Chapter 23: Kickstart. (2)

"Yeah, figures that she wouldn’t be here. Guess I was hoping for too much too quickly."

Gabriel stood in front of a tattered building as he muttered to himself. The wooden shack had quite a few holes, most of them barely covered by some cloth that fluttered with every breeze. This wasn’t a place you could live, even the orphanage that Gabriel grew up in was better than this.

But perhaps that was only to be expected, he was after all currently standing in what would commonly be called the slums. As far away from the noble district as possible, rows upon rows of houses stacked tightly together in front, as if to serve as a shield that blocked out the unsightly nature of this abandoned stretch of land.

Most citizens could go their entire lives without ever setting foot in this part of the city, and none of them ever wanted to set foot here either. The undesirables, the wastes of space, those abandoned by the world, that’s the kind of people that gathered here.

"Guess I’ll have to come back for her in the future, she’s bound to end up here anyway. Altare however… Still gives me a headache."

Yes, this lawless stretch of land, one day it would be the home of someone he was looking for. A girl trying to protect her three brothers, a servant of unwavering determination and loyalty, to the point that she could drink a cup of poisoned tea for her master with a smile on her face.

Teresa, the maid of the main character in the original show. In that show, she died for the main character due to one of Alice’s schemes. But in this life, he wanted her as Alice’s maid, she’d be a good fit for that position.

And then there was him… Altare, later given the surname De Viashin when he ascended to nobility. He was another person who died due to Alice’s machinations, another person in the side of the main characters. In the story, he was an alchemist, mixing magic and natural ingredients to make potions and items with beneficial or detrimental effects. And he was damn good at it too, his accomplishments in the field were what gained him his nobility.

The problem was, Gabriel had no idea where to find Altare. Teresa’s past was touched upon when the female main character first found her so that was why he knew that she’d end up in these slums eventually. But Altare was never given that, he was the archetypal mysterious ally that the male main character met at some point in the capital. But Altare was already a wanderer at that point, constantly moving between cities as he drift from fleeting fancy to fleeting fancy. Nothing was mentioned of his time before he encountered the main character, and he had only been in the capital for a handful of days when they first met.

"What a pain."

The thing Gabriel wanted to make the most, a Mana Smoke Candle, was something Altare would invent in the future. It was a revolutionary item that made it between three and seven times easier and faster to absorb mana. The items needed to make it weren’t too hard to get a hold of, but the way to make it wasn’t described in excruciating detail in the show. As such, his best bet, after finding Altare of course, would be to tell him the rough description and hope that his sheer genius would grace him with a flash of inspiration. Even if he couldn’t replicate the actual thing right away he should at least be able to make a weaker version.

Gabriel strode through the slums, retracing his steps. The sun was already creeping towards the horizon so it was about time he started heading back. The new bedsheets he’d bought were packed into a neat paper bag held beneath his arm. He didn’t have a salary so the only money he could spend was what Alice had given him, money she had undoubtedly taken directly from her own savings.

"Hmm, will it reach her next week? No, I paid quite well and then toyed around with his men so he’ll probably rush it so that we can meet again. Tomorrow perhaps?"

Gabriel mused to himself as he left the slums and made his way back home. The report he delivered to the Night Pack, it wasn’t something he brought out just because he wanted to blackmail or hurt Leonardo. No, the report getting leaked was something that happened in the original show as well, it was just that there it happened quite a few years later.

In fact, it was a rather important event in the original story, it was one of the final straws that broke Alice. And at the same time, it gave her the strength to properly sink into the darkness and embrace the role of the villain. Well, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the things that happened in the aftermath were what affected Alice.

It was quite simple really. With Leonardo’s dirty deeds, especially his opium business, getting dragged to the light, he had to engage in several undercover meetings with his investors and co-operators. One such meeting was uncovered and an assassination attempt was made as he travelled there. He survived, but was hurt rather grievously and got disfigured, as a result he took out his anger on Alice, finally breaking her last dreams of family.

And the power to sink into the darkness that followed that broken dream, came from the family she abandoned. They wanted to sweep it under the rug. They wanted to distract the commoners from the opium business by giving them something else to talk about. And the thing they came up with was Alice’s Spirit Awakening ceremony.

They had put it off for years at this point but suddenly made a big deal of it, welcoming people from every corner of the empire to spectate it. Were they hoping that the Vritara bloodline would allow her to awaken a great spirit that could draw everyone’s attention? Well, she succeeded in that at least.

As she laid there in the Spirit Pond, she cried and begged for the power to crush those who kept hurting her. She begged for something that could ease her pain. And a Calamity-grade fire spirit responded to her call, torching the entire palace that housed the pond. A bit over three hundred people died that day due to a ‘malfunction in the magic formation that contained the spirit’s energy’. Alice got her first taste of power, and the Vritara family got a tragedy to distract everyone.

"Hmm… When to leak it…"

That future, Gabriel was going to kick-start it. Well, parts of it at least. He definitely wouldn’t let Leonardo take out his anger on Alice, and he most certainly wouldn’t let her create a tragedy that the Vritara family could use as a distraction. He would have to tell her a bit more about spirits beforehand, just to make sure that she didn’t summon one that would instantly go wild again.

That second thing would be easy. People liked to think of spirits as these great and inexorable beings, but they were actually quite simple. They were just normal beings with their own preferences and desires, they were rather similar to humans in a lot of regards actually.

That first thing to prevent however… He was still debating on how to handle it. Taking the hits for Alice could only go so far, and he could only get hit so many times before it left a scar on her heart. He had a way in mind, the problem was just how Alice would react to it.

"Ah, I really can’t do anything but wait and see for now. Let’s hope Leonardo isn’t stupid enough to rush things straight away."

He could only rub the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh. He’d prefer to move after figuring out how Alice would react, but if Leonardo was stupid enough to rush about when all eyes were on him then it may force Gabriel to act before he wanted to, just so that he could prevent things from leaving his control.

Well, all that hinged on the hope that the Vritara family would act the same as they did in the show, even if the event took place a bit earlier than it was supposed to. If they decided to change things… well, he would have to figure something out then. He wasn’t a genius with contingency plans for every situation, more often than not he would just have to react to things as they happened.

"Ah, sorry, could I have two of those?"

His feet momentarily stopped as he passed one of the vendors that had set up shop in the plaza he first stopped in. He wasn’t selling anything spectacular, just wooden bottles filled with diluted fruit juice and ice. But Alice was someone who got excited even when she received apples and peaches that were already starting to rot so she would probably like something like this.

He paid for the bottles with the last of the money that Alice had given him and continued his return, packing away one bottle while holding the other, taking a sip from time to time as he walked. He made his way up the hill and to the side entrance meant for servants, returning to the Vritara estate just as the sun dipped below the horizon.

There was a bit of noise as he walked along the paved road that led to the mansion, it seemed as if the entire estate was buzzing slightly. It didn’t take long for him to find out why.

Approaching him from the mansion were two guards, a person walking a bit ahead of them with shaky steps. He saw them better as they got closer. Slicked back brown hair, murky blue eyes, pale lips, and finally a sharp nose. Chef Laurelai, one of Leonardo’s subordinates, and the one who kept giving Alice half-rotten food.

She was being escorted out of the estate by the two guards behind her, and judging by the baggage she was dragging along, it was likely that it was for good. She was trembling, nearly stumbling with each step. Her face was as pale as snow, an expression close to delirious lingering on her face.

She was lucky that Marion had intervened after Leonardo caused such a ruckus. She probably didn’t want her brother to raise more of a fuss by killing one of their workers, it would look bad on the family. Well, being fired and noted as a thief, as well as getting saddled with debt she would never be able to pay in her lifetime may not be better. Before long she would probably end up in the slums.

Her eyes landed on Gabriel, they were approaching each other so it was inevitable. She looked like a lost child with her vacant eyes, barely registering Gabriel’s presence. He raised the wooden bottle he had bought for himself, he drank slowly so there was about a third of it left. As they passed each other, he placed the bottle on top of the luggage she was bringing along, his words brushing against her ears.

"Here, the sweets I promised."