God's an Adventurer: Volume III

Chapter 25- "Merchants"

"It's about time we head out don't you think?"

"Still think we should wait a couple of hours."

"You're too worried."

A man sat across from them; his eyes constantly fixed over the horizon. He donned a common tunic and trousers a perfect disguise for avoiding unwanted attention. There was nothing particularly astounding about this man, besides the fearful look in his eyes. Like an animal who caught a sound of its predator stalking its every move, he looked over and held himself in place.

"Yes... yes, I think it's safe now, don't you?" another man spoke out.

This one was dressed no different than the first, except for a red tinted vest over himself. Besides that, he was bald and slightly more fragile in appearance than the first. No other distinguishing features.

He looked over his way which made him disgruntled.

"We should wait." I responded simply.

I shifted my sword in its holster and said nothing more. These men were honestly troublesome.

"Heh, scared are you guard? We should leave already, otherwise we're going to be late with our shipment."

A third man, this one was the nail that stuck out. Just like the other two, his attire was practically common for someone who was disguising themselves as simple merchants out to deliver goods. However, his physique was completely wrong. He was large and covered in a few battle scars that ran from his arms to his hands. At the base of his neck a tattoo that he could neither make heads or tails of but looked like the head of some creature from this angle. His lip was parted with a thin scar over it and his facial hair was unruly. Compared to the other two whose frames were far more thin and smaller, he was a monster.

Finally, himself.

"Precautionary, my lords."

"Heh, my lords? Never been called something so fancy, think I like this extra security around, haha!"

The man let out a bellow laughter but the other two did not seem amused.

I sighed silently and went back about pretending to do my duties.

Why was he here, all the way out in this human nation pretending to be an extra hire in hand? Well that all began a month or so ago.

Word reached one of their bases back in the Fay, that their product distribution coming from the human nation was being cut off by some unknown assailants. The higher ups, meaning his bosses, quickly got word of this incident, and as one of two men in charge of keeping tabs on this branch of their operation, it had been him and his partner who were being blamed for this. Their bosses wanted names, and more than anything, they wanted heads to roll.

I sighed again, this time a little more loudly.

The problem with the way they ran their operation, was that while it kept a lot of wandering eyes from looking in their direction, it also meant that the bottom of the chain was generally hired men, bandits or criminals who were not so trustworthy, but had some level of interest in coin. It was a very fragile system, a risky one but left not much traces back to them in case something went wrong. The only reason why many of these men did not go off and take the product for their own once it was handed to them, was because the pay was too good. They offset the price of their product by such a larger amount, that it was not worth stealing it from the thieves themselves.

That was not the point, however. With the knowledge that their product was being taken by assailants, he was tasked with personally investigating what was happening. He had to remain anonymous though, as someone higher in the chain of command, he had a little more information than these normal bandits and criminals and so going undercover was the best course of action.