Alex waited inside his room for Bren to move—he would notice immediately, as the man was always incredibly noisy.
When Alex heard Bren's voice echo through the hallway, he began to get ready.
He approached the door and waited for Bren to start walking down the stairs.
"Hey, servants!" Bren called.
But he received no reply.
"Fucking maggots. The day I become head of the family, I'll make sure to blast your skulls open," Bren muttered angrily. Then he took out a communication artifact and spoke into it.
"Hey, mongrels, I'm calling you all. I'm about to leave the inn." He barked the last part.
"We are on our way," came a voice from the other side.
Alex, standing just behind the door, was ecstatic—he couldn't believe he had found such crucial information simply by waiting for this douchebag to leave the inn.
'So he's alone at night in the inn, and there's more than one guard following him,' Alex thought, taking mental note.
This made everything much easier. He could strike at night, but he still didn't know where the guards stayed. If they were close, they might reach Bren before Alex could do anything.
"We are in position—you can leave," said one of the guards through the communicator.
Alex immediately came up with something else to do.
He would try to see who the guards were and, once Bren returned to the inn, track them to see where they went afterward.
As they reached the streets, Alex blended into the crowd, scanning faces to see if any looked familiar, but he found nothing.
He couldn't expect to recognize someone by familiarity alone—especially someone he had probably only seen once, and randomly at that.
Still, he followed, learning whatever he could from Bren.
For instance, he discovered that Bren was a tier 2 mage.
But knowing the idiot in question, Alex was certain Bren had pushed his way there by throwing money at his cultivation. That would leave him stuck at the master stage until he truly met the magic requirements for tiering up.
After that, Bren fell into a pattern of doing absolutely nothing useful.
He wandered aimlessly during the day, and at night, he looked for pubs to crawl into.
His daily life amounted to: eat, creep, sleep, repeat.
Alex kept to the shadows, still needing to figure out who the guards were. Eventually, he came up with an idea.
'How about I instigate a fight?'
He started thinking about how to make a stranger fight Bren, forcing the guards to reveal themselves. Once he knew their faces, he could track them later, after Bren returned to the inn.
'Someone sufficiently drunk will do. I just need a motivation,' Alex thought, entirely unbothered by the fact that his actions would likely lead someone to injury—or worse.
As the night passed, he spotted a man drinking fiercely. The guy was already heavily drunk, so Alex devised a plan.
He approached another man—this one less drunk—and said:
"Hey, fella, how about a challenge? I'll give you two gold coins if you can throw this bottle at that dude over there." Alex said.
"Hah! That's easy money, man! Watch this!" the man said. He grabbed the bottle, turned, and aimed at the person Alex had pointed to.
Alex dropped two gold coins on the table and immediately left, heading toward the soon-to-be victim.
When he was close enough, he saw the bottle fly through the air and hit the man square on the head.
'Shit, even drunk, he had good aim!' Alex thought, surprised.
Back at the table, the thrower turned around and said, "Hah! Did you see that!?" But no one was there. Still, he found the promised gold coins, pocketed them, and continued on with his life.
"Who the fuck threw a bottle at me!?" the wronged man roared.
"I saw that dude over there throw it at you, and when it hit, he celebrated," Alex said, approaching him and whispering while pointing at Bren.
"He dares!" The man was so drunk he didn't even care who Alex was pointing to. He simply stomped forward and punched Bren in the face.
"You dare throw a bottle at me, motherfucker?!" he yelled, then bent down and kept punching Bren again and again.
'How the hell is he this weak? Even a boosted tier 2 should have some fight in him,' Alex thought, surprised Bren was taking the beating this badly. He didn't mind, though. If anything, this was better.
And the fact that the guards hadn't appeared after the first punch meant they didn't care much about this mongrel.
Only after Bren took several more blows did two men rush in and yank the drunk off him.
Safe to say, Bren was furious.
"Why the fuck did you take so long to help me?!" he shouted. Then he pointed at the drunk man. "Drag this vile worm back and destroy his life!"
When the guards turned, carrying the man, Alex finally got a clear view of their faces.
'I'm done here. I don't need to see the guy coercing a girl again,' Alex thought. Having gotten what he needed, he left the pub.
He waited outside, hiding in the shadows, to see how far the guards stationed themselves from Bren.
Bren eventually left the pub with an unwilling-looking girl at his side.
Alex scanned the area and spotted the guards hiding a few meters ahead and behind.
This time, he followed Bren to another inn, but instead of entering to see which floor he booked, Alex waited. When Bren went inside, the guards left to go elsewhere.
Alex tailed them. And just like Bren, they seemed to have an obsession with lust—except they went with more "willing" girls.
'A brothel? Really?' Alex thought. 'No wonder they needed to be called. But is this a one-off? Or do they go somewhere else on other nights?'
Unsure, he needed more information.
As he returned to the inn where Bren was staying, he looked at the sky. It wasn't rain that was coming—it was a full-on storm.
He booked a room on the first floor, ate, then went to prepare some poisons and sleep.
The following morning, back in Lyssan, the town's academy was in an uproar—the rankings were out, and the results were shocking.