I have to admit that dealing with stalkers is something that I like to do. One reason for that is my mana sense is just so much superior to the people that are around me.

  Stalkers always tend to underestimate just how strong my mana sense is. That usually makes the difficulty of dealing with stalkers quite a bit less for me. More importantly, I can use the time when they are stalking me to study them. To figure out how to attack them and get rid of them in a few moves.

  Right now, two stalkers are following me. I can't say for certain who these people are because they have taken care never to come into my sight. They are always part of a crowd or are safely out of the way, like right now. The only reason that they would be so careful around me is if they are worried that I will kill them.

  They are using some kind of spell to mask their mana presence. At least that is what they are supposed to be doing. They have underestimated the sensitivity of my mana sense, though. That means that right now, my stalkers are expecting themselves to be invisible in my eyes.

  What they don't know is that I can track every single movement that they are making. Well, the spell is somewhat effective. I can't tell the exact kind of mana that they are using, nor can I tell just how much mana they have. I can tell that they have about as much mana as me. (Though there is room for error in this.)

  This hidden state of theirs makes them easier to detect. While the spell is hiding them, it also makes them stick out like a sore thumb in my vision. Without the spell, it would be hard for me to differentiate their mana from the mana of the people around them. Their present half-hidden state means that I can track them even from a chaotic location like the bazaar.

  Well, I guess I don't need to worry about a crowd where I am going to at least. After all, I am returning to the region that we had come to during my blood echolocation.

  Well, I get to study this place with more time as I stroll through this place. Right now, I am walking at a leisurely pace. After all, I have to pretend to walk about unsteadily.

  I am supposed to be drunk out of my mind right now. Drunk enough that I don't know where I am going. (At least my stalkers need to think that for a bit more.)

  As for where I am going, I am going to a street that I had made note of during my trip to this part of the town. Incidentally, this place is very close to the warehouse where we fought Esmerelda. There wasn't a sign of life in the place. I had noted down the place as the perfect place to get rid of the stalkers then.

  There would be nobody there to witness my fight with the stalkers. There is also nobody to find the bodies that I will inevitably get rid of. After all, what is the use of getting rid of bodies if they are just going to be discovered the next day?

  By the way, I have finally learned about this part of the town. Turns out it is called the butcher's quarry. This place is the part of the town that was inhabited before the creation of the wall and the quarries.

  This place acted as the living quarters for all the people who initially settled this town. Since there was no wall to protect these people, the place faced the full brunt of the undead. This, they usually had face right here. (Undead are always attracted to places where the living stay.)

  Once the Navok family came to power and built the wall, this place was finally abandoned. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the place had been steadily taking damage from all the battles that were fought here.

  Turned out, it was cheaper to just move to the area closer to the casino than to try and fix the damage to the place.

  Other than that, it also turned out that this place is the closest to the pit. (That is the reason for the infernal stink in the place.) The pit is outside of the town, beyond the walls of this place. The butcher's quarry is well within the walls that enclose this town.

  Still, the wall can do nothing about the stink that has become a part of this place. It is always there, a part of the background. There are many places where the smell of rotten flesh is overpowered by the smell of trash. Nobody would call that an improvement, though.

  Well, I guess that you can get used to the stink in the place, but there is no getting used to diseases. Due to its proximity to the pit, the entire place has become a hotbed for diseases. Turns out that it is cheaper to just abandon this place than to try and make the place liveable.

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  All of this means that the place has become half-abandoned now. There are still people who live in this place. They only do so because they can't afford to live in any other part of the town. That means that there are certainly no mages in this place that I might accidentally stumble into.

  While the place has a tragic background, it is presently the perfect place for me to get rid of my stalkers. Even as I am thinking this, I have been steadily making my way to the street. I reached it a few moments ago.

  All the buildings in this street are ruins. I don't think that I have seen a single building that has a full roof. Most of them are half collapsed, like a giant had stepped on them.

  As I have been going deeper into the street, I finally stopped near a butcher's shop. It is the perfect place for me to ambush the enemy. The shop is in the exact middle of the street. That means if my stalkers were to come here, I have the most chance of catching them should they run away.

  Even as I enter the butcher's shop, I can smell the scent of rust in the place. It doesn't take me long to find the source of the smell. The people here have left all of their blades here. As I look at it, I wonder how the people must have left the place.

  They must have been in a hurry. Otherwise, why would a butcher leave the tools of his trade here like this? I would imagine that it must have been in the middle of a death wave, like the one happening outside.

  He (or she) must have run at the last moment, the undead yipping at their feet. They must have been overcome by the panic of the moment as they ran away from their position. He (or she) must have sworn to come back for it. After all, something like this cannot be left behind, can it?

  They would most likely not have made it far if that were the case. Even now, their corpses must be decorating one of the streets in the place. Their blades outlived them, though, as the rusted mess in front of me.

  Looking at these rusted blades, I suddenly feel a sense of melancholy. I can feel the sadness well up in me as I go closer to the blades. With how rusted they are, they naturally cannot be used at all.

  Well, I have wasted enough of my time, it looks like, as I turn my attention back to my mana sense. I should be keeping an eye on my stalkers, not imagining the history of a rusted blade. After all, I am sure this blade will outlive me if the stalkers were to plant a dagger in my throat.

  Well, looks like my stalkers are not fools, at least. If they were, they would have just followed me into the place, and I would have gotten rid of them on the spot.

  They have stopped at the entrance of this street. I am sure that they are right now, debating among themselves about how this could be a trap. They will begin by checking for any formations in the place that can trap or kill them. After all, why would I come to this random part of a god-forsaken part of the town?

  They will debate among themselves about how they are overthinking it. They will debate about how they are unnecessarily working themselves into a panic.

  After all, we would have already gotten rid of them if we knew that they were here. After all, we had plenty of opportunities to attack us if they wanted to. They have been following us since about a week before the blood echolocation plan. That must mean that we have not detected them yet.

  Then they will debate among themselves about what I am doing here. The question will tickle their curiosity as they decide that it must be important to learn what I am doing here. Then they will finally enter the place.

  Well, I guess I have to answer that question right now. After all, there must be a reason that we have let them stall after us for so long. Well, we had discovered them quite quickly after they had begun to follow us.

  We would have gotten rid of them the day we had discovered them. If I am honest, we had planned to get rid of them the day we discovered them. Well, that plan was not mine.

  It was Eric who had discovered them. (Well, the man has an even more sensitive mana sense than me.) The only reason he had informed us about them was that not doing so would have offended us too much.

  Eric had wanted to get rid of the creatures the instant that they showed their faces. (Or their mana.) It was only the combined counseling of me and the searchers that stopped the man from doing anything rash.

  We had reasoned that these stalkers are easily detectable. We also didn't know who these stalkers belonged to.

  If these stalkers belonged to the Navok family or any of the other local powers here, things would get messy. We would be unnecessarily inviting trouble by getting rid of them. After all, all of our hard work in the last few weeks is to not get involved in the politics of this place.

  If these stalkers belonged to the vampires. Well, they can send people that we would never be able to detect. For whatever reason, they have sent these folks after us. It would be better to keep them with us. Getting rid of them would just mean that the vampires would send somebody we can't see the next time.

  Since we can detect them, it would be pretty easy for us to feed them false information. We were also planning our trap at that time. We had to make sure that we did nothing that would attract the attention of the vampires. After all, just the blood echolocation would have been a good indicator of our presence.

  We had to make sure that the vampire's attention was fully taken by Anthony and the Aegis. To do this, if it meant that we let ourselves be stalked for a few days, it would have been worth it.

  Granted, our plan ultimately led to nothing. So we might as well have gotten rid of them the moment that they showed their faces.

  As I record all of this, the stalkers have finally decided on a plan of action. They have finally entered this street.

  Well, it is time for me to focus, it looks like.