Well, I am back in the bazaar. This time, though, I am not roaming about the place waiting for the Aegis to fall into a trap. Instead, I am just sitting in one single place. This particular place that I have been stationed at has been picked by the scholars.

  It is a little restaurant right outside the casino. The place is not popular in the least. Firstly, it is located behind the casino. It is pretty unlikely that any customer will come to this place. After all, they will find better places to eat closer to the casino.

  Secondly, the food here is barely edible. I have been forced to eat here for the last couple of days. The only thing I can say is that I have been struggling to keep the food in my stomach. The only thing that can be considered positive about it is the fact that the food here is dirt cheap. (Because it is ninety percent actual dirt.)

  Well, that would help out with my story, I presume. After all, I am supposed to be a servant who was supposed to be removed from my job. Then I drank my heart out for a week continuously. I wouldn't have much money to spend on food. I would be eating at the cheapest place I can find.

  Well, I don't know why I am even thinking about that. After all, if things go well today, all of these rumours are going to be useless. I would have more immediate worries then.

  Also, there is no way that the people here are going to waste their time with rumours. After all, the people here are too busy to waste their time on a petty thing like rumours. I don't think the people here will even remember that I came here. They just look at me as part of the crowd.

  The reason that I am sitting here is for the building that is about a minute away from this restaurant. I am here for the servant quarters of the casino.

  I guess that I should speak about the servants of the casino. It is a fact that I have not spoken much about them. (I did not think there was a need to.) The servants of the casino are an invisible bunch. They are responsible for the cleaning and the maintenance of the casino.

  Based on what I have learned about it (much of it from the searchers), it is a thankless and painful job. The pay is pitiful, and the work they have to do is immense. As if that is not enough, there is always the threat that you could be killed and your corpse sent to the pit.

  It could be due to a drunk patron attacking you because they think they harmed your honour in some way. It could be due to you stumbling on some dark deal made by the Navoks.

  All in all, there is always a demand in the casino for servants. Now, the reason that I am talking about all of this is that the scholars are now sure. The vampires are presently hiding as servants in the casino.

  We are now sure that they have taken over the servant quarters. Well, they had already guessed that to be the case at the start. The searchers have been working to prove this exact thing for the last couple of days. They are using their sources to confirm that there has been a mass hiring in the last couple of months. They have confirmed that these new hires are members of the Bloodfire gang.

  They have also been stalking the servant quarters to confirm their presence. They have records on every Bloodfire gang member who attacked the Mayfire Castle. (Mostly, we had to rely on sketches provided by the mayfires for this.)

  They have also confirmed that many of the old servants at the casino have all disappeared. These are the folks who have spent years in this position. The method of their disappearance is quite mysterious as well.

  We have seen none of the vampires, though. Well, if they were that easy to find, the Navoks would have already found them. I am sure that they are still here, stalking us from the edge of our vision. There is no way they have not detected our presence when we have been so close to them.

  That is why I was here initially, by the way. I have been escorting both Patrick and Arnold to this place as they studied the place. (Their studies mostly involve studying the place to see its defenses and the people here.)

  I am here to act as their guard. It is not that the searchers need my protection. (They can handle their protection.) The reason that I am here is to keep an eye on the searchers while they use whatever magic they need to study the place. (They claim that it is magic that boosts the functioning of their mind. I can't help but wonder if it is a drug.)

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Well, it did not take the two searchers long to confirm the presence of the gang. That they did in the first few hours in this place.

  They have been working the last two days to figure out a way to infiltrate the servants' quarters. The only way that they can do that is to study the place from up close. That is why we have been coming to this restaurant for the last couple of days.

  Turns out, it is the perfect place for us to spy on the servant quarters. The place is close enough to the gates of the servant quarters that you can just sit here to study the place. It is also far enough away that a person won't stumble into this place from the servant quarters by mistake.

  More importantly, you can see all the people who are entering and leaving the place. Also, the place is relatively hidden from the servant quarters. There is at least no way that they will be able to spy on us from a distance. They will have to enter my field of vision to find us. I will be able to detect any of the more magical means of spying on us.

  The searchers have not found much in the last couple of days. We cannot launch an attack on the place without the Navoks getting involved.

  I guess that I should explain this in a bit more detail. Well, I will have to start by explaining a bit about the history of the servant quarters. To do that, we will have to return to the time when this place was an expeditionary town. The casino was supposed to be the town hall of this place when it was an expeditionary town.

  Now, the town halls of the expeditionary towns usually tend to have a warehouse next to them. This warehouse would contain all of the important things that you would need to survive a siege. Vital things such as food, weapons and medicines.

  The logic of this is that even if the rest of the town were to fall, the town hall can be used to protect the people of the town. After all, the buildings can be replaced quite easily. People tend to be much harder to replace.

  That is why the town and the warehouse that it connects to have been designed as if they were forts. If you have not guessed, then this warehouse has been converted into the servant quarters.

  Now, the reason that I have spoken about the history of this place is to explain that the place is impenetrable.

  The entire thing has been designed to hold back an army. (Granted, this army was not meant to be living.) Under the navok's the defense of the place has only improved. With how paranoid they are, they must constantly expect to be under attack.

  With the vampires manning the place now, I am more than confident that any direct assault on the place will fail.

  The very first thing to note is that the place is massive. There are three floors to this building, and each floor is massive. (The thing was meant to store things for an entire town. You can imagine how massive the place must be.)

  Each of these places can only be entered by a single staircase. Any person trying to attack the place will only be able to progress by attacking these stairs.

  There is no way that we can scale the place through its walls. The entire place has been constructed of massive slabs of rock. That leaves no handhold for us to climb the place.

  Each floor is also connected to the casino. That means that the vampires can very easily retreat to the casino if it looks like they are going to lose. That is not something that we can allow.

  If the fight were to spill into the casino, the navoks would have to get involved. After all, we don't want the Navoks getting involved until they have to. (Right now, the navoks hold our ship hostage.)

  Another issue for us is the garden that surrounds this place. We will not be able to sneak into the servant quarters without tipping off our presence due to this garden. Any person with. A strong mana sense will be able to detect us approaching from the moment we enter the place. (The other party has the archer.)

  We also cannot swarm the place because the garden has been placed to prevent exactly that. (This garden also extends into the casino, by the way.) The entire place has been filled with different kinds of roses. These are thick enough that we won't be able to enter the place without hacking them away. (More importantly, their thorns are poisonous.) That would make our location pretty easy to identify by somebody like

  The windows are also placed in such a way as to allow the archers to shoot at any location in the garden. Right now, this is the main threat that we face. After all, the other party has the archer.

  We don't know how good the archer is with an actual bow and arrow. The man must be good if his skill with cannons is anything to go by. Otherwise, why would they have called the man the archer?

  Finally, we know that the other party is vampires. They will have something ready to trap us the moment that we show our faces in that garden.

  Well, to put all of this in brief, the servant quarters might just be the most impenetrable place in the town for us. Now, attacking this place would have been impossible if it were anybody but us.

  We are the most talented people in the black mountain. That means that we have a plan ready to infiltrate the place now. (Well, it would be more accurate to say that the searchers made this plan.)

  That is why I am sitting here, by the way. What is about to happen is also a part of the plan. I am mentioning this because what I am about to do will seem to be quite a stupid thing.

  Right now, one of the vampire captains is making his way to me. I don't know which one it is since the only thing that I can see is the man's mana right now.

  Still, I can't stop myself from removing my sword. I haven't activated it yet, though. This gets a couple of looks from the people around me, but they don't say anything. I suddenly can't help but question myself whether what I am doing is smart.

  I will have to hold back my doubt for now. After all, doubt will be the first thing that will get me killed. I am about to face a predator after all.

  As I enter a state of focus, the enemy finally comes into my sight.