I am bored out of my mind right now. I have been roaming this place for the last couple of days now, and the only thing I got out of it is a headache. To anybody looking at me right now, I am supposed to be looking for the bones of a dracon.

  I naturally won't be finding the bones of a dracon in such a place. Anything that I find here is going to be a false product, or it is going to be priced well beyond its value. After all, Dracons are too rare in this place for it to be found in such a place. I would expect such a thing to be in the treasury of a family, if I am honest. Even there, it is pretty unlikely to find such a thing.

  They are supposed to be a delicacy down here, it seems. It is something only the nobles can afford. Right now, I am making my way through the bazaar, going from shop to shop. At every shop, I am routinely enquiring about the bones and leaving. I guess that I should speak about the place where I am doing all of this. This place is known as the bazaar.

  Much like the casino, the name of this place tells much about the place. It is a street about half a kilometer in length, right next to the casino. The entire street is packed with vendors setting up shop in every available inch of the place. There are hundreds of folks in the place, speaking, fighting and haggling with each other. If you did not know better, you might think their lives depended on it.

  Most of these people are drunk out of their minds. They leave the casino looking like they are about to puke out their guts. All in all, the bazaar has a chaotic and vibrant energy to it.

  Looking at this place, you wouldn't think that there is an entire horde of undead attacking this place. These people don't seem to think that the wall could be breached. Well, if the walls were to be breached, the folks here are going to be dead within the hour. They are in no state to fight. Not that I will mind their death too much, though. The incessant noise of this place will drive me insane if I stay another day here.

  The entire place is a cacophony of sounds that makes me feel like I am drowning in this sound. Vendors are screaming to attract the attention of customers. Servants are rushing about the place, trying to complete their jobs. They have to do this while dodging the drunk idiots and the beggars that are everywhere in this place. Then there are the drunk gamblers, who are leaving the casino in a steady stream. They don't have much money on hand, but are still itching to spend it. That means that they are haggling their hearts away. They are the source of half of the noise in this place, I tell you.

  Even now, I am forced to push myself through these people in a convincing manner. I have to be very careful not to use any of my vital mana here. One reason is that most of the folks here are not mages. A proper shove will shatter their bones. It would certainly clear a path for me in this crowd and will most likely get me killed in the next ten minutes. The reason for that is the guards.

  You see, spread throughout this entire mess is a group of people who are guards. Most try to make themselves look like beggars. Some pop out of the casino, acting drunk.

  Only an idiot would think of them as beggars, though. They just stand in their corners, looking out at the street, studying the people going about. They are most likely folks from the Navok family who are keeping order in this street. (Any chaos here will cause issues in the casino as well.)

  I am sure that if anybody were trying to be a nuisance here, these guards would kill them and add them to the pile outside. Well, I had been worried about these guards. After all, I have been spending the last couple of days here, from sunrise to sunset. Granted, I have my excuse of dracon bones, but it wouldn't fool a particularly paranoid guard.

  With the death wave, there is more than enough reason for these people to be paranoid. After all, I have to assume that they must commit quite a large number of their troops to the wall. This would be the perfect time to attack the casino.

  At least that is what I was thinking would happen. I have been here for the last couple of days. The guards have not looked in my direction at all. If anything, it feels like I am a ghost here. I guess that they are more worried about the drunk people. They are, after all, more likely to cause trouble than a servant out on a task. (However impossible that task is.)

  Well, that is a good thing because my getting detained here would screw up our plan completely. If it were not necessary for me to be here in the market, I wouldn't be here. You see, this market is the central location in this town. It will be pretty easy for me to go to any part of the town quickly from here. Time is going to be of the essence once I start the blood echolocation. Every second is going to be precious.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  After all, the first thing that vampires will be doing after they feel the blood wave is to be on guard. Even if they don't run away from their present location, this is not a fight that we want.

  Our goal is to catch them at their base with their pants down. We want to capture a vampire and bring it back to the ship. Once that is done, we can run away from this place as quickly as we came here. I am sure that the vampires know this, so they are certainly not going to make things easy.

  I have to wait for the Aegis to take their roles as bait. Even I was surprised by just how effectively the searchers have managed to fool them. Right now, Anthony is thinking that it is his idea to follow Enrique back to the vampire's lair. If he were to think about it seriously for a bit, he would realise how stupid that is. (That too without any support from us.) The scholars are not giving them that opportunity, though. If they succeed, it is all well and good. If they don't, that is where we come in.

  The plan is that if the vampires launch an attack on the Aegis in retaliation, then we will act. The Aegis are not weaklings. They can hold their own against the vampires for a bit. That will make our little raid much harder to detect. I guess that I should speak about blood echolocation. I have time to kill right now anyway.

  Blood echolocation is something that I have devised. It is not a completely new technique since I have made use of many concepts from mana echolocation. (Made use of, copied rune to rune. They are the same thing, really.)

  Blood echolocation is the same thing that I do with mana echolocation. It is just that it makes use of blood mana instead of my vital mana. I just had to modify these runes because we were making use of blood mana instead of your own vital mana. (Vital mana gives you a certain flexibility of control.)

  blood mana doesn't interact with any other type of mana. The only thing that can cause blood mana to bounce back is another source of blood mana. That means that a blood mana wave can travel a greater distance before the ambient mana will rip it apart.

  Due to this, the spell has a much greater range than mana echolocation usually has. Normally, it would be long enough to cover about a tenth of the town. With blood mana powering it, it will cover about half of this town. I have certain modifications I want to test. If they work, then I will be able to cover at least nine-tenths of this town.

  Whether these modifications work or not, I am confident that I will be able to detect them from here. I cannot do it from anywhere else if I fail here anyway. That is why I have had to stay here for the last couple of days, just roaming about. (And wasting my time.)

  By the way, the Searchers and the Sentinels are presently here in the market with me as well. The two leaders are in the casino, though. Normally, I would have been with them, but it would have been quite dangerous for our story if I did that. After all, why would a bunch of young masters take along a servant to such a place? That is why I have to make do with this place.

  Once I get the signal, I will begin blood echolocation using the blood mana in my mana core. (It is not enough to cast a spell, but it should be enough for this.) The two factions will then begin to follow me as I lead them to the vampires. Normally, I make use of a small formation that runs on blood mana stones. (You would be surprised just how many such stones we have got in our hunts. Vampires love to make these.)

  Now, I have to physically cast blood echolocation. If possible, I would have made the formation, but I don't have the resources to make it at this moment. After all, if I were to screw this up, all of our efforts here will become useless.

  Now I have done blood echolocation quite a few times in my life. The problem with this is that I always had formations to assist me. (That is the only way one can use blood mana stones safely.)

  Now, with the blood mana in my mana core, I have way more options at hand. What I am going to be doing right now is not like the formation I built for this task so long ago. I will have to modify it to work with my mana core. Technically speaking, this should be closer to mana echolocation than what I did before. Still, there are going to be significant differences.

  Right now, that is my main worry. If I make any mistakes here, the vampires would end up detecting this. That would put them on guard with us. We won't be able to do this again. The chances of this happening are pretty low. I have been working with this formation for years. If I did not have so much free time to think about what could go wrong, I wouldn't even consider this.

  Just as I was thinking this, Patrick pops up in my vision. (I am walking about quite aimlessly in the market right now.) Even as I grasp my sword, I see the man gesturing at me to start my work. His coming here means that the Aegis has failed.

  I do not stop moving as I finally activate my sword. I can feel the blood mana flow into my mana core as the sword pulses in my hand. The guards in the streets have not noticed this yet. (They will if I stay here too long, though.)

  I can feel the cacophony in my surroundings magnify as I grasp the blood mana. The sound that assaults is enough for me to lose my grasp on the blood mana.

  As I do this, I see one of the guards turn in my direction. Many things are going through my head as I wait for him to come and attack me. Thankfully, the man turns away from me. Looks like they haven't sensed it yet. (It is pretty hard to detect blood mana. Especially if you don't know what to look for.)

  I grasp blood mana again as I record this. I can feel the sounds in the market penetrate my head as I begin to control the blood mana. I eject the mana as it flows away from me like a wave. I do this for a couple of moments, after which I finally stop it. I stand there in the middle of the street. I stand like this for about ten seconds, after which I feel a tiny amount of blood mana from the east.

  It is tiny enough that I would have missed it if I had not known what I was looking for. I gesture for Patrick to follow me as I repeat this process, and I set off.