Free Web NovelChapter 29: A Plan
STEP ONE: INFORMATION.
He needed to know exactly what the Association had on him. Their leads, their theories, their next moves. Walking in blind was what got hunters killed, and he wasn’t a hunter anymore. He was a target.
And targets survived by being smarter than the predators.
The phone helped with that. It was a window into the world outside. He’d already seen the news. But he needed more than headlines. He needed internal chatter. Guild communications. The kind of information that didn’t make it to the public feeds.
He knew where to look. Old forums. Porter networks. The kind of places where low-rank hunters traded gossip and tips because nobody bothered to monitor them. He’d spent three years in those spaces, invisible and ignored.
Time to make that invisibility useful.
STEP TWO: RESOURCES.
He wrote the word and immediately frowned. Resources meant money. Money meant access. Access meant risk. He had nothing right now except the rags on his back and a goddess who could teleport him through shadows.
That was powerful, but power couldn’t pay for anything.
He needed cash. He needed gear. He needed a way to move through the city without being recognized.
Robbing people was an option, but he’d rather not have the association increase his threat level.
The porter networks could help with some of that. Low-rank hunters were always looking for side jobs, off-the-books work that paid in cash and asked no questions.
Ronan had been one of them for years. He knew the codes, the meeting spots, the unwritten rules.
But showing his face in those circles was a gamble. The Association might have informants. Bounty hunters might be watching. Every step he took outside this shack was a step closer to getting caught.
STEP THREE: ALLIES.
This one was harder. Ronan stared at the word for a long time, his hand hovering over the wall.
He didn’t have friends. No one alive, at least. He’d been a porter, the lowest rung of the hunter ladder. The people he’d worked with had tolerated him because he carried their equipment and didn’t complain.
The only person who’d ever looked at him like he mattered was currently asleep on his mattress.
He thought about his grandmother. Dead now, had been for years. She’d been the last person who believed in the old faith. If she could see him now, bonded to the goddess she’d worshipped, would she be proud? Horrified? Both?
He didn’t know. He’d stopped believing in her gods when he was twelve. Stopped believing in much of anything.
But Sarael was real now.
Maybe that made her an ally. Maybe that made her the only ally he needed.
He scratched out STEP THREE and rewrote it.
STEP THREE: TRUST SARAEL.
It wasn’t a strategy. It wasn’t a plan. But it was the truth. Whatever came next, he’d face it with her. That was the deal. That was the bond. That was the only thing he had left that felt solid.
Behind him, Sarael stirred. She made a small sound, something between a sigh and a murmur, and her fingers twitched against the mattress like she was reaching for something in her sleep.
Probably him.
Ronan watched her for a moment, then turned back to the wall.
STEP FOUR: THE SKILL EVOLUTION POINT.
He’d almost forgotten about it. The system had awarded him a point after escaping Tartarus-B, something about skill evolution. He hadn’t used it yet. Getting blinded by sunlight, interrogated, framed for murder, and teleported to a shack had kept him pretty busy.
But now, in the quiet of the safehouse, with Sarael asleep and his plan taking shape on the wall, he had time to figure out what it did.
"System," he said quietly. "Show skill evolution options."
A window flickered to life in front of him.
[Skill Evolution Point: 1 Available]
[Evolvable Skills:]
[Night’s Caress (Passive)] → [???]
[Shadow Consume] → [???] freёwebnovel.com
[Lover’s Protection] → [???]
[Shadow Merge] → [???]
[Corrosive Dark] → [???]
[Evolving a skill requires consultation with (Bonded). Proceed?]
Ronan glanced back at Sarael. Still asleep.
"Not yet," he muttered. "Let her rest."
The window faded.
He turned back to the wall and added one more line beneath his steps.
NO RUSH. PLAN FIRST. ACT LATER.
It wasn’t glamorous. But it was how he’d survived forty-seven days in hell. Patience. Preparation. And a willingness to let other people underestimate him.
Ronan stepped back from the wall and crossed his arms, tilting his head as he took in the full scope of what he’d just carved into the plaster. The words stared back at him like a manifesto, or maybe a cry for help, depending on who was looking.
"Now that I’m thinking about it, writing all this on the wall is kind of dramatic."
"But at least it reminds me of the plan every time I walk in here."
He continued, uncrossing his arms and letting them drop to his sides.
"So it works. Function over form. Or whatever."
He looked at the steps again, tracing the rough letters with his eyes. Information. Resources. Trust Sarael. The skill point. All of it pointed toward the same first move, the same opening gambit in whatever game he was playing against the Association.
His old contacts.
The fixers. The middlemen. The guys who didn’t care about bounties or news headlines or whether a hunter was officially sanctioned. They only cared about whether the job got done and the payment cleared.
Ronan had run errands for them dozens of times over the years, back when he was just a porter trying to make rent. Pick up this package. Deliver this message. Stand in this corner and look unimportant while certain people had certain conversations.
He’d been invisible then. Useful, but forgettable.
Now he was the most wanted man in the country, and he was about to find out if those old connections were still willing to pick up the phone.
"They’re just fixers."
He said, as if saying it out loud would make it more convincing.
"Surely they wouldn’t mind."
The words hung in the air, not quite as reassuring as he wanted them to be.
Because the truth was, he didn’t know. The fixers operated in gray zones, sure, but there was a difference between running unlicensed errands and actively aiding a fugitive who’d allegedly murdered seven people.
That was the kind of heat most middlemen tried to avoid. The kind of heat that got you arrested as an accessory, or worse, got you thrown into a black-site interrogation room with your own straitjacket and your own one-way mirror.
But what choice did he have? It wasn’t like he could walk into a convenience store and apply for a shift. His face was everywhere. His name was everywhere.
Intercepting portals from other hunters was out of the question too. Too risky. Too many variables. Too much chance of running into someone who could actually fight back, and without his skills in broad daylight, he wasn’t invincible.
Odd jobs through fixers were the best option. The only option, really. Low profile. Cash payments. No questions asked. The kind of work he’d done for years before Tartarus-B, except now he had the stats to take on jobs that paid significantly more than porter wages. freēwebnovel.com
Assuming anyone was willing to work with him.
Assuming the fixers didn’t take one look at his name and slam the door in his face.
Assuming a lot of things.
Ronan exhaled and rubbed the back of his neck. The plan was solid on paper. Execution was going to be the hard part. But that was always the hard part, wasn’t it? Planning was easy. Surviving was hard.
