“Any experience with evolving an eidolon?” Krahe asked.

  “Yes and no. What I know will not be helpful to you. Your methods are simply more refined in all ways that matter. You are a Lost Sun Society member, no?” Yao deadpanned.

  “How convenient of you to bring it up,” Krahe said, facetiously. “I mean to ask Zachariah for access to the Society’s restricted materials. Could you pressure him to accept my request without questioning it?”

  Yao’s annoyance was growing by the moment, now pinly dispyed in her expression and posture. She sighed, narrowing her eye. “Fine, just get on with it. I hope whatever you’re holding off on is worth the irritation you’ve caused me thus far.”

  With a smile, Krahe brought out a full copy of Firminus’ soulbeast memste, tossing it to Yao.

  “It’s been much longer than I had hoped, but I believe we will finally have that soulbeast hunt you suggested very soon. Just need to find the particur soulbeast and get a tracker willing and able to go after it. Not quite there, but we’re getting closer. I can’t think of a better way to stretch my legs after a long absence than to go after an extremely dangerous, sapient monstrosity in an alien region renowned for its danger.”

  “This is just a roundabout way of asking me to look into this for you,” Yao said, but no longer sounded nearly as annoyed.

  “Do or do not, it makes no difference to my course of action. I still have a few more threads to tug on before I need to beg,” Krahe retorted, taking the scroll off the table. “Before I leave you in peace, I take it you don’t have anything to tell me that would make your other scroll less torturous to comprehend?”

  “That which can be conveyed through words alone is not truly profound,” the old monster repeated with cruel amusement. “The process is vital in attaining true comprehension.”

  Krahe’s next goal was to visit Nozar and extract whatever he knew of Audunpoint’s soulbeast hunting world and of the soulbeasts currently active within a reasonable distance of the city.

  The payment would not be a problem.

  No, the problem was actually getting to the skeezy fuck, given where he lived.

  At least, so she had thought.

  The moment she was spotted on that street, Seer was there to greet her — and not with a gun, but with a retinue. They clearly weren’t comfortable with her being there, that much was clear, but when she stated her purpose to be here, Seer immediately delegated three of his subordinates to accompany her into the evoy apartment building. One of them was human, one was a squat Herculean — a beetle-man — and the st was… Familiar. It was the Croupier she had spared before, a pure-white Inax woman. There was no hate in her eyes, somewhat surprisingly.

  “Make no mistake. I want you out of here as soon as possible, without any corpses this time,” she said, picking up on Krahe’s surprise.

  “Let’s hope there are no giant quasi-war morphs with violent tendencies this time around, then,” Krahe replied, wasting no time in moving on. The possibility that she might get ambushed, that these three could jump on her at any moment, hung over her thoughts.

  To her surprise, in fact almost to her disappointment, it didn’t happen. She didn’t even receive the satisfaction of verbal antagonism from any of the apartment building’s inhabitants, and after she had gone to so much effort to painstakingly pick out a colorful bevy of slurs.

  She understood why she was able to reach her goal unimpeded — after all, she had spent nearly half her previous lifetime reaping both the positive and negative consequences of notoriety. It just so happened that, much like st time she had come here, she was itching to test her new toys on someone. As she saw it, Semzar barely counted, given the entirely extraordinary circumstances surrounding her battle against him. No, Krahe very much wanted to come across some shitheel mugger that didn’t know what he was getting himself into. She added pces where she might find such convenient live targets to her list of questions for Nozar. Sure, it might cut further into her reserves of Css-3 painkillers, but such was the cost of supremely accurate and supremely convenient information.

  “Wonder if he’ll take rejection suppressants as payment,” she thought. At this point, Krahe was fairly certain she would receive a sufficient supply of both painkillers and rejection suppressants for every specific operation she underwent as part of Firminus and Fidelia’s btantly obvious experiment. As she saw it, they had severely oversupplied her due to the high-risk nature of the Liminal Coil’s impntation. Was she pying with their goodwill? Perhaps. But she also knew how to discern her own perceived value in another’s eyes. Favonia wouldn’t kick up a fuss if she found out Krahe had used the painkillers as currency, especially since it was ultimately in pursuit of the church’s own goals.

  It took a good two minutes of knocking before Nozar came to the door.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m here, you can fuckin’ stop now. What’d you-” he began, only to freeze for a moment and move to sm the door. It was, however, too little too te, and Krahe skimmed through the gap.

  “Agh, fuck yaself!” he cried out, startled. After uttering a few more expletives, he turned to walk back into the depths of his hoarder’s ir, grumbling all the way. “Can’t wait for that barrier generator. Alright, what’d’you want? You better have payment.”

  “I want a list of all known active soulbeasts within the regions surrounding Audunpoint, including their characteristics, a list of all independent soulbeast trackers, and generalized intel on the current soulbeast hunting season, especially active caravans into the Beyond Frontier. And while I’m here, any intel you have regarding me – no need for deep cuts unless it’s something along the lines of another contract out on my head.”

  He looked over his shoulder, giving her a dubious look. Then, he shrugged and continued on.

  “Alright, but remember, y’get what you pay for — that means my effort, not just the information. Might get sloppy without proper incentive.”

  Akaso