Despite the rumors, Krahe’s re-emergeo the city went unnoticed. She simply appeared from a particurly well-hidden door in a random basement safehouse, one of over a dozen possible exit points for the tramline. From there, she wasted no time in putting her affairs in order. When she went to pick up her order of upgraded lenses for the Prospector’s Eyes, the craftsman remarked that she was te. He hadn’t sold them — if anything, he grabbed them frht uhe ter, as if he had been waiting for her all this time, and just as quickly accepted her sed half of the payment, without even b to t the money. It was clear he wanted her out of his shop as quickly as possible. She didn’t mind.
She didn’t return to Gashward Road, instead spending a few days at Sorayah’s home as she sidered how to proceed . The fact of the matter was, Firminus had wanted her to stay at the pound for another week. It had been her own choice to return to civilization before she was back to full fighting form. Even if her capabilities right now were in fact greater than during the raid, she was still only at 70% at best. The Adamas an had yet to fully settle in, and the various aftereffects of her numerous surgeries still made themselves known often enough to interfere.
Seeing as she had no iion to join up with an agency, Krahe had decided to create her own. A detective agency, that is, a simple front-office, a public faot only was this possible within the legal framework, it was fairly easy. From what she had learned, Audunpoint had a det number of smaller agencies, it was just that they usually ended up as subtractors — glorified proxies — for one of the big five or the church. The existence of such a front agency, iably, presented an issue by its very nature. A public office, one where she would be with some frequency, would iably bee a target. In the end, Krahe inteo turn that problem into a be by turning her offito a trap for those foolish enough to wander in with hostile iions.
The true problem, then was that she didn’t have the skills or resoureeded to turn a civilian building into a fortified death trap without making it obvious.
For this purpose, her than Yao Fu came to mind.
Then, there was the matter of the hunt. She now had more specific details regarding what beast she would need, and that she would likely o hire a trustworthy tracker. For this, she expected to o pry some intel out of Nozar… And once she did find a possible target, she would o sult with Yao Fu to firm that it would be suitable, given that woman’s involvement. She decided to make partial copies of the soulbeast intel memste, total out to around half a dozees with varying amounts of information, each of which she made three copies of.
As she went down her mental checklist, grinding a beetle-like beaween her mors, Krahe arrived to her o rectify her ck of barriers and wards. Astro Diving, Astro Skimming, her biosuit, the Adamas an, all these were potent defensive measures, but Krahe had already growo wards. Barriers, she could do without if need be, but she wouldn’t feel fortable without wards.
The answer, once more, led to Yao Fu.
The Atomica. The Shardkey of Heshmad Abbasi. The fragments of Eutropia’s Gulf Key.
All in all, Krahe had all the parts necessary to assemble somethiraordinary — perhaps the only missing ingredient would be a voidkey with exceptional barrier characteristics. Perhaps somethiropy-light, fulfilling the role of a supplementary defehan a typical barrier. She was certain there would be another catch, that she would o get some extra special material to allow for the unification of all these voidkeys as one, but that roblem for the future.
Almost without thinking, Krahe gnced inwards, towards Barzai, and saw that the eidolon remained dormant. There had been a ge, however. He was no lestating” — instead, his system readout simply stated that he was ready for the evolution ritual. The problem, of course, was that she didn’t know what that entailed. This… Also poiowards Yao Fu. In this case, it was because she had a great deal of influence over Zachariah Ahmadi, the Speaker of the Lost Sun Society. With each path of least resistahat turned out to have that old monster sitting at the crossroad, Krahe grew more and more uneasy. Not because she distrusted Yao Fu — if anything, out of all her acquaintances in this world, she was the most fortable with their retionship, as she k to be simply transaal in a mahat her side could afford to break. The number of threads leading back to that woman just made Krahe keenly aware of how ckluster her work of es was.
Last in order of how heavily it weighed ohoughts was the matter of her clothes, and especially of the biosuit. Upon her departure from the pound, Firminus had handed over the first fruits of his experimental bour — a spe of newly-cultured biosuit material, of a sort. It was different from that which made up her biosuit somehow, the reason for which she wasn’t sure of. She wagered it to be somewhere between the circumstances of her rebirth and whatever Firminus had doh her sample, as he had mentioned having made efforts to improve it in some vague manner. Regardless, she had a fairly signifit amount, and after going through a few options, Krahe simply used the extra mass to directly expand her biosuit. Despite this iion, the inal biosuit retained clear lines of separation, with the system reizing the new mass as “Type-38 Firminus-patterured Biogel”. Its properties were generally the same as the Type-37 had been upon her initial transmigration, but slightly inferior in all aspects, with an armor prote rating of E2. By parison, the Type-37 Biosuit’s armor prote rating had grown by two is — E3, to D2.
When it came to the issue of rising temperatures, thankfully, her biosuit and Firminus’ copy both helped mitigate it to aent. As part of its core funality, the biogel absorbed her sweat and used this excess moisture for its own form of evaporative cooling, effectively amplifying Krahe’s ability to naturally cool herself down — it truly fulfilled the descriptor of “sed skin” in all aspects. Furthermore, the gel’s structural makeup meant that its surface, despite being bck, absorbed very little heat from the sun. This property also caused it to glisten a purplish shade when the light hit it just right.
Akaso
