They wouldn’t likely have any Lords with them, but Kei couldn’t take chances with the lives of the ordinary people under her charge. She signaled a halt, then activated her message construct.

“We’ve found bandits at my current location,” she sent. “We’re going to double back and take the alternate route. We expect a delay of no more than eight hours.”

A construct fluttered off like a sunlight-colored sparrow. It would dissolve into a packet of madra and move much more quickly before re-forming at another construct that Lindon carried.

He wouldn’t like that their mission completion would be delayed, but he would understand.

The column of people had already begun reversing direction. She had expected to hear some complaints at the prolonged march, but the people were largely quiet. Either they were so tired that they couldn’t even muster the urge to complain or they knew the dangers of carrying on in their original direction.

No sooner had they all started marching the other way than her messenger construct returned. It burst into Lindon’s voice.

“I’m on my way.”

No further instructions.

Kei called a halt, and Teia flew over to discuss with her. Kei didn’t know what to say. How could Lindon’s presence change anything?

The two of them could handle combat with the bandits, but not without killing some of them. Unless it was a trap, and there were multiple Underlords hidden among the stone trees. Marching into unknown forces was a great way to die.

They both agreed that Lindon must be bringing the rest of the team.

Until he flew in on his green Thousand-Mile Cloud alone.

Kei stood on her own cloud, irritated, waiting for him to stop and explain himself. But, although he saluted to them as he passed, he didn’t slow down.

He dove straight into the trees.

He was going to kill them all.

Horrified, the sisters followed, pushing their clouds to maximum speed. As spirits flared in battle, Kei only hoped they weren’t too late.

Lindon was truly merciless. He was going to butcher these people. He…

Kei’s thoughts came to a halt as she landed, only seconds behind Lindon.

There were sixteen bandits, and they were all lying on the ground. Some were bound with simple constructs, others were groaning and helpless on the ground, and still others were in the process of surrendering voluntarily.

Lindon’s blue spirit chattered from its perch on his shoulder, and he flexed his hand of flesh as he listened. When he saw Kei and Teia, he ducked his head to them. “Pardon, but can you bring these people back?”

Kei swept her perception over them. Two were Underlords, and the rest were Golds. The Underlords were already bound.

It would have been so much easier to kill them. How had he done everything so fast?

Wordlessly, she nodded.

“Gratitude. I have to escort a mining team a few miles south of here. Is there anything else I can do to help?”

As he spoke, he slashed a line of black dragon’s breath across a dreadbeast a hundred yards away. It fell to pieces, and she knew he was going to grab its binding as he left.

Kei shook her head.

“Very good. Apologies, but I have to go now. I’ll see you tonight.”

Bowing slightly to them again, he swept off.

As she’d expected, he picked up the dreadbeast binding on his way out.

Grace dashed through the night, perception locked on her quarry.

She whipped her sword down, launching a Shadow’s Edge Striker technique after him, but he slipped aside. He followed some kind of illusion Path, and he was as slippery as those types always tended to be.

But when she finally got her hands on him, she was going to tear him apart.

He wasn’t an enemy or a bandit, but a sacred artist from a smaller sect who was supposed to be on her family’s side. But he was stealing from the cause.

More specifically, he was stealing from her.

He had presented himself as a courier, willing to take her natural treasures and dead matter back and turn them in on her behalf in exchange for a fee. Her void key was tiny, about the size of a picnic basket, so she would be able to earn more points if she emptied it.

Lindon’s fever for points was infectious. She found herself dreaming about the more expensive prizes and thinking up ways to save points.

And now this traitor had stolen twenty or thirty points from her team.

She fell from a short cliff, sure that she would land just in front of him, but he slipped away from her perception. As he had several times before.

This time, when she stretched out her spiritual sense, she caught someone else with them. That was a surprise; they were quite a way from Sky’s Edge, and most people took a break for the night. And this newcomer’s spirit was even harder to detect than the thief’s.

Until he removed his veil and she sensed his madra more clearly. It was pure.

Relief flooded her, followed by embarrassment. She had hoped to resolve this before anyone else on the team knew that she had lost some of their precious points.

Lindon’s large silhouette separated from the shadows, and he held a squirming sacred artist in his Remnant hand. “Pardon, Grace, but were you chasing her? Or do I owe her an apology?”

“Her?”

Now that Grace looked more closely, it was a woman. A girl, really; Grace would put her at sixteen or seventeen. Younger than Grace expected from a Truegold who wasn’t from a prominent clan. She was probably considered a genius of her Path.

Her previous appearance had also been an illusion to make her seem more masculine, and Grace hadn’t seen through it. If she’d gotten away, Grace would never have caught her.

The thief squirmed in Lindon’s grip, but she had a better chance of praying to the heavens for rescue than she did escaping from Lindon under her own power. “Let me go! These are mine!”

Lindon pried the sack from her hand and lifted them toward Grace. “Are they?”

Grace braced herself and decided to tell the truth. “They are not. She…tricked me.”

“I see.” Lindon tossed the sack back to Grace and looked to the girl in his Remnant arm. “Apologies, but why are you stealing from us?”

“I need points!”

“Understandable.”

Gently, he set her down. He lowered himself to look in her eyes, and she was shocked to see sympathy in him.

She would never have expected him to show compassion to someone who had stolen his beloved points, but he put his flesh-and-blood hand on the girl’s shoulder and spoke gently.

“Instead of stealing from our team,” Lindon suggested, “why don’t you steal for us?”

Now that was the Lindon she knew.

Lindon bent his every second to earning points.

He split up the team to take on multiple assignments a day, whenever they could. He took assignments on his own, worked as a Soulsmith when he couldn’t find a mission, and saved enough energy to Forge two pure scales a day.

Even so, they had only managed to earn about a thousand points in the first week.

Their pace was far ahead of the others, but he wasn’t satisfied. At this rate, they would only be able to pick one—maybe two—of the high-value items before he had to return to the tournament.

He would be coming back to Sky’s Edge after the next tournament round, so he would get another chance, but what if the other teams caught up while he was gone?