Vail's yard had one watchman and he was asleep by nine.
Soren went over the river wall at half past, which was easier than it should have been, because a 3rd level Apprentice Mage with a body that had been eating properly for six days could do things that Soren's body had not been able to do in three years.
In his free time Soren didn't slack on his cultivation, pushing forward at unbelievable speeds.
It seems the body he was in already had some degree of talent, together with his Mana Siphon Skill, pushed him forward at record breaking speeds.
The counting house door took the smallest key on the ring.
<<Loraine: Note that Ost had a key to his victim's counting house.>>
Yeah, I noticed.
<<Loraine: It means the Sallow Hand did not take a cut from Vail, they run it. He is not the top of this, he is the middle of it, and the eleven percent was flowing past him to Brannick Sallow.>>
Which means Vesper's four hundred and sixty-one crowns is a Sallow Hand debt, not a Vail debt.
<<Loraine: Which means when she moves on Vail, she will not be squeezing a grain factor. She will be pulling on a rope with a first level Adept on the other end of it.>>
Soren thought for a moment about the implications, and the more he thought the bigger the smile on his lips.
Good.
<<Loraine: Good?>>
She's going to find that out anyway. I'd rather she found it out from a book on her desk than from four men in her yard.
The second ledger was behind the shelf on the north wall.
He read three pages of it by the shuttered lamp and then stopped reading because his hands were still not entirely steady and holding them still took attention.
Fuck...I always thought if I had to take someone life I would be able to brush it off, Soren though with a wry smile before squatting down.
He looked up at the ceiling as if his gaze could pierce through it, his mind filled with thoughts of his family.
Soren had a bit of an estranged relationship with his father and siblings, partially from his insecurities, and his father's disappointment that he never seemed to be the best at anything.
His mind drifted to thoughts of his mom trying to make him feel welcomed, to a short suicidal moment in his life that he resolved by getting a mild gambling tendency.
Really hope you're able to live a happy life guys...I'll do my best here...even if I end up completely changing...
In the darkness of the counting house, a young man let himself break for a long moment before standing up, the air around him slightly different.
Soren looked back at the ledger one more time before setting it aside mentally.
Fourteen months. Eleven percent. Every load.
And in the back, in a different hand, a column of names that were not grain.
<<Loraine: Those are people.>>
I can see that.
<<Loraine: Those are people moving through Greyfen without a Bindwright's stamp against them.>>
I can see that, Loraine.
He took the ledger.
He also took the top sheet off Petrin's honest tally and then, after standing in the dark for about ten seconds arguing with himself, he took a blank page, wrote he went in the river, take her and go on it, and left it under the weighstone where a nervous man would find it and nobody else would look.
<<Lilith: Aww.>>
Shut up.
<<AWARD: 1 Uncommon Ticket.>>
<<Loraine: A kind act performed at material risk to yourself, with no strategic benefit whatsoever.>>
...
Finally after roaming around a little, he found a secluded spot where no one would bother him.
Status
A long detailed panel appeared, showing his full details and
<<GRAND LOTTERY SYSTEM / LUST COVENANT SYSTEM>>
<<System Status: Merged, Semi Degraded>>
<<Host: Ezra Vance>>
<<Vessel: Soren >>
<<Physique: N/A >>
<<Rank: 3rd Level Apprentice>>
<<Mage Path: 3rd Level Apprentice>>
<<Cultivation Technique: N/A>>
<<Body Path: N/A>>
<<Cultivation Technique: N/A>>
<<Techniques: Pebble Amongst Dragons(Exhalted), Piercing Palm (Profound)>>
<<Passives: Mana Siphon (Refined)>>
<<Fate Tickets:1 Legendary, 4 Epic, 2 Rare, 4 Uncommon>>
<<Fate Points (FP): 1, 950>>
<<Lust Points (LP): 83>>
He pulled the Legendary at four in the morning, sitting on the river wall with his legs hanging over the black water.
<<EXALTED GRADE ROLL.>>
The gold wheel turned. It took its time.
<<METHOD: Deepwell Circulation.>>
<<GRADE: Profound.>>
<<CURSE TAG: None.>>
<<A mage cultivation method of the western Karthval schools. Slow. Stubborn. Great for building capacity and correcting reckless cultivation. A practitioner of Deepwell advances more slowly than his peers at every stage and arrives at every bottleneck with roughly forty percent more room behind him than they have.>>
<<Loraine: Profound. Not Exalted. The ceiling was there and it did not reach it.>>
You sound like you're apologising.
<<Loraine: I am informing you that a Legendary ticket could have produced an Exalted grade method and produced a Profound one instead. That is a real loss and I dislike when hosts congratulate themselves on the thing that was not the best thing.>>
Loraine.
<<Loraine: What?>>
What was I doing before tonight?
<<Loraine: Pouring mana into a bucket with no shape and calling it cultivation.>>
And what happens to that at the Adept bottleneck?
<<Loraine: ...You hit it like a cart hitting a wall.>>
And Deepwell Circulation?
A pause.
<<Loraine: Deepwell would carry you through it.>>
Then I don't care that it isn't Exalted. Give it to me.
<<Lilith: Also, and I want to be clear that I'm being entirely professional here, capacity means a bigger soul.>>
Soren stopped.
How much bigger?
<<Lilith: Forty percent bigger than an ordinary Apprentice at every stage.>>
Lilith. How much of you comes back if I run Deepwell to Adept?
<<Lilith: ...All of it.>> Her voice, which was always doing four things at once, did none of them.
<<Lilith: All of it, Soren. Not capped. Not degraded. All of it and the Covenants with it.>>
Then Loraine can be as disappointed as she likes.
<<Loraine: I withdraw my objection.>>
<<Deepwell Circulation: Learned.>>
...
Since Deepwell could correct his original 'sloppy cultivation', he started with that first.
Although he lost a portion of his cultivation, it also corrected the gaps that would have made breaking through to Adept difficult.
There was no point in making Apprentice Stage the best he could achieve with his brute forcing that only worked because his mana siphon skill knew where to put it where it didn't kill him.
Meditating, inner reserves slowly released out of him, his body feeling weaker and weaker by the moment as mana left him.
Though the strength loss wasn't too exaggerated.
Mage style Cultivation was the simplest to brute force at Apprentice since all one needed was a technique to absorb mana.
Body cultivation on the other hands required enormous amounts of body tempering, resources and techniques.
The only reason he could even fight Ost is that he was also a Mage Cultivator, though without any spells under his belt he was just a very strong man.
After following the release technique in the Deepwell Cultivation manual he had imprinted in his mind, Soren finally reached an Unawakened status.
Thankfully, because of all the mana he released, the area around him spiked him mana density, which he quickly took charge of to cultivate.
He hit 4th level Apprentice on the river wall an hour before dawn, and it felt completely different from the first three, which had felt like filling something.
This felt like widening it AND filling it up but properly.
Then he came down off the wall, walked back up the market road toward the yard.
"No...don't," he heard from an up coming alley way.