"So you like sleeping on the floor?"
It was the next day and Visnelda and Azemo were eating breakfast together, meaning Visnelda was eating. Azemo had already gulped down his portion of food a long time ago.
"It is a pretty comfy floor." Azemo was not even joking. The floors of the house were surprisingly soft and springy and made for a nice bed.
Visnelda just chuckled before wiping her mouth signaling the end of the meal. Azemo sneakily tried to put a bag of money on the table but Visnelda bumped into the table and the bag magically fell back into his pocket. Another failure in the attempt to get even with Visnelda.
"What are we going to do today?"
"Since it seems like you healed nicely, I guess today we can go meet the other important figures of Kclzan."
While Visnelda had brought Azemo to help with a problem, no one in the upper city felt the lowers were a big threat.
'I might get to meet Borris today so I need to figure how to get some skin.' Azemo looked around for an idea and a knife on the table gave him one.
'I can use my gauntlets. If I make the bracelet have a spike on it I can drag it against Borris' skin. He probably won't even notice.'
With a plan in mind Azemo was content to do nothing until instructed, so he patiently waited for Visnelda in his room.
Unknown to Azemo he was being tested. Visnelda wanted to see what he would do with his free time and had her guards monitor Azemo's room and window to see if he tried to break out. It was inconceivable to her that Azemo would have been able to break out the day before because of his injuries but she thought that since Azemo was a bit healed he might give it a try. She did not really think that Azemo had the skills to the leave the house besides using the front door but Borris had pressured her to test her guest.
As for Bella and Ima, Azemo had decided that in the upper city they would stay by his side for backup. One could never be too careful with the most powerful people of the world.
"Warrencraft, it is time to go."
Azemo hurried to the door before he slowed down a bit, he was still supposed to be injured.
Visnelda led him through the boring city, but Azemo was still impressed. The city seemed like such a masterpiece of engineering and he got the feeling that if one thing went wrong, the entire city would go crashing into the ground.
"Okay the first person you have to meet is Borris, he is super old and awful but he is a genius who advanced our technology by leaps and bounds."
"A genius you say, that is like the only compliment you have ever given me." The old man Azemo had helped when he just came to Kclzan walked up to them. Visnelda looked visibly upset. Clearly she wanted the old man to think that she thought he was worthless.
Azemo held out his hand for a handshake and when Borris reached out to accept it, Azemo stumbled and gripped Borris' hand a little too firmly. Causing the spike on his bracelet to dig into Borris' skin.
"I am so sorry, I was injured the other day and my wound is not fully healed."
Borris just removed his hand inspecting the small cut on his hand disdainfully. 'Another perfect execution by spy master Azemo.'
"Why don't you tell Warrencraft what the problem is."
"Basically out of the lowers about two thirds of them are fake robots which I have control of, but right now that last third is on the verge of revolt."
Visnelda was surprised at the direct route Borris took, but thought maybe it meant he trusted Azemo. She had no idea of their past encounter, which was the reason Borris was willing to randomly trust Azemo. The kind ones were the easiest to control.
After she recovered from her surprise, Visnelda checked to see how Azemo took the news. Azemo was trying his best to fake a look of shock, but his acting skills were far from top notch.
"You don't seem that surprised Warrencraft."
"I am extremely shocked but the more I think about it the more it makes sense. A lot of the people I met seemed oddly alike."
"Hmm." Borris looked at Azemo in a new light, thinking that he was pretty smart to figure out something like the robots.
It was the first time anyone had looked at Azemo like that and he was really pleased. Of course, he did not deserve the praise because Azemo had been clueless until the day before.
"So do you have any ideas Warrencraft?"
"Give me some time but I think I can whip up something to counter the revolt."
"Alright, finally we get someone who is not as dumb as a donkey."
"Okay, I am going to take him to meet Amelie."
"Whatever."
Visnelda led Azemo away and Azemo could tell that Borris really got under her skin.
To his surprise Visnelda led Azemo to a woman who looked vaguely familiar. At first, Azemo thought maybe she worked for the governor but as they got closer he realized it was Indigo.
"Azemo, imagine seeing you up here."
"Haha I was surprised as well to see you up here Indigo."
"My name is actually Amelie. I was just using a cover name down on the ground, one can never be too careful."
"Funny thing I was also using a fake name. Nice to meet you my actual name is Warrencraft."
Amelie laughed for a while before she said.
"Apparently just after I left there was a string of vicious murders. I missed all the excitement again…"
Amelie stopped in her tracks at the look Visnelda was giving her.
"Is something the matter."
"Warrencraft was nearly killed by that same killer."
"Oh." At first Amelie looked surprised but after a few seconds her brow furrowed.
"Yes, bust him please." The Soul Essence of Behirite was a little tired with Azemo's good luck.
Apparently the Soul Essence jinxed it because Amelie immediately stopped thinking about the Painter of Crnst.
"Amelie is the one you are going to be working the most closely with. She is the master of information and controls our assassins."
Azemo realized that Amelie was very dangerous with Visnelda's sentence. After all Amelie probably trained the ones who attacked him back in the desert of Crnst.
"Have you figured out who leads the rebellion yet?" Azemo wanted to make sure Lleh was in the clear.
"Not yet, but we have learned that the group calls themselves Hell or something."
"Hmm."
"Okay Amelie we have to go now."
"Bye Aze… haha I mean Warrencraft."
"See you later Amelie."
Visnelda led Azemo to meet some more people but all their names and titles blended together in Azemo's mind. He was too excited with his new plan.
Before his cover could be blown Azemo was going to break into the building again and destroy the robot system. With that Azemo hoped his mission would be finished and he could finally leave Kclzan, but he was not sure exactly what would happen.
"Okay that is the last one. Let's go eat some dinner." Visnelda obviously did not like her counterparts in the upper city and it was no surprise to Azemo that she spent most of her time in the rich city of Srenti.
Even food was uninteresting to Azemo and the rest of the day passed in a blur. Azemo just wanted to go destroy the robots.
As night fell Azemo took out his tome and used (skill) Blend In, before sneaking out of the window. Visnelda had long since given up monitoring Azemo and besides she thought there was no chance he could escape out of the window.
The streets of the city were eerily silent as all the robots had finished their jobs and the living people were sleeping.
The dark storage building was extremely creepy at night as Azemo walked through the halls. Ima peaked her head out for a second but after she saw what looked like a bunch of lifeless dolls, that sometimes randomly moved, she quickly returned to the bag.
The room and the control panel were exactly the same as when Azemo had previously seen them and everything looked untouched. 'Borris must not come here often. He probably does not really do much with the maintenance of the robots.'
Without hesitating Azemo rushed over to the control panel and inserted Borris' skin. The control panel whirred to life and Azemo quickly looked for a command to destroy the robots.
There was none. Borris did not want his life's work to be destroyed with a push of a button and the only failsafe was a command that could shut down the robots for a week. In the week Borris was confident in his ability to fix any malfunctioning robots so a kill switch was not necessary.
Azemo was about to give up after his only plan was ruined but something about the panel connected with his ring.
Since it was the physical soul of Kclzan, Azemo trusted that it would know something about this device which was part of it's world. The ring moved towards a small whole in the panel and as it touched the hole Azemo felt his mana rapidly being depleted.
After a panicked second, Azemo felt the strain on his mana end and he looked down to see blaring red letters on the panel.
Critical failure no bots anywhere. Critical failure.
Azemo raised his eyebrows, but inside he was extremely happy. Meanwhile the Soul Essence was cursing anything and everything. How could Azemo be this stupid and still succeed in his plans.
Azemo's luck was not all good because suddenly Azemo felt a lurching feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The city was plummeting.