After making it to the alleyway, Jayce turned around to see if anyone had followed them over the wall.
Not hearing any hurried footsteps or alarms, Jayce was confident that no one had caught them leaving.
"What...now?" Ashley mumbled.
"Now, we are going to visit a smithy."
---
In a certain alleyway, a group of students with armbands was looking around in hopes of finding something that could have explained what had happened here.
One of the students had a small device in his hand that he would wave around to different parts of the alleyway. He was a little under 5ft and was wearing big round glasses.
"This just doesn't make any sense." He said as he scratched his blue hair which was styled into a bowl cut.
His armband had two stripes, unlike the other students who only had one strip on theirs.
"What doesn't make any sense, Pax?"
Turning around, he saw Oliver making his way over toward him with Yuko following close behind. "President! I wasn't informed you were coming."
"I heard there was some trouble with the investigation," Oliver said as he looked around.
"It's not just that, there's almost no evidence."
"The only reason we know something happened here is because of the blood and some parts of the alley were damaged but other than that we got nothing," Pax said without obvious disappointment in his voice.
"What about the Magic Tracking Device?" Oliver asked as he looked at the device in Pax's hand.
"That's another thing, the MTD is not picking anything up. Usually when mages fight they leave behind tons of mana particles which we would be able to track."
"When people fight without magic, they still interact with the mana particles, letting us track them although much more difficult.
"But, there's not a single mana particle in the entire alleyway." Pax waved the device around once more just to get the same result.
"How is that possible?" Oliver wouldn't have believed it if someone other than Pax had told him.
"There are some devices that block mana from gathering but those are incredibly expensive and massive. If there was one here we would have already found it.
"There is one more thing, Yuko could you stand over there for a sec?" Pax asked as he pointed to a spot in the alleyway.
"Okey-dokey." Just as she was asked, she skipped onto the spot Pax pointed to.
"Now, try to gather mana into your hand."
Yuko stretched out her hand as she tried to gather mana into it. All mages no matter how good they are at mana control could gather mana in a certain spot on their body.
Pax lifted the device towards Yuko, the device is similar to a thermal sensor but instead of picking up heat, it picked up mana particles that were too small for a human's eyes to see and were represented as blue dots.
The millions of little blue dots started to funnel towards Yuko's, but when they got within a few feet of her they began to tremble.
As the dots got closer to Yuko, they moved more slowly, as if something was pushing them back.
Once they were only a foot away from her, the shaking became incredibly violent right before they disappeared from the MTD.
"If a mana particle gets too close, it just disappears. We were taught that mana is another type of energy hence it can't be destroyed nor created, it can only be converted into a spell that after being used, dissipates back into mana particles."
This was one law of magic that everyone was taught at a young age yet that rule was broken right in front of their eyes.
Grabbing Pax's shoulders, Oliver spun him around to look at him, face-to-face. "Have you told anyone else?"
Pax shook his head at the question, he had just found himself not too long ago and he didn't know who he should tell.
"Good, for now, we will keep this between us, I'll head back to the Academy and tell the Headmaster. Get students to ask around the area to see if we can establish a time for when the murder happened."
As Oliver went to leave, a call came from his radio.
"President, I have a report on Jayce Price."
Grabbing the device which was latched onto his chest, he went to an isolated part of the alleyway and responded. "Go ahead."
"I've lost track of Jayce. I followed him as he tried to leave through the front gate as you had predicted."
After being rejected into town, he went behind the sparring facility, I waited for him to come back out but that's when I heard a scream."
"I got some other council members to come with me to check it out. When we got there, Jayce and the girl were gone."
Oliver didn't respond as was thinking about the best course of action. Chasing Jayce was out of the question as he didn't have the manpower to spare.
Finding the person who committed the murderers was not going to get solved any time soon.
He's felt that ever since the lycanthrope incident, strange things have been happening left and right. As he was lost in thought, the radio spoke up once again.
"I also have another report regarding the Other-Worldly Exterminators. Our inside person found intel regarding a meeting between the leaders and he said it was happening soon."
This was a break he had been needing for the past few days.
"Give up on searching for Jayce and meet with our inside man. I need to know when and where the meeting is taking place."
"Get all of our members geared up, I want all of our forces ready when we get that information. We only got one shot at this so let's get it done right."
"Yes, President." The voice said with respect as Oliver turned off his radio and attached it back to his chest.
"Yuko, we're heading back," Oliver said as he made his way out of the alley.
"Wait for me!" Yuko yelled as she ran to catch up to Oliver.
---
A bell chimed as the door to the smithy was opened.
"Welcome to The Dragon's Smithy, how can I -oh it's you. I'll get Mr. Greymaul right away." The attendant scurried off into the back room.
After a few minutes of waiting, the dwarf came out.
"What are ya doing back already? I told ya it would take more than three fuckin months!" The dwarf was annoyed that Jayce had come back much sooner than anticipated.
"I'm not here for that. I'm here because I need some favors." Jayce said as he looked down at Ashley.
Following Jayce's gaze, the dwarf saw a little girl hiding behind him.
"What kind of favors?"