After the events with The Crystalian on High Elven Island, Aliara had gone back to the continent alongside the three otherworlders, she had planned on doing so from the beginning but after the system had considered The Crystalian as dealt with, it had given her the title of hero as well as the clue for finding her father.
It was completely lackluster however, it had only told her to go back to the continent without any other precisions or instructions.
She felt like she had been made a fool out of.
She slightly touched her bandaged nose, Olivia had healed her broken nose but it still somewhat hurt and would be more fragile for a while.
"Excuse me but it seems like you could make use of some of my products" a weirdly dressed man called out to her from a suspiciously dark alley.
"I think I am good" she responded flatly.
"You seem a bit anxious about something, is it perhaps... Let me take a wild guess, about a certain family member that you want to find? I'll be even more wild and say that it is your father!" he did some rapid arm movements while speaking.
"Who are you?" she looked at him with wide eyes.
The man with the overly specific guesses wore a somewhat triangular black mask, only a few strands of dark red on it, no sign of any eye hole of any sort, that red was in fact, the only other thing beside absolute black on this man's whole clothes.
Apart from that, he had a tall-crowned, narrow-brimmed, conical hat sitting on his head and was wearing a long cloak that dragged a bit on the ground.
"The Godfather wants to see how you fare Aliara, follow this" suddenly, the man's tones did a complete one eighty, turning incredibly serious and almost threatening.
He threw some sort of compass to her before stepping back into the darkness and vanishing, only the sounds of his footsteps could be heard as they were soon joined by another set.
The dark elf was at a loss for words and looked at the compass that had been given to her, it pointed in a direction but it wasn't north, turning it around, a simple sentence was written on the back.
'From the merchant'
'Where could this lead?' she wondered as she scratched the back of her head.
_____________________
'What in tarnation is he doing? Did he lose it?' wondered Lukewarmness as he watched what Mylhart was doing, upon coming back, he had went to stand in the center of his office and hadn't moved for a few minutes now.
The lesser sin was a bit creeped out and worried about that, the sigil he had put was still there and working fine, the general shouldn't have noticed anything off.
'Is it something he normally does? I haven't been here for that long after all, maybe he just, sometimes, stands still like that for no apparent reason, yeah, that makes sense...'
'...'
'...'
'Why won't he move?! This is making me crazy, seriously, what is the point of that? I wasn't told he was a weirdo!'
Lukewarmness observed him for a few more moments but it really seemed that he wasn't doing anything in particular.
For the next few days, the general acted out of character and didn't fill in any papers or anything, only standing or sitting around with seemingly no purpose.
The sin felt like something was off, he hadn't been around for very long but he could tell that this guy was obsessed with his work and deeply patriotic, he was trusting of his colleagues and fellow Laparadisian to a fault even.
It wasn't normal for him to not do anything for even a single hour, let alone multiple days.
'Hold on...' thinking about it, it seemed like the effect he had on the general was somewhat fading away, it made sense, his powers were meant to bring failure and push people toward it, he could do many things to that end but if someone wasn't making any decisions, Lukewarmness couldn't make them do something from scratch.
Not that it mattered, he could always sent more of his powers toward him and he still had a hold on the decision of whether or not to leave this office for good that had arose a while back, even if things were weird, he still had the upper hand.
Or so it seemed at first, if the general wasn't going to make any important decisions anymore, then Lukewarmness would simply be here for nothing, his mission was to cause the general to fail in that regard after all.
'Did he give his responsibilities to someone else? That's impossible, the sigil I left would have prevented that...'
'Wait a minute, he is a workaholic and very focused on doing the best, so maybe...'
'Maybe giving his work to someone else would be considered a mistake and failure on his part? Good lord, I truly am a genius, even without any brain!'
'That doesn't look good either way, I can't move from here and I can't contact anyone about it, my only hope is that the one he gave his work to his incompetent but seeing this, guy, relinquishing anything to anyone would be the same'
'This is horrible, what if he had something prepared in case he felt like something was off? They should have just asked Occult to come by and blast him to oblivion, it would have been simpler...' lamented the lesser sin.
'Why does the lich have to want to do things in a more elaborate way? Is there an issue with just bruteforcing everything?'
'...'
'I guess I can't do anything about it, so I'll just... I'll just wait and see what happens, maybe I'll be lucky'
So the sin waited and waited, waited for something to happen, when you weren't able to move or sleep, time was long, so very lengthy.
But Lukewarmness was used to it, he would be able to stay like that for a while.