"-- that we are sorry for the miss information. After hearing about the disappearance of the original reporters and the lack of evidence, we are willing to compensate for your time."
From that announcement, the crowd had a shift in mood. While walking around, Mors noticed how either annoyed or angry the crowd seemed.
But from the announcement of free money, the whole crowd quickly turned happy, practically forgiving the Association of anything.
This was right before the announcer sweetened the deal, saying, "And if you can find the original reporters, there will be a compensation for catching them, ALIVE!"
Lights of greed boiled in the eyes of the adventures since they knew the reward for this task would be juicy.
But hearing the alive part made a few sad since they still kind of wanted to kill the false reporters.
While this was all happening, Mors had become mortified, slowly moving towards the doors. He had had enough for the day.
Hearing how the reporters were missing made Mors worry. Jarreld, Marbh, and Beo had been nice to him, believing his story, and they saved him.
Hearing how they had gone missing and the huge troll had disappeared scared him greatly.
It didn't just scare him, as he felt Spir quickly leave his body, dashing out in the direction of Alice's house.
For reference, those heroes had killed the beast, and Mors was more than certain that he had caused more than enough damage to tell there was a fight.
For something to recover the battle scene, take the monsters, remove 3 heroes, and all of this before the Association wasn't some regular monster.
Someone, or something, was covering this up.
Mors could feel something bad was coming, something he didn't want to be a part of.
So quietly leaving the crowd while not being seen, Mors tried to head back to Alice's house.
But not before someone saw him. Someone who recognized him.
Thankfully this person didn't say it aloud since they knew the chaos that would occur if they did.
Just silently following as Mors left the building, fleeing.
Mors quickly exited the doors from the now cheering crowd, He quickly decided to be in areas with a lot of people.
Maybe someone was watching, maybe someone wasn't, but he had a feeling of being watched and didn't want to ignore his paranoia right now.
Traveling up the street, routinely entering shops and taking breaks, he waited for the ghosts.
Thankfully that didn't take that long as Spir and Genn returned with concern on their face.
Genn quickly asked, without warning, "Are you being followed?"
"I don't know," replied Mors with a shiver. He had tried to hide deep in a clothing store since it had a lot of shelves.
Spir hearing this, felt worried. He never really watched out for people since Mors had the perfect cover.
You would never suspect the kind old man that a lot of adventurers knew as the gravedigger that respected their dead friends.
At least, you usually wouldn't. But as Spir looked around the store and outside the store, he noticed at least five people watching Mors shake as he stared into some clothes.
And there were even more people around the other stores, just looking around for something.
Taking a breath, Spir traveled over to the shaking Mors, saying, "Calm down, you did nothing wrong, so act like it."
Mors, hearing that, tried to calm down. Holding that grave fear he felt, he stuffed it into a bottle, thinking since he could put anger in there, why not fear.
Taking a final deep breath to calm down, Mors tried his best to remember everything Spir told him as the old gears in his mind started to turn.
Spir taught him how to hide from the sights of others, and how to hide from others. Then thinking about what Spir said to him, he guessed that people were watching him.
Spir usually did things with a purpose, always efficiently, so him saying these words could only mean that there have to be people watching.
Feeling that, Mors decided to try something to lose some suspicion as he started to shake and look at the price tag. Expressing a genuinely surprised expression seeing the price.
Spir seeing this, felt both surprised and happy. Mors was definitely in control right now, and his attempt at losing guilt was pretty good.
'How did he get that genuine of an expression? Could he have been an actor in his past life?' Spir thought, looking around towards the people watching.
As he watched the people watching Mors, he found a lot breaking off with bitter expressions on their faces. Apparently, believing that Mors's previous reaction was due to him seeing the price.
Feeling better, Spir decided it would be a good idea to scout out the path ahead, thinking it was best to lose that last person in a crowd.
To Mors, he felt happy. Spir didn't criticize him, and that meant he was doing it all right.
Spir usually didn't care about situations when he was training Mors and would criticize him in the most efficient way possible. It was his training style apparently.
But not getting any criticism made Mors happy in his attempt. Feeling that, he decided to consider his situation.
So if someone or something had covered up the incident with the hill troll, it would definitely come to either take away or kill him.
That was worrying, but Mors tried not to let it get to him. Fear wouldn't help him right now. It would only hurt.
So taking a breath, Mors thought about the people who saw both him and those adventures together since he had to watch out for them.
He also thought about hiding, keeping Alice safe when he got back, and a few more things as he waited for Spir.
After about 10 minutes, Spir returned from his trip around the town without an expression.
He looked at Mors, and said, "Follow me. We are going to the city center. Also, if you can, grab a hat," before leaving the store and waiting outside.
Mors decided to walk out causally. Since he didn't have money, and he didn't want to steal.
Taking in a deep breath of fresh air, Mors slowly followed Spir. They stopped by a few stores as Spir told Mors how to act and finally started criticizing Mors.
After a few stores, Mors felt a lot better as they reached the city center, which was packed with chaos.
Adventures were running around everywhere, talking to people and causing a few ruckuses as they traveled.
With Spir's help, Mors followed the flow of people moving around as they moved away from Alice's house.
As Spir was directing Mors, he also directed Genn to watch Alice's home to see if people were watching it.
Things couldn't go wrong at this moment since they were close to the heist, so everyone listened closely to Spir.
As Mors and Spir walked towards the Alchemy tower, they made a turn towards the Enchanters building.
Mors gave Spir that idea as they traveled since the person following Mors would have to have a key to enter.
It would be a great place to hide for a moment, and Spir could travel through the walls to wait and see when the follower left.
Quickly reaching the enchanter's building, Mors quickly entered as he tried to enter without anyone else entering.
It almost failed due to some lazy enchanters that didn't want to pull out their badges, but he did enter the decontamination without any human besides him.
Taking a breath of relief as the fear at the back of his mind melted, Mors quickly said to Spir, "I am just going to do a lesson with Malle. That should be normal enough and should take long enough."
"Sure, I'll keep watch. Good job at keeping calm," replied Spir as he smiled under his mask. Mors learned quickly under pressure and did a good job at not gaining any followers.
Most seemed to not even notice the old man. Which would usually be very hard for any regular person.
But in a short few days and constant criticism seemed to work wonders. Apparently, Spir's master was right about this type of teaching style being fast.
Spir had never taught anyone since he usually viewed it as boring. But now that he was forced to, he was relying on his old master's way of teaching to teach Mors.
Happy with the result of this teaching, Spir quickly looked out for the person who was watching Mors, and started watching them, hoping they would leave quickly since he didn't want to get bored.
Mors, on the other hand, wasn't bored at all since as soon as he got to Malle's office, Malle didn't even blink an eye and just started teaching Mors.
Mors quickly drowned himself in learning something new, trying not to deal with the bottled fear he kept hidden.