The Insider System

Chapter 136: Thanks

Getting Tiffany into a building and setting her down on the ground Lake looked at his potion then around to make sure no one was after them. He couldn't feel any eyes on him or see the mark that he had placed on the person he had been fighting coming towards him so he refocused on Tiffany and got her head up.

Feeding her the last of his potion to see if it would wake her up, Lake cursed the stupid Assassins guild for making such an effective counter to people killing their assassins. He had used his precious potion to heal an enemy and now he had to use the last of it on someone they were trying to kidnap.

After he thought of kidnapping Lake remembered someone he had met in his short amount of time inside the Temple. He couldn't remember her name but she had been Mimi's friend and she had said the Assassins guild had been trying to kidnap her because she had a skill that erased her presence.

It was a similar skill to the one Tiffany had that made her invisible so maybe this was more evidence he had just been fighting an assassin since he had literally just stopped them from kidnaping her and it was something they were known for. It made him think he had made the right choice in not killing them at least.

That was if they weren't faking their distress like they had been when he thought he had killed them the first time. Now that he thought about it, that was probably true, so him pouring his potion on them had been a complete waste because that weird blue spell they had used had also healed their wounds while getting rid of his poison.

Lake was pretty sure it had been Water magic but he didn't understand why a Water spell healed or destroyed his poison. He guessed it could have been a custom spell but he didn't know anything about Water magic yet so he couldn't be sure. "waaa." Looking down Lake saw Tiffany seemed to be moving around, and he was pretty sure that had been a yawn, so he got ready to ask where she wanted him to take her.

Once she finally opened her eyes and started looking around he could tell she was calm enough for him to start a conversation so he said. "Tiffany, are you able to get yourself back to the Temple?" If she was completely fine now he was just going to leave her and go since there was no reason she would need him.

"Jon?" Lake guessed he should have probably started with who he was because she had been knocked out while he had rescued her so she wasn't caught up with what was going on but he really didn't want to take the time to explain what had happened. "Yep." Lake didn't say anymore than that to make it obvious he wanted to know if she was fine.

"Why are you here?" After she said this Lake didn't have time to say anything because she seemed to figure out what had happened and she asked. "Wait, did you save me?" Lake nodded and said. "It was just a chance thing, I saw them carrying you, so let's end this discussion here. We need to get off the streets. Can you walk?"

"I don't know, let me see." After she said this Tiffany got to her feet and after she took a few steps she said. "I'm good but do you have any Stamina potions, mine's close to being gone." Lake kept his thoughts on having to use more of his potions on her to himself and got what she asked for.

She drank a good amount of it before she gave it back to him. "Your potion gives away the fact you work for the Alchemist guild." Lake could tell this wasn't advice and she was just complementing the quality of the potion so he didn't respond to what she said and turned to leave as he said. "I'm leaving bye."

As far as he was concerned they were done for good since she didn't have the money and the only reason he had saved her was because the Insider wanted him to so unless it told him why it had made him do it they would probably never meet again. "Wait." Lake looked back to see Tiffany had something she clearly wanted to say.

This made him realize he still had the dagger so he went to pull it out when he heard. "Thank you." Lake nodded. He guessed he did deserve a thank you for what he had done and it seemed she didn't care about the dagger at the moment so he left before she could get over her appreciation for him and ask for it.

As she watched Jon go, Tiffany couldn't help but think she should go after him. It was obvious to her that the Temple didn't want her around and Jon had turned out to be a good person that just had a rough exterior. There was no way around the fact that he had saved her and been too humble to even admit it not to mention he had been embarrassed by her thanking him.

He had already disappeared into the distance though so she needed to think about what to do now that she was alone. She had just been kidnaped, and even though she had gotten lucky and been saved, who was to say if it had been a chance thing and not set up with the permission of the Temple. She had heard the meeting where they said they should replace her with her own ears so she couldn't put it past them to let this happen.

It was possible that she would be set up like this again if she went back now and especially if it was empty handed. Tiffany smacked herself as soon as she realized Jon still had the dagger. It was true they had planned to hand it over at a specific time which was when she paid him which she couldn't do anymore.

Tiffany fell to her knees as she realized she would never be able to get enough money to pay him now that this plan had failed. "DAMIT!" She couldn't help screaming, just earlier today she thought she had everything she needed to get away from this farce of a war but with this failure it was over.

Looking at the sky that was in front of her Tiffany couldn't help but wish she had her thoughts together earlier when Jon was still here because maybe she could have been of use to him and possibly earned his help instead of buying it. She had a valuable skill even if she couldn't use it for too long or stay out in the open for long periods of time without being targeted by the Demon Worshipers.

She guessed this was still true even if she was just doing jobs for herself to earn money. It had been what she did before the Temple took her in when she had been on the run. Stealing was pretty easy when no one could see you and as long as she kept her face hidden when dealing with the Thieves guild they wouldn't know who she was or care who she was enough to look into her.

There were a few problems the first being she only knew a couple of thieves and they happened to be the ones who had just tried to sell her and the other problem was the city was closed down at the moment and that included the Dark Guilds so she wouldn't be able to find anyone else that would buy stuff from her.

There was also the problem that everyone had probably taken the valuables they could carry with them down into the shelters and hidden the rest so she would have a hard time finding anything worth selling in the first place, or the fact that it didn't matter if you were invisible when no one was in the buildings you were breaking into.

She realized she was being stupid because she was overwhelmed by the idea of what she should actually be doing right now, returning to the Temple. It was fine for her to be out here during normal battles but what would happen when the giant got here wasn't going to be a normal battle.

She would be fine at the Temple even if she couldn't trust the higher ups because she would be with her friends who had her back and the higher ups couldn't risk upsetting them by making it obvious that she was supposed to have gone missing today. She just needed to be on guard to make sure she was never alone for a long period of time.

That would be a problem though because when the giant got here the other members of the 23 would be sent out to fight and she couldn't go because she didn't have the dagger. This meant she would need to make herself scarce when the fight was going on so it wouldn't end up with her being gone when the others got back with it looking like she had run away.