The Insider System

Chapter 297: Hours Spent

The meeting had been going for about four hours at this point and Lake could tell it was about to end. The Temple Head had done a good job and was able to convince a few of the people who had stayed to ask questions to go with her to the Metal Domain. This probably sounded like good news if you weren't Lake but with the fact his plan had been to sneak away and hide the dagger so the more people there were the worse it was for him.

With the news that the Temple Head planned to come with the group, Lake had to try and think of a new plan and the best he had come up with was to say the dagger made a break for it the second the barrier came down. This would lead them on a chase that he was sure he could use to hide the dagger.

"Alright Ronnalis go ahead and call everyone else back so we can go over what happened with Davin." Seeing Ronnalis walk out of the room Lake didn't think he would be right back so he turned to Tiff and said. "You weren't kidding about the meetings."

"They're not usually this bad. There's just a lot going on right now." Lake had figured this to be the case because no one would have shown up if they knew they were looking at a meeting that could last upward of four hours. "How much longer do you think it will be?"

"I don't know but at least this next part will be more interesting. I'm sure by now they've gotten a bit of information out of Davin. He shouldn't have anything keeping him from talking like the loyalty curse considering the position he was in so the only thing keeping him from talking is his actual loyalty."

Lake understood Tiff was saying actual loyalty would break pretty quickly under certain circumstances. This was the reason the loyalty curse was invented in the first place. "You're right it will be interesting to hear who he was working for."

A short time after he said this, people started to come back into the room clearly because Ronnalis was spreading the word that there was another meeting. He didn't remember the exact number of people who had left but looking around the room he was pretty sure most had already come back and when he saw Ronnalis he knew they were ready to start the second part of the meeting.

"Alright Ronnalis you know more so you can state the facts yourself." Seeing the Temple Head get off the stage and sit down and Ronnalis take her place he opened his ears to the internal drama of the Temple.

...

Seeing Ronnalis was about to start talking about what Davin had done to them, Tiff couldn't help but think back to all the things he had done to her over the years. He had been on the side that had been trying to replace her for years so she had heard some truly terrible things come out of his mouth about her.

Of course none of this had been to her face since they hadn't wanted her to know their plans to get rid of her but you never really forget someone suggesting a way of killing you that no one would be able to trace back to them. To think he ended up being a traitor after all of this.

"Alright I'll just start with how long ago he was turned against us. I know this is what most of us wanted to know the most. From what he said a month ago a messenger brought some information from the frontlines and hidden in one of the sealed messages an offer from the Dark Guild Alliance that got his attention."

...

Lake didn't think a month was that bad but Davin had been in a high position so he didn't know how much damage Davin could have done in the month he had to feed information to the Dark Guild Alliance. "What was the offer?"

Lake had been wondering the same thing so he wasn't surprised someone interrupted to ask this. "Like always they offered Davin a wide range of benefits for each piece of information they could use but we weren't able to get what he actually got from this yet. We're guessing he has yet to actually get paid so when we ask him what benefits he got he doesn't have an answer."

Lake couldn't help but think it was like something from a movie. He had seen movies in which people were tortured for answers they didn't know but the ones doing the torturing didn't believe them so they kept asking the same thing over and over. There was one difference though since Ronnalis could apparently tell when someone was lying.

...

Tiff was hoping the next thing Ronnalis would talk about was what had actually been told to the Dark Guild Alliance because there was a good chance Davin was the one who had tried to get her taken by the coliseum. He had always hated her so telling the coliseum or just the Dark Guild Alliance in general that she was the new demigod would put a huge target on her back.

"Alright so far we have been able to get a small list of things he told the Dark Guild Alliance that had been kept secret up until now. The most obvious is loads of information on the secret team of holy mages we have stationed here and the location of the ones that weren't in the temple whenever they went out." Hearing Ronnalis confirm Davin was the reason she and Dawn had been targeted so well she was actually more grateful to Lake for catching Davin than she was for saving her.

If Lake hadn't caught him, Davin would have continued to be a risk to every member of the 23 which eventually would have led to the deaths of at least a few of them. Him saving Dawn was still her number one though. "He also fed internal information about an incident one of our members had with the Assassins guild to them."

...

As soon as Ronnalis said this, Lake heard a good portion of the people in the room start to mumble. It seemed the fact Tiff had almost been kidnapped a while back hadn't been spread around and this was the first time a lot of them were hearing about it. "Apparently the Assassins guild is looking for the same man we are at the moment. His name is Jon and he is suspected to be the one with the dagger but he also fought off a member of the assassins guild for one of our members a while back. Thankfully Davin was caught before our newest information on this so it wasn't handed to the Assassins guild."

At this time a number of hands went up which caused Ronnalis to say. "I'll provide more information about this incident later. Let me get through the list first." After this Ronnalis said a large number of things Lake didn't bother to remember since it just had to do with where troops were stationed and how many there were.

As someone who wasn't actually a member of the Temple he hadn't even heard of the places they were talking about so he didn't think he would have remembered it even if he had listened. "Alright back to the Assassins guild. First thing they aren't after us for anything that happened all the blame is being put on this Jon person and the Thieves who unknowingly sold them a member of our temple."

Lake could feel the tension in the room die down after Ronnalis said they weren't about to go to war with the Assassins guild. He had heard how much people feared the Assassins guild but he felt like the Temple should have more confidence. He didn't think the Assassins guild would have an actual god backing them so he didn't know why they would be so freaked out.

...

In another meeting somewhere more evil a group of people were sitting at a desk receiving news about the same thing they were talking about at the Temple. "Davin was discovered." The man who had said this saw the faces of all the people at the desk turn sour for a while before one of them said. "At least we don't have to pay him anymore."

Soon another of them agreed with the first one who spoke. "He wasn't really that helpful anyway, all the information he was giving us would have been better for the Demon Lord and he was unable to give us a solid answer on the man we are looking for." After the man said this they all looked down at a drawing of a man Davin had told them was named Jon and at the bottom of the wanted poster a bounty that read 1000000 gold.

The assassins guild was known to add interest to your bounty for every day you hadn't handed yourself over to them but once it got this high there wasn't much chance a single person would have this amount so they were forced to look for alternate ways to make the money back. "We should sell the information Davin handed to us to the Demon Lord to make up for the losses the guild suffered."

They wouldn't get rid of the bounty even if they made the amount of money this person owed them but it was starting to seem they wouldn't be able to find them so it was better than nothing. "Agreed, who do you want to send to set up the meeting?"

The Demon Lord wasn't actually part of their alliance so whenever they dealt with him they had to be careful who they sent on the off chance they were stolen and made into an undead. "Just pick one under 200. We should make more from this trade than the amount we spent on their training so we shouldn't lose too much if they are flipped."