After witnessing Anser's big spending, Bratt and the other man were also stirred into a bit of purchasing desire.
However, they did not let their heads get hot; what they bought were all standard-issue, ordinary magic items.
Bratt changed into a set of gleaming scale armor named "Shimmering Scale Armor." It belonged to the medium armor category, and its defining feature was that it would never get dirty.
He also bought a "Shield of Expression." The front of the shield was shaped like a face, and its wielder could change that face's expression.
It sounded somewhat bizarre, but Bratt liked it very much. One could only say that the creator truly understood the essence of a fighter.
Finn bought two quivers of armor-piercing arrows and a piece of "Sharkskin Armor." After changing equipment, the person… was still just as ugly, but at least his back view looked quite dashing.
By the time Anser completed Attunement with the Royal Butterfly Cloak, the two had already finished changing their gear. They looked somewhat elite now.
"Not bad, not bad." He stood up and paid the bill.
Those spoils also included shares for Bratt and the other one. After all, everyone had participated in hunting Gais and confronting the slave ship's crew, so it was only proper for him to make up their portions.
At that moment, it seemed some kind of disturbance broke out downstairs, suddenly becoming noisy.
At the same time, Anser also received a telepathic message from Nornoth: a fight had broken out outside. It was not Nornoth itself, but an acquaintance.
'An acquaintance that Nornoth knows?'
His heart jolted. He pushed open a nearby window and looked out. In the distance, at one corner of the cargo yard, a burly man was being besieged by four people. His body was covered in bloodstains, with many onlookers gathered around.
Bratt, who had leaned in, recognized that back at a glance. His expression changed immediately.
"Emon!"
"Come on, let's go take a look." Anser waved to Sidney and hurried downstairs.
Sidney froze for a moment, walked to the window, and from afar caught sight of that conspicuous black horse. He vaguely had a guess in his heart and immediately shouted downward: "Guards, stop them!"
"Yes…" Two merchant league guards immediately ran toward the disturbance.
As Anser went downstairs, he quickly asked Nornoth: 'What just happened?'
Emon was traveling with his family, and he really was not the type to stir up trouble.
'Someone yanked me… I knocked him over… then ran into… and we started fighting…' Nornoth was not very smart, but it could explain clearly.
The matter was not complicated. A group of adventurers ran into Nornoth wandering around Silver Scale Bay, and wanted to steal the horse. As a result, they were slammed into by Nornoth and coughed up blood, and they refused to let it go.
This scene drew a lot of people's attention. People from the Stonemasons' Guild knew Nornoth, and hurriedly informed Emon. Emon ran over to stop it, and after a few exchanges of words, they started fighting.
'They should be outsiders.' Anser was extremely certain. After the slave ship had been burned, in Silver Scale Bay, there probably were not many people who had not heard of him.
Nornoth was very distinctive; even if someone had not seen it before, they could still guess what it was.
'Why didn't you tell me earlier?' Anser scolded.
'I'm not afraid…' Nornoth felt that its master could kill people and set fires without any problem; it itself had merely knocked someone over—what was the big deal?
'Is this a matter of being afraid or not? In the future, whenever you run into any conflict, you must tell me the first moment!'
'Oh.'
'And from now on you're not allowed to run around.'
'I didn't run—I walked…'
Anser felt a wave of mental exhaustion and hurriedly urged, 'Go help—don't hit the wrong people.'
By now, several of them had already reached the scene. It was located between the open-air market and the shops, not far from the labor market.
There were many onlookers, packed in tightly and crowding close together, each one excited to the extreme, not afraid at all.
"Make way, make way—" Two guards sent by Sidney shouted loudly. Together with Bratt, who was striking his sword and shield, they forced a path through the crowd.
Anser moved forward along the narrow gap, with Finn following behind him.
Bang—
A man wearing half-plate armor was suddenly rammed by Nornoth, who had joined the fight, and was knocked to the ground, sliding several meters.
Unfortunately, the space was cramped, making it hard for Nornoth to put full force into it. The man also had a shield and armor, so his injuries were not serious.
Anser instinctively reached for his staff, then suddenly remembered that the Goodberry staff was with Finn. He immediately removed the direction orb and wrapped it around his hand.
After a brief utterance in the dragon tongue, a Sorcery Burst—Thunder streaked across more than ten meters and abruptly exploded in front of the man.
Boom—
The man raised his shield in front of himself. The blast made his body shudder and left his ears ringing, but he was not injured.
Anser had no intention of killing anyone. Stealing a horse was not the same thing as slave trading, and Silver Scale Bay had its own laws—how could one kill on sight?
The surrounding crowd was startled and retreated backward one after another; spells were not something to trifle with.
You cast Sorcery Burst on an Amn Elite, miss]
'How could that be?' Anser's gaze sharpened slightly. Anyone might not recognize him—except people from the Kingdom of Amn.
By now, he had basically figured out the dice's naming rules: when the specific name was unknown, it would assign a generalized designation based on the detected identity.
"Amn Elite" clearly indicated a member of some organization, not an ordinary adventurer. People like that were highly likely to know about his feud with the Nashivaar Family.
After all, the Conch had just had its ship name confiscated and was undergoing refitting at the docks. The matter had spread far and wide; any adventurer with decent information channels would know.
'Do they really not know, or are they putting on an act? Are they coming for me? What's their purpose?'
He touched the warming holy symbol at his chest, an inexplicable chill crawling up his back.
"Everyone stop—" two guards shouted angrily.
However, the four adventurers did not listen at all and continued to besiege Emon, striking with lethal intent.
Emon feared causing deaths and did not dare to go all out. Restricted and hesitant, he instead took several hits and nearly suffered a major loss.
Bratt could no longer hold back. With sword and shield in hand, he launched a charge and intercepted that warrior alone.
Anser stopped walking, deciding to continue probing.
"મેજિકમिसાઇલ"
Three flashing missiles howled forth, tracing three completely separate arcs through the air as they shot straight toward the other three adventurers.
The three had clearly encountered Magic Missile before and were very experienced. They immediately hunkered down to block, reducing their exposed surface area and hard-tanking the impact with the thickest parts of their armor.
Bang, bang, bang!
[You cast Magic Missile on an Amn Elite… Amn Elite is hit and takes 3 points of force damage, current Hit Points 19/22…]
Three consecutive combat notifications flashed through his mind, and Anser's expression immediately turned cold.
If the holy symbol warming up could still be explained away as a crowd issue, then could four Amn Elites gathering together still be a coincidence?
'They deliberately lured me out—what's the point? A few low-level professions like these can't threaten me.'
At that moment, the four adventurers stopped simultaneously.
One adventurer wielding a short sword saw that Anser was retreating instead of advancing and said urgently, "This isn't over. Just you wait—"
As he spoke, he slammed his right hand hard against the ground. With a loud bang, thick smoke billowed out, spreading rapidly in all directions at an abnormally fast speed.
Anser quickly retreated, but he was still slower than the smoke. His vision turned into a gray blur; he could see nothing at all and could only rely on blind-sense perception to sense the area within three meters around him.
He held his breath, his mind immediately tightening. While accelerating his retreat, he called out to Nornoth through telepathic communication.
There was no sound of hooves, yet he could clearly sense Nornoth drawing near. The surroundings were so quiet it was as if… time had frozen.
Without a second thought, he raised his hand and released a spell-like Gust of Wind. At a moment like this, there was no time to worry about friendly fire.
The wind force surged abruptly, whipping his hair wildly as it blew. Strands lashed against his skin, stinging slightly. Yet the thick smoke remained, and he could not hear any sound of wind at all.
'This isn't smoke!' He decisively cut off the casting.
Bad news came from Nornoth's side: it was blocked by the chaotic crowd and simply couldn't get through—unless it trampled the crowd.
'Trample!'
Anser couldn't see anything now. He didn't dare use Misty Step, and a sense of unease rose in his heart.
Before he could think of a countermeasure, the corner of his vision caught a glint of light. A translucent short blade with no hilt silently appeared at his neck, so close that his skin could already feel its sharp edge.
Clang—
The force-field shield blocked it for a moment, then shattered instantly.
Just as he thought the attack was over, the translucent short blade trembled slightly and, in the next instant, slid along the edge of his cloak and stabbed into his collarbone.
Hiss—a surge of intense pain spread from his chest throughout his body, making him involuntarily shudder as a trace of panic inevitably rose in his mind.
Before the short blade could sink deeper, his figure vanished abruptly.
In the next instant, a large swarm of vividly colored butterflies suddenly appeared four to five meters ahead, like a burst of color, fluttering around Anser and interweaving brilliantly with the Royal Butterfly Cloak, making it impossible to tell where the person actually was.
[You are hit by a Shadow Thieves Elite's psionic blade pursuit strike. You take 6 points of psychic damage. Current Hit Points: 30/36]
'The Shadow Thieves!' Anser's nerves tightened.
And at the very instant he teleported away, the bloodstained psionic blade vanished, and a figure appeared out of thin air.
The Shadow Thief's hand lifted slightly, but the target was gone. He paused, then turned his head and saw the sky filled with fluttering colorful butterflies behind him.
Clearly, he was unaffected by the smoke.
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