Chapter 819: Necessary Approach
Chapter 819: Necessary Approach
By the time the third day of the week arrived, Liam had decided to approach the problem in the one way he had been trying to avoid.Unnecessary effort.
Or at least, that was what he had considered it at first. Now, after Lucian’s information and the confirmation that someone close to Sheila was feeding Chris details, the effort had become necessary. That did not make it less irritating. It only made the irritation harder to ignore, because there was no longer a clean excuse to leave the matter alone. Sheila had been right to worry. Chris was moving again in some way, and Liam had given his word that he would make sure Chris did not become a problem by the time the practical exam arrived.
A word given meant action.
So Liam acted.
The first thing he did was deploy three shadow beasts to tail three different people: Sheila, Chris, and Isolde.
Chris was the obvious center of the problem. If someone was feeding him information, the easiest way to find the source was not to watch every possible person around Sheila, but to follow Chris himself and see who approached him. If Chris had been meeting someone privately, as Lucian claimed, then the best chance of finding that person was to stay on Chris’s shadow and wait. For that, Liam used Nyxie.
There had been no real debate there.
Nyxie was his best shadow, not simply in raw power, but in intelligence, adaptability, and independent judgment. Her recent ability to share memory had elevated her usefulness even further, and with the connection between them deepening, she understood Liam’s intentions with far less explanation than the others required. He did not need to explain every little detail to her anymore. He could give her a purpose, a few boundaries, and a warning about what mattered, and she would understand enough to adjust on her own.
For Sheila, Liam chose a shadow he had never used before.
The night before, after returning to his room and washing away the cold and annoyance of the day, he had taken time to silently search through the shadows stored within him. Many of them existed as quiet presences, waiting things without enough individuality to draw his attention unless summoned for battle or utility. Some were too weak for this kind of task. Some too simple. Some too noticeable if used incorrectly.
Liam needed something capable of remaining close, adapting to movement, and watching without causing distortions in Sheila’s shadow that might catch her attention or the attention of anyone around her.
Eventually, he found one.
A Raven-panther.
It was one of the magical beasts he had slain during the enrollment assessment in the Beast Realm, the same test where he had extracted Nyxie’s shadow. Liam had not used this shadow creature since then, but its presence inside his shadow felt more developed than he expected. More awake. Not as strong as Nyxie, not as clear in personality, but far above many of the other shadows he had left unused.