Blood Magus

Night eventually fell, and Zeth retired to his room to sleep. His conversation with Sophie kept gnawing at him, though. Not just the suspicion that she might end up pursuing an illegal Class like him, but also the more innocuous talk about Scrim they’d had. One thing she’d said stuck in his mind.

If you’re good enough at the game, there’s no such thing as hidden information.

Zeth felt like he had no idea what the Blood Mage was planning. There was simply no way to tell. But really, there was. Maybe he couldn’t quite see the line of reasoning right now, but there was always some way to tell what your opponent was planning. What they might know that’s still hidden to you.

He wanted to be cautious and stay in the house, just in case the Blood Mage was waiting to attack when he left the protected area. But could he figure out for certain what they were planning?

There was a ritual circle sitting in the middle of some storage closet in the guild. Zeth had been focusing on what that meant for him, but why would the Blood Mage do that? They’d hidden it somehow, but Zeth’s own finding it proved that their method wasn’t perfect. And they probably knew as much. They knew they were taking a risk by putting it there. So why take that risk? He didn’t know the function of the circle, but clearly, something about their plan needed the circle to be put in a populated area. Specifically, a populated area that was easily accessible by any normal person.

There were a few different reasons someone might need to do that. Maybe the circle had a defensive function, and the Blood Mage wanted to be able to easily reach the circle in case of emergency to activate it. Maybe they needed to frequently return to the circle, and having it within the building they worked in was convenient. But no matter the reason, they must have known they were taking a massive risk every day by keeping it there. And the only reason someone would take a risk like that was if they were planning something big. Something that would make the risk worth it.

And, judging by the fact that the Blood Mage’s last ‘something big’ included killing hundreds of people to fuel the acquisition of a special Class, Zeth knew he wanted to prevent this next one from happening.

Then there was the matter of whether or not the Blood Mage suspected him. The matter of Zeth’s own life and death. If he guessed wrong and walked out of the house and into the forest, where there were no witnesses, all while a demon tailed him, he’d be dead the moment the mage said ‘go.’

But when analyzing his opponent’s actions and considering what they might be aware of, he realized he may not have been in as much danger as he thought. Regardless of whether or not he’d been figured out, if the Blood Mage had some massive, risky plan they were in the middle of enacting, they wouldn’t waste precious time and attention going after Zeth. Whatever that ritual circle was for, it needed babysitting and surveillance. And, from the Blood Mage’s perspective, it’d been four whole months since they’d last seen Zeth without him causing a single problem for them. They had no idea if Zeth was even hostile to them in the first place.