Lowly Ascent

On the road, Cain thought deeply about what he should do once he entered the Capital City.

He had no ideas, all he knew was that he had to continually get stronger, but he also wanted to start laying seeds of chaos for when he was ready.

This led him either planning to join the government through the military or even the investigation bureau, but he also held thoughts of becoming a merchant or even a crime lord to propel his plans forward.

When Anders and Cain stopped to make camp, Cain would train in his Yurombi while also learning of his new weapons' effects.

The Yurombi were interesting, when someone is cut, the body stiffens and also stops the victim from speaking, making these a perfect assassination weapon.

That was not all, they also gave another effect which was the main effect: allowing the user to disappear in shadows.

Cain didn't know how it worked but suspected something like an energy field through light reflection or of that nature.

He used these daggers of his to train in a weapon technique, called Wistful Shadow.

It was a technique based on assassination and open combat. There were 10 forms, 6 for assassination, and 4 for open combat.

The technique used fast movement aiming for joints and weak points in the human body, it also moved the Yurombi in a way where they acted as daggers at one point and short swords the next through manipulation of how the weapons were held and swung.

It requires strong and flexible wrists and forearms.

Cain would have to spend time training as well as giving himself treatments to acquire the perfect ligaments and tendons to use the technique.

Wistful Shadow was one of the most skillful and powerful techniques for assassins.

It was dubbed one of the ten divine weapon techniques. Nine other such techniques also had no flaws and worked perfectly, hence the Divine title. Cain already was planning to use two of these techniques, the Maul and Yurombi techniques.

He also had the long sword and sickle technique, totaling 4 Divine techniques!

'The Union sure is wealthy hehe. The remaining six techniques weren't in the vault and should be divided among the royal families of the 2 great powers.

Each of these techniques was like an art form used for battle, take Wistful Shadow. When Cain practiced it, Anders would remember his sister and mother and began to tear up, just by witnessing the technique.

The techniques were mysterious and their creators were masters of their craft.

From what Cain gathered, the reason behind Wistful Shadows' peculiar traits could perhaps be found in its creator.

All Cain knew about the Wistful Shadow was it was made by an Elder's Ancestor, they made the technique after losing their lover to Numineer and made it in her memory.

He later died fighting Numineer in the battle to seal him in the earth.

Other than combat, Cain also began to learn things like manipulation and speech techniques, he found it would be useful for almost all interactions and he didn't trust Anders. He felt it would be safer if he slowly manipulated him and created some backup plans inside Anders's subconscious mind.

...

The day began and Cain and Anders were once again traveling the road heading for Peoria, the Capital of Puffrid. As they made their way, the master and servant saw an interesting scene.

There were large groups of people camping out in old ruins, there were thousands at the least, it was like a Grand Fair.

Cain commanded Anders to head over.

As they got closer, they saw many people injured and weeping against crumbled walls, all of them having bruises somewhere on their bodies. 

There were also merchants selling goods, bazaars holding markets and small houses set up for the rich to sleep in, and even some caravans making tents to act as an inn service for the less rich individuals.

Cain was enthralled that such a thing could occur, humans sure were intuitive! They rode up beside a big caravan and looked for the merchant in charge.

"Excuse me are you the one in charge?"

"Ah yes! Hello there sir, may I help you with anything?"

The Merchant was middle-aged, he had a goatee and was quite round, he was bald and wore a flat cap hat. The Merchant rubbed his hands together as a smile spread across his face from ear to ear.

Cain was hitting all his green flags, he wore wealthy clothes, had no tears or dirt in his clothes, and last but not least, his carriage had gold details!

Gold was a rare resource in Netherane and it was only used by Nobles as even wealthy merchants couldn't afford such extravagance!

Cain asked, "I want to know what this place is and why it appears to be thriving in the middle of nowhere."

The Merchant looked bewildered, "Sire? Did you not come from Free City? The undead invaded it and everyone here are the survivors on their way to Peoria, many are healing their wounds and others are purchasing supplies"

Cain got some information from the merchant before spending a few silver to rent a tent for a few days.

Cain got Anders to set up the carriage next to their tent and went to look inside.

The tents were square shaped and the interior was quite large, it was decorated and even had a makeup area for women.

Cain was satisfied with the tent and promptly left to look around.

The ruins were big, they looked to encompass the size of a big town, half the ruins were occupied by humans setting up shops or people with nothing, begging for food.

Cain ignored the beggars and even had to push one away when they tried to cling to him asking for food. Looking at the random shops set up, they were nothing extraordinary and had nothing related to plague bearers.

Disappointed after hours of looking around, Cain found no market or merchant selling viruses or bacteria of any sort and especially not the machinery to study it.

'This is expected. They're all survivors, no plague doctors at all....'

Right now, Cain had some decent but not good quality instruments for his research as he mainly worked in the Union. He only had some lower-end equipment taken from home for tiny experiments.

He didn't take John's as he also didn't have top-quality tools himself and his setup could only be used for experiments that would take short amounts of time.

John also didn't have a complete set and was missing certain things, the research he must've been doing only always required those instruments.

Nonetheless, this just meant Cain had to pick something up in Peoria's black markets. He just hoped he could get something decent there and not something of even lower quality than he already had.

...

A few days later, Cain noticed more and more people coming to the camp. When he asked the merchant, he found they were survivors from Yoen which surprised him.

What surprised him even more, was that they were one group, a group of almost 200 people or so.

Many of them were people escaping from Free City and went to Yoen only to see it in flames, the group was led by a plague bearer, and under their command, they managed to save almost 100 people.

Under this person's leadership, they eventually found themselves here when heading to the Capital.

Cain was interested in their leader but had no time to investigate as he was leaving in the morning to continue his journey, he couldn't stay in such an environment. It was hard to train without being noticed.

The next morning, Anders led well-fed horses leading a carriage out of a poverty-stricken encampment, they headed east, to the Kingdom of Puffrid.