It began with a merchant's daughter.
Not a noble. Not a slave. Just a bored, foolish girl who wrote letters she should've burned.
Alex found the first one tucked behind a barrel in a spice cellar — a torn scrap of parchment dropped during a drunken visit to a dockside lover. The lover, as it turned out, was married to the warehouse overseer for the Jorlen Trade Fleet.
And the merchant?He handled shipments for Magister Vorn.
Within two days, Alex had copies of the last three letters.Within a week, he had the guard's patrol schedule, the dockmaster's bribe log, and a list of illegal cargo that never made it to the books.
He didn't expose it.
He didn't need to.
He delivered a copy to the merchant's steward. Quietly. Without note.
Two days later, the overseer was replaced.And that merchant? He began paying a new tax — small but regular — to a man named "Handler A."
That man was Alex.
This was how the web began.
Not with swords.With whispers.With quiet pressure in dark corners.
One scandal at a time. One secret too risky to reveal.
He expanded with care.
His rats tracked movement in the Red Market — where poisons, powders, and "unregistered courtesans" were sold.
His raven kept watch over the Silco estate, mapping which servants left at which hours, and where they met informants.
His dogs patrolled the alleys near his targets — not to kill, just to watch. Their presence made enemies nervous. Nervous men made mistakes.
And his mind — sharpened by Scholar's Insight and Tactical Memory — remembered everything.
He created a log structure in his head. Not just memories — categories.Every person he encountered was assigned a score:
Threat Level
Influence Level
Exploitation Point
By the end of the month, he had profiled over forty targets. Twenty had active surveillance. Ten were compromised. Four were actively being used.
Not a single one knew.
Trait Usage Report:
✔ Echo Memory (6/10)
✔ Beast Mind-Link (10/10) — [Level Up Available]
✔ Scholar's Insight (3/10)
✔ Tactical Memory (3/10)
✔ Canine Command (5/10)
That night, the system chimed softly in his head.
Trait Level-Up – Beast Mind-Link has reached Level 1
New Duration: 15 minutes
New Range: 2.5 km
Increased visual relay (50 percent clarity gain)
New Feature Unlocked: Dual Link – Maintain two active connections simultaneously
New Feature Unlocked: Passive Alarm – Trained beast can emit danger pulse upon trigger pattern
Alex blinked slowly.
Dual Link.That meant two animals at once. One to watch. One to report.
And Passive Alarm meant his creatures could now warn him without control. A twitch. A noise. A movement pattern.
He no longer needed to be awake to be protected.
This wasn't just surveillance anymore.
It was remote security.
He trained for three nights straight.
Two pigeons and a raven. All tagged. All responding to hand gestures and light commands.
One rat in each major district.
Two dogs permanently stationed at the spice merchant's block.
By the end of the week, he slept with a 270-degree view of the city, even when his eyes were closed.
The first serious coin came from a port customs officer named Brann.
Brann had a brother who ran illegal dice dens in the lower city. A brother with unpaid debts and a reputation for slipping powders into drink cups.
Alex dropped a letter on Brann's desk during a night shift — no return name. Just a note:"I know about Jared. I know where he was last night. Keep shipments A and B clean. Mark crate 'silver tooth' when checked. No trouble comes to family."
Brann obeyed.
Every crate Alex marked now moved freely through the docks.
Smuggled goods. Letters. Coin. Steel.
No one touched them.
Not even Vorn's men.
By mid-autumn, the web had a shape.
Five merchants answered to him indirectly.Three customs officers ignored crates with his sign.Two brothels funneled gossip through trained barkeeps.One raven flew at his signal, circling the estate of any man he needed watched.
And every week, he copied new traits.
Some minor.Some strange.One... extraordinary.
From a travelling stage performer, he gained:✔ Voice Control (Level 0) – Ability to mimic pitch, tone, and accent. Extremely useful for deception and impersonation.
From a sickly beggar who remembered every story he'd ever heard:✔ Lie Detection (Level 0) – Subconscious read of micro expressions. Not foolproof, but good enough to sense unease, dodging, or practiced deception.
From an old woman who once served as an acolyte in Qarth:✔ Silent Focus (Level 0) – Ability to eliminate emotional distraction during mental strain. Prevents panic, clears thought during stress.
And from a traveling sellsword carrying a sword passed down through three generations, he copied:✔ Bloodline Instinct (Level 0) – Improves user's reaction in melee based on ancestral imprinting. Gains slight combat boosts in line with "legacy" warrior families.
(Alex suspected this one would be rare.)
He didn't rush to use them all.
Each copy was added to the web — not the physical one made of people, but the internal one he was weaving trait by trait.
Trait Count: 20
Active Traits Used Regularly: 12
Level 1 Traits:
Beast Mind-Link
Echo Memory (Close to 10/10)
Brutal Strength (8/10)
And then, he got his first offer of territory.
Tregar came to him in person this time — not with a message or errand.
They met on a rooftop above the salt pits, far from the ears of merchants or spies.
Tregar sat, smoked, then spoke.
"Silco wants to give you The Lantern Quarter. Full watch control. Protection fees. All of it."
Alex didn't answer.
"Means you'll owe him public loyalty. Won't be in the shadows anymore."
Still, Alex didn't answer.
Tregar looked at him. "Too early?"
Alex met his eyes. "Not too early. Just not ready."
Tregar raised an eyebrow.
"I don't need territory," Alex said. "I already own it. Just not out loud."
He stood, gave Tregar a nod, and walked away — leaving behind a confused fixer and a rooftop that smelled like salt and smoke.
He wasn't ready to rule.
Not yet.
Rulers got noticed.
And Alex didn't want to be noticed until it was too late to stop him.
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