Asher quickly fell into a routine during their trip to Poltar, and the next few days flew by in the blink of an eye. After grabbing a hearty breakfast from the food wagon as soon as it opened up, he would get a kiss from Samantha for good luck, before Recalling back to Helpha's shop. Not once did he end up running into the living statue again, which had to be bad for business.

Once in Dormaul, he'd meet back up with Miles at his office before working with the seeker to continue their hunt for Dormaul's Guild. Unlike his and Rosh's investigation into Loratta back in Whikoga, Miles actually knew what he was doing, and the seeker was extremely cautious in ensuring that they weren't being watched or followed as they hunted down assassin's left and right. Miles refused to go into detail about his own skills, but from what little he did admit, it sounded as though he had a skill similar to Awareness, albeit incredibly more powerful.

Unfortunately, while they were able to find a couple of different safehouses and dispatch the chaff hiding within, the other cells and the senior assassins manning them seemed to have grown wise as to what he was attempting to do. Asher didn't know if the Finger in charge of Dormaul's underworld had personally instructed the senior assassins to hide, or if they were all just a bunch of cowards, but the days spent hunting in Dormaul were far less productive than he would have hoped. Without anything to go on or additional corpses to track, there was only so much Miles could do in terms of seeking, even with his unique skills.

Other than a single senior assassin who laid in wait for them at one of the safehouses and seemed to have absolutely no regard for her own safety, which explained her berserker class, Asher didn't get a single fight worth noting. The woman did have a Pickaxe element, which was curious to see, and she even utilized it well with her Earth element, which gave her an astonishingly high combination of offense and defense. But Asher was a terrible match up for her. Her favorite move was to raise stone walls and shatter them with her dual pickaxes, firing the shrapnel at her opponents while using the walls as cover.

That would probably work wonders on most people, but Asher was capable of blocking all the shrapnel with Spatial Lock and simply slipping through her large walls with Astral Dip.

All in all, by the end of the fourth day and their last evening before Poltar, all Asher had succeeded in doing was trimming the edges of the Assassin's Guild in Dormaul without managing to do nearly as much internal damage as he'd wanted. Yes, he'd taken out four of their senior assassins in total, which was literally a third of the Guild's elite forces according to Slag, but he and Miles hadn't even caught wind of the location of the Finger, despite their best efforts.

Though he supposed it made sense that they were choosing to lay low rather than try and stop him after everything he'd done. From their perspective, The Reaper had just carved his way through Whikoga's Guild, even dispatching their own Finger, before immediately making his way to Dormaul to do the same. People in this world weren't entirely stupid, and most understood that when a far stronger force than themselves was blazing a path forward, the best thing to do was get out of the way.

Still, while his time in Dormaul hadn't been quite as efficiently spent as he would have liked, even after paying Miles for his services, Asher couldn't complain about the results of the past few days.

Astral Dip - Lvl 27

Distortion - Lvl 27

Personal Rift - Lvl 23

Spatial Lock - Lvl 19

Recall - Lvl 12

Recall - lvl 13

Secret Seeker - Lvl 23

Judgement - Lvl 12

Eternal Regeneration - Lvl 30

Complete Resilience - Lvl 26

Eternal Mark - Lvl 20

Permanence - Lvl 13

Shards: 179,246

While he hadn't made any massive advancements in any one skill, his warpath through the outer fringes of Dormaul's Guild had instead resulted in gaining a level in almost every skill. Most noticeably, Eternal Mark had finally ticked up to the level 20 cap, and he just so happened to have more than enough shards needed to evolve it.

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Spend 100,000 shards to evolve Eternal Mark?

Asher took in a slow breath as he leaned back atop the mogrant leading their wagon train, his mind hovering over the question for a moment. For most of his skills, he usually had either a slight hunch toward the direction the evolution was going to take the skill in, or could at least venture a guess. But Eternal Mark seemed like a rather straightforward skill.

Put a mark on a target. Sense said mark. Done.

How would something like that be improved?

His only thought was that it would increase the things he would be able to feel through his marks to something other than harm, but there was no telling when it came to elements and their skills. Seeing no sense in delaying any longer, he went through with the purchase.

Shards: 79,246

Eternal Mark (passive/active) - Lvl 21

Tier 1: Leave an everlasting mark on your target.

Tier 2: Scry the immediate area surrounding your marks.

No way… Asher stared at the newest effect of his Eternal Mark, his mind awhirl with possibilities. Prior to evolution, other than detecting physical harm, all he was able to get from his marks was a general sense of location that grew more precise the closer he got. This was a massive game changer for not only gathering information, but ensuring he wouldn't teleport into his own death when using Recall in a more offensive fashion.

You know… I wonder if this is another example of elemental bleed, he thought as he tried to decide what mark to test his tier two ability on first. He understood that the Stage of Bleed, where one's elements began blending together and providing the user with brand new skills, wouldn't begin until he'd evolved all fifteen of his skills. But Draken had mentioned how by keeping all of his elements fairly balanced from the very start, he had a leg up in that department. An Eternity skill that had a scrying effect sounded a lot like it was being influenced by his Knowledge element, after all.

Regardless, that was something to ponder later. For now, he had some experimenting to do. Unable to decide which person to start with, Asher figured he should start even simpler.

Crossing his legs under him and concentrating, Asher recoiled slightly as his mind was jolted across the land, and he suddenly found himself looking down at the interior of Helpha's shop from above. He could only make out about five or six feet in every direction around where he'd marked, everything beyond that was an eerie black void. The shop was as empty as ever, and he spent a few minutes playing around with his skill's newest function to ensure he knew what he was doing.

For starters, the scrying didn't come without one rather serious limitation. He needed to fully throw his consciousness over to his mark in order to peer at it, which meant his body was pretty much defenseless. He had a hunch similar to how his Eternal Marks worked, he'd sense if any sort of harm happened to his body while he was detached like this, but he'd have to do some more thorough testing with Samantha's help later.

Second, if he concentrated, he could actually shift his viewpoint around a little bit. He was able to change his bird's-eye view with a little effort, his view shifting to take in the scattered weapons along the nearby shelves. It was mildly unnerving when he turned to gaze directly into the black void, and he did his best to make sure he didn't turn toward the void any more than he had to.

Confident in his new ability, he went to go use it on an actual person before pausing.

His newest ability… quite frankly, was a huge breach of privacy. Knowing a person's general location or if they'd been injured was one thing, but scrying directly on them? Unless they had evolved scrying resistance, and he saw no reason why any normal person would ever pick that up when there were so many more applicable ones ripe for the taking, his marks would have no idea he was watching them.

Using the ability to ensure he wasn't about to teleport next to someone while they were doing something private was one thing, as his physical presence would probably be far worse than a quick glimpse from afar, but spying on them just for fun?

Nearly everyone he'd marked were people he actually cared about, one way or another. He didn't want to betray their trust, even if they wouldn't even know he was watching them.

Though there is one person I've marked that doesn't quite fit into that category…

At this point, after Helpha's store, Asher had marked five different people. Samantha, Brian, Rosh, Kree, and lastly, Jennifer. Even after all this time, he'd yet to actually remove the mark off the wayward assassin. He didn't know if it was just because she'd tried to kill him, or because she was pretty much the only one of his opponents who'd actually managed to slip away, even if only because he'd allowed it, but either way, she was still very much marked. Even now, he could feel her location a third of the way across the kingdom.

Deciding privacy was a right that was forfeited when someone tried to kill him, Asher focused on her mark and jerked as his mind whipped across the land yet again. His mind travelled hundreds of miles in moments, and he suddenly found himself viewing Jennifer from above.

Carefully mucking out a barn filled with pigs.

Asher couldn't exactly blink, seeing as he didn't have eyes like this, but he was still caught off guard by the change in scenery. The assassin that had once attempted to turn him into a pincushion with her Death Darts was happily cleaning out a large barn while humming to herself. Her dark clothing had been replaced with simple, rough woolens, and she looked strangely in her element as she quickly and efficiently went about her tasks. Occasionally, one of the pigs would waddle up to her and poke at her with their snout, and she'd simply smile and give their heads a good scratch before going back to her task.

Well then… Asher thought, continuing to watch the serene scene for another minute or two as Jennifer kept cleaning, none the wiser that she was being watched. Guess that confirms people can't tell when I'm scrying them.

It also explained where Jennifer's odd Wheat origin element had come from. The last he'd seen of the assassin was when she'd fled the city entirely after the trap she'd set with Frostcut, the ice-assassin, had failed. Asher hadn't known where she'd gone, but now he was guessing she'd run back to her family, who presumably owned a farm far from the city.

She looked so pleased with her work and content, he was honestly curious if her assassin class had already changed to something more fitting, like farmer. Unfortunately, it seemed as though Identify didn't work through his strange new ability, so he had no way of knowing unless he decided to pay her a visit with Recall.

And as hilarious as the look on her face would be, it looked as if the assassin was making an honest attempt at changing her life for the better. Which wasn't all that surprising after the terrors he'd put her through.

Good on you, Jennifer, he thought, silently applauding her as he cancelled his scrying and snapped back to his body. Rubbing his eyes, he looked around, only to find that not much had changed. The caravan had travelled a bit further while he'd been testing his new skill effect, but they were still a few hours out from Poltar.

Stretching, Asher got to his feet. Tonight's dinner might very well be the last peaceful one they had for some time, and he was planning on enjoying it with Brian and Samantha before they reached the next city and all hell broke loose.

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