Chapter 201: Old Man

It wasn’t a particularly impressive-looking inn. Just a simple building really. But the atmosphere was bright and cheery. She wasn’t lying about the place being a local favorite. There was practically nowhere to sit.

Luckily, they still had some rooms open for the night and they were able to get a pair of rooms. Afterward, they had some dinner and enjoyed some music from a group of musicians who were playing on a stage while people were eating.

The lady did not lead them astray. The food was amazing. It was simple soup and roasted meat, but it was surprisingly delicious.

Once they had their fill, they both went back to their rooms and while it was still early, decided to get some rest. Running around for several hours would do that to a person.

However, unlike Reinera who actually went to her room, Julius ended up sneaking out.

As for why he was doing so, well, that was simple… he wanted his money back.

Reinera had a point, it wasn’t about the money, it was about the principle of it. Julius didn’t enjoy getting taken advantage of, which was why he was heading back out to the gates of the town, hoping that the two guards were still on duty.

To his good fortune, they were still there, just lazing around. There weren’t any people coming in, so they were just loudly joking around with each other. The short one was pretending to stab an imaginary enemy while the tall one was talking.

“Did you hear that Dennis died the other day?” The tall guard asked.

“What? Doesn’t that mean his wife is available?”

“Yep, I would do anything to get that woman into my bed,” the tall one chuckled loudly.

“I don’t think you would have to do much, I heard she has been fooling around with a lot of guys.”

While these men were busy talking, Julius was sneaking up behind them.

Once he got close enough, he used his kinetic energy to restrict their movement. The tall guy froze from where he was sitting next to the gate, and the short guy was stopped in the middle of a thrust.

Julius even managed to prevent the two men from yelling out. He didn’t say anything to them, but he felt their auras flare out in panic, their fear obvious.

He didn’t stop to care and taunt them. He wasn’t there for that.

He slowly walked behind the tall guard and reached into the man’s purse, the same purse where he had seen the man put his stolen money. He pulled out all of the money with a smooth motion.

He could feel the man’s heartbeat pounding through the man’s chest as Julius was practically breathing down the man’s neck.

The man was terrified and Juilius wasn’t going to lie, it felt like a bit of well-deserved karma. This man and his friend had probably extorted so much money over the years.

Just by looking at this purse, there were well over a couple of gold worth of coins sitting in there. Way more than a simple guard should have in his purse.

He didn’t bother going over to the shorter guard, Julius didn’t sense much coin on his person, only a few silver. It seemed like the tall guard was the one in charge of the money they stole. Julius suspected that they didn’t just keep the money for themselves either. It was likely that there were multiple people involved in this scam.

Julius was tempted to leave a single copper in the man’s purse, as a sort of joke but thought better of it. He was already taking a risk by doing this, there was no reason for him to give these guys and who they worked for any hints about who had done this.

Instead, Julius took the money and just as quickly as he came, left back to where he came from. Only releasing the guards once he was far away.

He was feeling pretty good. The annoyance he had been feeling toward those guards was now alleviated and had a cheery smile on his face. However, as he was walking back to the inn, he spotted a group of kids playing outside of a building with a nice-sized yard. Then he looked over and saw a sign hanging from the front.

Stonewall Orphanage.

He glanced at the kids and back at the money he had just taken from the guards. He had only gone back to take the money because he didn’t like being taken advantage of by a bunch of scumbags.

But he didn’t really need the money. He would rather sow some good karma instead. So he snuck his way over to the building to investigate. He wanted to see what kind of orphanage it was beforehand.

He wasn’t about to steal the money just to leave it to a bunch of orphanage workers who didn’t care about the children.

He did admittedly feel pretty weird about stalking around an orphanage, but he reminded himself that he was doing it for a good reason.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Over the course of an hour, he observed several workers going about helping the children. There were a good number of them who wore similar robes that seemed to mark them as members of some sort of religion, but Julius didn’t know what kind of religion.

It was most likely the Church of Light, as that was the most prevalent faith within the Empire.

However, in his short time scouting the orphanage, he felt like they cared enough for the children. The children were all seemingly happy as well. It showed that this wasn’t a bad orphanage at least.

Thus, with his mind made up, he now had to figure out how to get the money to the children.

He thought about just giving it to some random kid, but he could already see how that might end, so he quickly tossed away that idea. He sat down and brainstormed some ideas until he came up with one that wasn’t too bad.

However, as he was about to move he felt someone appear right behind him.

Julius didn’t hesitate for a moment, he immediately powered up all of his skills and reached out with his kinetic restriction technique.

As his will touched the person who had appeared behind him, he felt like he had hit a brick wall. The person’s will crushed his with a tyrannical fist. His wasn’t even close, but that didn’t mean he gave up.

No, instead he dug deeper and channeled Inexorable Will with all of his might. He felt his soul strain from the effort, but [Soul Tempering] allowed him to push his soul beyond what it would normally be able to.

He actually felt the person’s will slightly bend from Julius’s surge. Their aura showed a hint of surprise as Julius was able to fight back. That didn’t last very long though as they put in a little more effort of their own and wiped out Julius’s attempt.

The one thing that Julius noticed right away was that this person hadn’t chosen to attack him yet. There was clearly an opportunity for this person to attack him if they wanted to, but they hadn’t.