EV B2 Chapter 41:

// Its been a little bit since I posted EV. Some life stuff happened and I had to step away for about 2 weeks. I had a backlog for legion due to its launch, but not for EV. It's unfortunate, but luckily now posting will continue as I am able.

A few seconds later, Jorg picked up the call—so to speak.

"Miles," he said, surprise in his voice. "I'm surprised I haven't heard from you sooner. How goes the mission?"

I was surprised at how fast he had gotten to the topic. But I supposed that was a good thing, as I didn't have to waste time with small talk.

"Well enough," I responded. "It's actually about that—why I'm calling. I needed a few clarifications on terms."

Jorg made a noise, indicating he was listening, so I continued.

"So, you were using me because you didn't want anything traced back openly to the Cult of the World Eater, right?"

"Yes."

"What level of deniability did you want? I'm sort of in a position where I can take care of the task soon. Still, it will be as a mysterious stranger or a strange coincidence—not something that can be solidly and undeniably pinned on someone unrelated to the cult. Or do you need me to frame someone? But that will take significantly longer—months if not years," I added, really not wanting to have to go about that.

Jorg considered. "As long as they can't prove it was us, it should be okay. But I do say that the less believable, the better."

"Okay," I said, crossing out the idea of getting him killed in a random brawl. Some level of deniability and some level of explanation would need to happen. But, well, I didn't need to actually go through the whole process of picking out someone to frame, planting evidence, and all that.

"Okay, that helps a lot. Thank you."

I closed the connection and looked over at Alana, who had only heard my half of the conversation.

"More is better, but it sounds like time is more important than that. So get it done with strong plausible deniability."

Alana smiled. "Oh, good. Do we want to take care of that while we wait for Astrid to get back to us? Or can we go run the challenge a bit more? I've leveled up some, so we should go farther, right?"

"We could, but I kind of want to take care of this. Once we finish it, I should get some more coin—more than we would through the challenges—to better outfit our team. And, well, I'm a little bit nervous that Astrid hasn't been back yet. I thought she'd only be gone for a few days, and it's been over a week." I let out a groan of frustration. "I don't just know, and that's making me nervous."

Alana just nodded in response, and I began to pace in the training room. I started putting together a plan for how I would handle getting rid of Peter.

My first instinct was to impersonate someone from the church using my disguise spell—walk up to him, stab him in public, and then run away. But there were immediate issues with that. First off, if they found the person I was impersonating, it would be evident that I had faked an alibi. And even if I killed them and hid the body... well, when I thought about it, I wasn't even sure there would be a body. They would just go down to the Lesser Hall and come back later, in which case the fraud would be exposed.

The goal was to have a reasonable level of doubt, and definitely not just for however long it took someone to get through the Lesser Hall again. That realization made me start to understand why it was so hard to get out of the Lesser Hall in the first place.

It was a bit of a tangent, but I couldn't help but feel annoyed at why it was so challenging to win twelve fights in the last rounds, especially when there were people who had already made that summit and were running through it again—like I had. If some level 50 character got killed outside an arena or a challenge and had to get dumped back down a level, they would have breezed through the challenge with ease. But then again, I hadn't seen any of them in the final ceremony. Those all seemed to be newbies every time I checked in.

So maybe that wasn't how it worked.

I just knew that coming back from being killed in Valhalla proper took some time and involved going down to the Lesser Hall. But was it a different Lesser Hall, or was there a special tournament for them? I wasn't sure, and I wasn't eager to find out.

I was just glad that if I went to a planet, not in the afterlife, I would come back as if I was freshly dead—but with the same levels. Though, I'd have to start making my wins a little less noticeable, or else I'd become recognized. Then again, maybe I was getting ahead of myself. I had no idea when I would even be going out for Loki again, though I definitely would consider it.

So I couldn't just use my disguise spell. And I couldn't just make it appear as a random accident, at least not in any way that was feasible. I was afraid that I'd have to get into the deep framing of someone after all.

But then I realized—I couldn't impersonate someone and frame them to be convicted by their own church. I could do that, but it would take much longer.

But if I was a member of the church and I just disappeared after… or my persona just disappeared…

Well, that was kind of back to my original plan.

But I stopped.

"Alana, it seems like no matter what I can think of, it'll always be evident that Loki had some hand in it. If I were to just stab him randomly, why wouldn't they just assume it was Loki's agent? Or if he died by accident, it was Loki's agent. If someone from their church stabbed him—oh, it was Loki's agent who worked his way into the church and stabbed him.

"Unless... the only way I can think of is... I'd have to frame someone beyond reproach and then somehow make it so believable they wouldn't just assume it was Loki's agent." I stopped pacing and stared up at the ceiling. "What did I sign up for?"

Alana frowned. "Mm. That's a bit more complicated than the normal court politics I'm used to. Not that assassinations were something I'd never heard of, I just..."

I knew what she meant, and she continued.

"I think that... you're right. It's not really possible to avoid all suspicion. There are just levels of it. The only way I could see it working completely would be if you managed to goad the priest into a duel with someone who then owned up to it later and killed him in a way that was completely acceptable."

I sat down against the wall next to her and sighed.

"I'm starting to think a lot of the effort I put into working for the church was a bit of a waste of money and time," I said, resting my head in my palms.

Alana reached over and stroked my back comfortingly. "Well, you learned a lot of information," she reassured me.

I leaned back and thumped my head against the wall. "Yeah, but if anything, I'm further away from my goal." I shrugged.

"Well, I think it's best that you just keep it simple then. Remember, these are Valhalla warriors, after all. They might be intelligent, but if some big guy wearing the insignia of Thor randomly gets into a fight and kills the priest before disappearing, that's about as reasonable as they can expect."

I looked over at her and frowned. "Am I overthinking this?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you are," she said.

I don't know why, but looking at it from that perspective gave me a bit of relief from the depression and anxiety that were starting to creep in.

"You're right. Okay, so we want to keep it simple, and I'll keep up my persona with the Church of Cheer for a bit—because maybe it'll be useful in the future," I said, shrugging.

"Is that a sunk cost fallacy?" Eleanor asked me with a smile.

I smirked back, knowing that I had often explained that phenomenon to her when I was dealing with her relatives and opponents in her own world.

"Maybe it is," I said, "but simply maintaining the persona shouldn't be too big of a deal. Once every few weeks, I just need to stop in and do some minor quests. It's not like I don't get rewarded for them anyway."

She shrugged. "Whatever."

I stood up. "All right. Time to go find Peter."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. You should probably stay here."

Alana didn't look happy about it when I gave her a list of training instructions. Things were fine, though—she accepted it and nodded.

I slipped out and made my way toward where I knew the Church of Tyr would be holding services soon. I had been keeping tabs on Peter for a while now, and I knew his patterns fairly well.

First, though, I would need to change my garb.

I kept an eye out and eventually found a follower of Thor—not of his clergy or anything, but just someone who looked like he admired Thor and had the pin of a minor faction within Thor's church fastened to his woolens or furs. Bumping into him slightly in the crowd, I swiped it and then made a few other small thefts, putting together a ramshackle kit.

It was not like anything I had ever done.

I assumed a disguise as someone much burlier than me, though of a similar height. I changed my face up a little, gave myself a long beard, and changed my hair color—until even I felt like I was a very different person. Wearing the pin proudly on my chest, I eventually made my final theft: a large Warhammer.

If I was going to do this simply, I might as well just take care of it now and put as much misdirection on it as I could get away with. A hammer seemed like an appropriately inelegant tool.

Eventually, I showed up at just the right time, when people were beginning to exit the church building. Standing in a nearby alley, I waited for everyone to leave. When I finally saw Peter lock up the door and walk down the steps, chatting with another clergyman, I rounded the corner quickly.

"Look have it you're way!" I called over my shoulder, intentionally bumping into the two priests. I turned around and started to yell insults at the pair for not watching where they were going.

Things escalated from there.