Enigma of Sin

After Kayn left the shop, Tina looked over at Kinzie with a questioning look after listening to their conversation just now. 

"Uh, are you sure he is going to be okay? I'm assuming he's a classmate of yours, so he can't have more than a 2nd stage core, right?" Tina asked with concern.

Kinzie just laughed a bit, "He'll be just fine, he's much stronger than he looks." Kinzie only winked without revealing too much. She then proceeded to pull her bow from her spatial bag and set it on the desk while asking for repairs.

Taking a look at the bow and the rough shape it was in, Tina shook her head. "It'll take a couple days, but it shouldn't be too hard. You really need to do better about performing your daily maintenance."

"Perfect! Thank you! Also, I'll try to do better about remembering. For now, let's catch up while we wait for Kayn to come back!"

…

Meanwhile, Kayn slipped in between a couple of buildings and changed into his assassin appearance. He still couldn't quite come to terms with his alias being called Jester, but he was stuck with that name now, even if he disliked it.

It was the middle of the day, but since Kayn wasn't going to go commit some major crime and risk being caught, he didn't care too much. Not to mention, there were shadows everywhere he could hide in because of the buildings.

Jumping onto the nearest building, he extended his Mana Sense as far as he was currently capable of. Just at the edge of his senses, he was able to find a rowdy group moving away from the shop's location. Kayn easily caught up to them, and from the looks of it, they were just about to enter another shop.

Sitting on the ledge of the building inside of a shadow, Kayn threw out several Mana Threads, wrapping them around the limbs of the group of people. He hadn't quite restricted their movements yet, but the more capable 3rd stage mage felt something was off.

"Hello all!" Kayn yelled out from above, "I'll give you one chance to return back to the shop you just left and pay the nice lady for what you broke."

They group of thugs looked up to see a figure dressed in all black with a strange mask covering his face and only laughed. What was he? Some kind of vigilante?

Without any other warning, a few of the 2nd stage mages that usually used ranged spells pointed at Kayn and started casting. A few seconds later, they watched in horror as right as their spells were manifested and released, they ended up pointing and launching the spells at their own group.

The friendly fire caused major disruption to their group and even took a few of them out of the situation entirely. The spells they used were only tier 1, so they weren't really enough to kill any of them, but a fireball to the face was still enough to cause severe burns and even knock out a couple of the weaker members of their group.

"Hey, casting spells at your friends' faces isn't very nice of you. Maybe you should punish yourself as repentance." Kayn laughed as he then forced a few of them to start flailing their arms at their own face.

The others who weren't affected were standing there dumbstruck as they couldn't fathom what was going on. Mind control spells didn't actually exist, and their group members wouldn't do this to their own group or themselves out of the blue like this.

The only 3rd stage mage was actually a magic warrior and he had already begun to gather mana into his fist to launch a powerful punch the second the mysterious guy was in his range. However, the man in black wasn't moving from his position, so he was either going to have to taunt him down or jump up and try and catch him off guard.

Going with plan two, he immediately tried to leap off the ground towards Kayn, but he ended up surprised as he remained rooted the ground. There was no earth restriction spell grabbing him or anything visible around his legs, but he could feel something wrapped around his ankles, keeping him in place.

"You piece of shit! Why don't you come down here and we can talk things out eh? Or are you scared? Heh, you're probably not much of a man down there either and you're probably fucking that tiny gnome to feel better about yourself." The 3rd stage magic warrior who seemed to be the leader of this rowdy group shouted at Kayn.

Kayn was caught off guard as he was suddenly insulted regarding his manhood. 'How did this guy even come to that conclusion? Maybe he's just projecting his own insecurities?'

As Kayn thought to himself, he jumped down while maintaining his hold on their actions with his Mana Threads. He couldn't help but marvel at how versatile the Tethers were and what he could accomplish with them and their inherent spell that had become a part of him now.

Kayn walked closer to the leader not feeling threatened at all. The leader saw this and grinned and just as Kayn entered his range, he threw his fist forward. Unfortunately for him, his own fist came flying back at his head. Kayn released his hold on the leader and allowed the force from his own punch to send him flying backwards.

"Let's have some fun, shall we?" Kayn laughed as he then started having the rest of the group flail their arms and legs around, kicking and hitting each other repeatedly. Kayn watched the scene he was orchestrating in amusement.

As Kayn willed his mana through the Mana Threads, the group looked like a bunch of drunken fools that were having a street fight. Once they were all bloodied and bruised, some even with broken limbs, Kayn released his Mana Threads.

Every single member of the group fell to the ground and started to grab at their injuries. Some even tried to stand up in a hurry and run away, but a single glance at Kayn who was currently wagging his finger at them as if to say "No running" stopped them in their tracks.

"See, this could have been a lot easier if you guys just paid the lady for what you broke. But now, I'm going to take all of your money and you got beat up. It would've been so much more pleasant for you lot if you would have listened."

Kayn proceeded to hold his hand out and gestured for them to approach and give him their money. This was clearly just daylight robbery, but Kayn couldn't care less as these peoples' money was probably all ill-gotten gains. When none of them approached him, he simply started dragging them over to himself one by one using Mana Threads.

He pat searched each and every person, taking every gold and silver coin they had while leaving them with only 15 copper coins a piece if they even had that on them to begin with. He didn't want to indirectly cause them to rob more people after all.

The leader was the true money bags as he had a coin pouch that held 293 gold coins, 79 silver coins, and 32 copper. He even had a few gold coins in his pockets. Apparently, he charged a decent amount of money as a 3rd stage mage. Though, he could have probably made more if he chose a better profession.

In fact, most of the guys here had a mana core and could be making more money working for legitimate businesses. He guesses they may have had actual jobs at one point and somehow fell into this profession, or they just liked stealing. Each one most likely had a money stash somewhere, but Kayn couldn't be bothered enough to go collect all of it.

None of Tina's broken weapons should cost more than a few dozen gold coins as none of them had been enchanted yet, so what he gathered from these fools should be more than enough to compensate the poor gnome lady.

From what Kayn had heard about Tina on the way to her shop, she had worked very hard to get to where she was with her craft. Being a non-mage as well as a race with a small stature, she came up with several inventions to solve her problems, it was actually quite impressive to hear about.

Also, according to Kinzie, she charged fair prices and wasn't raking in money, at least before Kinzie popularized her shop inside the academy.

As the leader of the group was still knocked out from his own punch, Kayn looked at the other hooligans and threatened them, "If I hear about you all harassing that shop again, it won't end with losing your money and a few bruises and broken bones."

The voice changing choker made his voice sound even more threatening, and the invisible pressure he released onto the group made the non-mages pee their pants. Satisfied with the silent but vigorous nods he received as a response, Kayn left the scene after blending back into the shadows.

…

A few minutes later, Kayn re-entered Tina's shop wearing his normal clothing. Seeing that both Kinzie and Tina were staring at him oddly, he cleared his throat and tossed a pouch onto the counter near Tina.

"They paid for what they broke as well as compensation for bothering you. They were even nice enough to say that they wouldn't bother you again. If they do, don't be afraid to let Kinzie know, and I'll take care of it." Kayn gave Tina a charming smile. However, Tina couldn't help but think that his smile was one of a deceitful devil.

Kinzie gave Kayn an odd look before speaking what was on her mind, "You didn't go overboard, did you?"

Kayn only laughed as he responded, "Nope! In fact, they were beating each other up when I arrived! It was quite comical to watch."

Kinzie glared at Kayn knowing that he had a bit of a playful side to him on occasion. She knew that what he said was probably only half of the truth.

*Cough* "Anyway, did you get everything here sorted out?" Kayn asked as he tried to divert the subject and her glare.

"Yes, we'll come back in a few days to pick my bow up. See you then Tina!" Kinzie waved and left the shop with Kayn. The small pink haired woman on the other hand was standing with a look of bewilderment on her face as she had no clue what that interaction was just now.

Shaking the image of Kayn's smile out of her head, she picked the coin pouch up and looked inside before dropping it back onto the floor. It was filled to the absolute brim with coins, the majority of them being gold! As the young man had said, it was more than enough to pay for her broken items.

Tina then laughed to herself as she picked up the pouch again, going into her back room where she had a very intricate and secure vault. She liked Kinzie, but now she liked her even more because she brought along quite the interesting person with her who gave away hundreds of gold coins like it was nothing!