(A/N) ain't my story
Original author: Greyghost412
Go read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48749857/chapters/122974282
Chapter 1 - Revelations
Well, I'm lost Cid thought to himself as he walked along the tunnel.
He could vaguely sense mana being used ahead and slightly to the right of where he was right now, so he headed that way. Alpha and the others must have already caught up to the kidnappers and were probably fighting them already.
He didn't really mind if they took care of all the bandit's as long as they were thorough honestly, there were basically just trash mobs at this point, but he needed to be the one to rescue Claire. It might be his only chance to interact with her like this and he needed to drop some vague "It was me all along" style hints.
He usually used bandits as training and free cash, but these guys had crossed a line kidnapping Claire.
If she disappeared or worse died then he'd be the heir to the Kagenou Barony. He'd have to live in the middle of nowhere and he would naturally draw more attention as a minor ruling noble, severely limiting his mob potential. These people would never even think of things like that, they were so selfish and self absorbed.
Deep in thought about how he was going to repay the kidnappers for risking his dream like this, he didn't notice the man running out of a retracting wall. God he needed a base with a secret passage. The guy dressed like a noble, but had clearly just been on the wrong end of a fight.
Definitely the bandit chief.
"You, you knew I was going to escape this way".
"Of course" Cid lied. "A cornered rat has no options, in truth" Nailed it.
The bandit chief just drew his sword and started swinging. He had a lot of raw strength and magical ability, and he wasn't exactly untrained. His technique was in a word, sloppy. He'd obviously been taught and then improved his strength to the point he could just steam-roll most opponents without proper form, then let his technique slowly degrade over the years.
For whatever reason the guy played along and let him get in some good ad-lib practice, so feeling generous, Cid decided to teach him how he should be fighting in this situation. Logically he wouldn't be able to use this lesson but since reincarnation existed it wasn't totally pointless. Potentially.
Then he took a bunch of pills, got massive, and started going apeshit. It was a classic villain bit but Cid couldn't approve, since he didn't beleive in using temporary enhancements to become stronger. Instead, you should just train so you can be stronger at all times. You couldn't truly be strong if your strength could be stolen as easily as cash.
It had been been a pretty fun boss fight, but without an audience there was no point dragging it out any longer, he finished the man with a simple thrust through the chest.
"You… you might be able to do what I couldn't" the man rasped out "you might be able to survive the darkness, but you must know that the cult of Diabolos already rules this world from the shadows" his eyes turned glassy "Milia, I...".
"Yes, the darkness poses no threat to me" Cid replied unthinkingly "And the shadows have always belonged to… wait!, what did you say about a cult?".
He grabbed (possibly) bandit chief's shoulder and began to shake him, then more roughly but with the same lack of response.
Why did he mention the cult? There's no reason he should even know the name.
"Come on, if you die what's poor, err Merial gonna do without you?"
No response came, and Shadow's world shattered
------
Epsilon felt almost giddy as she moved to fetch lord Shadow, the chance to give him good news (the cultists had been slain and Claire had been found almost completely unharmed) was rare. She would admittedly be happier if it was something she'd accomplished alone and they were somewhere more romantic than an enemy base, but she'd recently learned the painful life lesson that you had to make the best of what you had.
When she saw Shadow, she came to an abrupt halt. He stood locked in place over the corpse of the viscount, trembling slightly. She'd never seen him like this. He was always either carefree or effortlessly commanding, and she suddenly realized he hadn't noticed her approach. No one, not even Alpha or Zeta, had ever managed to sneak up on him as far as she knew.
Is he… Afraid. What could have shaken him so deeply?
"L-Lord Shadow" she whispered, but he didn't seem to hear.
"I can't believe it. How could I not have realized. This will change everything, but it's not too late yet. I can deal with this if I just...".
He noticed her then, and his red eyes narrowed on her. She almost stepped back, but managed to stand her ground and say "W-We've found Claire, and the cultists have been disposed of."
His silent stare dragged on for a few moments, then he nodded and spoke "Very well, take me to her then."
...
After Epsilon told Alpha what had happened (alone, so it wouldn't affect any of the others), she sat in silence with a look of deepest concentration for the next five minutes. Eventually she called Gamma back began going over all of the information they'd collected over the years and look for anything they might have missed, along with reviewing everything they had just gathered from the viscount's base. Clearly their lord had made some important revelation, and just to be thorough they needed to confirm it. Epsilon had been sent out soon to gather the other five shades back to base.
That was several hours ago now, and Epsilon could only sit with the other four shades, eyes downcast and trying not to think of how useless she had been in the last few hours. Delta had been called back from her hunt, Zeta from her scouting mission, Eta from the lab and even Beta from watching over their lord. Whatever had been found required the whole groups immediate attention, everyone seemed to share her unease except Delta, who just seemed agitated.
"We've recently discovered something that will change the nature of our mission." Alpha broke the silence with her usual businesslike efficiency after taking her seat. Epsilon hadn't even noticed her enter, but she was too dejected to be surprised.
"Previously, we thought that the cult of Diabolos had hidden itself inside the Midgar Kingdom's Church of Divine Teachings. It seems now that this was only a small faction of the cult known as the Fenrir sect, and that the cult's true influence is control of the church in every nation, as well as agents among the nobility, military and major economic institutions."
That's impossible. They'd practically control the whole world at that point.
The whole table paled apart from Delta who smiled and said "So we've got more prey to hunt now?"
"Ah" Gamma exclaimed, almost falling out of her seat. "We can't fight an organization that large with eight people Delta, not even with lord Shadow".
"If we need more people..." Delta exclaimed happily "We can just..."
"No!" Alpha interjected firmly, rejecting Delta's familiar request to "make" a large pack around Cid and take over the world before she could even say it this time.
"You have the same solution for every problem," Zeta replied sarcastically "Can't you think of anything else?"
"We don't need anything else, it would solve all of our problems if boss-man controlled the world," Delta replied smugly.
Zeta expression became thoughtful while the rest of the table including Epsilon looked to an exasperated Alpha waiting for her to shut this down to various degrees of gratitude and disappointment.
"That isn't an option, we've already moved against the cult and they'll be looking for us, we can't deal with that and children at the same time, even assuming our lord would agree." Thankfully they were spared from again having to explain to Delta (and apparently Zeta) that humans were primarily monogamous.
Epsilon struggled to suppress a grin as she thought that her odds of being the one he chose seemed to be rising. Her hard work was paying off, and she'd noticed her lord looking her up and down briefly with an expression of mild curiosity on his face over the past few weeks. More encouragingly, the attention she recieved was almost exactly in proportion to how much her curves had developed since she'd last seen him.
She was shaken out of a particularly played-out daydream, imagining where those looks might lead when Alpha spoke, her voice calm again "Our lord has already given us the answer. When he wished to fight the cult he recruited us, and now we have to grow the organization while he works alone".
Beta broke in then "How are we going to make something that rivals the cult? We don't have anything to build a faction that large."
Eta spoke up then in, her small tired voice only audible in the silent room "Shadow wisdom."
Gamma looked like she had just figured it out "Of course. Shadow didn't just give us power or combat training, but skills we could use to build an organisation and gather intelligence. He must have predicted that something like this would occur and prepared us so we could complete this mission."
Epsilon was in awe. She'd believed Shadow had been totally blind-sided by the scope of the cult, but even then his preparations were so perfect everything was already in place to deal with them.
Our master truly thinks at a level no one else could fathom. Even if the cult has all the world, they'd be completely outmatched by him alone.
Epsilon felt her heart begin to lift then. Back in the cultists base when she had trailed behind the silent Shadow, she couldn't do or say anything as she followed the man who had saved her and who she loved. Her own inability to help was the worst part. She had been too stupid to figure out what was wrong, and too cowardly to try and comfort him anyway. He'd seemed so shaken and alone then, and that image of him had refused to leave her mind.
But he wasn't alone. Shadow garden would prove their worth to their lord, or die in the attempt.
-------
Cid slumped down in bed, a few hours of pretending to be worried about Claire despite knowing she was fine then the hysteria of her return had left him exhausted. Claire just rushed up to him and hugged him so tightly you'd of thought he'd been the one that was kidnapped. Their parents had been relieved that the golden child of the Kagenou family had been recovered, and they were a little too happy to get out of explaining to the school that the top second year wasn't coming back after winter break. He didn't like to judge though, he did a lot of stuff to have people see him a certain way that other people wouldn't understand so he could kind of relate.
He'd been reeling since his revelation earlier in the day, when he'd found the cult of Diablos might be real. He hadn't really been paying attention to the cult/bandit leader guy so he'd only really heard the name mentioned. It could have just been something he heard from Alpha and spouted back to Cid.
After careful consideration, the most likely possibility (around 70%) was that the rest of shadow garden was trying to prank him. It was way more likely than some fictitious evil organization he made up was real and that he found one of there bases with a missed knife throw.
They'd make the bandits say something like that, wait for him to freak out and then go "Serves you right, you made it up in the first place, I can't believe you fell for that." It would admittedly be funny as fuck if he wasn't the target.
That left around a 30% possibility that the cult of Diabolos was a real organization, but he'd essentially need S-tier luck for that to be true. It would be pretty cool if it was true though. It would mean his secret organization was actually fighting a shadow war and he really was leading it as the eminence. He needed to keep his hopes down though, getting all excited about this was just what they wanted, and it would be peak cringe if they pulled the rug out from under him while he was like a kid on Christmas eve.
That had led to his second, even greater realization. Since he couldn't rely on shadow garden for information, his first idea was to bump Cid Kagenou up from an NPC to a side character so he could infiltrate the knight orders to gather intel.
He was just considering whether this plan conflicted with his eminence goals when it hit him like a slap in the face
All great shadowbrokers were side characters.
An eminence in shadow's skills were determined by how close they could get to the main character unnoticed. When it was a character that only had like two lines of dialogue and you were supposed to guess that it was complete bullshit.
Looking back it was understandable why he hadn't realized this before. In his past life he didn't have time for side character commitments like friends, hobbies or a job with training and missions to complete while getting enough sleep to function. In this world he could train with magic while doing almost anything else and he could also get by on three hours of sleep a night using magic, which gave him way more time for training, espionage or action.
With that in mind he got up, looked over at his desk and sighed. It was covered in documents ancient runes he had no idea how to read and now he'd have to learn. He could learn any skill he needed to become Shadow, but he had intentionally not learned this so he could better improv with Beta and the others. It was easier to role-play if he could pretend anything was written there, after all. If it turned out it was a prank, it would make their game way more lame, like watching a magic show after you already knew how the trick was done.
He sat down, forcing his thoughts away from potential retaliation pranks if this was all a joke and began the next step of his training.
I'm going to need to look into this by myself, but how do I get the others to leave me alone long enough without giving away that I'm onto them.
--------
Cid looked out over the rolling plains, completely at peace and mind totally blank. The shades had gathered behind him almost a minute ago but he couldn't just turn and face them right away. He needed to wait a minimum amount of time (75 seconds) to make it seem like he was making some important consideration that he absolutely had to finish. Finally he turned and steeled himself for the first phase of operation ditch-the-garden.
"My lord, we need to set out on our own for a time"
What?
"To what end?"
"We need to increase our numbers. If the cult really does control the world then our current forces are insufficient," Alpha said.
A world domination plotline. It's not like I dislike the direction but come on, if you're trying to trick me come up with something more realistic.
Cid mentally deducted 15% from the cult-is-real meter he'd built in his head while he stood in awe of Alpha's acting skills. Somehow she'd managed to keep her face straight and voice completely deadpan serious as she expanded the backstory to this ridiculous degree.
His silent shock appeared to be noticed as Beta broke in "but we're not leaving you alone, one of us will remain available to you at all times."
Zeta casually raised a hand "I'm up first. Let me know whenever you need anything"
Leaving someone behind to watch me, and having it be Zeta who's specialized in stealth and intelligence work, clever girl.
"Very well, I'll soon be setting off for the capital myself soon, perhaps we can meet again there." Prank or not, there wasn't much he could do out in the sticks, so he'd need to get there before he turned sixteen and would be enrolled at the royal academy. He known of a way for a while, but the pain and frustration he'd have to endure were so immense he'd kept it in reserve until now.
Excluding Zeta, they all lined up to hug him goodbye and wished him luck, which he had no choice but to repeat back to them. Delta went back to her usual thing of trying to burrow into him, which was interrupted by a hiss from Zeta. While those two got along like cats and dogs, Cid used the distraction to perform EiS technique 13 "Where did he go? We only looked away for a second" jumping off the wall and camouflaging himself with the slime suit while running away.
Mid run he reflected on his good luck. He'd wanted to get away from the others and dealing with just Zeta would be far easier than getting around all seven, and it had happened without having having to do anythi…
He stopped running and looked down at hands, as if they had done something without him telling them to.
It's just a coincidence. There's no way I have S-rank luck.