novel(7)
| ← Ch.056 | Ch.058 → |
Prime Minister Arcanta was shocked by the news he received as soon as he got into his office in the morning.
"What's been stolen now?"
"The statue of the golden goddess that was kept in the temple was stolen." Arcanta's aide calmly answered.
"Who, for what purpose?"
"Wouldn't it be the same person who robbed Count Druval's mansion a little while ago?"
Arcanta plopped down in his seat pulling on his hair."You mean the one named Lupin?" He felt a throbbing headache and a pain emerging in his stomach."Should I consider it fortunate that it's the same person or misfortune?"
If the thief was Lupin, it was fortunate that there was no need to disperse the manpower that had been chasing him so far. However, Lupin was also a ghost-like monster who had yet to leave a trace.
For the next 2-3 years, he planned on trying to trace the items Lupin stole in the black market. Although they had lost a lot of power compared to the past, the temple still boasted a strong power. But he decided to touch them.
He was planning on letting the treasury officials off Lupin's trail, but now it had become impossible. It was clear that Cardinal Fernando from the temple, one of the hard-core members of the temple well-known for his stubbornness, would send his complaints non-stop.
"But there's a lot of witnesses this time."
"What?!" Arcanta was surprised.
It was Lupin, a man who succeeded in stealing without being noticed, even in the heavily guarded mansion of Count Druval.
But at the night in the temple that wasn't even guarded, this ghost-like thief was seen?
It was just incredible!
"Yesterday, early in the morning, the cardinal and his paladins were praying. And it so happened that Lupin was passing through the ventilation shaft above the prayer room."
"Haha, what luck! Seems that thief has poor luck, passing over Cardinal Fernando."
Fernando was one of the best combat priests in the empire. If he had been caught by such a man, he must have died without leaving behind even a single bone.
"Ah, Lupin must be already dead. Then shall we find what the thief has hidden and take it back to the treasury?" Arcanta smiled deeply.
Normally, it had to be distributed to the victims. However, the only stolen items identified were jewelry blessed by a Goddess, a necklace made of a 1000-year-old amethyst, and sacks of silver coins stolen from Count Druval.
Say something that makes sense. Most of what Lupin stole would have been illegal slush funds of nobles. As such, even if the stolen goods were taken back to the treasury, they couldn't say anything.
"Um, by the way~"
The aide tackled Arcanta as his stomach was starting to feel better and was thinking he could majorly screw over the nobles who were always giving him trouble, including Count Druval.
"The thief, Lupin, ran away just fine with the golden goddess statue."
"What... ?!"
Arcanta grabbed his head again as the aide nodded.
"How did he get away?"
"Apparently, he swung the stolen golden goddess statue like a weapon, making it impossible to attack him."
Arcanta looked at his aide as if he couldn't believe there would be such a person."So, if there were witnesses, what was his description?"
The aide handed over a document and recited the description on the document."First, he was wearing a half-white mask and a black hood."
"What about his height?"
"That is, perhaps there was a perception disrupting magic on the mask, but most people could only remember the white half mask. The ones with some magic resistance were just barely able to recall a black hood."
Arcanta sighed."Is there anything else?"
"Ah, one more thing. Other paladins rejected it, but Paladin Vibrio, who was chasing Lupin, said in passing that she thought it might be a woman."
"Woman?!"
"Yes. At a brief glance, the person looked slim, less than 170 centimeters tall, but the paladin said she couldn't remember it that well so it is not accurate."
Arcanta stroked his chin and fell into thought."If less than 170 centimeters, it could be a boy."
"Yes?"
"No, it's just a passing thought." Arcanta waved his hand and dismissed his aide as he spoke. The latter bowed his head with a curious look and went out of the office.
Arcanta was deeply troubled. But soon, he threw away his conjecture.
If the perception was disrupted, it would not be accurate information, and if it was the person he thought he was, he would be tall as a knight.
It was said that Bloody was already over 180 centimeters tall by the age of sixteen. Moreover, looking at Doomstone's past activities, he did not hide his identity. Considering Bloody's nature, he wouldn't hide behind a mask either. Most of all, if Denburg Blade was Lupin, he wouldn't have touched Count Druval, the Crow Tribe's main customer.
"Who's Lupin? What is his purpose?"
When he robbed Count Druval's mansion, he saw Count Druval as Lupin's target. But now that the temple was suddenly touched, he didn't know what the purpose was once again.
But one thing was for sure- it was about to get busy.
-o-
It's been about a month since I joined the training center. In other words, it's been almost 15 days since I started researching the golden goddess statue after stealing it.
The golden goddess statue didn't emit any kind of energy, but strangely it would not enter my pocket space. In the end, half giving up, I put plaster all over the golden goddess statue to turn it into a plaster goddess statue, and I decorated my room with it.
"Oppa! Stop playing around!" [1]
As I was calmly drinking tea in the living room, I could hear Alice telling off Lisbon from upstairs as usual.
"Aly, but it's the first day though. They've all been close friends since the low-rank knight school. Do you think it'll be okay?"
"I said it'll be fine! Quit acting like a little b*tch!"
"Aly, how can a girl say that! Such vulgar—"
"Be quiet and hurry downstairs!"
Seeing Lisbon getting kicked in the butt by Alice and coming downstairs, the scene was just so funny that I ended up laughing.
"Hahaha, it's okay. With a sociable personality like yours, you'll be able to get along wherever you go."
"Hahaha, do you think so?" Lisbon asked.
That said, it was quite burdensome to squeeze into an already solidified group.
Knight school may be a school, but it may have a rigid atmosphere as it was essentially a military academy that trained knights.
Lisbon seemed to be worried about getting treated as a newcomer.
"Isn't it time to go to school?" I held my watch for the siblings to see.
Alice screamed, "Kyaak! We're late!" Miffed, she hit her brother in the back."You fool! I'm late because of you!"
"But, Aly. What do you mean 'you'? I'm still your oppa." [2]
"Shut it!"
The pair ran like crazy. Still, despite fighting and criticizing all the time, Alice was the only one who looked after Lisbon.
Come to think of it, Yuria and Alphonso had left early in the morning even though it wasn't time to go to school. I wonder if something happened?
Well, they probably left early half due to Alphonso's excitement.
Unlike the magic school and knight school, the training center only required attendance when you had class like a university from my previous life. Everyone else had to be in the dormitories which limited their freedom, but since I was commuting, I could be totally free.
According to Flam, the housemaster was so strict that if you wanted to go out during the weekdays, you needed to go through complicated procedures. To get out easily, one of the family members had to be seriously hurt, which basically indicated that everyone would have an ordinary life.
Now then, should I slowly head to work too?
To have to say it's work, not school, made it feel sad. Since I had to truly go to work after this year, I felt like my heart was breaking.
But today was the day I had my favorite class- the magic class. The contents of the class were the basics of the basics, but it was fortunate that there were times they covered subjects that I didn't know. At least it was more fun than the PRI-like shooting training that made you bleed, grind your teeth, and get calluses.
As the comprehensive weaponry subject implied, we slowly began to learn swordsmanship and archery but the main was still the musket that became obsolete in the rain and wind. Other classes were pretty easy. For the etiquette, since I was already such a polite person, there was no problem.
Really. There really was no problem.
For the imperial law class, there was nothing for me to judge or defend. It was just a memorization class. And economy class, I passed it easily with the help of what I had learned in my previous life. There was nothing to mention about the Empire Language class as it was a subject that I had already mastered back in the village.
Anyways, I didn't want to go to work.
-o-
From the now closed Granwell branch of the Big Mama Information Agency, Milpia, the former head, infiltrated the magic school under orders disguised as an invitation from Big Mama. Although she was still young, she had been a field agent who had been gathering information since she was even younger. As a result, she became the head of one of the most important bases of the Big Mama Information Agency at the age of sixteen.
That was at least until a man with a scary scar on his face came to Granwell, a top-secret location, and bought a huge amount of information.
"Phew!" Milpia entered the class assigned to her at the magic school and sat at a random desk with a sigh.
This was a real demotion. Granwell's branch manager position was one of the best in the information agency. No matter how you looked at it, going from an administrative position in the most important location in the information agency to a field agent it was a demotion.
In a normal business or organization, this would be no different from asking you for a letter of resignation, but in the information agency, where you dealt with information, there was no retirement before death. It was quite brutal if you thought about it. It was especially vicious the higher administrative position you held.
Although Big Mama, the head of Big Mama Information Agency, consoled her by saying, "It's not a demotion, " she had to say something that made sense to believe.
If Milpia didn't trust Big Mama, she would have thought the information agency would try to kill her. To be honest, she did have some doubts that they might try to assassinate her, but she dismissed it sooner for she would easily throw away her life for Big Mama's sake. If her death was Big Mama's aim, she would gladly die smiling.
But that is that, so why the demotion. Even if Milpia died, she wanted to die in style.
She sighed as she thought of how much effort it would take to crawl back up to a managerial position.
"Can I sit next to you?"
"Yes, please sit, " Milpia said absent-mindedly, giving a rough glance at those who had asked. It didn't really matter since it wasn't like she had reserved those seats. As the cycle of pessimism was about to start again, she doubted what she had just seen.
She looked back at the person sitting next to her.
1. Oppa is the word for older brother that females use. I will start using the words, "Oppa", "Noona", "Hyung", and such rather than older brother, etc, because in Korea, the words for older brother like "Oppa" is actually used as a title to refer to a person instead of using their real name.
2. She used the informal 'you' on him.
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