Chapter 420

Narke Farnese stood alone in a snowy Berlin square, looking around.

He had been dropped here alone. He couldn’t have failed to understand what that meant. Since he already possessed divine power, they considered his basic abilities sufficient. In other words, he had no need for cooperation.

Without changing his expression, Narke approached a newspaper stand and pulled out the Berlin Daily.

“Excuse me.”

“Ah, if you want to read it, you’ll have to buy—”

“I’ll come back tomorrow morning and pay you.”

Narke gave him a faint smile and made the completely unreasonable promise. Then his expression went blank again as he quickly skimmed through the newspaper.

Pleroma crackdown. Heavy snowfall. Personal advertisements.

After reading whatever caught his eye, Narke put the newspaper back on the stand and walked away.

Five minutes later, Narke arrived at a bakery with a purple sign. He opened the door without hesitation and walked toward the counter. As the owner turned toward him, his previously indifferent expression gradually filled with alarm. Before the owner could do anything, Narke’s hand had already touched his forehead.

“Enter through the narrow gate. I’m here to see Ms. Violett Brot.”

“…Ah… uh…”

Without saying another word, Narke stared straight into the owner’s eyes. His unfocused pupils slowly rolled. The words Narke conveyed through his divine power sank directly into the owner’s mind.

— The person who comes to you next, carrying vitriol and seeking your answer, will be an impostor sent by the German government. I came to warn you before it happens, because I fear that, in seeking the will of Christ, you may fall into the Antichrist’s scheme and and take the coming judgment for a lie.

The owner’s knees suddenly gave way. This was not the result of Narke’s poor control over his divine power, such as excessive tension or an overly forceful removal of consciousness. The owner was about to show a reaction that any mage belonging to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would have seen countless times before. Realizing what he was about to do, Narke simply watched him. Even under mental manipulation magic, the owner was now able to stand upright again, just as he had before. Only then did Narke speak aloud.

“We need to hurry. Where is the interview being held?”

Thirty minutes later.

“…Violett Brot.”

Leonard murmured the name without realizing it as he stared at the purple sign. Seeing the sign confirmed his suspicion. ‘Violett Brot,’ the name of the tutor supposedly looking for employment, was a code.

Elias, who had been frozen beside him, suddenly widened his eyes and leaned his face toward Leonard’s.

“What. Why are you saying what I was supposed to say~?”

“…….”

Leonard suppressed the urge to close his eyes and grabbed Elias.

“We need to raid that place. Don’t go in yet. If we walk in like this, it’s over.”

“Hey, you can actually think like that? Look at you, all grown up.”

“That’s my line.”

Leonard grabbed Elias by the arm and quickly moved them to the side of the shop. They needed to hide before the baker spotted them. Considering the purpose of the training, that bakery hadn’t opened its doors for actual business. Instead, it was displaying an ordinary advertisement that everyone else would simply take for a notice seeking a private tutor, while waiting for someone who possessed the key to the code hidden within it. The shop owner would then hand that person a letter or some other item. In other words, this bakery was a kind of ‘base.’

Elias let out a sharp whistle—earning him an almost immediate smack in the mouth—and followed wherever Leonard led.

“Elias. Do you want to look for the item, or talk to them?”

“Obviously I want to beat them up. Why are you even asking?”

“Good grief…”

“Why?! You asked me first! This is hurtful!”

“Pick one of the choices I gave you!”

“You’re no fun. Fine, I’ll go with talking.”

“Good.”

Leonard stuffed all of Elias’s hair that had slipped out from under his hat back inside. He pulled the hat down firmly, doing his best to hide Elias’s hair color, then said with a troubled expression, “I don’t think revealing our identities is a good choice… We can’t exactly walk around without our coats in this weather.”

“You do know that even taking the coat off won’t solve anything, right?”

Leonard frowned at Elias’s remark. Elias whistled casually a few times, feigning indifference, then changed the subject.

“Still, I’m surprised you didn’t say we should just walk in there and flash our Association credentials. You’ve really changed a lot. Don’t you think?”

Leonard was not usually the type to make use of his power—if anything, it was quite the opposite, which was why Elias sometimes found him rather rigid—but when it came to witnessing a crime, that was another matter entirely. As far as Elias knew, Leonard was the sort of friend who would use the Association’s authority openly and properly, confront the crime head-on, and get to the bottom of it.

Elias, on the other hand, was more accustomed to getting by without relying on authority. Perhaps because he always considered the worst-case scenario, he went so far as to avoid revealing genuine information to an almost excessive degree, even by his own standards. To Elias, walking into the bakery with an Association credential and standing in front of the owner was practically the same as revealing everything they knew. And if their deduction turned out to be wrong, that would leave them with very few ways to turn the situation around.

Yet perhaps spending so much time with Nikolaus Ernst had changed Leonard’s way of thinking. To Elias’s surprise, Leonard was now suggesting that they conduct a sting operation. He was thinking exactly the same way Elias was! Elias’s eyes lit up with a strange sense of amusement. Whatever Elias found so amusing, Leonard lowered his voice and whispered beneath the soundproofing spell.

“…I don’t know what changed or how, but we don’t have any other option right now. We can’t exactly go looking for a clothing store around here. We’ll just have to go in like this.”

“Why can’t we? …Seeing this, you’re still as rigid as ever.”

“What?”

“Never mind. If that doesn’t work, what are you going to do next? Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Elias had a clear idea of his own, but he deliberately kept it to himself because the people from the Imperial Mage Association were watching the two of them. Leonard knew that too. He was certain Elias had already figured out what he was thinking, so he only said two things.

“Go in and draw their attention. I’ll look for the rest.”

Three minutes later.

Jingle—

Elias entered the bakery without bothering to abandon his usual cocky attitude. The baker’s already stiff expression hardened further, only to relax almost immediately.

“Welcome. What brings an Imperial official here?”

“I am here for a spot inspection.”

“A spot inspection? Is there something wrong?”

While they talked, Leonard, under a concealment spell, slipped behind the counter where the owner was standing. Elias sensed the movement of mana, glanced briefly into the air, and continued.

“Well, it’s not like we came here because something was wrong. You do get inspections like this from time to time, don’t you?”

“Not that often, but…”

“Then consider it that way from today on. I just came from another place, actually. We were ordered to look around downtown Berlin. Mind if I have something from here?”

Elias gestured toward the bread with a raised eyebrow. Leonard’s eyes shifted to the baker’s face. Why had this bakery been chosen as a sort of base? He needed to figure that out. If something was hidden in those loaves, which were obviously meant to make the bakery look like it was operating normally, the owner should hesitate at least for a moment.

As the tension tightened without the baker even realizing it, he readily waved a hand, so casually that it almost deflated the tension altogether.

“If that is what you wish, please. I apologize that I cannot offer you something better.”

“You’re a kind person. So, how’s business?”

“To be honest, not very good. When will the lockdown be lifted? It would be nice to at least know when supplies will start coming in.”

“I don’t really know either… I’m just doing what I’m told. It’s not like I go around finding things out for myself. Come to think of it, I don’t smell any bread.”

“We’ve run out of flour, so I can’t make any.”

At that, Leonard, who had been leaning behind the owner and quietly inspecting the things around him, frowned.

‘What is he even talking about?’

Enough with the small talk. They didn’t have time to waste.

“Haha, I see.”

“Yes, yes. And the real reason I came in here was, you see, that thing over there. Outside.”

“Yes? Is there a problem outside?”

“Obviously. The door is falling off. It’s covered in snow; what are you going to do if the kids step on it?”

“It was fine this morning.”

“Well, it’s not anymore. I mean that door over there.”

“The back door? This building isn’t actually mine—”

“Then you can tell the owner about it. You know you’re the only business operating around here. Come outside for a moment.”

The owner looked less than pleased, but he followed Elias out without putting up any further resistance. Holding his breath, Leonard watched the owner’s gait and the tension in his body as he stepped out from behind the counter.

He walked smoothly, without a moment’s hesitation, with not the slightest stiffness in his neck or waist. There was some tension around his eyes, but it was about the same as what Leonard had seen in other people who had encountered an Imperial mage. Surprisingly, his eyelids were even slightly lowered, as though he were tired. He didn’t so much as glance back at the counter or the door to the small storeroom.

Leonard immediately knew something was wrong. Anyone from the Headquarters who came here would have noticed it.

‘This is…’

If this place really was an intermediary for delivering supplies to Pleroma, and he was keeping letters or other items here, then he shouldn’t be able to leave this place so easily. No matter how well the concealment spell made it look as though no one was here, he was standing face-to-face with the ‘enemy of all enemies.’ Someone with something to hide couldn’t simply walk away from his own hideout. At the very least, he couldn’t leave without a single moment of hesitation like that.

Leonard searched through the things behind the counter, then tore open the locked side door at the back and searched inside. There was no safe. The small storeroom contained nothing but empty flour sacks, spare cooking utensils, and white aprons.

There were no letters. Nothing with an unusual mana signature, either. No. There wasn’t even any clutter. It was as if the place had been kept completely clear in preparation for an inspection that could happen at any time.

“…….”

Leonard closed the storeroom door and came back out.

Creeeak—

“…Then I’ll let the building owner know. It was definitely fine this morning… I assume the fine won’t be issued to me, correct?”

“Of course not. Don’t worry about things like that. Anyway, that’s settled, so go about your business now.”

“Yes, yes. Of course. But the lighter…”

“Ah.”

Elias handed the lighter in his hand to the owner. Perhaps conscious that Leonard was watching him from somewhere, he gave a little wink. As expected, he seemed to have already gone through the owner’s pockets. Maybe that was why he had come in with a cigarette Leonard had never seen before between his lips. Leonard nearly collapsed at the sight, but since this was a Mimesis, there shouldn’t be any actual damage to Elias’s lungs―Elias would probably call him ridiculously uptight for worrying about it, but health was fairly important to Leonard when it came to the efficiency of magic―and since he couldn’t exactly yell at him, all he could do was keep observing until the very end.

The owner took the lighter and returned to the counter with a tired look on his face. Not a single sign of anything unusual.

Now, there was only one conclusion left.

Whatever ‘thing’ Pleroma had hidden in this bakery had not been materialized. They were already cornered, and they knew an Imperial inspection could happen anywhere at any time. Even a safe wasn’t something they could rely on.

Therefore, the information inside the baker’s head was the ‘thing’ Pleroma had hidden in this shop.

‘…Whew.’

It was a long while after leaving the shop that Leonard finally dispelled his concealment spell and took a deep breath.

So, what were the participants supposed to think now? Where was their reasoning supposed to lead them?

The case had fallen into a maze.

Let’s return to the beginning. They had started at Number 1 and reached Number 3 without going through Number 2. To draw a specific signal out of the baker, they first had to find the still-unidentified ‘Number 2.’

The Elias-Leonard team wasn’t the only one to reach the same conclusion.

Ten minutes later.

Nepomucena Wettin, who had entered a different Mimesis from them, was in the bakery with the purple sign. He had the baker by the collar as he lay sprawled on the floor, a wand pointed at his left eye. Old Humans tended to respond better to guns than wands, so if he had had a gun, he would have used it as a threat. But perhaps because that illustrious representative of the 98th Unit had screwed things up, or because firearms had been deliberately left out this time, there were no guns in the Mimesis either―something Wettin found rather disappointing.

“I’m asking you one last time.”

“N-no… no…”

The baker stammered as he lay with the back of his head against a pool of blood, desperately trying to get away.

Wettin closed his eyes at the sight. The baker had been at it for twenty minutes now, and he was keeping his mouth shut for far too long. Wettin’s longtime friend and only teammate had already left before they even reached the bakery, fiercely berating Wettin’s approach as idiotic—though this wasn’t actually the first time Wettin had done something like this—so there was no chance of getting his teammate’s help.

Still, there was one good thing about being left alone. If no one was around to stop him, couldn’t he do whatever he wanted? That was how Wettin saw it. There were all sorts of clues pointing to this purple-sign bakery, no matter how much his teammate might have cursed his methods. So he planned to search the place first, then move on to interrogating the fisherman at Berlin University.

Using force right away might look ‘idiotic’ at first glance, but they had plenty of time, so the chances of success were high. For Wettin, who had already been called upon by the Imperial Family to carry out all sorts of violent operations, this approach felt like a wide-open road with nothing standing in his way.

“I asked where you hid it.”

“I-I-I didn’t hide… anything…”

BANG—!

“Urgh…”

“If it’s there, then it’s there. You say it’s not? Who gave you the right to decide that?”

Wettin grabbed the baker by the collar and hauled him up.

“His Majesty has no need for subjects who collude with Pleroma. If you confess now, His Majesty may still show you mercy. But if you keep your mouth shut, you’ll die right here. My summary execution is legal, so you can’t appoint a lawyer or prosecute me.”

“N-no, I—no, really, there isn’t anything… Search the place if you want! Y-you can even check the storage room…!”

“Haa…”

THUD—

Wettin let go of the baker’s collar. Rolling his stiff shoulders to loosen them, he said, “Then let’s keep going until you talk.”

“Oh, good grief. They’re all making a mess of things in their own special ways.”

After watching Nepomucena Wettin’s screen last, Adrian Askanien’s aide, who had been watching all the Mimesis screens from the monitoring room, burst out laughing. Just then, his friend—the professor who had designed the exercise—opened the door to the control room, and the aide called out to him.

“There are only a dozen or so of them, yet they’ve come up with quite a variety of ways to handle things. Don’t you think?”

“Do they? At this point, I wouldn’t know.”

“The more I watch, the funnier it gets. These are supposed to be A-Classes… Hm. To think this is all the talent we get after filtering through the entire Empire again and again…”

At that, the professor, who had taken the sheets of notes the aide had written and was reading through them, gave him a mild reprimand.

“There are simply too many possibilities. It’s too early to make careless judgments based on these footage alone.”

“Too many? What are you talking about?”

“We haven’t even told them what they’re supposed to do. That means everything around them becomes potential information. Do you really think you could pick out what actually matters from that sea of information?”

The direction of the wind blowing in, the amount of snow falling on their heads, the fact that it was December, Christmas, the appearance of the people walking by, the streams, forests, and parks around them… Everything was information. There were so many different newspapers and magazines that dozens of mages had to stay up all night just to recreate them in the Mimesis. Even knowing all that, the aide scoffed from his seat and replied irritably.

“Oh, come on. Of course I could! In a place as small as Berlin, what could possibly be so hard…?”

“It’s easy to sit here, stare at a screen, and talk big. Especially when you’re doing it from the position of someone who already knows the answer.”

“…….”

The aide turned away, furrowing his brow at his friend’s words. It was an annoying thing to hear.

But he wasn’t wrong. Everyone on the staff, except for the participants, knew the model answer. Just thinking back to their school days made the professor’s point obvious. When you were handed nothing but a test paper and told to solve it, you could feel completely stumped. But once you looked at the answer sheet and went back to those same difficult questions, didn’t they suddenly become so clear and easy that it was almost irritating?

The two serving as Adrian Askanien’s aides had not even made it into the Association. They simply didn’t have what it took. The mage sitting there found himself thinking that if he had been dropped into that place, he would probably have spent his time blankly reading newspapers, desperately searching for some absurdly obvious advertisement like ‘Jdi mjfcf ejdi’—something that practically screamed, This is a code, and this is obviously the answer, while being so ridiculously stupid that there was no way it could even have passed the newspaper’s censorship.

What would have been even more embarrassing was that, if he actually found such a code, he would probably have felt rather proud of his own cleverness, then sat down at a café in the square—choosing one with a good view of the people passing by, just in case he needed to keep an eye on the citizens—and tried every code-breaking method he had learned in his advanced Combat Magic studies. In fact, if something like that showed up on an exam, the first thing to consider was that it might be a trap. The best thing to do was simply keep it in mind.

Or else, he might have spent his time warping around in search of Rampagers that didn’t even exist.

Actually, if he had been in that square without knowing the answer, he would have simply walked right past the bakery with the purple sign—the same bakery that half of the A Classes had already sensed was suspicious. Even with the lockdown in effect, the blockade on supplies had not been in place for that long. Wouldn’t common sense dictate that there should still be one or two shops in the neighborhood that were managing to stay in business? Apparently, their idea of common sense was a little different.

Once the mage’s thoughts reached that point, he found himself with nothing to say in return. More than that, he was inexplicably annoyed, so he simply kept his mouth shut and pursed his lips in displeasure. The professor gave him a mild scolding.

“Make sure you record this properly. As the Deputy Minister said, failure itself isn’t what matters. We need to figure out their tendencies and choose the people we can actually deploy in real operations.”

“Yeah, I know…”

“Ah, so. Did they really screw everything up that badly? I did tone it down to a fairly moderate level, though.”

“No, they didn’t completely screw it up. I just said it that way… Honestly, having to explain even this much makes it hard to say anything.”

The aide, still irritated from earlier, shot back curtly. The professor placed the records of the captains of the 91st B and C on the desk and gestured with his hand.

“Well, that’s good to hear. So, who’s currently closest to the correct answer? Hand me the records.”

“……”

The aide shrugged with his eyes only half-open, but pulled the screen closer and handed over the two records.

“I’m here to deliver some lyophilized bread to Ms. Violett Brot.”

At those words, the baker’s eyes hardened for an instant. Seeing the resolute light in them, like that of someone carrying out some patriotic duty, I put on the same expression. The fact that I hadn’t been thrown out yet, despite his suddenly changed gaze and my thoroughly insane nonsense, was a welcome sign that I was on the right track.

The baker looked slightly flustered. He glanced at the expensive-looking wall clock and narrowed his eyes.

“…Now? No, I was told it would be sent around three.”

Hm, slow. They say rumors travel faster than feet, but apparently not this time. Still, I knew for certain that an Imperial mage had been walking around the arcade earlier—because that mage was me. And I knew the others had seen him, too. I briefly glanced at his name tag, wondering if the name written on it might be an alias, then spoke.

“No, sir.”

Clatter—BANG!

Both the owner and I turned toward the door in surprise at the sound of it coming off its hinges. A gaunt, scrawny Old Human shouted with a pale face.

“Mr. Martin! An Imperial Mage Association mage has come to this neighborhood!”

Only after shouting did he notice me. His eyes widened in surprise. The owner’s face stiffened for an instant at the news.

“Where are they now?”

“They were last seen around the newspaper stand. Apparently, they asked Mr. Schweitz why there was no one walking around the neighborhood.”

It had been about thirty minutes since the start. So thirty minutes must be the grace period the government gave us. If the other A-Classes had received the same field, then the news of an Imperial mage’s visit was supposed to reach this shop within thirty minutes, or even sooner.

I silently praised the Old Human for doing the tattling I had been about to do myself, then put on a tense expression. The owner swallowed hard, his brow furrowed with tension. He checked the clock, then held out his hand to me.

“…….”

The gaunt, scrawny Old Human who had come in with him was also watching me nervously. I pushed the soap—or wax—box I had picked up earlier toward him. The owner opened it, inspected the bite marks, then handed the soap back to me. Lowering his voice, he muttered, “…There is an eight-year-old Old Human in the GutsMuths family.”

“…….”

I slowly nodded.

The GutsMuths family. They weren’t nobles, but they were a renowned family of educators. And in honor of the achievements of Hans GutsMuths, a scholar well known to Germans of this era, Berlin had named one of its streets after the family.

Good. I needed to deliver this ‘lyophilized bread’ all the way to Gutsmuthsstraße in the Steglitz district of southwestern Berlin.

Now that I had confirmation that my deduction was correct, I could finally look back on the path I had taken so far with some peace of mind.

So, how exactly had I ended up here?