Chapter 300 - 65: A Messy Start

Just as Duan Fei noticed the agents, they noticed him too.

The three agents exchanged a series of complex hand signals. After coming to a decision, they walked over to Duan Fei.

After having the Bartender bring over four more drinks, one of the agents whispered to Duan Fei, "You’re not human, are you?"

Duan Fei studied them. The three agents—two men and a woman—all looked somewhat world-weary.

The leader was a man in his early thirties who looked particularly weathered from years of rough living.

The female agent was much younger. She looked about sixteen, but her figure was far more developed.

The last male agent had almost no distinguishing features, which probably made him the most qualified of them all.

Duan Fei memorized their faces and asked, "Why do you say that?"

"Your movements are uncoordinated, you barely breathe, and most importantly, a guy who sticks his tongue into a beer mug and spins it like a propeller is hard not to notice. Besides, haven’t you noticed the Bartender staring at you? The mugs you’ve used are cleaner than the ones he’s polished."

Duan Fei retracted his tongue. ’So I did slip up.’

’I’ve been a Slime for so long, and I’m still not used to this human form. It’s causing all sorts of issues.’

Knowing he’d been found out, Duan Fei leaned back. "Alright, I’ll drop the act. I’m the legendary Dungeon leader, just out for a breath of fresh air."

"No, you’re a Slime," the lead agent stated flatly. "I won’t tell you why, but based on that sentence alone, I can tell you’re no leader."

Duan Fei’s mind raced. ’They must have information I don’t.’

’They clearly have the upper hand on intelligence. They figured me out in just a few sentences, while I know nothing about them.’

’But that’s okay.’

With a soft chuckle, Duan Fei screenshotted the three and posted it to the forums. The staff of Eight Desolates created a thread, asking other players to help investigate these three NPCs.

The players’ Professions were a trove of hidden talents. Some could even use their Professional Skills to identify the NPCs’ names from their faces alone.

Searching with the names as a starting point, more information would be unearthed. From there, it was just a matter of expanding on the results until they could find out every last detail, right down to the color of their underwear.

In just a few short minutes, the information on the three NPCs was compiled.

Downing the beer in his mug, Duan Fei said, "Alright, I’m a Slime. A pleasure to meet you, Kate, Maos, and Mr. Doug."

The three agents’ expressions changed when Duan Fei called them out by name with perfect accuracy.

After all, he had used their real names.

An agent’s real name was a closely guarded secret. From the moment they joined the service, their true names were sealed away, never to see the light of day again.

Staring at Duan Fei, they began to speculate about his true origins.

But they could never know what kind of being they were truly facing.

Tens of millions of Slimes were active in their country, and each one could communicate with the others via a network with almost no latency.

For the inhabitants of this medieval world, who largely communicated by shouting, such a network was nothing short of a miracle.

Magic could achieve a similar effect, but the required Magic Materials were incredibly expensive, so it was only used as an absolute last resort.

The first round of probing ended with Duan Fei holding a slight advantage. Both sides had demonstrated an information gap, letting the other know they weren’t to be trifled with.

After quietly finishing his beer, the lead agent, Kate, gestured for four more bottles and began the second round.

An agent’s duty was to gather information and nip any threat to the nation in the bud. And these talking Slimes were the greatest threat of all.

Pushing a drink toward Duan Fei, Kate took a quiet sip of the sour beer. "Seeing as I’m buying," he said, "care to answer a question for me?"

"How about we trade? One question for another?" Duan Fei countered.

"If my superiors found out I was making deals with a Demon, they’d have my head."

"Then don’t let them find out."

"...Allow me to consider that."

The agent narrowed his eyes at Duan Fei, assessing his intelligence based on their exchange. He judged that the creature was, at the very least, clever.

’That’s very strange, then.’

There had been cases in the past of creatures leaving a Dungeon and entering the outside world.

However, those creatures usually had little to no intelligence. They were as dumb as mechanical puppets, capable only of following predetermined rules.

But an intelligent leader, bound by the Demon King’s Power, could never leave the Dungeon. This was iron-clad, common knowledge.

That was how he had seen through Duan Fei’s lie so easily. After all, any normal person knew that a leader couldn’t come to the outside world.

But now, the common knowledge that Demons lacked intelligence had been shattered. These Slimes were out in the world, and this fact completely upended Kate’s worldview.

He lightly tapped the table three times—a signal for his teammate to use Magic.

Magic was a form of miracle. Each spell corresponded to a deity, a gift from the gods to humanity.

Thirty-one gods corresponded to thirty-one types of Magic. Each spell required a large quantity of materials to cast, but the effects were astonishing.

The three taps indicated he wanted his teammate to cast the third type of Magic, known as "Lie Detection."

This Magic would analyze the speech of anyone nearby. If a person lied, the caster would immediately sense it. It was the agents’ favorite spell.

The female agent, Maos, tapped back three times in acknowledgment.

After drinking half the beer in her mug, she put it down and nonchalantly polished the ring on her index finger. Just like that, the third Magic was activated.

The third Magic corresponded to the Oak Goddess. The condition to cast her spells was to soak a piece of 150-year-old oak in mead for three days and three nights, then fashion it into a wooden ring. Each casting would grind away a part of the ring as an offering to the goddess.

Once the Magic was active, the female agent drained the rest of her drink. This was the signal that the spell was complete.

Seeing her signal, Kate acknowledged it, then turned to Duan Fei and asked earnestly, "I agree to your terms. So, I’ll ask the first question: are you harmful to humanity, or beneficial?"

But before Kate had even asked his question, Duan Fei had already started a livestream.

Unbeknownst to the agents, their subtle movements had all been broadcast by Duan Fei, watched with perfect clarity by tens of thousands of players.

Hordes of players watched the stream, using their Professional Skills to assist Duan Fei and help him extract more information.

In a way, Agent Kate had already lost, and lost spectacularly, from the very beginning.