NOVEL NEXT Chapter 266: Means of Transportation (2)
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Piisuke arrived almost exactly on time, joining Mira in the air. Then they circled the area together, searching for a good place for the Spirit Flying Ship to anchor on.
『That should work without much problem.』
There was that lake, slightly north from the hidden village. That caught Kagura’s eye, so they moved closer to it. The lake was two hundred meters across on the widest side, and it was decently deep as well.
The Spirit Flying Ship, as its name suggested, was still a ship, so it could anchor on water just as well as on land.
There were no clearings nearby in the forest, so an open lake like that was the best option they had.
Once they were done surveying the area, Piisuke shrank in size and rested atop Mira’s head and they headed to the hidden village. But since it was all well camouflaged, she completely forgot where it was, and eventually Lastrada got worried and went out to search for them.
Once they were brought in, they headed to the church again, where Artesia was waiting for them. Kagura fully took over Piisuke there, and a reunion of four Wisemen began.
It had only been a handful of months for Mira, but Kagura, Artesia and Lastrada had spent years away from each other, so they had a lot to talk and catch up on, which they did before even mentioning their travel plan.
Once they had talked about the Fifty Bells, Fuzzy Dice, the orphanage and their village, the search for all Nine Wisemen, and so on, they finally began discussing how to transport all the orphans to Arkite.Then again, they had already arranged most of it during the call before, so all they needed to discuss were the estimated dates for the ship’s arrival at the forest, how long the trip would take, and how everyone would get from the treehouses to the lake.
「The lake? Then we’d need to break open a path there.」
「There’s usually no monsters nearby, but maybe we should split the children into four groups, just in case.」
There was no direct route from the village to the lake, meaning they would need to traverse through wild forest with a group of more than a hundred children. That sounded like a reckless and dangerous idea, until Mira declared she would take care of it.
「In that case, just leave it to me and the Korpokkur Sisters to open a path to the lake.」
The Korpokkur were experts on dealing with forests, so Mira believed that they could easily open a path no matter how remote the location.
Everyone instantly took up Mira’s offer, and then they assigned her and Lastrada to head the group on the day they would travel. Soon, they had decided everything.
Kagura left shortly after to get the Spirit Flying Ship ready, while Piisuke regained his bird shape, and went into standby mode. The rest of them went to the church’s large dining hall for dinner.
「Miss, are you an adventurer? Are you strong?」
「Are you stronger than him?」
Many of the children living there were also in the dining hall, and once Mira introduced herself, they surrounded her and began bombarding her with questions.
「Yes, of course I’m stronger.」
Mira puffed her chest with immature pride, and the children cheered wildly. But it was not only children who had gained interest in Mira. The teachers were also looking at her, trying to understand who this young adventurer was, who had already reached rank A, and even had a popular nickname.
But they were not trying to measure her strength, and instead were trying to see if she could become a good spellcaster teacher.
There was so much happening that dinner time blazed by in the blink of an eye.
After dinner, they all went to a bath house next to the church. Artesia had placed around twenty of the younger kids in Mira’s care.
「Justice is absolute! Justice Dive!」
「Hey, stand still!」
Mira warned a young boy that jumped into the bath, while having a really good idea of who had influenced him to do that. Then, a young girl approached her from behind.
「Your hair is so prettyyy~」
「Stop that, don’t pull on my hair!」
Mira had to chase after the unruly children, making them sit down so she could wash their hair, but they just kept going out of hand one after another.
Once she managed to go through all of them, she made them get in the water and wash their backs. After that, they gathered to wash Mira’s back while singing nursery rhymes. There were less children than at dinner time, but somehow, they were even more noisy.
「You really should wait until you’re outside and in fresh clothes before running around like that.」
Mira’s woes seemed endless. Even when they got out of the water, the children continued running around naked, and she had to chase after them with a towel and force them to change into new clothes. The only detail was that Mira remained oblivious to the fact that she was no different than them, as she was only wearing a set of panties the entire time.
At night, after the children were put to sleep, Mira and Lastrada went to drink together.
「I see… So you were already listening the entire time.」
Eventually, they ended up talking about Fuzzy Dice again. Mira had been with the detective before, and now with the person behind Fuzzy Dice, so she was essentially trying to verify or deny everything she had heard so far.
One of the first things that became clear was that Fuzzy Dice had been listening in to their entire conversation, by disguising himself as an average person and sitting nearby.
「By now, he expects me to do that though, so it’s getting harder to know what he’s planning.」
In the end, the entire plan the detective had relayed to Mira had been a fabrication to distract the thief, while the true plan remained a secret in the detective’s mind. Ultimately, the plan had failed, but the detective had managed to suss out who the thief was for the first time, which made Lastrada let out an exhausted sigh.
「By the way, you said you have one final job to reach your goal. Does that mean you’ll retire Fuzzy Dice after that?」
Lastrada had created the persona of Fuzzy Dice with the objective of squashing a large slave trader ring. He had just finished obtaining all the evidence necessary to convict their leader, so he was one step away from accomplishing that.
「Not quite… It’d be more accurate to say that heist was his final appearance.」
Mira was curious as to what the future of Fuzzy Dice would be, and that was Lastrada’s response.
Fuzzy Dice had been a chivalrous thief who always sent advance notices for his heists. But that had ended, as Lastrada intended on attacking the final target, the leader, without any sort of notice. The leader was such an influential person that giving him time to prepare could ruin everything.
「Is he really so powerful? Exactly who is it then?」
Mira’s curiosity had reached its tipping point, she needed to know who that person was that even Lastrada was so wary of.
「He’s the duke. The duke of all Grimdart.」
「Are you serious…」
Grimdart was one of the three biggest regions of the continent. The power held by the duke, governor of the region, was enough to easily topple over any of the smaller countries.
That explained why Fuzzy Dice, or Lastrada to be more precise, was so wary of him, so Mira began to worry for her friend, and expecting a harsh battle, she decided to once again offer her help.
But Lastrada turned her down with a daring smile. Everything he had done had secretly been building up to that moment, so in a way, he expected things to go even more smoothly than usual.
And as it would be the final move, he was also ready to employ the help of a special ally.
「I’m sure this will make it to the news everywhere once it’s done, so just wait for that and you’ll know everything that happened.」
Lastrada had spent so long preparing for that moment that he was fully confident that it would work out, and his smile was brimming with justice as he said that.
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