Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic

Waking up, it was already 6:30 on a Tuesday morning.

After preparing breakfast for myself and Mia, I glanced at the advertisement section of the newspaper and realized that in the half a month I had been raising Mia Cat, it seems that I had not given it a bath yet.

But before Shard could do anything, the orange cat, seemingly aware of something, darted to the first floor of the house after finishing its sheep's milk-soaked cat food. No matter how much Shard called, it firmly refused to come upstairs.

And when Shard took the initiative to go downstairs, the petite cat evaded his hands and even let out a roar-like "meow~" when Shard cornered it, the first time the cat glared at him fiercely.

The light from the window on the first floor poured into the undecorated room. Crouching in front of Mia, Shard's face showed a look of astonishment, then turned into a dejected expression, looking at the cat he had raised for half a month with some shock.

"You actually against me..."

His mouth opened as if wanting to say something, but he finally just slowly stood up and retracted his hand that had been reaching out to pick up the cat.

Standing there, looking down at Mia, his lips trembled slightly, yet he said nothing. He turned his head first, then his body, and with footsteps that carried a hint of heaviness, he walked toward the stairs.

Mia Cat stood in the corner, watching Shard's retreating figure. The cat's large eyes blinked twice, then immediately followed him. The cat walked beside Shard's feet, looking up, trying to see his expression.

"Meow~"

It let out a soft call.

Shard stopped, looked down at his feet, bent down, and picked up the orange cat, then his expression changed:

"Ha~ I got you now!"

He showed a happy smile, holding the orange cat around its waist and lifting it high. The man skilled in acting, even when performing for a cat, still displayed excellent acting skills, a basic ability for Outlanders to survive in the Otherworld.

"Meow~"

The small orange cat struggled twice but failed to break free from Shard's grasp and thus resigned itself to sulk. Fortunately, Shard did not actually give his pet cat a bath that day.

Because he simply did not know how to bathe a cat.

In this world, people believed that cats possessed the ability to bring good luck, a cultural and customary view, and hence many Arcane Techniques related to "luck" could be linked to cats.

Shard's act of catching "the cat" that morning seemed to have brought him good luck. That morning, he was not visited by Miss Maid Tifa Servet at his home, but instead, a new client arrived.

Last week's advertisement in the newspaper finally had an effect.

The visiting client was a slender middle-aged woman, whose attire indicated her financial situation wasn't good. As she followed Shard upstairs with some nervousness, Shard suspected the client was there for the typical commission of "investigating a husband's infidelity"

But the situation was more outrageous than he expected.

"Hamilton Detective, it's like this. My distant relative, Mr. Jonathan Lemaire... I'm not clear how distant he is; I only met him decades ago. Mr. Lemaire has passed away, and he left me a large sum of inheritance..."

The middle-aged woman sat anxiously on the sofa, perched on the edge as if afraid to damage it. She did not touch the tea Shard had prepared, and after sitting down, she nervously clutched the hem of her skirt while explaining her commission,

The middle-aged woman's last name was also Lemaire, but her relation to the deceased Mr. Jonathan Lemaire went back to her great-grandfather's generation.

"A few days ago, his lawyer... is that the word? I think it is. His lawyer found me and said that after I sign, I could take Mr. Lemaire's inheritance. But I'm afraid it's some kind of trap.

Sir, you know, the kind where they trick people into signing documents and then take everything away."

This was a fairly common trap of the time, but for an Outlander, in this somewhat naïve era, schemes like the "Ponzi scheme" were actually the most cost-effective traps.

Of course, Shard wouldn't do that. Even if he wanted to make money, he would do so honorably with the knowledge he had. He had always considered himself to be more or less a "protagonist"...

"Come to think of it, I haven't done anything illegal yet, and the Steam Bomb wasn't thrown by me."

He pondered in his heart, then quietly comforted the somewhat nervous woman, sensing that she was unaccustomed to such places:

"So, what would you like to commission me to do?"

"Investigate that lawyer, the one who wants me to sign. I don't understand these things, not at all, so I need to rely on someone trustworthy to investigate the whole matter thoroughly. I can't read much, but I know that a detective with an office on Saint Delan Square cannot be a charlatan."

These were the innocent thoughts of the lower-class citizens; it never occurred to them that the detective on Saint Delan Square might not be a swindler, but he could be a foreign spy or an Otherworld visitor.

"Investigate the lawyer... Do you have any information on him?"

Shard inquired after some thought.

"Yes, I have his address. Sir, all I need from you is to confirm whether he really is the so-called lawyer. Oh my, that word is quite a mouthful," said the woman with a low level of education, somewhat embarrassedly. Shard shook his head, indicating it wasn't a problem.

If it was just a matter of confirming whether the man was a lawyer, that would be quite simple. A straightforward approach would be to go directly to the man and check if he was a Ring Sorcerer. If he was, Shard would immediately advise the client to dismiss the matter; if not, he would pull out a gun and threaten the man to reveal the truth.

A less aggressive method would involve visiting the man to engage in conversation or conducting a day's surveillance—all within Shard's capabilities.

"Let me ask, how much is the inheritance you spoke of?"

Shard inquired further, and Mrs. Lemaire was quite open:

"Around 50 pounds or so."

"That's quite a sum."

This was not an exaggeration; for the lower classes, 50 pounds was a sizable amount that could change a family's destiny.

"So what did Mr. Jonathan Lemaire do for a living, and do you know how he died?"

Shard continued to inquire, as these details, although seemingly unrelated to investigating the lawyer's identity, were important to determine whether this was a scam or not.

"I know, that attorney told me,"

Mrs. Lemer recalled, but there were some details she wasn't clear about:

"In my twenties, I heard he went to sea with a fleet to explore a new northern route to the New World. Gradually, we lost contact, and I only heard occasionally that he joined a very impressive fleet... The attorney said he died in a shipwreck, and people later discovered the will he had left with a friend at the port.

It seems he had long anticipated that seafarers would sooner or later run into trouble. His estate included fifty-three pounds in cash, besides some personal items, journals, collected books, and a few odd trinkets... Oh, this is probably the poor man's lifetime savings."

Although she wasn't familiar with her distant relative Jonathan Lemaire, Mrs. Lemer still dabbed her slightly reddened eyes with her handkerchief.

Letting Mrs. Lemer calm down a bit, Shard considered the details of this commission and ultimately decided to take it on.

After all, investigating whether a stranger was an attorney was just a day's work.

As for the commission fee, since Mrs. Lemer was a middle-aged woman who had been abandoned by her husband and was raising her children alone, Shard did not ask for a high price. Explore stories at empire

When they finally signed the commission agreement, it was decided that if the attorney was not actually an attorney, Mrs. Lemer, unable to inherit the estate, would pay Shard a five shilling investigation fee.

If the man was indeed an attorney, then Shard would accompany Mrs. Lemer to sign for the inheritance and collect a suitcase of belongings. After Mrs. Lemer received the inheritance, Shard would receive a substantial reward of five pounds.

Both parties were satisfied with this valuation method, and when the client was about to leave, Shard specifically asked where she had learned of this address. The advertisement was published last week; Mrs. Lemer must have been drawn here by an advert in some newspaper.

"The Steam Bird Daily. I was worried about being cheated, so I didn't dare go to those detectives from small newspaper ads... My neighbor, a kind-hearted young man studying art at Tobesk University, read the ad to me, as I can't read much..."

Mrs. Lemer said somewhat embarrassingly. Shard escorted the client downstairs, feeling even more indebted to Miss Luisa.

"At worst, I'll just cooperate with her more on the research of 'The Little Match Girl'; right now, that's the only way I can repay her."

He thought to himself as he watched the client merge into the bustling crowd of Saint Delan Square.

Compared to when he first arrived in this world, Shard could now be considered above the poverty line. Continuing to take such relatively low-paying commissions was not because he was engrossed in his detective identity, but because he had more ideas in mind.

Firstly, leaving the civilized world to go to Saint Byrons Integrated Academy, located in the Far North, was a thing of the far future. And before that, he needed to blend in Draleon, hence maintaining a necessary respectable identity was very important.

Moreover, being a detective could also be lucrative, but this required the accumulation of countless small commissions, so looking down upon low-paying commissions was a foolish act.

Not to mention, the study methods of Circle Sorcerers meant that correspondence School Sorcerers needed to have an identity that could deal with crises within their own areas of activity.

So, even though he was not as desperate for money now as when he first came to this world, it was still necessary to take on commissions.

Not to mention, Shard was actually interested in these types of small commissions, the Outlander deliberately used such means to get a better look at this unfamiliar world.

The client came in the morning, and Shard planned to use an entire day of trailing to confirm whether the attorney was a fake. The tracking of the attorney would start tomorrow during the day, so he spent this somewhat calm Tuesday elsewhere.

Around ten in the morning, Shard went out with Mia to "Good Man Peter's Pet Shop" located in Purple Iris Alley, which was also the place where Shard first met Miss Beyas and took Mia home.

The shop owner, with a whiskey nose, had a deep impression of the young orange cat. Seeing Shard come in with the cat, he almost declared the shop closed for any business today.

But fortunately, Shard was not planning to have Mia fostered here again:

"I need to know how to give a pet bath."

He revealed his purpose, but the shopkeeper blocked the entrance, showing no intention of letting the man and cat inside.

"Just wash it directly, what else can you do, just make sure not to scrub it like you're doing laundry."

In this noisy era, complex and varied pet service projects had yet to be developed.

"So, can you do it for her..."

"When this cat was in the store, it was usually my wife and Miss Cindy who bathed her,"

the middle-aged shopkeeper said, shaking his head rapidly, as if he was afraid that Shard would leave the cat behind.

The cat, held by Shard, remembered this place, but seemed to have a poor impression of it, refusing to budge in Shard's arms.

"So are those two ladies in the store now?"

Shard inquired further, to which the man replied without a second thought:

"They're not here, not for the past half a month, no, the past year, they... eloped. But actually, you don't need to bathe pet cats that often; cats are different from people. Mister, you can just wash the cat yourself; it's simple. Even once every three or four months is fine, cats aren't that delicate."

Shard was quite suspicious that the other party simply wanted him to leave quickly, but he also knew that Mia had left quite a "profound" impression on the middle-aged shopkeeper, so he expressed his regret at the shopkeeper's wife and the female clerk eloping before leaving the place.

While he spoke, the middle-aged shopkeeper's face was a picture, even making Shard look forward to the next time he visited.

As for the matter of washing the cat, that still needed careful consideration.

After leaving Purple Iris Alley, it was about lunchtime. Shard found a nearby restaurant and spent 1 shilling and 10 pence to have a decent lunch with his cat.

After leaving the restaurant, seeing that the misty haze still lingered and the fierce summer sun could not penetrate the fog, he decided to stroll with Mia towards the direction of the Prophet's Society.

It was an extraordinarily dull afternoon; the ground's puddles, left by last night's heavy rain, quickly evaporated, leaving no sign that it had rained just fourteen hours ago.

The outlander dressed in a long-sleeved coat was not quite acclimated to the city's climate, but fortunately, the Prophet's Society on Silver Cross Avenue was relatively cool.

He wasn't there for the Roder Card; he was there to find Miss Annette, to tell her about the recent communication he had with Miss Beyas.

He used the contact information left by the brown-haired female diviner, first explaining in the lobby on the first floor that he wanted divination, and then mentioning Miss Annette's name. Unfortunately, Miss Annette was not currently at the Society.

The Society's Circle Sorcerers had a relatively relaxed management, not as strict as the Church Ring Sorcerers who needed to be on duty every day. And while Shard knew Miss Annette's residence, obviously, the likelihood of her being at home during daytime was quite low.