The city was shrouded in a thick fog, and the country air wasn't much better—it was simply too close to Nolan.
On a country lane blanketed by a thin mist, three figures walked onward: Mr. Black Cat, Mr. Hood, and Skylark Miss Hathaway. Mr. Black Cat occasionally glanced at a notebook, muttering to himself, while Mr. Hood cradled a compass—the very one he had once used to find Pomphey, the wielder of the Skull Sword.
"I can only stay with you until five this afternoon," Hathaway told her two companions, glancing at her pocket watch to check the ti. "After that, I have to report back to my order. I hope we don't run into any more of those Greed's Reflections. The things are a real nuisance."
Hathaway directed her question to her two companions.
"Is your order certain the treasure is sowhere around here?"
Mr. Hood inquired. He and Mr. Black Cat had co out searching for the treasure and happened upon Skylark Miss along the way. All of them had their faces disguised, and it was only after they revealed their identities that they realized they were friends from the sa gathering and decided to team up.
"The head priestess of my order ntioned it. I don't know the specifics myself; she just said it might be in the area and told to try my luck. No big deal if I can't find it. Mr. Black Cat, are you certain that notebook of yours will be of any help in this matter?"
Hathaway directed her question to Mr. Black Cat, who nodded firmly.
"It's not a Numbered Item, just a temporarily enchanted object I ca across, but it genuinely has the power of a Treasure Sense ability. I found a huge sum of money on the street in Shire City because of it!"
"How much did you find?"
Mr. Hood asked, his interest piqued. Skylark Miss leaned in, equally curious for the answer.
"A thousand pounds! The most money I've ever found in my entire life!"
The other two stared in amazent, but Mr. Black Cat let out a sigh.
"A bag of money literally fell on my head while I was in an alley. I only found out later it was from an illegal tobacco deal—yes, that one—the paynt for the goods. The dealers were cornered by the Orthodox Church and chucked both the money and the tobacco out a window. It just so happened to land on . And then..."
His expression turned dejected.
"If I hadn't happened to et soone from the Orthodox Church while helping out Mr. Candle—you rember that—I might have been arrested right along with the criminals. A real sha, a thousand pounds... Oh, I'm not greedy for money, but will an opportunity like that ever strike twice? It's not as if I can just reach out my hand and have it happen again..."
He stretched his hand toward the sky as he spoke and actually caught sothing. Looking up in astonishnt, he saw that it was only a crumpled tourist map, not the banknotes he'd been imagining.
A sound from above drew their attention, and soon, a unicorn carrying a man and a cat erged from behind a dark patch of clouds.
Mr. Candle leaped down from mid-air with the white cat, Vanilla. The unicorn neighed once and galloped away into the heavens.
"Good afternoon!"
Jenkins called out cheerfully as he landed.
"Sorry, Mr. Black Cat, that's mine."
He pointed to the map, and Mr. Black Cat handed the paper back to him.
It turned out his three friends were also here for the treasure hunt. They had all arrived quite early—Hathaway had been here since morning—but the trio had only t up at noon while having lunch in town.
Mr. Black Cat and Mr. Hood were purely here for the fun of it. Mr. White Cat was absent, as he had gone to City Hall to file the paperwork for their new business venture. That morning, the two of them had unexpectedly found one of the Greed and obtained a clue:
"The treasure is not buried underground."
Hathaway, on the other hand, had co up empty-handed all day. In truth, she wasn't particularly interested in the treasure; her presence was solely due to a mission from her order.
Jenkins had initially planned to join his friends on their treasure hunt. He wasn't aiming to find the treasure either, but simply wanted to relax and enjoy his last bit of leisure ti.
However, the trio's next destination wasn't Honeywood Town—in fact, they had just co from there. Jenkins didn't want to alter his own plans, nor did he wish to change his friends', so after a brief discussion, they parted ways once more. With his impatient cat in tow, he made his way toward the town.
Honeywood Town's proximity to the mountains made road access inconvenient. However, it served as a crucial stopover for anyone venturing into the mountains, so despite a small permanent population, the town itself was surprisingly large.
The first place Jenkins and the cat sought out was a shop selling honey. It wasn't a confectionery—a rural town like this was unlikely to have one. It was simply a small store run by a beekeeper on the ground floor of their ho, mainly to attract wholesale rchants.
They primarily dealt in bulk orders but had no objection to selling to individual custors.
The kind proprietress cheerfully inford Jenkins that cats could indeed drink honey water, but he needed to be careful with the concentration and the amount he fed it. She owned a cat herself—a small one, too—and had plenty of her own insights on feline care. Jenkins nodded along, ntally noting her advice as he carefully packed three jars of thick, golden honey into a paper bag.
Not wanting to lug the cumberso jars around, he left the shop and headed straight for the town's post office. After explaining the contents, he paid for express delivery, sending one jar to the church, one to his family's ho, and the last to Maidenhaven Road.
The cat was clearly displeased, not having had a single taste. But Jenkins was one step ahead. He had already asked the proprietress for a few samples used to attract custors. Dissolving one in his flask, he ward the water slightly with a flicker of fla, then poured the sweet concoction into his palm. Crouching down, he offered it to Vanilla, who began to lap it up.
The cat seed overjoyed, which in turn brought a smile to Jenkins's face. Finding the treasure was completely unimportant. He was just here to unwind.
There was nothing of note in the town itself, save for three unfamiliar Enchanters walking together—certainly nothing worth staying for. It was in the small cetery on the northern edge of town that Jenkins found sothing interesting: two groundskeepers. One of them radiated a faint blue, aberrant aura. It was the Greed he'd been looking for.
In a town this sparsely populated, the cetery wasn't large. A single groundskeeper would have been more than enough; two was an extravagance. For anyone else, this small discrepancy would have been the only clue that sothing was amiss—the key to probing the pair and exposing the Greed hiding in plain sight.
After all, the disguise of a Greed was flawless. Anyone connected to it would have fabricated mories, and its na would even appear in written records. The only vulnerability was so small, illogical detail, a test of sharp observation and intellect.
Seizing the mont when the two groundskeepers separated, Jenkins cornered the Greed in the northwest corner of the cetery. The creature, holding an oil lamp, was just about to enter a crypt.
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