The fight in the Mirage Maze over, Mira’s group returned to her wagon and headed back to the Fifty Bells’ headquarters. Kumo’s group stayed back, examining the remainder of the Mirage Maze in case there was anything else left there.
The sun had already begun to set as the four began discussing what to do after that. Though as far as reporting their findings to headquarters was decided.
They all were ready to go to Sentopolly, but they still had to decide who went to investigate what part.
As they were engrossed with their conversation, they suddenly heard the ringing of a familiar sounding bell.
「Wha-! What’s that?!」
Sasori’s tail sprung up and fuzzed up, her eyes darting around her while clinging tightly onto Hebi’s robes. It appeared she could not handle loud noises.
「That sound…」
Mira walked past her and pulled open the sliding paper door of the closet, which concealed the source of the ringing, which made the sound beco louder while Sasori’s tail began twitching.
「I wonder when he put this in here.」
She opened a box placed there, finding a black communications device inside. It looked the sa as the one she had seen in her tower.
It was shaped similarly to a phone, so the way to use it was quite intuitive. Mira took the receiver and held it to her ear.
『Ah, you finally picked up. Hello~ can you hear ?』
The noisy bell stopped and a familiar sounding voice rang through the wagon. It was Mira’s good friend Solomon.
「Eh? What?! Who’s voice is that?!」
Sasori’s eyes peeked out from Hebi’s robes as she asked that in a low voice.
「A communications device? That’s incredible.」
Arlon quickly connected the dots, hearing an unfamiliar voice and seeing the device Mira held in her hand. He was aware of its functionality, as well as it’s high price.
『Oh? I hear a lot of other voices. Hellooo, are you theree?』
「I can hear you. I’m with the guys from the Fifty Bells.」
Mira turned to look at her companions as she replied into the device.
『Ahh, I see. I get it, I get it. So you’re traveling together with them. Alright so… hello everyone there, I’m Patronager S, I’ve provided Mira with pretty much everything you can see her use, nice to et you.』
Arlon smiled hearing the rather casual introduction, while Hebi was still busy explaining what communication devices were to the scared Sasori.
「So, what do you need?」
Mira opened the closet wide and sat on the upper half, her feet dangling as she relaxed her body.
『Do you still rember that incident from a while back? With that grudgeful kid.』
「Yeah, I still rember.」
He was talking about Kairos, the student at the academy who had attacked Mira while covered in shadow spirit arms out of a grudge. Mira had just fought soone in similar attire, so she quickly knew who Solomon was talking about.
『Heh, you actually do? Now that’s surprising. That makes things easier though. We figured out where his spirit arms ca from.』
「Ohh that was fast! Where did he get those?」
Considering Mira’s unreliable mory, her response was unexpected. Solomon’s voice sounded very surprised through the phone. Mira did not seem bothered by that reaction, her interest lying entirely on the information regarding those weapons.
They had found a strong link between shadow spirit arms and Chira Clauzen, so whatever information Solomon had would prove to be valuable. There was no better mont to hear that, so Mira urged Solomon to continue.
『You sound more interested than I expected. But anyway, lem explain everything in order so you understand where my help ca in handy.』
With that, Solomon explained how he interrogated Kairos and his parents.
First they gathered all the spirit arms and figured out that they were bought from different people.
The family had no direct ties with those rchants, but they all seed to be part of three rchant groups that had a great deal of spirit arms stocked up. As Solomon looked more into that, he found sothing in common amongst those three groups.
They all were under the umbrage of the lville Trading Corporation.
Until a decade ago, they were rely average mbers of the corporation, but in recent years they had garnered more authority and were close to being the three biggest groups under the corporation.
The lville Trading Corporation mainly dealt with weapons, so they tried tracing the source and movents inside those three groups and found so bizarre things.
A portion of the weapons that passed through the corporations would transform into spirit arms sowhere along the way. In so transactions more than half of the items change.
But as the corporation passed them along to the three groups, the spirit arms trickled down one after another so it did not stand out.
Those details were a bit dubious though, as it all happened internally in the corporation and would need to be investigated more.
『The thing is, this lville Trading Corporation is looking pretty suspicious already. And then I began to wonder if it might have so connection to the stuff you’re investigating as well.』
Considering how suspicious everything was, Solomon closed his report off by ntioning a possible link between the corporation and Chira Clauzen.
「So things are looking even darker.」
Replying that way, Mira also told him of everything she had found during her latest mission. Including what she saw and heard in the Libra Fortress and Mirage Maze.
She was pretty much leaking top secret information about their mission, but Arlon and Hebi had no interest in stopping her, and Sasori figured she had no reason to stop her either since her companions remained still.
『I see, that does seem to paint them that way. Not to ntion Sentopolly is also really close to where the lville Trading Corporation’s main offices are located. They’re soaked in suspicion.』
When Mira told him everything, Solomon seed convinced.
「I didn’t realize they were near each other. But that does sound dodgy.」
『I know. They’re in the Roseline Dukedom, which is also a powerful rchant country, though most of their nobles are also rchants and are embroiled in a political power struggle at the mont. Here’s the thing, the owner of the lville corporation, Elvis lville, is next in line to be their reigning duke. Kinda a funny na don’t you think?』
A humorous voice filled the wagon. But it seed everything he said was true, as Arlon muttered to himself 「Now that’s interesting.」 In a few short years the corporation had grown to the point of taking the reins of their country, and Chira Clauzen seed to linger in its shadows. There were plenty of reasons to investigate them further.
「Is that all you had to say?」
『Yup, that’s it.』
「That’s rare. You usually go on a bunch of tangents.」
Solomon had gone through the trouble of sneaking a communications device into the wagon, and then used it to call her out of the blue. Mira thought he would have another botherso quest for her, but she felt slightly let down learning there was nothing of the sort.
『This was a small warning just in case. At this point we only have a vague connection between Chira and lville, so it’s hard to say who’s working under the orders of who. So in case you were to defeat Chira and they turned out to be the underlings, lville might discard them like a lizard’s tail and scurry away to find new servants.』
「Hmm, so they would start all over again.」
Losing Chira Clauzen would weaken the corporation, but since they were the source it was highly likely they held all the skills and knowledge necessary to restart a group like Chira Clauzen. So as long as they still stood, they could continue with their plan as many tis as necessary.
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