After seeing Mooks-san and Suou off, I headed to the sofa and table set.
First, I needed to clean up the teaware and then work hard on my tasks. I definitely wanted to preempt the prohibition on going out and taking on subjugations requests!! Otherwise, my body would become dull and, above all, I wouldn’t be able to make money. Even if I had a contract with Suzuella Company, I couldn’t rest assured. One might worry about not having any money, but there’s no one who worries about having too much money. I got fired up while washing the teaware.
After I finished with the teaware, I went back to the Chief’s office. Originally, I would head to the office room, but before I worked hard, there was something I wanted to do. Now that I couldn’t leave the Agency, there was something I could only do here, because it would be bad if it was seen by other people.
I put up a barrier to prevent anyone from entering the room. Mooks-san wasn’t here and it was only for a brief moment, so it was okay. After I took a breath, I closed my eyes and concentrated on all the nerves in my entire body and took in mana essence and activated search magic. The targets were the magic powers of the 17 men in black. I should be able to find them, unless they left the kingdom.
Mooks-san said all of them were captured, but if they were, would they be in the royal castle? As expected, all 17 of the sensed magic powers were gathered in the royal castle. Amazing! Other than the four cursed men from that time, they all seemed to have been captured.
It seemed like they were in the royal castle. However, as expected of the royal castle, it was hard to search for them properly because of some kind of spell or magic. Rather, I wanted to try destroying the defenses, but if I did that, it would definitely become a big issue. I understood that at least, so I would endure…but honestly, at times like this, I really wanted to break it. It would be a lot easier to just break it. Protecting something while doing something else is a lot more difficult. Kii. Moreover! Even if I tried hard, the royal castle was swarming with magic power, so it was difficult to find them. Also, I had bad affinity with magic power!!
I started thinking hard. If magic power was no good…then, let’s search the mana essence of the magic I cast on them. The magic I cast on them wouldn’t disappear unless I released it, so they would continue to be in that state. When I tried to sense the mana essence of the magic, I found two different mana essences that were shining strongly. I unconsciously turned my consciousness towards them and I understood. It was probably the mana essence stones of Kei-san and Ani-san.
I had not grasped the inside of the castle, so I didn’t know what section they were in, but as expected of upper class aristocrats, they were in the upper floors of the castle… although I predicted this, now that I confirmed it like this, my stomach ached. Wuu. They are just tea-drinking friends, tea friends, tea friends!! Nothing else, I told myself.
Even so, they should be working right now, and seeing that there was a reaction from the stones, it meant they were wearing it. I felt kind of happy. I didn’t know where they lived and I didn’t think they would just leave it at home, but it was a lot better than throwing it away!! My heart got warmer. Yup, I’m happy. I hope it keeps protecting those two people…no, I hope a situation where they need to be protected doesn’t occur. For that reason, I couldn’t relax! I almost forgot my original purpose, but I started to concentrate again.
I was able to properly find them this time. It seemed like they had been separated into groups of three, but they were still close. Uu~n, I wanted to know a little more about the situation.
After a little hesitation, I started to concentrate again. I wasn’t sure if I could do it, but I cast enemy detection magic, centering my consciousness on the mana essence I found… At that moment, the castle was found to be full of enemies!? Why!? Did I fail? The warning signs started to ring in my brain and I started to get dizzy from the overwhelming amount. Why? Is everyone in the castle an enemy? Isn’t it the end as a country….
No, wait a second? To whom are they enemies to? I started to concentrate once again. I tried to imagine who would want to harm Kei-san and Ani-san, but that wasn’t it; it was judged by who would be enemies from my viewpoint.
It was a really vague image, but it succeeded? It did. The magic in this world was so nice to me!! It was so vague, but it still worked! I breathed out as the warning signs disappeared. The impact just then was really amazing. To think it would change so much with just one image…I learned a lot! My brain still ached.
From the successful enemy detection magic, there was no enemy in the vicinity at the moment. There seemed to be shadows of 23 people around the 17 people, but they weren’t recognised as enemies. Were they the remaining members of the men in black? Did that mean there were 40 members altogether? There were a uselessly large number of people. Moreover, it was amazing for all of them to be caught or something.
In addition, I tried using search magic in the surroundings. They seemed to be divided into several rooms. By normal thought processes, those would be the prison rooms.. These 40 people were separated into three rooms. There seemed to be dozens of people in a few rooms further away. Were they the small fries? Just how many did they hire… Well, they could be criminals of a different crime.
Now then, it’s the real thing from here. Since I could previously use enemy detection magic, I should be able to succeed in what I’m going to do now as well. I will cast area protection magic on the 17 members of the men in black by concentrating on the mana essence of their magic.
If the men in black were about to die, recovery magic, along with a barrier that decreased any physical attacks, magic attacks, and poison, would be invoked within a fixed range based on the mana essence. I also enhanced it with identification so that it wouldn’t recover enemies within the range or invoke a barrier for them.
If only I could use identification together with search magic… was what I thought and was able to do. When I used search system magic, various targets with matching indications were displayed in my head, and from the indications, a marker was attached to the one I wanted to identify.
With this, it would be alright if something coincidentally happened and a soldier who noticed something abnormal came to fight.
Against the assassination later on, I imagined physical attacks, magic attacks and poison, but I wondered if that was alright. I also had to make it so the recovery and barrier were invoked only when they were about to die. Otherwise, if the recovery and barrier were invoked whilst they were being interrogated, it would become a problem. As one would expect, Kei-san and Ani-san wouldn’t do an interrogation that might kill them. Those men in black might be cruel, but they did do bad things so, it couldn’t be helped. The interrogation had priority.
That’s right, what I wanted to do was to make sure that they weren’t assassinated. If what Suou said was true, the evidence that Kei-san and Ani-san would finally get their hands on would be destroyed. That’s unacceptable.
Whether these guys lived or died, truthfully it didn’t concern me, since I thought it was their retribution for all the things they did. However, it would definitely disturb my mind somewhat if I knew they would get killed and I didn’t do anything. Therefore, since it involved Kei-san and the others, I decided to do something within my powers.
I chose the best magic after thinking about it a lot. There wasn’t any magic that would only be focused on the 17 people. That is why I cast area magic, but if they were all separated into different rooms, I wouldn’t be able to save them. That couldn’t be helped. There were things you could do and couldn’t do. This was the best I could do.
After finishing what I wanted to do, I opened my eyes. As expected, I felt like I overexerted my nerves…I’m so tired. I released the barrier in the room and headed towards Mooks-san’s office desk.
I lightly arranged the documents on Mooks-san’s desk. The desk was brilliantly buried under the documents. Mooks-san’s hands handling the documents stopped during the conversation. If there were any documents I was not allowed to see or touch, it wouldn’t be in this room, so it was alright even if I touched them. In that aspect, even if he looked crude he was actually very reliable.
I left the room after roughly organising the documents. What I thought while I was growing up was that it was a good thing if you had nothing. If the things I do caused needless worry, that way was better.
Well, now that I’m done with the things I needed to do, it’s time to do the Agency’s work! A reward…huh? I guess I have to work hard for the reward.
On a different note, the moment I stepped into the office, I was surrounded by the staff and subscribers because of Suou. Everyone seemed to be interested. I was asked a lot of questions, so「That’s just an idiot！」was what I told them!!