ch13

Just InCommunityForumMoreRegrets and Wishes: One More Chance by jnscrtm Anime » Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken/転生したらスライムだった件 Rated: T, English, Hurt/Comfort & Romance, [Rimuru T., Ciel], Words: 104k+, Favs: 190, Follows: 196, Published: May 20, 2022 Updated: Jun 13, 202221Chapter 13: 11 - The Spymaster's Observation

CHAPTER 11 - THE SPYMASTER'S OBSERVATION

The sun has risen, unveiling the curtain of night that has been enveloping the world in darkness.

In a commercial area located at the southern part of the Armed Nation of Dwargon, standing is a masked woman on the roof of a building. Her hair is light blonde. The irises on her eyes have the colour like that of an emerald. Her long, pointed ears indicate that she is the of the Elven race.

For a whole night, she has been standing there, observing the surrounding area with the main focus being another building—an inn, to be exact—located just across the road from her position.

⁂

It all began since the previous morning.

A commotion had happened at the entrance gate. After everything seemed to have been settled, a rumour was spreading rapidly among passing travellers and many citizens in the southernmost area of the nation.

There were these two mysterious bluish-silver-haired girls who were said to be able to barehandedly beat up two sword-wielding thugs (or some called them "predators") whose bodies were much bigger than them. Those girls had astonishingly attractive faces. But once they were pissed off, they would become so dreadful, enough to make the thugs frozen in fear—so the rumour said.

The elven woman, who happened to be observing the southernmost area near the entrance gate, was interested in this rumour. According to what she heard, it looked like the girls and the thugs had been brought to the security guards' office for interrogation.

She submerged herself into her own shadow, disappearing from sight. More than a hundred metres away from there, she had already re-emerged from the shadow formed by the morning sun shining through the security guards' office.

As a spymaster who had been serving the nation for a long time, dark and illusion magic was her greatest expertise. After casting concealment magic, she went into the office building while hiding her presence as much as possible then began to eavesdrop the interrogation while utilizing the full capability of her [Magic Perception] to increase the accuracy of information that she received.

Much to her surprise, even though [Magic Perception] had been used to the best she could, she felt literally nothing out of the girls, as if they were just normal human girls with nothing out of ordinary.

If they were Enlightened or Saints, it would be one thing. They did sometimes let out an intense aura, enough to ignite people's fear. But how could "normal" humans do that? It didn't quite make sense.

Your everyday people perhaps would simply be amazed at the apparent fact that they were just "normal" human girls—humans who had yet to evolve into the realm of Enlightenment—but with a physique far surpassing that of the majority of full-grown adult. But for her, one who had been experienced in so many espionages and secret investigations, it was something incredibly abnormal.

Her vast experience as the spymaster of Armed Nation of Dwargon for a long time had polished her instinct to its finest. She immediately deduced that this was not something to be ignored. She felt like they could be a threat to this nation if they were to be left alone. With that in mind, she decided to keep an eye on them.

...

The result of interrogation came out just a few moments later: the girls won the case.

The interrogation itself didn't take a long time because the thugs admitted their misdeed right away without even a single attempt to lie. The thugs were convicted with two-month detention then would be exiled to their home country for further judgement. The girls were allowed to go free after the captain of security, Kaidou, had apologized for the inconvenience that they had experienced in this nation.

Instead of going immediately, they asked the captain for a favour. They said that they were looking for Kaijin, the blacksmith renowned all around the world for his excellent works, the best craftsman that the Armed Nation of Dwargon had.

Kaidou, who happened to be his younger brother, decided to lead them to the workshop, in where the blacksmith was working.

Curious as to why they were even looking for Kaijin and what they really wanted from him, the elven woman started to follow them quietly, to wherever they went to. Keeping her concealment magic active, she observed them from above while jumping quietly from one building to another.

They arrived at Kaijin's workshop.

She silently jumped onto the ground and tried to take a peek of and eavesdrop whatever would happen and whatever would be said through a slightly opened window.

Kaidou entered the workshop while cheerfully greeting his brother. Alas, Kaijin wasn't there. Only the three dwarven brothers were there.

He asked the brothers where Kaijin was. They answered that Kaijin had gone to the Royal Palace. He himself had said to them that he had been called by the king.

Less than a minute later—speak of the devil—the blacksmith in question had returned to his workshop while grumbling and cursing a certain someone. After a small conversation between all of them regarding the task given to him, suddenly the first of the girls—the one with gold eyes and black outfit—let out a three-stage laugh, making everyone in and behind the scene confused by her sudden change of behaviour.

Out of nowhere, she pulled out something that no one would expect. What she had taken from her pocket was a cluster of magic ore.

No, it was different. It was not a mere cluster of magic ore. It was a cluster of magisteel—with an extremely high percentage of purity. Taken aback, all dwarves couldn't help but scream in disbelief and have their mouths agape.

Magisteel was a metal refined from magic ore. It was highly resistant, durable, and excellent in conducting magic, making it very suitable to produce high-quality equipment. It was, however, an incredibly rare material, hence was a very expensive material. It costed more than twenty times as much as gold of the same weight.

As the payment for the magisteel, the girls demanded him for something. They wanted him to help finding someone who'd travel to their village and teach the villagers their crafts. Apart from that, they also wanted some connections to clothing, weapons, and armours suppliers.

They have a village, huh? I am curious how their village will look like...

Kaijin decided to agree with the demand. Having been given the magisteel cluster, he started working on the longswords that he had been tasked with.

After ten hours had passed, Kaijin finally finished one sword. Within those ten hours, they were doing nothing but watching Kaijin forging the sword helped by the brothers, while sometimes also talking with them

The gold-eyed girl complained that even just one sword needed ten hours to be finished. She told Kaijin to show her the freshly-forged sword.

Having been given the sword, she examined the sword closely and carefully. When she raised the sword, an ominous black mist came out of her hands, engulfing the whole sword and causing it to disappear without a single trace. Just from one glance, Henrietta knew that the power that they were wielding was no joke. It was enough to made her feel a chill throughout her body.

Right afterwards, the second girl—the one with gleaming-red eyes and white outfit—spread her arms wide. A terrifyingly complex-looking magic circle began to draw itself on the floor. Within the circle, smaller magic circles were also formed. Mysteriously, from each smaller circle, appeared one longsword.

The suspicion grew bigger and bigger inside the spymaster's mind. On the one hand, she was glad that she decided to keep track of them. But on the other hand, she was also terrified by the display of power that the girls had shown.

Should she continue? Or should she stop before she was found out? She wasn't sure.

But what if she was found out? What would happen to her? What if she ended up not being able to deliver a single word to her king? She didn't want to even begin imagining it.

"Are you here, Aurelle?"

A cloaked figure appears from a nearby shadow of building behind her while kneeling and bowing. "Do you call me, Henrietta-sama?"

The cloaked figure was one of the king's shadows, as well as a direct subordinate of Henrietta herself—the king's personal covert team.

She had been observing the area before Henrietta came. But seeing that her superior was also here, she knew there must've been something wrong within this area. As such, she also began to observe the very building that Henrietta was observing.

Henrietta, aware of it, called her out.

"You do understand the dire circumstance we are currently in, do you not?" she asked without turning around.

"I do, my lady."

"Go to His Majesty and tell him about the story."

"As you wish." The cloaked figure vanished in an instant.

She continued observing the girls and the dwarves in the workshop. The one with gold eyes casually said that he was actually a guy.

Shocked by this unexpected revelation, Henrietta almost screamed out loud. She felt like she had fallen into an awfully deep, nearly inescapable trap. Even as a spymaster who should've been used to unexpected circumstances, it took almost exactly ten seconds for her to recover from the sheer shock.

She brought herself together once again and saw what would happen next.

The gold-eye, she—no, he told Kaijin to immediately deliver the longswords to the king. Kaijin happily agreed to it, then immediately brought all of the longswords to the king.

They were then just waiting inside the workshop together with the three dwarven brothers, without even seeming to try doing anything suspicious.

...

A few minutes after sunset, Kaijin had come back. The swords had safely been handed to the king, it seemed.

He invited them to celebrate the occasion with a party with him paying all of the price. Seeming to be wondering what kind of party that they were going to hold, the one with black outfit asked them.

As soon as one of the three brothers said that there would be lots of elven girls, he immediately refused it without waiting for him to finish his sentence. He stated without hesitation that he would rather spend night alone with his partner instead of partying in the elven bar.

The other one, the one with white outfit—whose face had been being unhappy for some reason—looked surprised by what her partner had said.

Ignoring her surprise, he took her hand and half dragged her towards the door. Ultimately, they two were the first to leave the workshop.

...

Henrietta kept following them from above the buildings until they arrived and stopped at a quiet alley.

The black-outfitted one pulled out a black orb from his pocket then held it with both of his hands. Just a moment after he closed his eyes, the orb began to change shape into that of a crow.

Henrietta was dumbfounded. It was the first time she saw a literal living thing created by just a small orb.

The crow landed on the back of his left hand. He took out another thing with his right hand. This time, it was a piece of paper with a weird pattern painted on it.

Henrietta focused her [Magic Perception] to get a clearer view of the paper.

She could vaguely recognize it. It looked like a magical rune pattern. Looking at the fundamental pattern, on which the entirety of pattern was based on, it appeared to be the runic pattern for triggering a magic from the illusion magic family.

The method that they were going to use, however, was unfamiliar. Generally, the patterns would be painted with magical potions on ground, be inscribed on magical tools, or be drawn directly in the air by manipulating surrounding magicules. She never saw any magic users paint the magical pattern on a paper using an ink.

The black-outfitted one put his hand on the paper while closing his eyes. The pattern glowed, and suddenly the crow vanished to the thin air, nowhere to be seen. The magic was successfully triggered.

It hinted that the ink used to paint the pattern was not a regular ink. Rather, it was an ink that had been mixed with magical potions through some unknown special procedures. She never saw magical potions being used in such a manner.

That, however, was not what surprised her the most. She tried to find any traces of magicular disturbance left to pinpoint the approximate location of the crow. But it was to no avail. No matter how precise she tried in finding the remaining traces, she was still not able to detect them.

Illusion magic family made use of magicules to interact with targets' minds and confusing their senses.

Since some creatures like humans could also have magical senses—the [Magic Perception]—apart from their physical senses, a proper illusion magic must do both physical and magical illusions simultaneously, although almost every known method used to manipulate the magicules would naturally do both kinds of illusion without the caster having to take any extra steps.

Illusion magic for concealment typically worked by disrupting the flow of magicules surrounding the object, person, or area in effect. A thin layer of magicules covering the object's surface were used as a sort of illusory mirror able to refract, reflect, and even adjust the luminosity of the passing light in such a way that it would appear to physical eyes as though the object weren't there.

However, since the principles that governed the reflection and refraction of waves by physical molecules and magicules were essentially the same, the magical illusion would be automatically done. It was so because [Magic Perception] worked by calculating surrounding magicular disturbances caused by light and sound waves within range of perception then translating them into the completed picture of environment. As such, the object also wouldn't be visible to [Magic Perception].

Usually, this worked only to mask the appearance, not the sound caused by the object when it rubbed against or hit another thing. This mysterious couple was able to take things even further.

The illusion magic could be said to be analogous to a hiding ninja. The ninja would quietly move here and there while hiding from sight. But, no matter how proficient a ninja was in hiding, the surrounding air would still be disturbed by their movements and the traces of his footsteps on the ground would still be left.

When those traces were correctly investigated, the ninja's origin and destination could be found out. However, when even those remaining traces were erased, no one would ever be able to know from where he came and to where he was heading.

They used two extra layers of magicules to do their magic.

The first extra layer was used to cast a silencing barrier to trap then negate the sound waves produced by either friction or collision between the object in effect and another before they even managed to propagate within the other object—including the air.

Just like air molecules, magicules also had density within specified area and from some aspects were behaving like a fluid. When an object was moving through magicules, the magicules would split then flow around the object and exert a some kind of drag force on the object although it was not nearly as strong as air molecules.

But because magicules violated many laws of physics, it wouldn't be weird that they wouldn't immediately fill the empty space left after the object moved. Unlike air molecules that would immediately fill the left empty space, those magicular traces would usually stay being "visible" until the next few seconds to minutes.

In this situation, the last layer came to be useful. It could catch some other magicules and use it to fill in the empty space left by the object as it was moving. Apart from masking the appearance of the object, the sound produced and even every single trace of magicular disturbance left by the object as it was moving through the space were also masked.

In other words, the magic that they had used was the most perfect form of concealment magic.

From all surprises and shocks that she had got since observing them, she had come to a conclusion. Apart from owning great wealth, possessing terrifying power, and having excellent mastery of that very power, they also wielded a great amount of knowledge and wisdom, that perhaps even surpassed that of the wisest sage in the world.

Having wealth, having power, and having wisdom to perfectly manage and gain even more of that very wealth and power—it was as though they had the most perfect life of all.

He then talked to something unseen on his hand, where the crow had landed on before.

If it is indeed a complete concealment magic, Henrietta thought, why is he still able to even give the crow an order? Are you saying that not even the most perfect concealment magic can fool their eyes? Then, what about my inferior magic?

Wouldn't it seem as though I had been found out from the very start?

Wait... is that why they never seem to have their guard up? Because they are so strong that they feel no need to even be wary of anything?

Does it mean I have indeed been caught from the very start?

...

Because of what just happened, she couldn't see where the crow was heading to. So, she decided to just continue watching and following them.

If they really intend to destroy this nation, there is nothing we can do to stop them.

They had a small conversation as they continued walking.

After a few minutes, they arrived at a commercial area. They stopped walking.

Henrietta had resolved herself. If they were to begin a mass destruction, she would throw herself in trying to save the citizens, even if it meant that she had to sacrifice her very life.

And even if it was futile in the end of the day, at the very least, she had tried his best and had used the last seconds of her life not to run away, but to proudly offer her last dedication to the nation that she loved so much.

...

Nothing big happened. Outside her expectation, the black-outfitted one instead asked his partner about where she wanted to go to. Because the situation around the commercial area was currently quite busy with many people passing by, she couldn't hear their conversation too clearly.

After another small conversation, his partner finally pointed at a certain café, most likely hinting at where she wanted to go to.

Unable to believe what just happened, she observed what they would do in the café. All they did was ordering some dark chocolate cakes and some cups of black tea.

Before starting to eat the cakes, they had a small romantic moment like a real couple. Even when eating the cakes and then drinking the teas, they had blissful expression on their faces, as if they were just like other normal people.

This turn of events left Henrietta flabbergasted. She had thought that they would start a big chaos, but in reality, they perfectly blended with the others while enjoying the time that they were spending together.

That's right. She finally was able to get her mind back to its rational way. If they do wield a great amount of knowledge and wisdom, why would they even unreasonably stir a chaos?

Seeing this, she was greatly relieved. She was grateful from the very bottom of her heart that they did and would do nothing terrifying in this kingdom. Still, she wanted to keep observing them. From their characters to their unexpected actions and behaviours—they were such an interesting couple to watch.

After paying for the cakes and teas, they went out of the café. Just after a few steps, the one with white outfit suddenly stopped while pulling her partner's hand. Surprised by what she just did, he turned his face at her then asked her something.

After she had replied, he tilted his head, seeming confused. Seeing her apparently struggling to find the right phrasing of what she was going to say, he looked around. As soon as his eyes caught an inn less twenty metres away from there, without saying anything more, they walked towards the inn.

A few minutes after they entered the inn, a room of the inn that was previously dark got bright. She could see them inside the room through the glazed window.

Just when she was about to eavesdrop their conversation, her [Magic Perception] couldn't sense their presence inside the room. Every sound coming from the room also got silenced for some reason.

What are they going to discuss that they cast another concealment?

The destruction of this nation? Or to seize this nation? Or perhaps even world domination?

She could only wait there in anxiety.

⁂

A few minutes later, the lamp got turned off.

Eh? They are going to sleep already?

I had thought that they were going to discuss an evil plan or something like that, but it seemed it was all false.

There is no way, for people of their level of intelligence, to plan something recklessly. A plan to completely dominate the world isn't something that can be formulated in less than ten minutes.

...

This is intriguing...seeing such unpredictable people whose actions were always outside what I had assumed.

They really are mysterious.

~TO BE CONTINUED~

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