Veil 8

"Hide and seek?" Lia thought she has heard wrong.

Even if it was because Xavi was a child in the Lord's eyes, this was a stupid game to play.

Was that chessboard over there only a bait? A distraction? Served no purpose? Did the Lord just pretend to know how to play chess in order to seem intellectual?

Something about this wasn't right.

"Yes! A good hide and seek game is fun. You have 10 minutes to hide anywhere here and my men and I will go to find you. Don't worry about getting lost. After 15 minutes of searching, if we can't find you, it's your own. If we find you, you'll lose and no permission for you."

"How many of your men?"

"Five. I promise. It's 6 against three. If you don't believe me, I'll gather them here. No other staff will interfere, you're free to hide anywhere."

"Do you play with everyone in this game?"

"It's my favourite!"

Lia thought, if everyone who asked for the permission had played the game, it'd explain why they had gone missing.

The mansion could have a lot of tricky places like that underground path they took to come here. But they had no choice than to play it. The odds weren't too bad either. It was only the unfamiliarity of the mansion that proved to be a risk.

Like the Lord has promised, all of his staff assembled in the room. They all looked like they were used to it. For an immortal like the Lord, this was a twisted hobby to pass his boredom.

There was no doubt, people have failed at this game every single time. There was a hook to it but it was too early to figure out what it was yet.

"We only need to hide for 15 minutes?" Xavi was also suspicious. He finally got over his lollipop craze and thought.

"It's a brilliant game, isn't it? Very fun!" the Lord stood up and clapped. Five of his men stepped forward.

"You'll help us get to Rag?"

"No, my little boy, my men will guide you to the area where Rag is and you need to obtain permission from the other Lord."

"So, let's start. These will be the ones who help me catch. Remember their faces well!" he continued and pointed at the five men in red uniforms.

"We'll wait here for 10 minutes. The clock please!"

A servant brought the Lord a wooden clock. Then the Lord showed the three that both of the clock arms are on 12.

"When I press this button here, the clock will start working normally. Once 10 minutes are over, a loud Bang will signal we'll start looking for you."

Xavi looked at Lia and then Lily, and said, "No cheating, right?"

"Little boy, do I look this unjust to you?"

"Of course not!" Xavi quickly answered in his childish voice.

Lia sneered in her heart seeing the act the Lord put on. So much effort for a simple game definitely smelled of shadiness.

"Ok, on 3. 1- 2- 3!"

The three ran out of the door and headed down the hallway.

The mansion was cut into three parts- The main body where they were now, the east and west wing. It also spanned three floors and an underground floor.

It was as the Lord said, they came across no one.

"Let's head to the third floor first!" Xavi ran up the stairs. Lia knew that Xavi was very intelligent for his age. Apparently, that was the power of the A family.

It seemed like he had grasped something. If Lia could choose, she would've beaten the permission out of the Lord or even better use her corpses to kill him. The permission allowed them to freely traverse in the area but if the Lord was to die, the soldiers wouldn't have anyone to obey anymore.

But the consequences were too big, Lia understood it. Killing the Lord would only resort to someone new taking over and alarming Min that intruders have snuck into the Veil. Using force on the Lord would also result in him leaking their information.

With probably many secret passages, it was bound to happen that one of the Lord's men could escape and inform the others.

The most reasonable option was to stay low and go along with the Lord's whim and win fair and square. It was the most peaceful solution.

Xavi led them to the third floor in the very far corner and randomly entered a room. It was a normal bedroom. He sat on the bed and motioned Lia and Lily to join him.

"Young Master, are we going to hide here?"

Lia also wasn't into the idea of staying on the top floor.

"It's more likely for them to search here the least," Xavi answered.

"Why?"

"Out of all four floors, where would you want to hide the most? The third, second, first, ground floor or underground? Your first instinct might be probably the underground as you think they wouldn't search it and underground sounds attractive, right?"

Lia had to admit, she thought underground would be the best, after all, they could use the passage and in the worst case go back to the wooden house in the Veil.

"The Lord thinks so too, so my guess is that's where most people have failed. They enter the underground floor and are trapped. So, the Lord only would be enough to check the underground floor, however, sometimes there are people who don't, so in that case he has more helpers. In total 6- Why 6 and not 9 or 10?

"9 makes more sense because each floor would have two people searching and if the underground is really a trap then only one person needs to check it before joining the others," Lia followed Xavi's line of thoughts. This did make sense.

"Yep, then there's the 15 minutes time frame. If we exclude the underground, there'll be approximately 3,5 minutes for each floor but this mansion is huge, there's not enough time then if we go from having 2 people each floor," Xavi continued and stood on the bed.

"This means they're disregarding a floor?" Lily wasn't as perceptive or clever as Xavi but she could still understand to an extent.

"Yep, the third floor. So the top and lowest floors are eliminated. Ten minutes aren't enough to explore the whole mansion, so the ones who hide would naturally only have time to explore the lower floors and their minds don't tell them to go up if they aren't familiar with any other floors," Xavi started to jump and reach for the ceiling.

"If we follow people's thoughts, it might be 'the Lord won't think I'll hide on the ground floor' or because the ground floor has attractive places to hide. The first floor, because they're able to make it up the stairs and eliminate both the ground floor and first as a possibility.

The second floor in their haste. Most people won't think third floor because it leaves no option to retreat, you could try to go a lower floor but it's definitely not as attractive as being able to go up and down," Xavi gave up and sat down.

He quickly finished explaining, "So, one of them looks underground, one looks ground floor, the other two first and the other second. If the ones on the second don't find someone only then will they move up the third but then time's possibly up because the mansion is huge and has many rooms. So, having 5 minutes for each floor is already a stretch."

"That makes sense. The Lord seems very confident with only 15 minutes of search time while 10 minutes for us hiding seems too generous," Lia could understand where Xavi was coming from. Her first thought was also to hide underground and not go up.

"But it's an understatement to say no one thinks of the third floor."

"Yep, that's why," Xavi stood up again and pointed at the ceiling, "I thought about hiding there. What I was saying was only hypothetical and isn't necessarily right. Because another possibility is that the underground and ground floor could be easily checked since there might be traps prepared.

Which means with one look they could determine if someone's on the underground or ground floor, which again means they'll send two people from the beginning to the third floor instead of wasting time on the ground floor and underground. So in case of this coming true we should go a floor even higher."

"Like an attic... but young master, the ceiling's hard," Lia couldn't figure out why Xavi wanted to hide somewhere that didn't exist.

"Not necessarily, every mansion or place of a person in power with wealth or who has some secrets, will always have several hidden places."

"Then how can you be sure it's here, young master?"

"I'm not but it's the farthest away from the stairs."

"Meaning any escape routes are cut off," Lia also stood on the bed, held Xavi up and blankly looked at his slowly reddening face before she sat him on her shoulders.

She had to admit Xavi was kind of heavy but her physical strength has evolved a lot, so this shouldn't be a big deal.

"Y-Young master! Lia what are you doing?"

"Helping him check the ceiling. We only have about two minutes left."

Lily gasped, "You're right. Let's break a hole then."

"It'd be too obvious," it was instantly shot down by Lia.

"T-Then…"

"Have you noticed there aren't any windows here?" Lia thought it was strange.

"Yea," Xavi's voice sounded from above, "Either we're still in the Veil or somewhere completely different."

"Or we might be still underground."

"What?" Xavi stopped touching the wooden ceiling.

"We've been walking in the darkness for long. We descended stairs. It's obvious it leads to the underground floor but I can't remember how far we walked down and if the path was straight or even went further down. It was pure black."

"Now that you mention it," Lily anxiously looked around.

"If we're underground, this leads up?"

"Young master, let me try!"

Lily instantly punched a hole in the ceiling and then along the lines of the wood removed the square, then another one until it was big enough to fit a person through.

Xavi crawled through. His head peeked through the hole, "It's an attic!"