The Incomplete Map

During breakfast the next day, Theodore began to debrief Kalman on what he obtained from the mother slime. He would have liked to do so yesterday, but Annaliese had arrived unannounced and took him outside during that time. After returning, Theodore was then occupied with some amount of emotional distress and took a while to pull himself together. Though, it appeared that he pulled himself together a bit too quickly.

"So you're saying that the map is incomplete!?" Kalman exclaimed as he munched on the slice of cake Annaliese had bought in his hand. Of course, he had examined it beforehand to make sure nothing suspicious was done to it. One could never be too sure.

"Right. From the memories of the mother slime, the best I can do is a fragmented map. Granted, it's much better than nothing, though far from complete. From what I can tell there are probably more than one mother slime and different groups of slimes adhere to a different mother, resulting in each collecting a different piece of the information."

"I suppose we'll have to find all of them if we want to full map then? Do we even have the time? The other factions will no doubt make their move the moment the Archmage leaves for the summit and we know at least one of them has a full map."

"I was just about to get to that. Rather than visiting all of the mothers, we could just steal from the one with the complete map."

"Ah, I see. Still, stealing from the mother slime is one thing, but a master? It's not going to be easy. Then again, you've pulled off a more difficult heist."

"It all depends on the circumstances and whether or not an opportunity presents itself. Either way, I'm going to have to discuss this with Albatross. She knows the way to this master's dwelling."

"I have to say, all this sneaking about is making my stomach upset."

"*Your* stomach is upset? I'm the one doing the sneaking mind you."

"Ah. true enough. I'll be relying on you once again."

"And I'll be relying on you when we make our escape. Even with the majority of the mages distracted, it won't be easy to just leave."

"Don't worry about it, I'll make the arrangement. As weak as I am as a mage, I am still an elder."

"Oh, but I do worry, just in case."

"Of course. A mage can never be too careful."

Making sharp glares and glances at one another, the meeting was adjourned, to be continued later with Albatross present.

As Theodore went back to his room, Kalman's gaze was fixed on his back. Something had changed about him, and he wasn't talking about the breakdown he had experienced after returning with Annaliese.

Normally, Kalman would hardly care so long as Theodore was still useful, but he sensed a wrongness in Theodore. It was that eerie calmness that Theodore tended to have from time to time, except now it was eerier than ever before.

***

"You want to know about Master Torben?"

With her lead tilted, Albatross wondered why the sudden interest in one of the battlemage masters. It hardly took a moment for her to quickly realized that Torben was the one she delivered those maps to, which likely meant one thing.

"So that mother slime heist was a bust after all?" Albatross voiced her conclusion.

"Not quite," said Theodore, pulling out a huge roll of parchment and laying it on the table before Albatross.

Taking a glance at the parchment, Albatross thought she saw something familiar. Though there were huge gaps here and there, leaving it largely incomplete, it certainly looked like a map of the city.

"It's the map of Lancea."

"So you recognize it. Have you seen the map of the city before?"

"I was made to memorize it when I became a courier. I couldn't keep the map, of course, but I do have it in my head. The housemistress made sure of that."

"In that case, can you show me where Master Torben's dwelling is?"

At Theodore's request, Albatross began looking over the incomplete map. With the fountain pen in her hand, she marked the location with a cross.

"It's about here," she said.

The cross was drawn over a blank spot on the paper, a gap in Theodore's map. However, it was close enough to the known locations that Theodore figured that he'll be able to find his way regardless.

"Good," uttered Theodore, satisfied. At least now, his efforts in obtaining the mother slime's memories were not a waste. "With this, we can plan another heist."

"Are you sure?" asked Albatross. "We don't even know where the map is hidden, much less if he even kept it near his house."

"Chances are, he will. It's far too important to have it somewhere out of his reach. Besides, if Torben is prudent, he'll want to confirm the contents of the map sometime before he takes action. If we keep him under watch, he'll reveal the location to us himself soon enough. Which is why I am going to request a few more fresh corpses to use."

"Right, those undeads of yours were quite useful on many occasions, weren't they? But what about the crystals? You've used them all up when you had to destroy the mother slime, didn't you?"

"I've reserved a few just in case. I also grabbed some from the slimes during the mother slime heist. Since I was stealing from them, I figured that I might as well. Of course, I disabled the function to transmit location data to prevent being traced."

"Imagine if you had forgotten."

"I rather not, thank you very much. We've come too far to mess up like that."

"Hasn't that always been the case?"

Hearing that, Theodore let out a laugh, followed by a sigh. Ever since coming to this city, not a single day went by without him feeling some kind of tension. Theodore was impressed that he was able to keep it up for two months without driving himself insane, though, in a sense, he might already be not quite sane.

Theodore was well aware that the way he was behaving wasn't normal. The fact that he's acting as if he was normal was not normal. After everything that happened, after losing his strongest motivation for escaping, it was rather insane of him to still be talking about their plans as if nothing was wrong.

(Even so, I'll fulfill my promise. I'll help Albatross escape this city. And after that, a new promise, and this I promise to myself. I will kill the Demon Lord within me. The key lies underneath the tower. If I can get to that, I can 'kill' the Demon Lord. Until then, I'll make use of everything the Demon Lord has to get to it.)

***

End of Chapter 108

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