Chapter 11
AFTER LEAVING THE ILLUSORY CORRIDOR, Mira and the gang boarded the wagon and began their journey back to Isuzu HQ. Spider’s group stayed behind to investigate the corridor, just in case.
As the hour grew late, the four in the wagon began an impromptu strategy meeting. In particular, they discussed what they would do after they delivered information to HQ. Everyone was more than willing to press on to Sentopoli, and they had a spirited conversation as they planned out who would search where.
Just then, a familiar ringing tone sounded in the wagon.
“Wha?! What’s going on?!” Scorpion’s tail shot up as she peered all around. Finding nothing, she hid in Snake’s robe. Could it be that she was scared of loud noises?
“That sound…” Mira moved toward the sound’s source and opened the closet door. The ringing grew louder, and Scorpion’s tail began to twitch madly.
“When did this get here?”
Mira opened a box in the back of the closet and found a black communicator inside, just like the one in her room in the Linked Silver Towers. Its shape was similar to a telephone, so it was pretty intuitive for former players. Mira picked up the receiver.
The annoying tone finally stopped, and a familiar voice echoed through the wagon. It was someone Mira knew well: King Solomon.
“Hey, you finally picked up! Hiii, can you hear me?”
Scorpion peeked out of Snake’s robe and squealed, “Huh? Wha?! Who was that?!”
“A communicator, huh? Awesome. Bet that set you back.” The receiver in Mira’s hand, the voice that belonged to nobody present—Aaron connected these two pieces of information instantly. It seemed he knew not just what they were, but also how expensive they were.
“Huh? I hear a lot of voices out there. Heeey!”
“Yes, yes, I hear you. And I have some members of Isuzu present.” Mira answered as she turned around and looked upon her guests.
“Yeah, okay, gotcha. Roger that, you’re working together right now. Uh, hi, everyone. I’m…Agent S, and I help Mira out once in a while. Nice to, uh, meet you. Sort of.” Solomon fake-introduced himself with a flippant fib.
Aaron laughed while Snake explained the communicator to her cowering partner.
Mira threw the closet open and jumped up to sit on the second level. She kicked her legs back and forth as she lay back and relaxed.
“So, what do you want?”
“Well, remember that thing that happened? The guy who got mad and attacked you?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
The guy had been Caerus of Alcait Academy, armed head to toe in yin spirit equipment. Hard to forget, especially since she’d just fought someone similarly armed.
“Wow, you do? I’m kinda surprised.” It was rare for Mira to give such a quick answer; she usually had a bad memory. “Well…great. Makes things easier. So, we found out where he got the stuff.”
“Aha! That was fast. Let’s hear it, then!” exclaimed Mira.
The yin spirit equipment was almost certainly connected to Chimera Clausen. This information was likely to bring them even closer to their target.
“Wow, you’re more eager than I expected. Okay, so basically, I’m gonna tell you everything in chronological order because I want you to know how hard I worked on this.”
With that preface, Solomon shared the results of his interrogation of Caerus and his parents.
First off, the full set of spirit equipment had all been bought from separate merchants. There was no connection between the vendors, but Solomon’s people had traced their suppliers a few layers back. Everything pointed to three merchant caravans. Shockingly, that was where one shared trait had been found: they were all under the umbrella of Melville Commerce.
Melville Commerce was a long-standing firm that specialized in traveling merchants. Until ten or so years ago, they had been more or less a middle-of-the-road firm within the Merchants’ Guild. However, in recent years they had expanded operations to become a firm that rivaled the Great Three of Commerce.
Melville Commerce mainly traded in weapons and armor. When Solomon’s investigators began to dig in, several suspicious details emerged. Somehow, some of the equipment they traded was becoming spirit equipment in transit. Over half of the goods in one particular transaction had been affected. But when they were delivered to the merchant caravans, they were treated as normal equipment and gradually laundered into spirit equipment during the journey with no one the wiser.
According to Solomon, this was a closely guarded secret of the traveling merchants. It would have stayed hidden, too, if he hadn’t already suspected something and probed deeper.
“So, yeah, Melville Commerce is pretty suspicious,” Solomon summarized. He also added, “I was thinking it might be related to Chimera Clausen.”
“Indeed, it seems likely,” Mira answered and told him all of the information she’d obtained in return. She gave him plenty of details on what she’d seen at the Citadel of Scales and Illusory Corridor.
This could be seen as a leak regarding a top-secret mission, but Aaron and Snake didn’t try to stop her. Scorpion decided to follow their lead and kept her mouth shut too.
“Huh. Yeah, I’d say it’s likely, too.” Solomon sounded convinced. “Sentopoli is not far from Melville Commerce’s HQ, either—just in the neighboring country. Sounds like a cut-and-dry guilty verdict to me.”
“Oho. They’re in neighboring countries? They get full marks for suspiciousness.”
“Right? They’re stationed in the Roslein Duchy, where business is booming. Almost all of the nobles there are also merchants, and they’re in the middle of a power struggle. The closest to earning the title of duke is Elvis Melville, head of Melville Commerce. That’s a mouthful, right?”
His facetious comment echoed in the wagon.
Aaron replied with a chuckle, “Very interesting.” A company that had suddenly jumped up in the ranks, Chimera Clausen lurking in their shadow—it was certainly quite suspicious.
“Is that all you wanted?” Mira asked.
“Yep, that’s it.”
“That’s rare. I expected you to load me up with chores again.”
After all, he’d gone through the trouble of setting up a communicator in her wagon and calling her. Mira had expected him to bring her some more trouble. She found herself almost disappointed that it wasn’t the case. Almost.
“This is more like a warning. So far, we only know that Chimera and Melville might be connected. It’s unclear who’s really in charge. If you took down Chimera and they happened to be Melville’s peons, Melville might just cut their losses and find someone else to do their dirty work.”
“Hrmm. A game of cat and mouse.”
Melville would be weakened if they lost Chimera Clausen—but if they had created Chimera, then they would most likely still have the technology and knowledge. They’d just create more shadowy organizations over and over until they themselves were destroyed.
“Now, if the opposite is true,” Solomon continued, “they might lose some of their revenue, but Melville Commerce is big enough to live without a parent network by now. Heck, they might just see it as good PR to be rid of Chimera Clausen. Meanwhile, they’ve learned everything they need from Chimera, so they might end up picking up where their shadowy bosses left off.”
That was certainly possible. If they were working together, defeating one alone would be meaningless. Both Chimera Clausen and Melville Commerce had to be cut down if they wanted to destroy them at the roots.
“Right. In short, we must confirm their connection and crush them once and for all,” Mira said.
“Exactly.”
“Still… How do we prove any of this?” Mira flopped back and lay down in the closet, burying her face in a blanket. Though she’d asked the question, she didn’t plan to think too hard about it; that sounded like Solomon's work to her.
“I think infiltrating them is the best way. Look for records of transactions with Chimera, account books, evidence of spirit equipment manufacturing… Find any of that, and I’d say you have your evidence.”
“Do you think they’ll be so easy to find?” Mira asked with receiver in hand as she wrapped herself up in the blanket like a bagworm cocoon.
“Dunno. I think it’s worth trying, though.”
“Hrmm. Perhaps you’re right,” Mira agreed, her head barely poking out of the blanket. Aaron and the gang watched her relax in total ease, legs still kicking all the while.
“Aaand, if you happen to find evidence, I’d like you to send it to Ebatess Commerce. I’ll let them know ahead of time.”
“Leaving commerce problems to the commerce giants, eh?”
“Pretty much. You won’t have trouble fighting Chimera Clausen even if they’re armed, but the head of Melville Commerce is next in line to be Grand Duke of Roslein. The whole country would be your enemy. This has huge ramifications for the future, so we need to make their relationship with Chimera crystal clear. Then, we’ll have Ebatess—second in line to the title—on our side.”
Solomon was right; no matter how just the reason, fighting an entire country was not ideal. Not to mention, attacking another country was forbidden thanks to the temporary non-aggression pact. Using the Isuzu Alliance’s military power to subdue Melville Commerce could be seen as breaching the treaty, and that would put them in a dangerous position.
However, Ebatess Commerce—a faction within the same country—could corner them without military power as long as they had clear-cut evidence. And in helping Mira’s allies successfully corner Melville, Ebatess would eliminate their own top rival, all but guaranteeing themselves the seat of Grand Duke.
“I see… And they’ll owe us as well.” Mira smirked in the darkness of the closet. She was beginning to see Solomon’s real goal here.
“Ooh, do you think? I’ve kinda known him for a while. Figured this was a good opportunity.”
“You’re awfully frank. Have you forgotten that I have three companions present?”
“No worries, no worries. After all, I’m only the mysterious info provider Agent S, right? I’m sure they don’t mind.” Solomon’s playful voice resounded through the wagon. Mira sat up in the closet and looked at her friends’ faces.
“It peeves me that he’s using us, but we need his connections,” Aaron said. “And if we wanna get Melville Commerce out of the picture, we couldn’t ask for a better ally than Ebatess.”
The Isuzu Alliance was an outsider and ostensibly a goodwill organization. Ebatess was a merchant firm with great sway in their homeland. The latter would clearly be much more influential with the same evidence.
Snake silently expressed her agreement as well. Scorpion simply looked confused.
“Seems so,” Mira agreed. “In that case, we can leave the rest to them as long as we get a hold of evidence, yes?” she asked the receiver and nestled back into her blanket.
“Of course. Don’t you worry; I’ll make sure you can focus on kicking Chimera butt,” Solomon declared. Even through the communicator, his confidence came through loud and clear. His voice was full of a dignity befitting his great status.
“Fine. Then we will search for this so-called Melville Commerce. Ah, one more thing.” Mira looked down to the paper she’d taken from her pouch and spoke in code. “K 2132, 6, 18 is their leader.”
The letters and numbers were the first initial of a Wise Man and the date they’d arrived in this world. She had communicated to him that Isuzu’s founder was Kagura.
“…Wow. Okay. Got it.” It seemed he’d understood. This time, his surprise was plain through the communicator. “I’ll see if I can do anything about that on my end, but you keep up the good work. Anyway, been nice chatting. I’ll call you if anything changes.” With that one-sided goodbye, he hung up.
It seemed this revelation had provided him with new inspiration for their overarching strategy. Quick to think, quick to act. That was very Solomon.
Mira returned the receiver and closed the box before peeking her head out of the closet. “I presume you all heard that. Apologies for making promises on your behalf.”
“It’s fine. The deal is acceptable,” Snake said.
“Yeah, I think it’s fine,” Aaron added. “Now that we’ve decided they’re suspicious, we can’t exactly leave them alone.”
They seemed to be fully on board—they obviously believed the information was likely accurate. It seemed the two had some idea of just who was on the other side of that communicator.
The biggest hint of Agent S’s identity was the communicator itself. Mira had implied that it had been put in without her knowledge. Who would do something like that, and with such an expensive item? That narrowed down the list of suspects considerably.
Besides, even nobility would have trouble tracing the history of a single product all the way back to its origins. Who would both have connections with merchants and benefit from their leader being in charge?
And Mira was an envoy from the Kingdom of Alcait.
“Although it still ticks me off that he’s pulling our strings,” Aaron muttered.
Solomon hadn’t used his real name, but he also didn’t seem to be too keen on hiding his identity; in fact, he had at times seemed to be teasing them with it. Solomon was making sure not just Ebatess Commerce, but Isuzu as well owed him some favors. But that was not a major burden for Isuzu. After all, they had been given a stake to drive into the enemy’s heart. Peeved or not, they would happily grasp the weapon offered.
“Sentopoli and Roslein. We have two destinations now,” Mira murmured as she hopped down from the closet’s second level and closed the door. Frankly, she didn’t care about things like favors and debts. She simply saw this as another line on the list of places she’d need to investigate.
Aaron chuckled at Mira’s total lack of concern. “Yeah. How about we split up?”
The four began their strategy meeting again, armed with this new information.
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