Chapter 15
MIRA SPENT A COUPLE OF HOURS making her way around Haxthausen, preparing for her confrontation with Fuzzy Dice.
Soon finding herself hungry, she stopped by a restaurant offering a discount and ordered their lunch special. The main course was a giant cut of quality steak with a light, puffy Danish and a cup of chowder. A salad with all the fixings and a heavenly slice of cake rounded out the meal.
“Thank you, Mr. Fuzzy Dice!”
It was the kind of meal that one would only expect at a high-end restaurant—everything tasted utterly sublime. And it was a steal at only a thousand ducats, which was also due to the Fuzzy Dice effect. Noting that the restaurant was probably losing money on the lunch special, Mira finished her glorious meal by ordering another slice of cake to go.
Sated, Mira resumed her preparations, finishing them all in short order. By four o’clock, she was ready. There were still four more hours until the fated hour of the heist, and three until she had to meet the chief detective.
Would the plan she’d finally put together actually work? Thinking it was better to be safe than sorry, Mira decided to give it a dry run. “Well…perhaps I’ll take a shot at it.”
Mira was planning to position lookouts throughout the city: the Valkyrie Sisters, the Korpokkur sisters, First Pupil and Woofson, Wasranvel, Undine, Gnomide, and Sylphide. As she was unable to speak to three of those spirits, Mira relied on the Spirit King to interpret for her.
“We won’t let him escape,” she heard Martel and the Spirit King say.
She’d chosen not to use Salamander because of its appearance. The evocation could easily be mistaken for a dragon, so Mira would hold off on summoning it. And she didn’t plan to summon Anrutine because…well…it might be an issue if those water-spirit-hungry female adventurers caught wind of her.
She’d sent Wise Popot to fly around the city in Fuzzy Dice’s stead, and things had gone surprisingly successfully.
“Hunh. This worked better than I’d expected.”
Wise Popot flew low to keep hidden, but although she flew inconspicuously and soundlessly, Mira’s lookouts had no trouble spotting the evocation. Receiving reports of Wise Popot’s position from all over Haxthausen, Mira quickly established just where she was flying.
That meant that even if Fuzzy Dice outmaneuvered Mira, and even if he eluded the tracking tool, Mira could still track his exact location by keeping him in the evocations’ sight lines.
Especially important to this plan were First Pupil, who excelled in determining enemy locations, and Elezina, one of the younger Valkyrie Sisters, famed for her archery as well as her hawklike vision.
“You won’t catch me,” Wise Popot stubbornly declared as she attempted to escape.
It was a face-off between the owl—who could freely wield illusion magic—on one side and the sharp-sighted First Pupil and hawkeyed Elezina on the other. The battle was fierce; Wise Popot’s illusion magic caused quite a stir below.
Mira maintained an air of complete ignorance in regards to all this, however. She dispelled Wise Popot before the scene grew too chaotic, ending the exercise with a blithe expression. As she did, she considered whether First Pupil and Elezina alone would be enough for her purposes. In the end, she decided not to worry about it.
Having finished positioning and testing her lookouts, Mira noted that it was just about seven o’clock. It would soon be time to meet the chief detective.
Her test had determined that she could keep an eye on just about the whole city. But things would become much more difficult if Fuzzy Dice escaped outside Haxthausen. The surrounding areas were mainly flat, grassy plains. She feared that, if she tried to trail him there, he’d immediately realize that she was following him.
After considering it for a moment, Mira paired up First Pupil and Wise Popot. “In the worst-case scenario, I’ll have to rely on you,” she said.
Since both evocations looked like animals, they were likelier to go undetected. First Pupil was particularly good at moving in the darkness. Meanwhile, in addition to her illusion magic, Wise Popot’s silent wings allowed her to all but melt into the night sky. Those two were ideal candidates for pursuing someone across grassy fields.
“Meow, leave it to us!”
“I’ll do my best!”
In response to their sweet, determined voices, Mira addressed the group. “All right, everyone, I’ll be counting on you!” she reiterated.
Alfina immediately affirmed her commitment to the operation, and the rest agreed quickly.
Hearing her friends’ determined tones, Mira smiled to herself and headed off to the spot where she’d meet the chief detective. After connecting, they made their way to a conference room in the Mages’ Guild.
“All right, let’s go over our plan quickly,” the chief detective said, opening a map of Haxthausen on the table.
He began briefly reviewing their plan for the night. The entire city was roughly three square kilometers, and the president’s mansion was a little over a kilometer from the Mages’ Guild. The cathedral lay on that route, only about three hundred meters from the mansion.
Julius would stand by in front of the mansion, waiting for Fuzzy Dice to make his move. As soon as Fuzzy Dice completed his heist and began making his way to the cathedral, Julius would contact Mira and the chief detective, then hasten to the Mages’ Guild.
Once she got that message, Mira—who would be disguised as a Fuzzy Dice fan so that she could easily blend in—was to lie in wait at the building across the street from the guild.
When Fuzzy Diced showed up on the guild balcony, Mira would use the Lock-On M Type-2 to begin tracking the phantom thief. That was the key to the operation’s success.
The chief detective would wait in the Mages’ Guild and, the moment Fuzzy Dice arrived, give a signal to seal off the guild. That, however, would be nothing more than an act. Fuzzy Dice would easily slip out and escape, Wolf confirmed.
At that point, Mira would again step up to the plate. Having locked on to Fuzzy Dice with the magical tool, she’d go after him. That was the operation in a nutshell.
“All right,” the chief detective concluded. “It looks like you don’t have any questions.”
Once they finished reviewing the plan, they gave their magical tools a quick check. Everything seemed to be working fine. The communication set functioned smoothly, and they had no trouble sending each other messages via text. The Lock-On M Type-2 that Mira would use was working fine as well.
“All right, then I’ll be off,” Julius said after they’d prepared. He set off toward the mansion to take up his position.
Mira and the chief detective savored the delectable cake that Mira had brought before leaving the conference room. As they made their way downstairs, something odd happened.
“Oh, that’s right. I should give you this before I forget,” the chief detective said, handing Mira a dubious-looking mask. It looked like the kind of thing a Fuzzy Dice fan would wear to psych themselves up before one of his big heists. Since the plan was for Mira to blend in with those fans, it would apparently be best if she wore a mask as well.
“Hrmm. Sure thing.” The half mask would mostly cover her eyes; it looked like something one would see at the Carnival of Venice. Mira took it and immediately put it on. “How does it look? Do I come off as a Fuzzy Dice fan?”
The chief took a quick look at her and smiled. “If anything, you look more queenlike.”
“What kind of queen would wear a thing like this…?”
A queen putting on a mask? Yeah, maybe a queen of the night. A bit dispirited, Mira quickly glanced at the mirror in the corner to check how she looked.
“I look like some kind of hussy.” Seeing her cutesy yet devious-looking reflection staring back at her, Mira couldn’t help but smirk.
As they left the Mages’ Guild, she glanced across the street. “There are more of them now,” she murmured to herself.
“Yes, this always happens. Even more will arrive,” the chief detective replied, transfixed by the scene.
They were certain that Fuzzy Dice would show up at the mansion to which he’d sent the calling card, as well as the cathedral and Mages’ Guild. His fans all knew that too, of course, so most were waiting outside those three places.
Additionally, two rivals of the phantom thief were present: the chief detective and Julius. And while the chief detective wasn’t super popular, Julius was.
“Are they…mobbing Julius?”
“Yes. This always happens too.”
Looking ahead of them, Mira saw the detective’s assistant—who should’ve been long gone—utterly surrounded by fans. Not only that, but they seemed to be cheering for him as well.
The women seemed drawn to the dashing young man who fought so valiantly in the face of adversity, both because of his rivalry with the phantom thief and his handsomeness. Fuzzy Dice’s fans flocked to the chief detective as well once they saw him; they seemed to be the type of women who were into grizzled, mature guys.
Mira felt like a third wheel. If I were still Danblf…they’d be all over me.
Back then, she hadn’t just been grizzled and stately but strong as well. Mira reminisced on the good old days as the women forced her away from the chief detective as if she weren’t even there.
Finding herself isolated as Fuzzy Dice’s fans obsessed over Wolf and Julius, Mira went ahead and departed, making her way to the building opposite the Mages’ Guild. To get a clear shot at Fuzzy Dice, they’d made sure to secure permission to use the balcony of that very café.
There, Mira found that the three female adventurers who’d agreed to help them with their operation had already gathered.
“Ah, you’re here.”
They’d made their introductions the day before. There was a swordswoman, Nina, who was clad in armor and wore a sword at her belt. Then there was Mina, a robe-clad mage, and finally a necromancer named Nana.
“Huh? Where’s the chief detective?” Nina asked as soon as Mira joined them.
“Over there.” Mira shifted her gaze slowly toward the giant crowd in the middle of the street.
“Goodness. Well, yeah, the chief detective has fans.”
Nina seemed to get it; it was apparently fairly common knowledge that Wolf was popular as well. She chuckled that he’d just have to wait for the ruckus to die down.
“By the way, I overheard something when we first met yesterday… Um…my lady…I mean, ma’am…are you… Look, you’re the Spirit Queen, right?” the robe-clad Mina asked, seemingly egged on by her two friends.
From the way she spoke, she seemed to be clumsily attempting to figure out how to address and speak to Mira. No surprise there. Although Mira looked like a young girl, she was the fabled Spirit Queen, which meant that she was an A-rank. The girls were all C-rank. From their perspective, the Spirit Queen existed on a whole different plane. Thus, it wasn’t hard to imagine why they’d have trouble speaking to her.
“Ah… Hrmm. Yes, they do call me that,” Mira proudly affirmed, as if she were used to answering that question.
The second they heard her response, the three girls’ faces brightened.
“Yeah, we thought so! You helped out one of our party members, Zack. Not just that, you were even generous enough to give him something so valuable for us. Thank you so much!” Nina suddenly exclaimed, bowing her head.
Once she’d done so, the other two thanked Mira in quick succession.
Mira tilted her head to the side slightly, trying to figure out what they were talking about. After thinking back a moment, she finally remembered: Nina had mentioned Mira giving someone something, so they had to be talking about the guy she’d given the spirit crystal to the day before.
“Ah, so you girls are pals of the guy who was up on the roof?” Mira guessed.
It appeared that she was right on the money. “Yes, that’s right!” they all replied, nodding. They proceeded to thank her once more and told her how happy she’d made them.
The girls were apparently all sisters and also had a much younger sister who wasn’t there.
Six months prior, that younger sister had turned ten and gone to take an aptitude test for magic proficiency. She’d said for a long time that she wanted to become a cleric to help her awesome big sisters with their adventuring.
However, the aptitude test’s results indicated that she was only suited to summoning. Yet the barrier to entry when becoming a summoner was so high that most people who were only suited to that role gave up before ever becoming adventurers. Since it was the most difficult class, that was a fairly well-known phenomenon.
As one might expect, the girls’ younger sister had despaired at this news and was thoroughly crestfallen. But, Nina excitedly recounted, that was when the Spirit Queen suddenly rode in on a white horse.
The Spirit Queen was an A-rank adventurer whose exploits were famous even in far-off lands. That had offered their sister a ray of hope. Indeed, the girl had seemed quite fired up, since—even as a summoner—she could become a famous adventurer and would undoubtedly be able to help out her sisters.
“She’s been doing physical training ever since then, and she’s begun studying summoning. But she’s realized how hard it is and just how few study resources there are…so she’s in low spirits again,” Nina said, smiling bitterly. In the next moment, her expression brightened, and she looked straight at Mira. “But then we bumped into the Spirit Queen herself.”
The ray of hope their little sister had thought she’d seen had turned out to be just beyond her reach. Yet, though she was disheartened once again, rumors began spreading that the very person who’d once inspired her had arrived in Haxthausen. Not only that, after arriving, the Spirit Queen had talked at length about the usefulness of water spirits and explained in great detail how to make a contract with one.
For the beginner summoner’s sake, her three sisters had hurried to get hold of one of the all-important spirit crystals. By then it was too late: Spirit crystals had flown off the shelves and were already in short supply.
Despairing at yet another setback, they’d heard that a water spirit had come to the city. Again for their sister’s sake, they began scouring Haxthausen. At that point, Zack had chanced upon the Spirit Queen herself. Not only that, she’d even given him a spirit crystal. The girls’ sister was happier than they’d ever seen her.
That wasn’t all. Having accepted the chief detective’s urgent request, the girls had found themselves in the company of the very Spirit Queen that they’d heard so much about.
“We were kind of hoping that you might, like…push her in the right direction.” Having spoken at length, Nina exchanged looks quickly with Mina and Nana. Then she stood up straight and turned to Mira. “I’m sorry to ask you to help in this situation, but…do you think you could teach our younger sister about summoning? Even just a little bit would be great.”
Once she finished requesting that, all three women bowed in unison.
It seemed as if they’d decided the night before to request this of Mira, no doubt for their sister’s sake. To low-ranking adventurers, an A-rank famous enough to be known by a pseudonym was like royalty. If any other adventurers saw them ask such a famed adventurer to essentially become something like a private tutor, they’d assuredly have laughed at how silly a proposition it was. They might even have confronted the sisters and insisted that they not bother an A-rank adventurer with such a trifle.
Requesting such a thing was a bit of a faux pas, and the three seemed aware of that. Still, for their sister’s sake, they felt compelled to do so.
“Hrmm. Yeah, sure.”
Nina and her sisters had probably only decided to ask Mira for help after agonizing over whether to do so for some time, but Mira had agreed instantaneously. That certainly had something to do with just how much the three wanted to help their sister, but Mira more or less just agreed to anything that had to do with summoning.
Since their younger sister had been struggling with the art, Mira would show her the ropes. To her, the whole situation felt more like an opportunity for her to teach someone than like someone getting an opportunity to learn from her.
Another thing motivated her: the struggle of finding anyone besides herself to spread the art of summoning. While she had yet to meet the girls’ sister, the very fact that there was a fellow summoning devotee out there sent Mira’s spirits sky-high.
While the three sisters were initially shocked by Mira’s sudden response, they quickly and politely said, “Th-thank you…!”
Mira simply nodded back as if the thanks were unnecessary. Even if it’s off to a bit of a slow start, it’s nice to see summoning starting to get its day in the sun!
She had once despaired over summoning’s future, but her exploits as the Spirit Queen and proselytizing were promoting the art to the world once again. Her existence gave others hope, and Mira herself gave them hope too. She was certain her work was beginning to bear fruit.
She beamed as she reflected on how she’d particularly made an impact this time.
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