Spy Classroom - Volume 5 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Liecraft

The Din Republic’s intelligence agency, the Foreign Intelligence Office, ran twenty-seven different spy academies. Each one had just over a hundred students, and their ages ranged all the way from eight to twenty-two.

In order to get in, you had to receive a recommendation from one of the myriad scouts and spies scattered across the nation. Any children they found promising would then abandon their old identities and head to an academy to live in a dorm sequestered from the rest of the world.

Then, in order to graduate, they had to pass one of the academies’ semiannual graduation exams. It generally took students six years to graduate, but the lion’s share of them didn’t even get the chance to try. About 80 percent of the students ended up flunking out due to poor grades in the periodic exams well before then.

The reason why so many of the students failed out was because of the sheer breadth of knowledge the academies wanted them to retain. They were expected to cram in every foundational skill a spy needed. Naturally, that included learning several languages, and on top of that, the students needed the physical abilities to infiltrate anywhere they might have to, the conversational and acting skills required to engage with whoever they might need to, and the marksmanship and close-quarters prowess to carry out assassinations, to name a few. And the list just went on from there.

For the students, Monday morning through Wednesday afternoon was all outdoors training. Their instructors would drop them off deep in the mountains and force them to walk dozens of miles all through the night. Then Thursday and Friday were filled with nonstop language and cultural lessons, and on Saturdays, they had lectures on specialized topics like cooking and dance. Most of the students spent their Sundays sleeping like corpses. The hellish curriculum wore away at their minds and bodies, and one in ten students fled before the six-month mark even rolled around. Even those who remained often found themselves unable to clear the periodic exams’ hurdles, and slowly but surely, the students’ ranks dwindled.

Amid that brutal environment, there were two groups of people who became spies through vastly contrasting paths.

Avian’s members were standouts from the start. Take “Flock” Vindo, for example.

Vindo was eighteen when he first enrolled. During his time in the Naval Intelligence Department, his outstanding successes caught the attention of a major player in the Foreign Intelligence Office. From there, he left the navy and entered one of the Foreign Intelligence Office’s academies. After passing all his periodic exams with ease, he decided to take the graduation exam just a single year after enrolling. The best and brightest students from every academy were there, but even so, he secured the highest score in brilliant form.

Thanks to his hard work and honed talents, Vindo entered the world of espionage through the official path. And most of the Avian members’ stories were a lot like his.

Then you had the hodgepodge of special cases that made up Lamplight. Take “Flower Garden” Lily, for example.

Lily was only nine when she first enrolled, making her one of the younger students at her academy. People initially had high hopes for her due to her natural resistance to poison, but she had one fatal flaw: She was a giant klutz. She got great grades on her written exams, but on her practical exams, she made one huge blunder after another. If not for the potential her diligent attitude toward her training and unique physiology represented, she would have long since gotten expelled. And the rest of the team’s experiences largely mirrored Lily’s.

“Daughter Dearest” Grete was a bona fide master of disguise, but her fear of men kept her from using her talent to its fullest. She often suffered from poor mental health, and her physical health wasn’t anything to write home about, either.

“Meadow” Sara had a talent for rearing animals, but what she didn’t have was a disposition suited for espionage. She was timid and indecisive, and while her instructors decided not to expel her during her first year out of compassion, they’d all but decided that her second year would be her last.

“Pandemonium” Sybilla’s athletic skills were fantastic, but she always had big problems on her written exams. Plus, after the injuries she caused during a certain incident, her ability to cooperate with the other students began falling apart, and she started becoming a washout.

“Forgetter” Annette didn’t give a whit about the rules, “Dreamspeaker” Thea got in hot water with her instructors for her extracurricular lovemaking training, “Glint” Monika started cutting corners after suffering a setback, and “Fool” Erna found herself isolated due to her poor communication skills.

All the girls Klaus found and recruited into Lamplight had been a hair’s breadth away from expulsion.

Avian and Lamplight were as different as could be, and there in Longchon, the two teams were coming to a head.

Avian’s base of operations was over in the Longchon mainland’s business district. Longchon had been steadily growing, and the nation had responded to its population influx by building a series of large-scale apartment complexes. Each one had a restaurant on its ground floor, and from there on up was a series of sketchy apartments piled atop one another with each hallway blanketed in ads for dentists, traditional herbalists, and the like.

At the moment, Avian was renting one of those studio apartments. Having a mixed-gender group of six all living together in a single room would normally have made for a pretty cramped living environment, but with how rare it was for all six of them to be there at the same time, it wasn’t too bad.

When Vindo and Qulle returned, they found the apartment empty.

As soon as they were inside, Vindo slammed his fist into the wall. The beer bottles scattered across the floor toppled over from the shock. “Damn you, Bonfire,” he snapped with a small click of the tongue.

Qulle let out a surprised yelp. It was the first time she’d ever seen Vindo so mad. “Huh? Did Mr. Klaus do something to you?”

“That bastard wants to use us as tools to train his students with.” Vindo plopped himself down on the bottom bunk bed. “That was what he was after the whole damn time. When I made my demand, he said he’d only accept it if I told him about the techniques that Lamplight hadn’t learned yet. I knew he’d see through me if I tried lying, so I had to tell him, and not a moment later, they drop that nonsense about an onboarding period.”

“………”

“He thinks he can play us for fools. I have to say, it’s been a while since the last time I felt so belittled.”

“Nothing’s ever easy, is it?”

On the surface, it looked like the negotiations had gone their way, but there were moves being made behind the scenes. Klaus came across as amiable, but apparently, he had a hell of a stubborn streak.

“Are we going to have a problem, do you think?” Qulle asked. “Is he going to break his promise?”

“I doubt we have to worry about that. There’s no way he gets sentimental enough to embarrass himself by staying in Lamplight after we’re done demonstrating how much better we are.”

“So you’re saying that our goal—”

“Hasn’t changed. We have to prove that Avian’s better than Lamplight. That’s all.”

Once they were done sorting through the situation, Vindo said “…I’m going to turn in for a bit” and got a bottle of beer out of the fridge. He bit into someone else’s half-eaten xiaolongbao and washed it down with the beer.

After finishing his light meal, he began pulling off his clothes.

Qulle drank from her glass of grape juice and gave him a disparaging look. “I’m right here, you know.”

“Oh, get used it already,” Vindo replied unconcernedly as he tossed his outerwear into the laundry basket.

Qulle took another sip of her juice. “Why are men such animals?” she mumbled quietly.

“When I wake up, it’s go time,” Vindo said, naked from the waist up. “While we’re doing this mission with Lamplight, I want to gather intel on them. Make sure the others know the score. I don’t want to leave a single stone unturned.”

“Are you sure we can’t just do this peacefully? I feel like we’d be just fine, even without going all out.”

“Don’t underestimate them. They might look like a mess, but they’ve cleared multiple Impossible Missions. There must be a reason for that.” Vindo cracked his knuckles. “No mercy. I want us taking Lamplight to the cleaners.”

“……………”

Qulle could tell he was really fixated on this. Them not having a boss was a problem, of course, and she wanted to fix it, too. Elites or not, they were still rookies, and it would have been great to have someone more experienced there to guide them. For Vindo, though, there was clearly more to it than just that. It was like he wanted Bonfire badly enough that he was willing to do whatever it took to get him, and whatever his reason was, Qulle was pretty sure it was something he hadn’t shared with her yet.

She thought about asking him about it, but Vindo had already burrowed into his mattress.

As it turned out, the members of Avian weren’t the only ones renting an apartment in Longchon. The other apartment in question was also a tiny studio, and though at a glance it felt more spacious than Avian’s, that was only because of how meticulously clean its cerulean-haired resident kept it.

The morning light streamed down on the three girls sharing a meal there. They were eating pasta, which was about as far from being a staple of Longchon cuisine as you could get. No matter where in the world the cerulean-haired girl was stationed, she never changed her diet. She liked to have things just so, and if not for how flexible her brown-haired roommate was, their cohabitation would have quickly ended in disaster.

The girls were seated around a circular table.

“Avian, huh? There they go, making big decisions without me again,” the blue-haired girl—“Glint” Monika—grumbled. She had a medium build and had gone to some lengths to strip herself of any distinctive physical characteristics. The one notable aspect of her appearance was the way her asymmetrical hairstyle hung down and covered her right eye.

“Top academy students? Oh no. I don’t think I’m going to like this at all,” “Meadow” Sara said, nervously cradling her head. Her brown permed hair peeked out from beneath her drooping newsboy cap, as did her skittish, squirrel-like eyes.

“I agree. Things have taken quite an unexpected turn…,” redheaded “Daughter Dearest” Grete muttered gloomily. Her limbs were so slender they looked liable to shatter if handled too roughly, lending her the kind of ephemeral air one would expect of a glass sculpture. She wore her hair bobbed.

The three of them had been off on a separate op, so they hadn’t been consulted on the Avian issue. The others had only just radioed over to inform them that they were in the middle of a winner-takes-Klaus battle, and they were feeling more than a little blindsided by the news.

Of the trio, Grete’s expression was the most brooding of them all. “To think that people would come try to steal away the boss… I suppose it makes sense once you consider how endearing he is, but still…”

By that point, the fact that she was in love with Klaus was common knowledge.

Monika waved her hand mockingly. “I mean, those Avian guys have a point. There’s no denying that, as things stand, Lamplight’s just an anchor weighing Klaus down.”

When Monika put that out there, Grete agreed. “You’re aren’t wrong,” she replied. “But oh, what to do… I haven’t even completed the first step of my plan to deepen my camaraderie with the boss…”

“Just for the record, what step is that?”

“Getting him into bed with me.”

“And who was it that came up with this plan?”

“Thea. Isn’t she wise?”

“I swear, I’m gonna punch that girl.”

Monika began loudly popping her knuckles, but Sara hurriedly chided her. “W-we need to start by freeing Miss Grete from her brainwashing!” That said, she didn’t voice any specific objections about the “hitting Thea” part.

After their standard little back-and-forth, Grete got the conversation back on track. “…For now we should go over to the boss’s base so we can get a better handle on the situation.”

“Yeah, good call.” “You got it.”

After settling on a course of action, they finished their meal and headed out.

During their stay in Longchon, the three of them hadn’t spent much time at Klaus’s villa. It wasn’t a good idea to have a group of undercover spies all gather in the same place too often, and besides, they’d been up to their necks helping out the other squads anyhow.

This was going to be Grete’s first time seeing Klaus in a good long while, so she was all smiles.

As the three of them walked through the city, Monika offered a suggestion. “So what do you say we make a bet of it?” she said. “Let’s predict what the others are up to right now. The winner gets everyone’s share of ice cream tonight.”

“You really love gambling, don’t you?” Sara said, putting her hand to her mouth in amusement. “My guess is that they’re training. We’ll need to work hard if we want to beat Avian.”

“Oh yeah?” Monika replied. “I figure they’ve all buried themselves in bed after having their old traumas revisited.”

“…In that case, I’ll predict that they’re engaged in acts of sabotage,” Grete said. “Now that Avian is trying to steal the boss away, I imagine the others will want to do whatever it takes to obstruct them.”

After each of them finished making their bets, they arrived at Klaus’s villa. Given the time, they assumed the others would all be there. This was going to be the first time in two full weeks that all of Lamplight was together under one roof.

Monika used the knocker hanging on the front door. However, no one came out to greet them. She knocked again, but the result was no different. All she got for her troubles was the loud sound of the knocker’s clanging echoing fruitlessly through the air.

“URRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!”

Then they heard a low, animalistic groaning coming from inside.

“Hmm?” Monika tilted her head in puzzlement, then tried the doorknob and found that the door was unlocked.

Inside, in the living room just past the entrance, there were five girls sprawled out on the floor.

“URRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!” Lily groaned.

“HRAAAAH! GRAAAAAAAH!” Sybilla screamed as she repeatedly smashed her fists into the ground.

“When the man’s finger reached the girl’s maidenly fruit, she could no longer stop herself from letting out an obscene cry—,” Thea said, reading aloud from an erotic novel.

“Yo… I’m sleepy…,” mumbled Annette, who was in fact fast asleep.

“I’m adorable. ♪ Hee-hee—and so sparkly,” Erna said with a strange smile.

It was abject chaos.

“““What am I even looking at?””” the three newcomers said in unison. None of their predictions had been anywhere close to the mark.

As the three of them stared at the others in bewilderment, Erna mumbled “I—I—I’m pretty…” and walked over to them. Her face was pale, and her eyes were out of focus. She spun in place twice in a row, then toppled over to the side.

Sara rushed over and caught her. “Oh, be careful!”

As Erna lay in Sara’s arms, she let out a groan. “Yeeeeep…” Something was clearly wrong with her.

Monika frowned. “What are you all doing?” she asked.

Erna’s pallid lips trembled as she gave her answer. “T-trying to learn liecraft…”

“““Liecraft?””” the other three parroted back.

Sure enough, not a single person in Lamplight had so much as heard of it before.

After splashing water on her collapsed teammates, Monika forced them to give her a sitrep.

According to the others, Klaus had gotten Vindo to tell him about a concept called liecraft.

“To be honest, this is a way of looking at things I’d never really considered before. The academies were the ones who came up with it, so what I’m about to tell you will mostly be me repeating what I heard from Vindo verbatim,” Klaus had explained to the five girls. “First of all, liecraft is a concept that the academies only teach students when they’re right on the verge of graduation. There would be no point to learning it without building up your other skills first.”

“Ah… So that explains why we didn’t know about it,” Lily interjected. By the sound of it, none of Lamplight’s members had gotten far enough to reach that particular lesson. They’d all run into their stumbling blocks well before getting to the graduation exam, and they’d gotten recruited into Lamplight before they had a chance to learn about liecraft. “It sounds super cool, though. Is it, like, some sort of crazy secret technique?”

“It’s nothing nearly that complex. At its core, a liecraft is a way of deceiving people.” Klaus looked around the circle. “Up through now, how have you each been deceiving your enemies?”

Looks of confusion crossed the girls’ faces at the unanticipated question.

“…I’ve just kinda been winging it,” Lily replied.

“Yeah, I’ve mostly been goin’ with the flow,” agreed Sybilla.

“I’ve been telling real good lies, yo!” Annette declared.

Klaus sighed in exasperation. “Your explanations could use some work. A lot of work.”

“Goodness, I wonder who we learned that from?” Thea commented.

“Still, that’s pretty normal,” Klaus continued. “I’ve never given much thought to how I deceive people. I just do it.”

The girls agreed. Deception wasn’t really the sort of thing you could explain.

“However, the word deception actually contains a wide variety of subcategories. You can deceive people through acting, through theft, through tools, through hiding, through omission alone, by tampering with objects, by playing dumb, by leading them astray through seduction—the list goes on and on.”

“Now that you mention it, you’re right,” Thea murmured.

The girls had tried to deceive Klaus on countless occasions, but they’d done so in all sorts of different ways. If they tried to classify all the different things they’d tried, they could probably come up with over a hundred different categories.

“Here’s another question for you.” Klaus raised his index finger. “What type of deception is the one that best lets each of you leverage your skills?”

“““““…………………………”””””

The girls didn’t have immediate answers for that one.

“Do you not know?” Klaus asked. “Because I’m sure there is one. What type of deception do you always turn to when you’re up against the wall? Alternatively, what type of deception ties in most closely with your strengths?”

His voice was beginning to pick up in intensity. They were starting to get to the heart of the explanation.

Sybilla spoke up. “So wait, you’re sayin’ that liecraft is—”

“Exactly.” Klaus nodded. “Your liecraft is the type of deception that synergizes best with your unique talents.”

It was a simple concept, when you got down to it.

Each of the girls had a special skill they could use better than anyone else. Between their poison, theft, disguise, negotiation, rearing, tinkering, and accidents, they were basically a group of extreme specialists. However, the way they used those talents was far from perfect. For example, Lily had been relentless about trying to spray Klaus with her poison gas, but he’d evaded it each and every time.

What they needed to do was multiply their talents by their deception.

They’d been unconsciously trying to pair the two, of course, but none of them had ever given the idea any serious thought.

“Here, I’ll put it in real-world terms,” Klaus offered. “Let’s use Vindo’s liecraft as our example.”

“Ooh,” the girls cooed. They leaned in, spellbound.

They’d been made painfully aware of what a powerful spy Vindo was twice over now, and even the girls who hadn’t been there personally had no choice but to acknowledge his skills.

Klaus took a piece of paper and wrote something resembling a formula on it.

Knife Skills × Pretending to Lose = Instakill Counterattack.

“………”

“This is the trick behind Vindo’s strength.”

The girls stared at the formula.

Then Lily quietly raised her hand. “So Vindo’s liecraft is ‘pretending to lose’?”

“Apparently. When he told me, he went into more detail,” Klaus replied. “It’s a simple trick but a powerful one. In order to take advantage of his advanced knife skills, he needs to start by getting in range. To do that, he puts on a clever show. By pretending to lose and getting in close, he can use his explosive, springlike movement to take down his opponent before they can react. It’s a combo he’s used to complete many of his missions.”

Sybilla and Lily immediately understood what Klaus was talking about. They’d each seen it with their own two eyes. Vindo had refined his tactic, and once his foes fell for his trap, there was nothing they could do. When Vindo had launched that surprise attack when he was supposed to be wounded, his enemies had fallen into disarray and become helpless prey for his knives.

“As spies, you all have only just reached the starting line,” Klaus told them. “And your skills are still lacking. Even if you hit your opponents with one hundred percent of what your honed special abilities are capable of, there will be plenty of times where that’s not enough to best them. If you want to win in spite of that fact, you’ll have to deftly use lies and falsehoods to engineer situations where your abilities can operate at three hundred percent of their capacity.”

He was absolutely right. If they wanted to get stronger, they couldn’t just sit around waiting for it to happen. Their special talents were weapons. They’d acquired them over the course of their lives, and they’d honed them through their training with Klaus. What they needed now was a new fighting style—one that let them use those weapons to their fullest!

As the girls listened with bated breath, Klaus wrapped up his lecture. His voice rang with conviction. “Now, find the type of deception that’ll let you shine brightest. Once you do, you’ll improve by leaps and bounds.”

That marked the lesson’s conclusion.

For a strange, short little while, Klaus and the girls just stared at each other.

“……………………”

“““““……………………”””””

“……………………”

“““““……………………”””””

“……………………”

“““““……………………”””””

“……………………”

“““““……………………”””””

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“““““……………………”””””

“………That’s what he said to me, but still,” Klaus said, sounding deeply moved. “That was inspiring. For the first time ever, I actually managed to give a lecture like a proper instructor. I have to say, it felt kind of nice.”

“That’s what we were just thinking!” Lily bellowed.

There stood Klaus, deeply proud of having done nothing more than repeat what Vindo had said word for word.

“The type of deception that will let us shine brightest, huh…,” Sara said after sitting through the long explanation. “I guess I never gave it much thought…”

The eight of them were all still on the living room’s leather sofa. It was their first time getting back together in a while, but the mood was hardly festive. The girls’ exhaustion was written all over their faces.

Liecraft—that concept was going to take Lamplight to the next level.

I guess we all graduated before we had a chance to learn about it…, Sara thought. It made sense. Based on the fact that Klaus hadn’t heard of liecraft, either, the idea must have come from the academies. Klaus had learned to do the same thing, but in his case, he’d done it more or less subconsciously.

“So that’s the idea, huh? I don’t hate it,” Monika commented. “It makes your deception more predictable, but I guess having no structure has problems, too. And a lot of us have been in the habit of just firing off our special abilities without putting any thought into it. Some of us could definitely do with some introspection.”

After calmly laying out her analysis, she shifted her gaze.

“So what was all that groaning about?”

“I was groaning ’cause I can’t figure out what my liecraft should be!” Lily cried, pounding the sofa. “I don’t know what kind of deception fits me best! The thought never even crossed my mind before, so I barely even know where to start. I mean, I have some ideas, but like…”

“Ideas like what?”

“Poison × Covert Ops! Like, where I hide in the shadows, then catch my opponent by surprise by spraying poison.”

“Nope. Don’t you hate sitting still?”

“Poison × Crocodile Tears! I could cry like a baby, then stab my opponent with a poison needle when they let down their guard.”

“See, now you’re just being pathetic.”

“Stop wounding me with your words!” Lily wailed, then collapsed onto the floor. She let out a quiet sob. “I know they’re no good.”

The question Lily and the others had been racking their brains to solve was, what kind of liecraft would suit them best? They understood liecraft as a concept, but they still needed to figure out how exactly they were going to make it work for them. It was a tough task, especially considering that this was their first time even thinking about it.

“We can’t afford to put this off,” Thea explained. “Our battle with Avian is right around the corner. I’ll fill you all in with the specifics later, but the gist is, we are going to be competing against Avian over a classified document. Whoever gets their hands on it will prove that they’re the more competent team. And we only have a week left until the battle begins.”

“So you’re saying we need to learn our liecrafts before then?” Monika asked.

“If we don’t, Lamplight will fall. We’ll lose Teach, and we’ll all end up back at the academies.”

Thea’s voice rang with a sense of urgency. Earlier, Vindo had taken out three Lamplight members single-handedly, and including Qulle, Avian had another five whole elites on its roster.

A stifling air hung over the living room. None of them voiced it, but the team’s members all shared the same feeling of unease. Their mouths were dry at the way the word defeat loomed over them.

“I’m having it rough, too…,” Erna moaned to Sara, who was sitting beside her. “I’m no good at tricking people with my words, so I can’t find a single type of deception that suits me.”

“I don’t blame you…,” Sara softly replied. She patted Erna’s head.

Incidentally, Erna had been testing out Accidents × Cutesy. The idea was that she could adorably approach her target, then ensnare them in one of her accidents. Thea was the one who’d come up with it. Considering how ill-matched Erna was with the deception technique she was practicing, it wasn’t hard to see just how far off course the team had strayed.

“…And I need to work harder than anyone.”

“Hmm?” Sara tilted her head to the side. She hadn’t quite caught Erna’s murmur.

What did she mean by that?

Before Sara had a chance to ask her to repeat herself, though, Annette presented Sara with her head and said “Pat me too, yo,” so Sara missed her window.

When Sara replied “Roger that” and began patting Annette’s head as well, Erna closed her eyes.

At that point, Monika stood up and called over to her. “Sara, we gotta go.”

“Wait, where are we going? I wanted to pat their heads a little longer…,” Sara asked, still patting Erna and Annette at the same time.

“…I swear, it really is like they’re your kids.”

“Oh, it’s very relaxing. Would you like to give it a try, Miss Monika?”

“Don’t you have something a little more important on your schedule right now? Especially considering our battle with Avian is just around the corner,” Monika said in exasperation. “You’ve got intensive training to get to.”

Monika had first started training Sara right after their mission in Mitario.

It had all started because of their darts match against Purple Ant’s minion Miranda. Sara herself didn’t feel like she’d provided very good backup, but either way, it had been enough to earn Monika’s respect. After they got back to Din, Monika began showing her the ropes.

“Everyone else on the team is either a kid or an idiot. I’m gonna need you to help pick up their slack, and it’s not like I can count on Klaus to teach you squat.”

That complaint of Monika’s began something of a regular refrain.

Sara wasn’t sure she quite agreed with Monika’s assessment of the team, but she also didn’t turn her down. Sara badly needed someone to help her find and patch the holes in her skill set, and she was overjoyed to have someone as talented as Monika willing to fill that role.

However, the training regimen she found herself thrust into was downright spartan. Not only did Monika make her do long training runs on the daily, she also assigned Sara five books a week to memorize. “But that’s impossible!” she cried over and over—but Monika was doing the exact same training.

The most grueling part of all, though, was Monika’s hands-on combat training.

They conducted their sessions on the roof of the apartment complex they were staying in, and today their bout ended in Monika flinging Sara away with a beautiful throw.

“Good work,” Monika said. “We should probably head out for our mission now.”

“I can’t… I can’t… M-my legs won’t work anymore,” Sara moaned, still lying prone on the roof.

Despite the fact that they had a mission right afterward, Monika hadn’t pulled her punches even a little.

“Oh yeah?” Monika coolly replied. “In that case, we can take five. That means five.”

She was a devil in teacher’s clothing.

That said, all her lessons were exacting in both their pertinence and accuracy. Unlike Klaus, whose laissez-faire teaching style revolved around positive reinforcement, Monika’s lessons were harsh but specific and useful.

“It’s been nearly three months since we started your training, huh.”

Monika pulled out a canteen of lemon water and handed it to Sara. Sara thanked her and glugged it down. “Y-you’re right,” she said with a nod once she was done drinking. “H-have I gotten a little stronger, do you think? At least enough that I’m not getting in everyone else’s way?”

“Nope. You’re useless.”

“Y-you could at least be nicer about it…”

“Your job’s to provide backup, but you’re not even dependable enough for that yet. Honestly, I have some serious doubts about whether you and Lily have actually reached academy graduate level.”

“I—I see…”

Sara’s shoulders slumped at the harsh appraisal. Monika was the one person willing to say what the others wouldn’t—that out of all of Lamplight’s members, Sara’s skills were the most lacking.

Each of them had their strengths and weaknesses, of course, so it was a little like comparing apples to oranges, but over the many months they’d spent together, something akin to a hierarchy had become evident. And Sara was the weakest of them all. In practical terms, she didn’t have a single major accomplishment under her belt. All she’d done so far was hide in the others’ shadows and use her animals to help them out. Compared to the other girls, there were far fewer situations where she could make herself useful.

“You are getting stronger, though. I’ll give you that,” Monika said matter-of-factly. “You just haven’t hit the benchmarks I need you to.”

“I—I see…”

“How’s that assignment I gave you going? You think you’ll be able to train that animal of yours to do it?”

“I-I’m still giving it my best, but I’m not making much progress…”

“Well, keep at it. If you can get Johnny to pull it off, it’ll hugely expand your strategic options. Make sure he gets it. It’ll go a long way toward letting you pull your weight. Maybe go ahead and try it out on someone?”

Johnny was the name of Sara’s puppy, and there was a specific trick Monika had ordered her to teach him. Aside from just Sara’s training regimen, Monika had been giving her specific instructions about other things, too. Monika came across as blunt, but she was actually really caring.

“For now, though, I guess you should focus on your liecraft. Hmm…you’re not really the type to specialize in just going up and lying to people. And with your ‘rearing’ ability… Huh. I wonder what’d be best for you?”

Monika crossed her arms and sank into thought like she was pondering her own skills. Instead of working on her own liecraft, she was prioritizing helping Sara figure out hers.

However, Sara wasn’t able to muster up much of a response. “A-am I really going to be okay…?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“Hmm?”

“I’m just a little anxious… How is someone like me supposed to go up against Avian?”

“What?” Monika dropped her voice an octave. “You seriously that freaked out?”

Sara nodded. She fidgeted restlessly with her fingertips as she spoke. “I—I really don’t know if I’m going to be up to this… Back when I went to my academy, the top students shone like the stars. It was like they had this whole different aura about them, like everything about them was just better than me, and those feelings turned to an ache inside me like a wound that never healed…”

The painful memories from her academy days rested heavy in her heart.

There had been tons of students at her academy with incredible talents. In the time it took her to commit a single book to memory, the top students memorized ten. When it took everything Sara had just to decode a cipher at all, the top students finished in a third of the time. Even now, Sara started fading if she stayed up for more than twenty straight hours, but the top students had been able to complete their training after a full fifty hours of sleep deprivation.

When Sara watched them, it made her realize just how much of a washout she was. In her mind, those six people who stood above all the other top students may as well have existed in a whole different dimension.

She rubbed her fingers back and forth against each other. “He said we needed to find a type of deception that would let us shine, but…I can’t even begin to picture what that would look like…”

This was the final technique conferred only to students about to graduate. As someone who’d stumbled well, well before reaching that line, Sara found it difficult to imagine herself successfully mastering it.

Monika quietly muttered a few words. “…There you go, still thinking of yourself as ordinary.”

Sara looked up with a start and turned her gaze toward Monika. She could tell that her teammate hadn’t meant it as a compliment.

A look of contempt loomed in Monika’s eyes. She frowned wearily, swept back her hair, and let out a deep sigh. Then she began rapping her fingers against her thighs. “It pisses me off. You’re still stuck in that headspace? After all that coaching I gave you?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, I felt the same way when I first joined Lamplight, but you have to realize by now that that won’t fly anymore. Remember how the self-proclaimed World’s Strongest, Klaus, recruited and praised us? There’s no way we’re just ordinary. We’re not allowed to be.”

“………”

“If we were, Avian would be right to make that demand of theirs. Klaus doesn’t need ordinary people working with him.” Monika flicked Sara in the shoulder. “You need to hurry up and get it through your head that you’re a prodigy, too.”

Sara gulped. She had no reply to that. It felt like Monika had just socked her right in the spoiled part of her heart.

“You’re sitting out today’s mission,” Monika declared. “I’ll be fine on my own. You, just stay out of it.”

“………”

After unilaterally making the call, Monika walked off toward the roof’s entrance.

Sara could do nothing but watch her go as despair swelled within her.

Sara slumped over.

Oh no, I made Miss Monika mad…

Things with Monika had generally been going pretty well, but it would seem that she’d finally exhausted Monika’s patience. Sara’s heart still stung from the disdainful look Monika had given her right before she left. Everything she’d said was true. At the end of the day, Sara’s resolve was lacking. She didn’t have strong positive feelings about the spy profession like Thea or Lily, and she couldn’t make herself believe she was a prodigy.

I don’t even have a proper motive for wanting to be a spy in the first place…

On top of her mediocre abilities, even her mentality was weak. Looking at the situation objectively, it was no wonder Monika had abandoned her.

Sara headed back to the apartment with heavy footsteps.

Inside, Grete was organizing their data by looking at the photos of their targets they’d stuck on the wall and jotting down notes. She glanced over at Sara. “Monika told me what happened,” she said gently. “I’ll make the arrangements to have Monika handle the mission this afternoon on her own. Please, do take the day off. I can’t imagine you’ve had much time to rest lately.”

“Okay, but…I know I need to do better.”

“…You mustn’t take it so hard. I’m sure Monika is just on edge because of how tired she is.”

The only response Sara could offer to Grete’s consolatory words was an appreciative bow. Then a question sprang to her mind. “T-tell me, Miss Grete, do you think of yourself as a prodigy?”

“………?”

“Oh, no, it’s nothing important. I was just wondering if you were at all afraid about going up against Avian.”

Grete must have been an academy washout, too, and Sara was curious how she was confronting her old demons.

“That’s a fair question…” Grete stroked the corners of her lips. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t anxious. I have a lot of unpleasant memories about my academy days…”

“I—I can imagine.”

“But when I was brought into Lamplight, I met the boss. He sensed all the days I’d spent agonizing and all the nights I’d spent crying in confusion, and in his compassion, he offered me the most wonderful encouragement.”

“………”

“Because of him, I’m prepared to give this battle everything I have. I know that all I have to do is take advantage of the skills I spent my time with the boss cultivating.”

To Sara, there was something dazzling about the unashamed way Grete gave her answer. I’m no match for Miss Grete, am I? she couldn’t help but think.

Grete was proud of herself, just the way she ought to be.

Klaus had complimented Sara, too, of course. He’d called her magnificent, and consequently, she’d started becoming slightly more assertive with her teammates. However, she had yet to make any bold plays during any of their missions.

Sara thanked Grete and left the apartment. Now that she’d been ordered to take the day off, there was nothing for her to do but rest up. She headed outside so she wouldn’t get in her teammates’ way, thinking that perhaps she could go out and let her hair down a bit alongside her pets. As she recalled, there was a kind of treat called an egg tart that had made its way onto the scene lately, and she really wanted to try one.

When she got to the ground floor, she was still mulling over how best to spend her break.

That was when she ran into someone unexpected. “Huh? What are you doing here, Miss Erna?”

Down on the first floor, Erna was standing in front of the complex’s communal letterbox and frowning in consternation. It looked like she’d forgotten which apartment Sara and the others were staying in.

Erna’s face lit up. “Oh, Big Sis Sara! Perfect timing!”

“Did you need me?”

Now that she thought about it, it had felt like Erna had wanted something from her earlier, too.

Erna practically hopped her way over to Sara. “If you wouldn’t mind,” she said, “I’d like your help. There’s something I really want to try out so I can hopefully figure out my liecraft.”

“Y-your liecraft, huh? That’s all well and good, but what exactly were you thinking?”

“Isn’t it obvious? When Lamplight wants to train, there’s just one thing for us to do.” As Erna went on, her voice boomed with excitement. “I want us to attack Teach! You and me, together!”

It probably went without saying by that point, but attacking Klaus was the way the girls trained. As the team’s boss, he’d given his subordinates one simple training exercise—“Defeat me.” Their missions had kept them so busy lately that they hadn’t gotten as many chances to go after him, but the assignment was still ongoing. In a sense, it was going better than ever, as it gave them an opportunity to get extra reps with techniques that hadn’t worked out for them during missions.

Sara decided to tag along with Erna. She hadn’t settled on an itinerary for her day yet, so she had no particular reason to turn down the request.

“Are you sure you’re okay to do this? I don’t want to get in the way of your mission…,” Erna asked.

“Y-yeah, it’s all good,” Sara replied with an evasive smile.

She really didn’t want to have to explain how Monika had sidelined her for the day.

The two of them made their way away from the middle of Longchon to a spot on the outskirts of its mainland side. After a one-hour bus ride, they arrived in a town close to Longchon’s border with the Republic of Ryuka. Unlike the more central parts of Longchon, the outskirts hadn’t received any urban planning whatsoever, and they were lined with buildings of all sorts of mismatched heights and widths. Signs were scattered about written in Ryukese characters, and as disorderly as the townscape was, it spoke to the vibrance and energy of the people who lived there.

The air was thick with the fragrant smell of spices, and Sara’s puppy twitched his nose in irritation. According to Erna, this was where Klaus was carrying out his mission. “By sneakily watching Teach work, we can figure out how to take him down,” she’d explained.

The reason she’d recruited Sara was because she needed help tracking Klaus’s position. If she tried tailing Klaus by conventional means, he’d sniff her out for sure, but with Sara’s puppy’s nose, they could follow him from far enough away that he wouldn’t notice them. The puppy wasn’t loving all the spices in the air, but he dutifully followed Klaus’s trail all the same.

“You’re really fired up, aren’t you, Miss Erna?” Sara noted as they followed along after the pup. “You must be so busy with your missions, and here you are, using what little free time you have to train more.”

Erna nodded deeply. “I mean…of course I am.”

“What makes you say that?”

“At the end of the day, the whole reason we’re in this mess is because I screwed up the mission back at the cotton mill.”

“Ah.” Now Sara finally got it. After successfully completing the mission that Sybilla and Erna had bungled, Vindo and Qulle had used that as evidence to make their case that Avian was stronger than Lamplight. As part of that, they’d referenced the way that Erna had gotten knocked out.

Sara could only imagine how guilty Erna must have felt about that. In her opinion, Erna was making it out to be bigger than it actually was, but Erna’s voice was brimming with fervor. “I have to make things right… I’m going to come up with an awesome liecraft and use it to trounce Avian!”

Erna was taking long strides. Even her gait spoke to how unusually determined she was.

From the sound of it, Erna wasn’t scared of Avian, either.

“That’d be nice…,” Sara replied, trying to hide how mixed-up she felt about the whole thing.

“I’ve come up with loads of potential options,” Erna said, sounding quite serious. “My plan is to pick one based on the situation and hit Teach with it.”

“Oh, what kind of options?”

“Accidents × Seduction. I can lure enemies to their doom by seducing them the way Big Sis Thea does!”

“I think that might be hard for you, what with how shy you are.”

“Accidents × Babbling. I’ll guide them to where I want them to go by telling them clever lies like Good fortune awaits you to the north.”

“These ideas are starting to sound as bad as Miss Lily’s.”

Sure enough, Erna was well and truly lost. All Sara saw in her imminent future was failure. However, there was something truly courageous about how proactive Erna was being about coming up with ideas.

She’s really giving this her all…

Sara couldn’t help but compare Erna against herself. She had yet to come up with a single decent idea for her liecraft.

What would even work for me? What kind of deception pairs well with animals? Bluffs? Could I tell someone The monster I reared will swallow you whole? Masquerading? Could I dress up my pets to make them look like different animals than they actually are…?

She gave it some more thought, but none of those options seemed likely to work. She just couldn’t picture a washout like her successfully taking on a group of elites. She wasn’t even the kind of person who battled her enemies head-on in the first place. She was terrible at fighting.

But…if I don’t, Miss Monika is going to get mad at me again…

Sara was sick and tired of what a coward she was, but rooting out a deep-seated inferiority complex was easier said than done. She hung her head.

Ahead of them, Johnny the puppy came to a stop. He carefully swiveled his head from side to side, then began walking circles in place. Eventually, he turned to the side and headed down a small path.

They soon arrived at a hill road made up of cobbled stone steps. The path curved sharply to the left, so it was impossible to see what lay beyond. The sides of the road were lined with abandoned buildings with signboards that said things like FORBIDDEN ROSE HOTEL and ENTRAIL MEDICINES. They appeared to be hotels and pharmacies and the like, but there was something unmistakably shady about them, and the air was ripe with the sickly sweet smell of narcotics.

Erna gulped a little. “B-Big Sis Sara… Looking around, I think we’re in a pretty bad neighborhood.”

“I know it’s a little late to be asking, but what did the boss come here to do?”

“I think…he was meeting someone…? Oh, now I remember…”

Erna went on softly.

“…he’s here to negotiate with the Longchon mafia.”

The moment the two of them set foot down the path, they spotted a small table by the side of the road. It was barely visible behind the signboard.

CRYSTAL DIVINATION

According to the sign, it was a fortune teller. It wasn’t an uncommon sight; it felt like there were fortune tellers down just about every alleyway in Longchon. However, the part that caught Sara’s attention was the method the fortune teller used. Palm readings and bamboo divining sticks were much more in vogue in Longchon, so you rarely saw fortune tellers who used crystal balls. Sara had learned that from one of the books Monika made her memorize.

As it turned out, she was right to be suspicious. All of a sudden, the fortune teller rose to her feet and swung something straight at Sara’s head.

““________?!””

That something was an iron fan. Right away, Sara and Erna evaded the attack. As they leaped to the left, they reached for their guns.

“Oh-ho! You dodged it!” the woman crowed. She shed her shabby-looking fortune teller getup to reveal her red dogi, the outfit worn by practitioners of traditional Ryukese martial arts. Her long hair was tied back in three braids, leaving her broad forehead fully exposed. Based on the lively energy of her smile, she was probably still pretty young—early twenties, maybe. “I attack any suspicious characters who pass me by, but you two are the first to ever react in time! I can tell you’re no amateurs. Are you covert operatives from abroad, perchance? Villains, come to trample Longchon beneath your boots? How intriguing! I think I’d best capture you for an interrogation!” After rather arbitrarily making her assessment, she spread the iron fans she was dual-wielding out wide. “My name is Reirin, proud member of the Jewel Family Eight!”

““………””

Sara and Erna stared in disbelief at the woman calling herself Reirin. If the introduction she’d just given was true, that would make her a member of the Longchon mafia.

“…She seems like she could be dangerous,” said Erna.

Sara nodded. “I feel like interacting with her would be more work than it’s worth.”

As an aside, the two of them were talking in Din’s national language. Reirin was ostensibly a Longchon native, so there was no danger of her understanding them. She gave them a puzzled look.

Sara and Erna inched backward and got ready to make a break for it.

“Hmm? I introduce myself, and you try to leave without reciprocating?” Reirin made a pouty face. “So discourteous. I suppose you must be spies. Cowards, that’s what you are!”

Sara saw little point in lending her an ear. Instead, she told Erna her plan. “I-I’m going to shoot. Just to scare her a little. When I do, we run.”

She didn’t want to cause a commotion, but it was more important that they get away from that woman.

Sara quietly produced her gun and leveled it at Reirin.

“Hmph. You’d do well not to look down on Reirin, proud member of the Jewel Family Eight!”

That woman seemed to really like introducing herself. “You already told us that part!” Sara retorted as she placed her finger on the trigger.

The moment she did, Reirin somersaulted backward and hid behind one of the signboards. With how nimbly she moved, it was clear that her dogi wasn’t just for show. From where she was, she vanished off down the far end of the street.

Erna cocked her head. “She ran away…?”

Sara decided not to fire and lowered her gun. If Reirin was going to flee all on her own, there was no need for them to go out of their way to fight her.

“It looks like it… For now we should run away, too, then—”

Before Sara could finish her sentence, something struck her in the shoulder. “______?!” she gasped as the air rushed from her lungs. Whatever had just hit her was hard and blunt. She lost her balance and crumpled to her knees.

“Big Sis Sara?” Erna yelped.

Sara hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of the attack. However, she knew which direction it had come from.

“…B-behind us,” she choked.

The two of them whirled around in unison and saw Reirin with her iron fan held aloft.

“Too slow, scoundrels!”

Before Reirin had a chance to swing her fan down, Sara hurriedly did a forward roll to get out of harm’s way. Her combat training with Monika was paying dividends. As she came out of the roll, she tugged Erna by the hand and broke into a run.

They made their way up the winding hill road, turning at what looked like a dentist’s office and heading across a road filled with even more small shops. There was a signboard blocking the path, which was pretty obnoxious considering what a hurry they were in.

“What happened back there…?” Erna asked as they ran. “We blinked, and she was all the way behind us!”

“I—I don’t know!”

That was just the thing—Reirin’s movements didn’t make sense. One moment, she disappeared down a path in front of them, and the next, she was right behind them. No human could have covered that much ground that fast on foot. It just wasn’t possible. Sara hadn’t even had time to ready her gun.

As Sara racked her brain over how she’d done it, Reirin strode out from behind the LIU XIONG BOOKS sign straight in front of them.

Erna and Sara skidded to a stop.

Once again, Reirin had traveled impossibly fast—and this time, she’d cut them off.

“It’s an art called earth-shrinking.” Reirin laughed proudly at the girls’ bewilderment. “I learned it through dutiful study, and now all I have to do is shrink the earth and connect your location with mine. It’s a trivial technique; any of the Jewel Family Eight could perform it.”

With that, she swung her fans hard to the side.

At that point, there was still a good ten feet between her and the girls.

“With it, my attacks can transcend distance!”

A dull pain shot through Sara’s knee. Something had just hit her again, and this time, it came from the side. She hadn’t been expecting to get attacked from that angle, so she hadn’t even been watching.

“You can’t escape me. And know that I, Reirin, offer no mercy to those who would defile my beloved homeland!” Reirin readied her fans. She was winding up to do that invisible attack again.

Sara spoke as loud as she could muster. “W-we don’t mean this country any harm. We’re just a couple of tourists with a little bit of combat training, that’s all. And this gun is only for self-defense…”

“If you think I’m going to fall for that, think again! You spies are a foul lot—you lie as easy as you breathe!”

“……!”

“Though I’ll admit, I can see that you are terrified of me!”

Reirin flashed them a combative grin. When a real mafia member decided to do someone in, they didn’t pull punches. Sara wasn’t going to be able to fib her way out of this one.

I should have given it more thought… I should have considered what kind of operation the boss was on!

She’d already known that their current mission involved the Longchon mafia. By tailing him so carelessly, they’d wandered right into mafia-controlled territory.

“Yeep!”

Beside Sara, Erna pointed her gun at Reirin.

Reirin laughed mockingly. “No matter how much time you buy for yourself, this will always end the same way.”

Before Erna could pull the trigger, Reirin somersaulted back behind the signboard. The area was full of things she could use for cover, and based on how she was moving, she knew them all like the back of her hand.

“Now’s our chance! Run!”

Sara grabbed Erna’s arm and dashed off once more. Yet again, they made their way along the curved hill road. There were signboards all over the place, so their ability to see their surroundings wasn’t great. Due to all the clotheslines the buildings’ residents had hung up, the area barely even got any sunlight.

In all likelihood, Reirin was moving to cut them off again. Sara didn’t know if her earth-shrinking ability was real, but regardless, she definitely had some sort of incomprehensible movement technique at her disposal.

Sara’s breath ran ragged as she diligently kept running. Her injured leg hurt, but she had no choice but to grit her way through the pain.

I’m sure Miss Thea could have figured out how to negotiate well enough to avoid a fight… Miss Grete could have used her disguises to escape… And I doubt Miss Monika or Miss Sybilla would have lost to her in a fight…

She couldn’t help but think of the absent members of the team. She didn’t have the tools to escape this dilemma. That was the painful truth, and she couldn’t stand it.

Then Erna grabbed Sara by the sleeve. “Let’s stop here, Big Sis Sara.”

Huh? It didn’t make sense to Sara. The spot Erna had chosen for them to stop in had terrible visibility. The road was narrow, and the buildings had all sorts of signboards sticking out of them. Given that they were up against a martial artist who liked to show up from unexpected angles, waiting for her there seemed like a terrible idea.

Before long, Reirin made her appearance, chasing after them by leaping from one signboard to the next like she was running across the sky. Sure enough, her movement was still blisteringly fast. She brandished her fans from a good distance away.

Erna leaned against Sara. “Anyone who bullies you is going to have me to answer to.”

After making it so that the two of them would fall over together, she took her gun in both hands and fired.

The shock wave from the blast slammed Sara head-on. Erna’s gun was a massive revolver, and its magnum round ripped through the air. Erna’s body was too petite to withstand the shot’s force, and with a “Yeep!” she collapsed backward.

Sara gently caught her as she fell.

Above them, Reirin recoiled a little at the gun’s thunderous roar, but she soon broke into a mocking sneer. “Were you even trying to hit—?”

“I’m code name Fool—and it’s time to kill with everything.”

The moment Erna’s lips moved, the sound of metal snapping rang out. It might have been because of the magnum round’s impact, or it might have been because of the sound waves from the gun’s discharge, but either way, the worn and fatigued iron signboards were at their limit. An avalanche of surrounding signboards cascaded down.

“Wh—?!”

Reirin’s eyes went wide, and she frantically dodged away.

That was the last thing Sara saw of her. She was shocked, too, and she wrapped her arms around Erna’s head and protectively cradled it. As she did, though, Erna just casually stared upward. She wasn’t fazed in the slightest.

Sara thought back to Erna’s ability.

Erna was so intropunitive and drawn to misfortune that she’d gained the ability to sense ill omens before they came to pass. That was why she’d fired that shot—she realized that the signboards were on the verge of collapsing.

The sound of metal getting crushed boomed out as the signboards continued crashing all around them. However, not a single one of them landed on Sara.

When the noise eventually stopped, Sara timidly raised her head. There was a mountain of debris surrounding them on all sides.

“~~~~~~~!”

Sara let out a voiceless shriek. No matter how many times she saw Erna’s ability at work, it never failed to inspire awe.

She was a little worried that Reirin might be dead, but she didn’t see any bodies beneath the signboards, just a few scraps of Reirin’s outfit. It didn’t look like she’d been crushed, so she’d probably retreated for the time being.

“Well, it looks like we’re out of danger for now,” Erna said. Then one last bolt came tumbling out of the sky and hit her right on the head with a big clunk. “How unlucky…,” she groaned as she hunched over.

“Y-you’re right. Reirin’s gone for now, so we should run away, too.”

Reirin was a skilled martial artist. Sara didn’t know who the Jewel Family Eight were, but they seemed like trouble.

She massaged her injured knee and rose to her feet.

“W-we should go back to the base for now,” Erna said worriedly. “I’m sorry, Big Sis Sara. You got hurt, and it’s all my fault…”

Midway through her sentence, she started getting choked up. As soon as tears began welling in her eyes, Sara patted her head. “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s really not your fault. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“But…”

“Plus, there’s no need to head straight back. I wasn’t just running away at random, you know.” Sara gave her puzzled comrade a big smile. “Mr. Johnny’s been following the boss’s scent—and we’re really close.”

All of a sudden, the black-furred puppy popped his head out from the alley where he’d been hiding. He rushed over to Sara, nudged her, then clambered atop her head, wagging his tail all the while.

Erna’s eyes went wide. “Oh!” Now she understood the situation.

Mafia stronghold or not, it didn’t matter. The Greatest Spy in the World was close by, and that meant that they were as safe as could be.

Apparently, Klaus was inside a massive mansion.

When they followed the puppy’s nose there, they were greeted by a towering scarlet gate flanked on each side by a bronze statue of a dragon. The building inside was downright palatial, and it was surrounded by walls made of stacks of glazed orange roof tiles. Whoever lived there was clearly a big deal.

As Sara recalled, Klaus’s mission had involved going and negotiating with the mafia. This must be where the boss lived, and the mansion was designed to keep outsiders away.

“I had no idea just tailing him was going to be so hard…,” Sara murmured.

“Me neither. But the fact that we got this far is proof of how much we’ve grown,” Erna declared proudly.

Sara agreed with Erna’s optimistic view of the situation. And it wasn’t just their regular training with Klaus—the intensive spartan training Monika had put her through was paying off, too. If not for that, they never would have escaped from Reirin.

Over at the gate, there was no gatekeeper to be seen.

“But what in the world do we do now?” Sara looked over at Erna. “Should we give up on the training and just ask the boss to protect us?”

Their original plan had been to threaten or attack Klaus once they’d tracked him down, but they’d worn themselves out just getting there. And to make matters worse, if they weren’t careful about what they did next, Reirin might well attack them again.

“After we came all this way? I still want to give it a go.”

Erna puffed up her cheeks in displeasure, but Sara couldn’t bring herself to agree. “But we’ve already gotten in loads of training. Trying to take things further now would be dangerous.”

“………Fine.” Erna nodded, but she didn’t look happy about it.

Miss Erna seems almost desperate…

A flash of unease ran through her upon seeing how much pain her teammate was in. The same behavior that had seemed courageous just moments ago now filled Sara with worry. It was like Erna didn’t even care about how much danger she was putting herself in.

“Let’s join up with the boss and figure the rest out from there,” Sara urged her.

Having decided on the objective, the two of them headed around the side of the gate. It wasn’t like they could just march in the front door and demand to see Klaus, but as spies, infiltration fell well within their wheelhouse.

After circling around to the building’s flank, they scaled the wall and used their binoculars to check out the situation inside. Fortunately, the spot they’d chosen had a pretty clear view. There was a big pond in the middle of the yard, so there were no trees to block their line of sight. The garden around it had been carefully maintained.

““Huh…?””

Still holding their binoculars, the two of them simultaneously tilted their heads.

A pond sat in front of the gorgeous scarlet building with ten different bridges of varying sizes stretched over it, and the garden was full of long-weathered boulders, pavilions, and well-sculpted shrubs. It was a truly elegant space, but there was something bizarre scattered across the ground in it.

Namely, an unconscious horde.

Eyeballing it, there were nearly a hundred people collapsed in the garden, all still clutching their guns and falchions. It was evident from their lolling tongues that they were unconscious.

And there, standing in the middle of it all, was Klaus.

He leaned against one of the bridge’s handrails, looked up at the sky, and muttered a few words to himself.

By reading his lips, the girls could tell what he was saying.

“…I had no idea that negotiating would be this difficult.”

His expression was marked with sadness.

“Who would have thought that three mafia families would all join up and try to kill me without even listening to what I had to say? I guess they don’t much care for foreign spies, not after all the years spies have been running roughshod over Longchon… I suppose it was a mistake for me to come to them openly as a show of good faith.”

Waaaait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Sara and Erna thought in unison.

Klaus had just taken down three entire mafia families. From the sound of it, he’d decided to try negotiating with them directly instead of secretly pilfering information from them. He said he’d meant it as a show of good faith, but the move was so audacious it had backfired and merely pissed them off. As a result, he’d had to knock out over a hundred mafia members.

As per usual, the scale he operated on was outrageous. It was starting to get to be a little bit much.

But………

Sara looked up from her binoculars.

This is the world the boss lives in…

As a man who carried their entire nation’s safety on his back, Klaus was constantly getting more responsibilities dumped in his lap. He often had little time to work with, and sometimes that meant having to take aggressive measures like he had there.

It was as if he and they lived in totally different worlds. As things stood, Lamplight was only capable of providing him with backup, nothing more.

Erna let out a sad “Yeep…” as that realization sank in. She clutched at the hem of Sara’s clothes.

The two of them had just witnessed the sheer gulf that existed between them and Klaus. Then right as they felt their chests start to tighten—

“Vindo and Vics have the north side of the building under control, Mr. Klaus.”

—they spotted a jade-haired girl in a ponytail rush over to Klaus.

“That’s Qulle,” Erna murmured. Avian was here.

Qulle pursed her lips with a touch of proud excitement.

Klaus, who’d been waiting for her on one of the bridges, gave her a nod, then spoke.

“Good work. Just to be sure, they didn’t kill anyone, right?”

“Nope, just like you said. The one thing is, we couldn’t find the guard who’s supposed to be the go-between for the Steel Urn Group and the Jewel Family… If we’d just been able to talk with her first, this would all have gone a lot smoother.”

“She’s out on patrol right now.”

“Wait, you know where she is?”

“One of the guys I knocked out just told me. She’s supposedly quite fickle, so he didn’t have any idea when she’d be getting back.”

“Ah, I see. Should we go sweep the area, then?”

“That would be great. Having you all here has been a big help. This’ll be a lot easier than trying to clean this all up myself.”

“…Wh-what? No, no, you’re too kind! Besides, it was nothing. Vindo and the others barely broke a sweat taking down the Jewel Family Eight.”

Klaus and Qulle were chatting away like old friends. Apparently, Klaus was carrying out his current mission together with Avian. That was no surprise; after all, this was supposed to be an onboarding period so they could work together better in the future.

From there, Klaus and Qulle began carefully coordinating what the next steps in their op were going to be. Sara couldn’t make out the specifics of their conversation, but it was obvious how in sync the two of them were.

“……………”

Her chest hurt, and her fingers drifted up to curl into her shirt. Each time she looked at the scene before her, she could feel her heartbeat pound faster.

Now I finally understand why Miss Erna felt so desperate…

Sara looked over at Klaus off in the distance.

His most immediately noticeable trait was his eccentricity, but he was also open-minded enough to accept all of Lamplight’s members as they were. If not for that, he never would have agreed to work as the boss of a team as riddled with problem children as theirs. However, teaming up with Avian wouldn’t stop him from being able to put his superhuman powers to use. Sara knew that all too well. Klaus was special to the girls, but to him, there was nothing special about them.

Avian really is skilled… It took everything we had just escaping from that mafia member, but they were able to stand proud and defeat loads of them…

The question was, who deserved that spot by Klaus’s side more—the elites or them? By now, though, the answer was plain as day. It was Avian. She and Erna had come to ask Klaus to save them, whereas Avian had been strong enough to fight by his side.

Avian would make a far better group of subordinates for the Greatest Spy in the World. Sara understood that, and yet…

It hurts, Boss… I can’t stand the thought of losing you to some other team…

Seeing him like that made it all feel terribly real.

Klaus was really going to leave Lamplight. They weren’t going to have him around anymore. He was going to go become another team’s boss, and they were going to have to part ways.

No! a voice in her heart shouted.

A moment later, she realized that that voice was her own. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! her heart pathetically screamed.

Sara broke into a run.

“Huh?” Erna said, but Sara didn’t hear her.

She fled the mansion, and with it, that horrible sight.

Sara never had a strong reason for becoming a spy.

She was born in a small coastal region of Din. Her parents happily ran a restaurant there, and one thing she loved to do as their only child was feed leftover food to the local dogs and cats.

Her childhood was, by all accounts, an ordinary one. There was just one unusual event in her life, and that was when she found an injured hawk by the side of the road and nursed it back to health and tamed it. After that, she developed a strange knack for getting along with animals.

When she chose to become a spy, she did so to avoid financially burdening her family. There was no deeper motive than that. Her parents’ restaurant had gotten caught in the crossfire during a spy battle. Rumor had it that the fight was between an Imperial spy and the Military Intelligence Department, but in any case, there was a big flashy firefight that left the restaurant all but demolished. Her parents didn’t have the savings to repair it, so they had no choice but to close up shop, and before long, the expenses associated with raising a child got to be too much for them.

That was when a Foreign Intelligence Office scout who’d heard about her through the grapevine approached her and asked if she wanted to enroll in a spy academy. With no other way to put food on the table, she decided to take the path of least resistance and accept the offer.

As a result, Sara didn’t have anything driving her. She wasn’t particularly motivated by the idea of protecting her nation, and she didn’t even have an ideal in mind of what kind of spy she wanted to become. When her academy branded her as a washout, she figured she deserved it.

At the end of the day, she didn’t really care about being a spy.

She was immature in body, mind, and resolve alike, and with how unmotivated she was, there wasn’t a single person who expected anything out of her.

Sara’s thoughts turned as she dashed down the curved hill road.

Then, after becoming a washout, I came to Lamplight…

Getting expelled would have left her unemployed, so joining Lamplight was the only option she’d had. At first, she was horrified. Going on a deadly Impossible Mission felt like it would be throwing her life away, and as she tearily told Lily at the time, she had planned on running away.

By all rights, Lamplight should have been hell on earth for Sara. And to make matters worse, all the other washouts on the team were still so much more talented than her. She had no place there.

But then I met people who accepted me…

There was the World’s Strongest, who’d called her magnificent, there were people who’d become attached to her like little sisters, there were conniving friends who’d carved out spots for her in their plots to attack Klaus, and there were even older girls who’d mentored and helped guide her. Before Sara knew it, Lamplight had become an irreplaceable home to her.

I might not have a reason for being a spy—but I’m not going to let the others down…!

As her teammates’ faces flashed through her head, Sara’s legs moved faster still.

Eventually, she arrived at a tiny diner that had long since shut down. The door wasn’t locked, and she threw it open with all her might.

The room inside had a small counter and a kitchen. The stove was off, and there was a young woman sitting atop it.

“Hmm?! You’re that spy from earlier!”

It was Reirin.

She’d gotten injured in Erna’s accident, and she was right in the middle of bandaging her leg. She finished winding the bandage, cut it off the roll with a pair of scissors, and stashed the bandage roll back in her dogi. She rose to her feet atop the counter.

“How peculiar! How did you find my hideout, one wonders?” Reirin furrowed her brow, then laughed once she spotted the puppy by Sara’s feet. “Aha, I see! You followed my scent from the clothing scraps I left at the accident site! Ha-ha, how devilish. You’re a clever one!”

“………”

“But at the same time, you never learn! To think you’d come fight me on your own after fleeing so shamefully earlier. So kind of you to seal your own fate!”

She lorded over Sara from her spot atop the counter and drew her fans. Her behavior was brimming with confidence. In her eyes, Sara was going to be a pushover.

“…I have one thing I’d like to ask you,” Sara said.

“Oh?”

“Are you the guard who acts as the go-between for the Steel Urn Group and the Jewel Family?”

“Oh-ho. I’m surprised you knew.” The corners of Reirin’s mouth curled into a grin. “Right you are! That’s me! Proud member of the Jewel Family Eight and liaison for the Steel Urn Group. So whaddaya want? You trying to get in touch with the Steel Urn Group? Because if you are, I’m the only one around these parts who’s got an in with those rebellious shadow lurkers. If that’s your game, just know that I charge a steep rate for my—”

“I’m here to train.”

“…What?”

“I’m sorry you have to be part of this, but I’m going to catch you before my boss can. Then I’ll make him say he surrenders in exchange for me handing you over.” Sara adjusted her newsboy cap and looked straight at Reirin. “Please don’t try to resist. I promise nothing bad will happen to you.”

“…I feel like someone’s being mighty impolite.”

“Well, you were impolite first. It’s time I got you back for that bump on Miss Erna’s head.”

Sara was pretty proud of how glib she was being. She’d learned the art of verbal warfare from watching Lily and Monika, and sure enough, she could see Reirin squeeze her fans so tightly that her fingertips went white. That woman was no hardened spy, so even Sara’s psychological attacks were working like a charm.

Honestly, I’m scared to my bones, but…

There was no point worrying about how she might fail. She just had to do it.

After all, just how many mafia members had the Avian elite just torn through?

“If I can’t beat someone like you, then I have no right to stand by the boss’s side…!!”

You can do this, she told herself. You’re gifted, just the way Klaus said you were! Hold your head high like the magnificent prodigy that you are!

Reirin rose to the challenge and leaped at her. “To think you would be this blind about how outmatched you are! You’re a fool among fools!”

Sara immediately fell back and rushed out of the diner to an alley not far from where they fought earlier. The path curved back and forth, and it was dotted with myriad little hill roads and staircases. Between that and the signboards scattered all about, visibility in the area couldn’t have been worse.

Sara raced down the road, probing for what her opponent would do next.

“You think you can get away?!”

Sure enough, Reirin appeared in front of her, cutting her off yet again. She couldn’t have gotten there that fast on foot; she must have used her high-speed earth-shrinking technique.

However, Sara had come into this fight prepared. She took the paper bag she’d been concealing and hurled it at Reirin. Reirin swatted it away with one of her steel fans, but when she did, the bag tore and blasted her with its finely powdered contents.

“Ack! What is this, peppercorn?!” Reirin yelped, flustered.

A stinging aroma spread all through the alley. You could buy potent spices just about anywhere in Longchon, and by grinding them up, you could make yourself a quick and easy tear bomb.

Sara had successfully limited her foe’s vision.

She wasted no time in drawing her gun, but Reirin quickly did a splendid somersault backward and hid behind a nearby building. Sara heard her confidently cry, “Sorry, but I could run through this town with my eyes closed!” However, Reirin’s voice echoed off so many walls that Sara couldn’t get a good bead on her position. “Is that all you’ve got up your sleeve?” Reirin went on. “If so, I’ll settle this with my next blow! I’m in a bit of hurry—for some reason, my calls to HQ aren’t going through!”

“…Your headquarters got taken out, actually.”

“You’re still lying, even now?! You truly are a deplorable one!”

Reirin wasn’t listening to anything Sara told her. Her style was to ignore any battles of wits from the get-go and simply fight things out, no matter what. Annoyingly, that meant that any bluffs Sara tried to pull were unlikely to work. Sara renewed her resolve and tightened both her hands around her gun.

“Feel the wrath of my Jewel Family Eight secret art—all-out full-power earth-shrinking!”

The moment Reirin shouted, Sara felt her skin prickle as the hostility in the air rapidly swelled.

Something impossible was happening.

One moment, she heard footsteps from the south, but the next, Reirin came running at her from across the shops to the north. Sara spotted her to the east, and not seconds later, she saw her leaping atop a signboard to the west. The unbridled way she was moving made no logical sense, yet it was allowing her to close in on Sara all the same.

However—

“I know how you do it.”

—Sara wasn’t enough of an amateur to keep getting bamboozled by the same technique forever. She’d spent ages now training with teammates who came up with lies far cleverer than Reirin’s.

“It’s a pretty cheap lie. There’s no such thing as earth-shrinking. I can track your smell from that pepper I used earlier, and that let me figure out the gimmick behind your movement.”

Eventually, Reirin appeared directly in front of her and raised up her fans in a big, telegraphed attack.

Down by Sara’s feet, her puppy Johnny let out a big bark.

“The secret behind your movement is a childish trick—the fact that you’re a pair of twins!”

She fired backward.

Without turning her body, she swapped her gun to a single-handed grip. After taking it in her right hand, she shoved it under her left armpit and pulled the trigger.

“Gah—!”

A scream rose up from behind her.

Sara whirled around and found Reirin clutching at her bleeding shin. With the way Sara had shot, her reversed bullet had gone low instead of flying in a straight line. Sara had no intention of killing Reirin, of course, so that fact came as a relief. She took a big sniff, but she didn’t smell any pepper. Her puppy didn’t react, either.

Sure enough, there had been two Reirins all along.

“Your coordination was fantastic,” Sara said. “So you had two people pretending to be a single woman? That’s a wonderful technique.”

By sheer coincidence, what the Reirins had pulled off was similar to the concept of liecraft Sara had been taught. A liecraft combined a unique talent with a synergistic form of deception, and the Reirins had paired their twin combo with just the right lie. That was how they fought—Coordination × Optical Illusions = Fake Earth-Shrinking.

“Urk…” Sweat streamed down Reirin’s face. “I can’t believe you saw through us…”

“I’m too old to believe in magic like earth-shrinking.”

It had been far too implausible an explanation to be true. Now that Sara thought about it, Reirin had been relentlessly introducing herself as “a member of the Jewel Family Eight!” since they first met her. That must have been misdirection to distract from that fact that she was actually two twins.

Sara took a deep breath and aimed her gun at Reirin’s forehead. “Surrender. You’ve got nowhere to run.”

“You’re not half bad!” Reirin scoffed. Even now, her triumphant expression never left her face. “But the thing is, the win is ours. Think about it—you’ve got two opponents. While you’re here threatening me with your gun, all my sister has to do is attack you from behind.”

“…You have a point.”

“That’s checkmate. You lose.” Reirin grinned. “Now you have three seconds to lower your gun. Otherwise, my sister will cut you in half with her fans.”

“……………”

Sara didn’t lower her gun. It was obvious that if she did, the Reirin in front of her would attack her with her fans. Given the situation, though, it was impossible for her to deal with the imminent attack from behind the other Reirin was going to launch. However, she couldn’t shoot the Reirin in front of her, either. She still needed to pump her for information.

Sara had lost.

Even after seeing through her opponents’ trick, she still couldn’t beat them in a fight. Plus, it was two against one, and these weren’t the kind of people Sara could defeat by battling them head-on anyway.

She was weak.

That was why she needed something. She needed a type of deception all her own—one that would let her overcome that talent gap.

After counting down from three to one, Reirin smiled. “Come on, Reika! Attack her from behind, and—”

“There’s a reason I’m not moving, you know. It’s to lure you in,” Sara said.

Then she quietly made her declaration.

“I’m code name Meadow—and it’s time to run circles around you!”

Once again, a scream rose up from behind Sara.

Reika—Reirin’s elder twin sister—had landed down in the alley to attack Sara, but a large hawk swooped down at her as though he’d been waiting for precisely that moment. His name was Bernard, and he was the pet Sara relied on most of all.

Bernard dug his talons deep into Reika’s upper arm and jabbed his beak into the back of her neck.

“Wh-AHHHHHHH?! Where’d this beast come from?!”

The attacks didn’t stop there—Aiden the pudgy pigeon followed up by body-slamming her, and Johnny the puppy diligently sank his teeth into her ankle. Sara’s pets were all working together to gang up on Reika.

“Reika!” Reirin cried, but Sara shouted “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try anything!” and redrew her bead on Reirin’s forehead to stop her from moving. “If you want to save your sister, then I’m going to have to ask that you drop your weapon.”

“………!”

“I knew all along how little you two thought of me, so I put myself in danger so you’d charge at me without thinking too hard about it. Once you did, it was easy to have my animals surround you.”

Sara had thought long and hard about how someone as weak as her could deceive someone, and in the end, she realized that she could use her weak self as a decoy. By intentionally placing herself in harm’s way, she could get her opponents to lower their guard and give her animals an opportunity to take them down.

That was the new spy combat style Sara had just come up with—Rearing × Decoy = Human-Beast Pincer Attack.

By using it, she’d completely locked down the twins’ movement.

I can fight. I can fight, too…!

Now all she had to do was extort them. Her hawk, Bernard, was far stronger than she was, and he was capable of tearing right through a person’s carotid artery. At this rate, she was about to rack up her very first solo victory, but then—

“Huh…?”

Sara’s thoughts got interrupted.

Her side was wounded. Unable to withstand the pain, she crumpled.

“It… It hurts…?”

When she saw the object that had just fallen in front of her, she realized where the attack had come from.

It was a crystal ball.

Reika must have thrown it during her battle against Sara’s animals. Her fans had been blocking Sara’s view of what she was holding, so Sara hadn’t known to dodge it. Now that she thought about it, though, this wasn’t the first time the twins had performed an “invisible” attack.

That was another trick in the twins’ toolbox—using their iron fans to obscure their crystal projectiles.

Sara collapsing meant Reirin was free to move again, and she drove off the animals that were swarming Reika. Realizing that the situation had turned, the animals withdrew and returned to Sara’s side.

““You’re a crafty little rascal! This is how you spies like to fight, then? Laying twofold and threefold traps? We’ll have to keep that in mind!”” the twins said in unison, verbally pounding the nail into Sara’s coffin as she lay on her hands and knees.

Sara had no more moves left to play. She was out of schemes, and even though her hawk, Bernard, was pecking at her to urge her to flee, the pain in her flank was too bad for her to do even that.

““Now it’s time for your punishment!””

The twins raised their fans in perfect harmony.

“Here’s a question—have you ever heard of restraint?”

Then Sara heard a different voice come from behind her.

Reirin’s and Reika’s eyes both went wide, and Sara turned back. There stood a blue-haired girl—Monika—looking well and truly exasperated. She scratched the back of her head in annoyance. “I know I told you to be more confident, but that doesn’t mean you should go picking solo fights against mafia members. What’s with the sudden burst of motivation? You hitting that age where you’re just itching for a brawl?”

Sara gasped. “Miss Monika, what are you doing here?”

“Lily and the others were freaking out. ‘Erna went missing! She must be lost!’ So I went out looking. Imagine my surprise when I found you here.”

Reirin and Reika stared daggers at the newcomer to try to gauge how strong she was. Despite the intensity of their gazes, though, Monika remained cool and undaunted.

“So Rearing × Decoy, huh? That’s the liecraft you came up with?” Monika must have been watching from somewhere.

Sara nodded, and with a “Hmmm,” Monika sank into thought before finally delivering her verdict. “……………………No dice.”

Sara had received a failing grade.

She slumped her shoulders and let out a little groan. She’d worked really hard on that, too.

“Ultimately, a liecraft is a mirror of who you are. You take your experiences, your beliefs, your tics, your habits—everything about your life—and you come up with a form of deception all your own.” Monika gave her a small smile. “Using you as a decoy is out of the question. You’re not nearly as weak as you think you are.”

After observing the conversation, Reirin and Reika eventually determined that Monika was a powerful threat. They backstepped with the exact same timing.

““We see, we see! Reinforcements, is it? Intriguing!”” they said as one. ““In that case, we’ll bring all our might to bear! Remember, you’re on our home turf. You’re about to regret having spoiled our moods!””

With that, they simultaneously fled behind signboards.

The omni-directional noise of their footsteps sounded out even faster than before. They hadn’t been using their full strength back when they were fighting Sara. They were blisteringly quick, and they circled Sara and Monika like a pair of predators hunting their prey.

“Well, that’s a shame,” Monika said flatly.

“Huh?”

“I wanted to practice my liecraft, but they’re too weak for that. There’s no point using a skill like that on a pair of shitters I don’t even need to trick,” Monika complained. It was a hard proclamation to believe, but Monika wasn’t the sort to lie about something so trivial. “I’ll be fine just going with the usual. Here you go, Sara. As a special treat, I’ll show you my ability—creepshot.”

With that, she pulled out a set of mirror shards and scattered them up into the air. They gleamed like powdered snow as they fell back to the ground.

“I’m code name Glint—now, let’s harbor love for as long as we can.”

Monika’s eyes began twitching finely back and forth. It was like she was checking every one of the reflections. Actually, there was no “like” about it—with her astounding calculation abilities and precise movements, that was exactly what she was doing. On closer inspection, there were a couple of concave lenses mixed in with the mirror shards, too.

Sara had spent a long time working by Monika’s side, so she understood what Monika’s ability was. No, perhaps the word ability didn’t do the full breadth of her capabilities justice. When Monika combined her mirrors and lenses, her expertise was downright superhuman. Creepshot was a skill that allowed her to observe anything and everything within a set amount of space!

Eventually, Reirin and Reika leaped out in unison. ““Eat dirt!””

However, Monika didn’t twitch. She’d seen it all. The twins had been staying behind cover, but Monika had been tracking their every move.

A series of dull thunks echoed out in succession.

Monika’s knives had struck Reirin and Reika straight in their temporal regions. That much was clear from the way their bodies crumpled. They sank to their knees simultaneously, then slowly keeled over.

The fight had been as quick as it had been decisive. Monika’s strength was in a whole different league than Sara’s.

“Well, that handles that. Now, it’d be nice if we could just pump them for intel straightaway—”

Monika shrugged, then turned her gaze from the downed sisters.

“—but sadly,” she continued with a grim smile, “Klaus is already here.”

Sara turned her attention over in the direction Monika was looking.

There stood Klaus.

Beside him, Erna was looking over at them with a worried look in her eyes. The two of them had come there together.

“Sara,” said Klaus, who seemed to understand exactly what had happened. “You tried to fight them on your own? That was very brave of you.”

Sara felt a tremble in the back of her throat.

She wanted to say No, it wasn’t. She felt like she might cry. In the end, she hadn’t been able to win. She was weak. She was inexperienced. Her skills were fatally lacking. She had lost to one of the same mafia members that Avian had been able to mow through with ease, and the liecraft she’d worked so hard to design had been a flawed dud. If Monika hadn’t shown up and saved her, she would have died.

“Magnificent.”

When Klaus’s gentle gaze fell on her, though, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of accomplishment.

Once the business stuff was all finished, Monika read Sara the riot act.

“Okay, seriously, what the hell were you thinking? What kind of imbecile takes an idea they just cooked up and does their test run in a live battle? I’d expect that from Lily, sure, but you? And plus, Rearing × Decoy… No. That gets thirteen out of a hundred. Your spot isn’t on the front lines, remember? I don’t ever want to see you pull a stunt like that again. For now, no working solo until you can at least complete that assignment I gave you.”

She was laying on the criticism thick, and Sara had no rebuttal to any of it. It was hard to blame Monika for being mad after what Sara had done.

However, the taste of satisfaction still lingered in Sara’s mouth.

She felt like she’d improved a bit. She still had a long way to go, but she was making forward progress. Monika’s voice was a fair bit gentler than usual, and that was all the proof she needed.

In the end, the sun had already started setting by the time Monika released her. Sara was curious as to how the mission had gone, and her pets needed a walk anyway, so she headed over to the Lamplight base.

The villa sat atop a small hill on Longchon Island, and Sara was sweating profusely under the sunlight as she ascended the hill’s precipitous slope. The higher she got, the better the view became. Just beyond the age-worn aluminum fence, she could see the rows of buildings lining the harbor as well as Longchon’s turquoise sea.

Halfway up the hill, she discovered a small table. There was a fortune teller sitting at it with a sign that read CRYSTAL DIVINATION.

Isn’t that what I saw this afternoon? Sara thought, thoroughly disquieted. She took another look at the fortune teller.

It was Erna.

“Reirin has my respect.”

Sara froze. “Whaaaat…?”

For whatever reason, Erna was wearing a Ryukese-style cheongsam dress. Its fabric was bright pink, and she’d altered its hem to be adorned with frills. She was also going for some sort of tiger motif, as there was a pair of yellow ears on her head and a yellow-and-black-striped tail extending out from her backside.

She held up a crystal ball. “I’m going to become the best fortune teller in all of Longchon. When my targets come to visit me, I’ll tell them that good fortune can be found on a train platform. Then when they arrive at the platform I tell them about, I’ll deviously push them onto the tracks. It’ll be the birth of Erna, the assassination specialist feared the world over.”

“…………………………………”

Sara had no clue what to say to that.

“………”

“………”

“………”

“………”

Erna took her tiger ears and hurled them against the ground. “I can’t keep doing thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis!”

“She’s gotten even more lost than before!”

Erna’s face was bright red, and she began lashing out. It was plain to see how embarrassed she was. She crouched down and began rolling around on the ground, not caring how dirty she was getting.

Sara rushed over, hugged her, and helped her back to her feet. “Now that I think about it, you never got a chance to try out your liecraft, huh?”

“No. We kept running into trouble. And then you went on that rampage, Big Sis Sara…”

“Urk. I am sorry about that.”

“I get how you feel, though. You wanted to get stronger as fast as possible so you could beat Avian.”

“That’s right. Ah, but we can’t afford to be so reckless.” Sara patted Erna’s head. “Miss Monika gave me some advice. She told me that a liecraft is like a mirror of who you are. Why don’t we head back to the base for a bit, take a breather, and work together to come up with some ideas that suit us?”

Sara had been worried for a while now about how rashly Erna was acting. The way she’d strolled so casually into mafia-controlled territory had been really careless.

“…But I……………”

Still holding her crystal ball, Erna took a few unsteady steps. Her eyes swam with anguish.

Her lips twitched. “…don’t like who I am…”

“What?”

“I hate myself… This whole mess we’re in is all my fault.”

Erna ran her hand along the aluminum safety fence and let out a pained groan.

That was the second time Sara had heard her say that. She was still beating herself up about her screwup back at the cotton mill.

It feels like there’s something more going on with her, though…

Fear crept its way into Sara’s heart as she headed over to Erna. “That wasn’t your fault, Miss Erna. I heard about what happened, and the mission only went south because you got caught up in that weird explosion midway through. It was just bad luck. Let’s go get some rest, okay?”

Erna shook her head in frustration. “True, that was unlucky…”

Down by her feet, Johnny let out a small bark.

Sara said nothing. “………”

“But I can’t just shrug it off like that.” Erna bit her lip. “I’m the one who gave Avian that opening to move in on us. I’m terrified to imagine what it’ll be like if we lose Teach. That’s why I—”

Erna squeezed down hard on the fence to try to contain her tempestuous emotions. And when she did, the fence warped.

Sara gasped.

From there, it felt like she perceived everything in slow motion.

The weathered aluminum fence, bending from the ground up. Erna’s body lurching forward along with it. The thirty feet plus of cliff. Erna, falling as though sucked down by some force. Her crystal ball glinting in the sunlight as it quietly rolled away. The wind blowing. The smell of the sea. The stone steps down at the bottom of the cliff. Erna’s widening eyes. Sara’s own outstretched hand.

Erna’s lips twitched. “How unlucky…”

The puppy barked so loudly it was practically screaming.

Sara had immediately thrust out her hand, but she was too late—and Erna fell down the cliff.