Spy Classroom - Volume SS1 - Chapter 3.1

Chapter 3

Monika’s Case

After Lamplight finished its month of training, its members embarked on an Impossible Mission.

The girls started by sneaking into the Galgad Empire, then got to work gathering intelligence on the laboratory they needed to infiltrate.

Over in the rearguard, Thea and Grete were in charge of sorting through the information the team assembled and coming up with specific plans to achieve the overarching goals Klaus had set out for them. Sometimes, they also approached targets themselves when the team was short-handed.

“Did you follow that, Grete? If you want to get a man wrapped around your finger quickly, the best way to start is by making a lot of physical contact.”

“…Ah, so that’s the technique you were using today. I’ll be sure to remember that.”

As the two of them were carrying out their duties, they also developed an odd mentor-student relationship.

Meanwhile, Sybilla and Lily carried out their assigned missions one after another. They pickpocketed wallets off of Endy Laboratory employees, stole client lists from drug dealers to use as blackmail material, infiltrated distributors’ offices to find out what deliveries the laboratory was expecting—the list went on and on.

“Is it just me, or are we getting stuck with the biggest workload of all?” Lily moaned.

“We’re not,” Sybilla muttered. “From what I hear, the two of us together are only gettin’ handed half the Operations squad jobs.”

The two of them continued running themselves ragged all over the Empire.

Then there was Sara, Annette, and Erna, who provided backup to the other squads.

They, too, handled a large variety of jobs.

Whenever a request came in for them to build a weapon that could be disguised as a wallet, to direct a group of mice to drive people out of an office building, or to cause an accident in order to buy some time, they carried out the task with aplomb.

“My homemade rubber ball set is complete. Yo, time to test it out on Erna!” Annette crowed.

“Y-yeep?” Erna yelped. “Why are they bouncing so much, and why are they making that awful thudding noise?! This doesn’t feel safe!”

“I see you loaded them with metal, just as requested,” Sara said. “I’ll handle the delivery, so you two can go ahead and take a breather.”

Annette and Erna were both a little emotionally immature, but Sara did a stellar job managing them. Keeping the two problem children in line was a key part of her job, and it was a task that Sara alone was equipped to handle.

However, that wasn’t to say that everything always went exactly according to plan.

It was their first real mission, and many of them made mistakes. Some of them were so nervous their hands shook and their knees rattled. They knew that if they screwed up, it would be all too easy for the police to apprehend them and hand them over to the Imperial army or intelligence agency. Captured spies had nothing to look forward to but death by torture, and the mere thought of that was enough to make several of the girls quiver in their boots.

Klaus did what he could to help them out whenever they got into a pinch, of course, but there were eight of them, and there was only so much a single man could do for them all. A single month wasn’t nearly enough to turn a bunch of academy washouts into elite spies.

But they had one saving grace—the genius in Lamplight’s ranks who stood head and shoulders above the others.

As Grete stood in the business hotel in Galgad’s capital, her eyes went wide.

“…Are you serious?”

She was disguised as a male technician, and she’d infiltrated one of her teammate’s hotels under the pretext of needing to fix the room’s radio. Grete was a master of disguise, and her job was to use the many faces she had at her disposal to pass messages between her teammates.

The cause for her surprise was the room’s inhabitant, Monika.

“…Allow me to reiterate, just to be sure,” Grete said. “The success of our entire Impossible Mission rests on this upcoming task, and the boss says it’s going to be quite dangerous. In my opinion, it would be best to bring along the entire Specialist squad, and the boss is prepared to provide backup himself when and where he can, as well.”

They were halfway through their undercover mission, and their intel on the Endy Laboratory was all starting to come together. At long last, they’d finally figured out who they needed to compromise in order to accomplish their goals.

If they wanted to get into that lab, they needed to take their target down.

However, the importance of the task at hand wasn’t the only thing that had caught Grete’s attention. Klaus himself had described it as being dangerous. The exact phrasing he’d used was the needlessly abstract “it’ll be as perilous as poison gas pooling at our feet,” but even so, they couldn’t afford to ignore the sentiment.

Despite all that, though, Monika sounded almost nonchalant. “Yeah, I’ll be fine solo.” She didn’t even sit up on her bed as she gave the same reply as she had a moment ago. “Now that I have my weapon from Annette, I don’t need any more backup. Tell Klaus he can focus on supporting the others.”

“________”

All Grete could do was stare at her speechlessly.

Monika’s voice practically bubbled with confidence. And she wasn’t bluffing, either.

There was a pronounced gap between her and the rest of the team. Aside from Monika, all the girls were worn out. Not only had they been at the bottoms of their academy classes, but this was also their first real mission. It was only natural for them to want help from Klaus and their teammates, and many of them had asked the Intel squad for exactly that.

The only one who seemed at all relaxed—excluding Lily, whose well of emotional fortitude seemed nigh bottomless—was Monika.

“If he’s got effort to spare, better to spend it on the rest of the team. At this rate, Lily’s gonna come up with some sort of inane idea. She’ll say something like, ‘We’re all worn out, so let’s throw a party!’”

“………”

“Nah, I guess I should give the idiot some credit. Not even she would suggest something that stupid.”

Monika’s glib comments didn’t earn so much as a grin out of Grete. Instead, she just gave her head a small shake. “But Monika, not even you can—”

“Ugh, just drop it already. I said I can do it, so I’m gonna do it.” The look in Monika’s eyes was frigid. “And I’ll get it done quick, too. See you back here in two days?”

After unilaterally ending the conversation, Monika grabbed the book sitting on her nightstand. It was a piece of pure literature by an Imperial author. She lit an aromatic candle and made herself comfy.

Grete gave her a puzzled look. “If I may…”

“Hm?”

“…what made you wash out at your academy?”

Monika stared at her silently, and Grete elaborated on her question. “You once told us that you pulled your punches during your exams. But why would someone with your talents and confidence go and do something like that?”

Monika laughed. “If I told you it was ’cause I discovered my ceiling—”

“What?”

“—would you believe me?”

Grete wasn’t sure how to reply to that. She sank into silence.

Monika shrugged. “I’m kidding. It just started feeling like work, that’s all. I figured I wasn’t in any hurry to graduate.”

Grete could tell that that was a lie, but with how evasive Monika was being, she had no way of pressing the issue.

She had lived under the same roof as Monika for over a month now, but she had yet to see so much as the faintest glimmer of sincerity out of her.

“Hey, Grete.”

As Grete went to leave, Monika called out to her from behind.

“You don’t have to worry about me. If things actually start looking dicey, I’ll get out of there.”

Grete had no idea whether or not she truly meant that.

The morning after she accepted the assignment from Grete, Monika headed to an apartment complex in one of the capital’s suburbs.

The Imperial capital was situated in a valley with the schools and businesses concentrated in the middle and the residential areas on the high ground surrounding it. The suburb Monika went to was full of prewar public apartment complexes. There were dozens of them, each standing eight stories tall, and altogether the full development was home to over two thousand people. Every day, the suburb’s residents used the bus and subway systems to commute in and out of the heart of the city.

Early that morning, Monika bided her time by one of the apartment buildings and watched the people coming and going.

Luckily for her, she wasn’t the only bored-looking youngster loitering about. The area was full of truant teenagers, so all Monika had to do to blend in was sit on a bench and enjoy her breakfast sandwich and coffee.

Then, she heard a group of kids shouting over by the residences.

“You little twerp.” “Just give us what we want already.” “Yeah, and quit your backtalk.”

It sounded like someone was getting bullied.

Monika rose from her seat and headed toward the voices.

There were three bullies picking on a single kid over in an alley between two of the buildings. The victim looked to be about nine, and the boys surrounding him were far brawnier. The kid was cradling a lunchbox in his arms. That was probably what his hungry assailants were after.

Monika took a good look at the victim’s face, then called over to the group. “C’mon, that’s not cool. Seriously, three against one?”

The bullies all turned and looked at Monika. They were a little younger than her, probably fourteen or fifteen, and they were all dressed in grimy shirts and soot-stained cotton trousers. Their home lives clearly weren’t great.

“That’s not very sporting.” Monika smiled. “I get that you’re hungry, but this just isn’t right.”

“The hell? I dunno what your problem is, lady, but you can’t just—”

“Shut up.”

The boys went dead silent.

Monika had just hurled a handful of rocks at them—five in total.

They stood there with their mouths agape. “Wh—”

The coin-sized rocks had just flown at them like bullets.

However, not a single one had landed a hit. Instead, the pebbles had whizzed beside their ears, between their thighs, and beneath their armpits like they were weaving their way around them.

“If you don’t want me to be nice about it, I certainly don’t have to.” Monika picked up some more rocks off the ground. “These ones’ll hit.”

The bullies shrieked, then beat a teary-eyed retreat.

Now, the only one left was their victim.

The kid had chestnut hair and was wearing a bulky pair of glasses and a beautiful ocean-blue blazer. Monika’s sudden appearance had left him bewildered. He did manage to stammer out a “Th-thank you…” but the reality of the situation had yet to sink in for him, so that was all he could bring himself to say.

“Look, you can be as amazed as you want”—Monika tossed aside her rocks—“but it looks like you missed your school bus.”

“Oh no…”

The red bus heading to the private school was already turning down the road.

Monika smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll walk you there.”

“O-oh, no, you really don’t have to… I’ll be fine on my own.”

“Don’t worry, I can explain to them why you were late. Wouldn’t want to get in trouble with your teacher, right?”

She grabbed the boy’s arm and began pushily leading the way. He was flustered at first, but the phrase “in trouble” seemed to do the trick, and he obediently followed along.

The boy’s name was Mattel.

He spent the whole time nervous as hell, so Monika did her best to make small talk to cheer him up. After making up a story about coming to visit her grandmother, she threw in a handful of jokes, and eventually, she actually got Mattel laughing.

“Tell me, miss!” Once he’d loosened up a bit, he spoke up. “Do you have superpowers? You know, that thing you did with the rocks back there.”

“Of course not,” she casually replied.

However, her dispassionate answer only seemed to pique Mattel’s interest. “Then please, teach me how to throw rocks like you do.”

“Hm?”

“I wanna get strong like you. My dream is to become a soldier in the Imperial army someday.”

Mattel’s eyes were sparkling with reverence, like he was looking at a real live hero.

Monika pretended to think it over for a moment. “Hmm… Eh, sure, what’s the harm. I’ll give you some pointers after you get out of school.”

Mattel pumped his fists in delight. He began calling Monika “Coach” and started telling her all sorts of things about his school that she hadn’t even asked about. She responded with a couple of perfunctory “hmm”s and “oh huh”s.

The two of them continued on pleasantly until they got to Mattel’s school, where Monika dropped him off.

Naturally, it wasn’t altruism that had inspired Monika to rescue him.

Mattel was her target’s son. That was the first and only reason she’d lifted a finger.

“Your task is to extract information from a licensed electrician named Jordan Cupca.”

Grete was the one who’d given her the details.

“The information he has is essential to our mission.”

The girls’ ultimate goal was to infiltrate a facility called the Endy Laboratory, and in order to do that, they needed maps of the premises and intelligence on its defenses.

The people Grete set her sights on were the construction teams that frequently visited the lab. Her logic was that instead of trying to get information out of the researchers, who were bound by a strict duty of confidentiality, they could simply pump intel out of the lab’s external contractors. Furthermore, it stood to reason that a contractor who dealt with switchboard maintenance and electrical inspections would have a pretty detailed understanding of the lab’s inner workings.

Of the people that fit that description, Jordan Cupca did more work for the lab than anyone.

In order to get close to him, Monika started by winning over his son, Mattel Cupca.

After dropping Mattel off, Monika headed down a sideline on her own.

Over on the corner of the street, there was a partially constructed building. At the moment, it was little more than a frame of steel beams, and even those only went up three stories high. DO NOT ENTER signs were hung up all around the steel chain surrounding the area.

Monika stepped over the chain and headed into the construction site.

Fortunately, there was no one around. There must not have been any work scheduled for that day.

After making sure the site was clear of people, Monika whirled around.

“If you’re trying to be stealthy, you’re doing an awful job of it.”

She was talking in the direction of the building’s shadow.

“You were tailing us that whole time I was taking Mattel to school. That’s right, you, the hag in the ugly blue scarf. What do you want? Who do you work for?”

All was silent—but only for a moment.

That was enough time for the other party to decide that Monika needed to be eliminated. The individual in question was an old woman pushing a handcart. She rushed out from behind the building and shouted, “Die!” while grabbing an automatic pistol from her cart. She was obviously at least in her sixties, but she had the speed and agility of a woman in the prime of her youth.

Monika ducked behind a girder and assessed the situation.

I didn’t make any mistakes, so Mattel must’ve been the one the hag was tailing. When I got close to him, that was enough to draw her attention.

It was unclear what her goal was or who had hired her. That said, all Monika needed to do to find out was capture her opponent and make her talk.

The old woman blasted off shots at the girder Monika was hiding behind.

Her cart must’ve been packed full of firearms, as the moment one of her guns ran out of ammo, she pulled out another without a moment’s delay. In short, her assassination technique was to overwhelm her foe with raw firepower until they died.

“Now then, how long can you keep hiding? At this rate, you’re just going to get—”

“I’m fine right where I am,” Monika replied frostily to the old woman’s taunt. “I can see you well enough from here.”

By all rights, the steel girder should have blocked her line of sight, but Monika grinned all the same. Then, she withdrew a rubber ball from her pocket.

Annette had made those balls for her to use as throwing weapons.

“It’s time for you to learn something—that this world is home to monsters the likes of which you’ll never beat.”

Still hidden behind the girder, Monika hurled the ball with all her might.

Her technique seemed downright superhuman.

After bouncing back and forth between the myriad girders, the ball eventually smashed right into the old woman’s face.

Despite utterly demolishing the old woman, Monika learned almost nothing of value.

The woman must have been under some sort of brainwashing or something, as all she was able to do was mutter incoherently. Monika snapped a photo of her and sent the film to the Intel squad via express mail. Figuring out who the old woman was could be their problem.

At the moment, there was only one thing Monika could say for certain: the Mattel family was in some sort of serious hot water.

That high-firepower hag was no amateur. She must have some sort of organization backing her.

However, even knowing that wasn’t enough to faze Monika.

Still, no sense worrying about an org so insignificant it would willingly deploy someone as incompetent as her.

Monika’s mind was made up.

She was going to stick with the original plan—get close to Mattel, then pump his dad Jordan for information.

“Hey there, Mattel. I’m here, just like I promised.”

“Coach!”

That evening, Monika headed back to the apartment complex and met up with Mattel again.

Over at the onsite park, she taught him how to throw rocks. What they were doing amounted to nothing more than finding stones on the ground and hurling them at empty cans, but Mattel took to it with zeal. All Monika was doing was playing the part of a coach and giving him the occasional pointer, but Mattel seemed moved all the same, which certainly made her job easier.

According to Mattel, it was like doing drills. Sweat poured from his forehead as he single-mindedly continued going through the motions. Monika briefly wondered what it was about phrases like “doing drills” and “secret training” that young boys found so enthralling.

When she asked Mattel why he was going about it so passionately, he answered with obvious excitement. “So I can become a soldier!” His eyes sparkled. “Being a soldier is an important and honorable job. They taught us that in school. Before I was born, we fought valiantly against the Allies. My dream is to become a soldier so I can fight in the next war.”

His responses were oddly snappy. He was probably imitating the way soldiers talked.

“Ah,” Monika replied half-heartedly.

Imperial soldiers had ravaged the Republic, so as someone who was born there, Monika had complicated feelings about all that. In what world were people who mercilessly mowed down women and children anyone to look up to? There were a million things she would’ve liked to say, but she knew that telling them to an innocent child wouldn’t accomplish anything.

“Do you have a dream, Coach?” As Monika stood there engrossed in her thoughts, a question shook her from her reverie. “I’m curious. What do you want to become?”

“Who, me? Nah, no dreams.”

“Wait, no dreams?” Mattel’s eyes went wide in surprise.

Monika scratched her head.

It was a fair enough question. In elementary schools, they often made the students write essays about their future aspirations.

Back before she joined her spy academy, Monika attended a civilian elementary school herself. Even back then, she’d never been any good when the topic turned to dreams and goals.

“Tell me, do you think having dreams is a good thing?” Monika asked in a dispassionate tone of voice.

Mattel raised an eyebrow. “Is…is it not?”

“Here, try this on for size. Let’s say you found out you were fantastic at football, and that you were good enough to become the best player in the world. Would you still want to become a soldier?”

The Empire founded its professional league before the war, and to that day, football players were revered by children the nation over. On game days, people would gather in television-equipped pubs and go wild whenever their team made a shot.

Mattel started wavering. “If that happened…I would have to think about it.”

“What if you could become the biggest movie star in the world? Would you want to become a soldier, then?”

“Oh, man…”

“You’d have more money than you knew what to do with, women would throw themselves at you, and you’d get to eat gourmet food every day. Would you trade that life to go live in some strict, smelly barracks?”

“I-I’d have to think about that one, too…”

“Or would you still try to become a soldier if you got to the military academy and you ended up being dead last in the pecking order the whole time you were there?”

“………”

Mattel was silent. He understood what Monika was trying to say.

“It’s all just leftovers.” Monika smiled bitterly. “The thing about people is that we sort things into stuff that seems possible and stuff that doesn’t, then take the best of what remains, call it our ‘dream,’ and treat it like it’s priceless. It’s really nothing that special.”

At the end of the day, people desired money. They desired recognition. They desired to be able to contribute to society. They desired sex. People were filled with all sorts of desires, and jobs were nothing more than a means to achieve those ends. Sanctifying them by calling them “dreams” or “ambitions” was ridiculous.

That was how Monika saw the world.

“………” Mattel seemed dumbfounded.

None of that had ever crossed his mind before. He stood motionless, like a stray child who’d just lost his map.

Monika smiled in self-derision.

It was time to get her head back on straight. There was no sense lecturing her target’s son about her philosophy on life.

She changed the subject.

“By the way, I’m getting pretty thirsty. Let’s stop by your place so you can get me some water.”

Monika didn’t have much in the way of passion.

Her family had built their fortune as artists. Her father was a painter, her mother was a musician, and her older brother and older sister had inherited their parents’ skills and were planning on becoming artists as well. During the Great War, the whole family evacuated to another continent so they could continue devoting themselves to the arts. They all wanted to heighten their craft; day in and day out, they had discussions about what constituted “beauty.”

Monika never really fit in.

The well of artistic sensibilities seemed to have run dry at her siblings, and as the youngest daughter, Monika never found herself drawn to art. Whenever she slapped some paint on a canvas, she received reasonable amounts of praise, and when she picked up an instrument, she would garner decent reviews. However, she herself couldn’t care less.

“Your music and art are all function and no form. It’s technically precise, but it never pops,” her father told her wistfully. “Perhaps your true calling lies in some other field.”

His words echoed heavy in her thirteen-year-old ears.

I have to find somewhere where I can really be myself.

In the end, she decided to become a spy on little more than a gut feeling. She used her father’s connections to join a spy academy, and when she got there, she passed the entrance exam without a hitch.

By all accounts, she’d made the right choice.

The moment she first got there, Monika immediately began getting the best grades out of all her peers. It only took her a few shots to get a feel for how guns worked, she was able to listen to simultaneous radio broadcasts in three different languages and memorize them all, and she was able to take those three messages, convert them into a cipher, and relay them over a telegraph without making a single typo. She was even able to complete a sixty-mile hike, then scale a seventy-foot-tall building barehanded and sneak in through a seventh-floor window immediately thereafter.

Being a spy is what I was born to do.

It didn’t take long for Monika to start believing that, and she began putting everything she had into her training.

“Wait, for real? This is what passes for top students? Sheesh, what a shocker. You kids are weak as hell!”

Soon, though, her hubris got smashed into a million pieces.

One day, the academies all brought their best students together for a special joint training exercise—and on that day, Monika learned the truth.

The assignment was dead simple. All they had to do was steal a single code book from their examiner. Monika had only recently enrolled, and she was surrounded by upperclassmen whose current skills surpassed even hers. They all assumed they had it in the bag.

But they failed.

Not just that, they got annihilated. Soon, every student but Monika was lying unconscious on the ground.

As the sole survivor, all she could do was stare blankly at their examiner.

“I gotta say, I’m surprised. I guess we’re not gonna have a single successful candidate this time around! I mean, Guido’s still holding his test over at the male schools, but that guy’s even stricter than me.”

The examiner had taken down twenty honors students without so much as breaking a sweat.

Once Monika was the only one left standing, the examiner gave her a smile. “You can head on back now. Yeah, you, with the blue hair. I heard about you, you know. Getting invited to this exercise after just two months at your academy? You’ve got promise, kiddo. That’s something to be proud of. But with your current skills, you’re a total no-go.”

She patted Monika on the shoulder as she passed her by.

“Remember this: In our world, people without fire in their hearts are nothing more than garbage.”

Monika didn’t know.

She didn’t know that the woman was a member of Inferno and Klaus’s de facto older sister, “Flamefanner” Heide.

And she didn’t know that the so-called “special joint training exercise” was secretly a selection test for new Inferno members.

In that moment, though, she’d witnessed something—a peak she would never be able to reach, no matter how much effort she put in.

That was the day Monika stopped trying.

When they arrived at the apartment, Mattel got Monika some mineral water, then chugged down a glass himself. Soon thereafter, he began nodding off.

“Sorry, Coach… I’m just really tired…”

He diligently apologized, then plopped himself down on the nearby sofa and fell asleep. When Monika gave his shoulder a light push, he crumpled onto his side. The sleeping pill she’d slipped into his water had worked like a charm.

“Don’t worry, it’ll wear off soon.”

Mattel was the only other person in the apartment. His mom had moved out during the divorce, and his dad was still at work. Mattel had told her what time his dad was getting home, so Monika knew she was free to scour the place. The apartments in the complex were pretty standard two-bedroom affairs, with a pair of bedrooms accompanied by a living room and a combined kitchen-dining room.

Monika headed straight for the dad’s bedroom and opened up his filing cabinet.

Let’s see if we can find something to blackmail him with, shall we?

The best-case scenario would be finding schematics for the Endy Laboratory’s electrical systems, but he probably stored those at his workplace or in some office inside the laboratory itself. What Monika needed was something she could use to threaten him into stealing those schemata.

Worse comes to worst, I can always take the kid hostage and get information out of him that way.

She’d already won Mattel over, so that would be easy to pull off if necessary. Looking through the apartment’s photo albums, it was clear to see just how much the man loved his son. Monika didn’t relish the thought of kidnapping the kid, but it would certainly be an effective way to get the target to obey her instructions.

When she opened up the man’s chest of drawers, Monika tilted her head to the side.

…Is that a false bottom?

The bottom of the drawer was ever-so-slightly elevated.

The question was, why would an ordinary civilian apartment even have something like that?

She lifted up the bottom and inspected the hidden drawer’s contents. Inside, there was a single notebook.

Monika couldn’t help but grin as she leafed through it.

This target’s got one hell of a secret.

It was time for a change of plans. Monika decided not to leave the bedroom. Instead, she hid behind the door and waited.

An hour later, Mattel’s dad got home.

His name was Jordan Cupca, and he was a skinny, earnest-looking man who worked at a small electrical shop. He draped a blanket over Mattel, who was still out like a light, then loosened his tie and went into his bedroom.

Monika pressed her gun against his back. “Don’t move. Don’t turn around. Hands up.”

“Wh—”

Jordan was understandably shocked. His body trembled. He reflexively started to look back, but Monika pressed harder with her gun. “I said, don’t turn around.”

Jordan raised his hands. He was as pale as a sheet. “A-are you a burglar?”

“Nah, nothing nearly that barbaric.” Monika pressed the bedroom door shut behind her. “I took a look at that false bottom of yours.”

“I’m sure I don’t—”

“That’s quite an exciting document you’ve put together.”

Tiny quivers began running down Jordan’s back. Monika couldn’t see his face, but she guessed he had tears in his eyes right about now.

Now that she had him good and scared, she made her reveal. “Don’t worry. I’m on your side.”

“What?”

“You’re planning on defecting, right? I’m a spy from the Din Republic.”

That was what the false-bottom drawer had contained—a scathing report on the unethical research Jordan’s motherland was conducting.

Jordan detested the Empire’s expansionist ways much the way Monika and the rest of Lamplight did.

Jordan continued facing away from Monika as he explained the situation.

He described how he was unable to turn a blind eye to the acts of aggression the Galgad Empire committed during the Great War. Officially speaking, Galgad signed a security treaty after they lost the war, but the nation’s people still harbored deep grudges against the Allies, and the army was preparing in secret for another war. According to Jordan, the Empire was on track to start another campaign of aggression.

“I’ve given up on my motherland. During my work inspecting the lab’s electrical systems…I discovered that they’re performing human experiments on death row convicts.”

Jordan had taken that confidential information and listed it all out in his secret notebook. Eventually, he planned on handing it over to a foreign journalist and exposing the Empire’s schemes.

“Kind of ironic, considering how much of a diehard patriot your kid is,” Monika commented drily.

Jordan heaved a heavy sigh. “I imagine I have his school to thank for that. The teachers there drill the students into thinking that the reason we lost the Great War was because of the Allies’ underhanded tricks.”

“Oh yeah? I’ll be honest, figuring who was in the right and who was in the wrong is above my pay grade.”

“Well, that makes two of us. And I’m certainly not trying to speak poorly of all the soldiers who died fighting for our homeland. Even so, the Din Republic was clearly the victimized country there. That’s the way I feel, at least.”

The Empire invaded the Republic simply because it was in its way.

Jordan nodded. “If you’re a spy from the Republic, then this is the best thing I could have asked for. You’re investigating the laboratory, right? I’d be happy to help out however I can.”

“Glad we could come to an understanding.”

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this day to come.”

Monika flipped back through Jordan’s notebook, then nodded in satisfaction.

The man wasn’t lying. The notebook had dated records of rumors he’d heard at the lab, transcripts from the recording devices he’d planted in the switchboards, research documents he’d stolen, and vitriolic diatribes directed at the Galgad.

His mistrust of the Empire had been building up for years, and this was the result. He was practically a spy himself.

Looks like my work here is done. It’s almost disappointing how simple that was.

She hadn’t needed to bribe him or threaten him or anything. As far as jobs went, this one had been about as easy as they came.

Jordan even had his daily notes all neatly organized, so she wouldn’t need to ask him to clarify or elaborate on any of it. It was hard to believe that an amateur like him had collected so much information.

Wait a minute…

A thought crossed Monika’s mind.

These notes are almost too detailed.

The moment she realized what it was that seemed so off, she gasped. “Hey, Jordan. Let me ask you a question.”

“What?”

“While you were stealing all this intel…did you ever draw any suspicion?”

“Huh…?”

Jordan didn’t seem to understand the question. It was like the possibility had never even crossed his mind.

Monika fought back the urge to click her tongue. Never mind, he was definitely an amateur. He’d forgotten the risks he was taking.

Now, what would happen if anyone had noticed how shadily Jordan was acting?

The first thing they’d do is get the secret police involved, and the secret police would assign a counterintelligence operative to him. Then, the operative would start digging through Jordan’s personal life and acquaintances. And how would they do that? Probably the same way Monika had—by getting close to his son.

Monika’s eyes went wide. “The old woman.”

“The who?” Jordan asked.

“They’ve already got you under surveillance!”

If that old woman was a member of the secret police, it would mean that they were right on Jordan’s tail.

All of a sudden, they heard the sound of wood exploding into splinters over by the entrance. Someone had just smashed in the apartment door, and whoever they were, they weren’t there to play nice.

Mattel screamed. The noise must have woken him up.

“Mattel! Are you okay?!”

Jordan sprang into motion like he’d just received an electric shock. He rushed into the living room, toward the scream.

Monika immediately hid. She peered into the living room through the crack in the door.

“How nice to meet you. I’m here from Ravine, the Empire’s counterintelligence organization,” a female voice said casually. “My name is Eve, and you, Jordan Cupca, are under arrest for suspected espionage.”

Monika stood there with bated breath as she thought through just how doomed they were.

The Din Republic’s intelligence organization, the Foreign Intelligence Office, didn’t make a strong distinction between intelligence and counterintelligence work, but in Galgad, Ravine existed as a fully autonomous counterintelligence body. Assassinating foreign spies and suppressing renegades and insurgents was their entire MO.

Once they zeroed in on someone, that person was as good as dead. They didn’t even hesitate to kill their own citizens.

Currently, there were two hostiles: a petite woman wearing a cruel smile, and a large, brawny man. The man had already captured Mattel and was holding a knife to his throat, but Monika’s instincts told her that the woman named Eve was the more dangerous of the two. She was clearly the one calling the shots.

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Over in the living room, Jordan’s knees rattled. “You must have made some mistake. I’ve been nothing but loyal to the Empire…”

“Oh? From what I hear, you’ve been doing quite a lot of grousing down at the pub.”

Eve gave Jordan a forceful kick to the chest. He groaned in pain. “Dad!” Mattel cried, but the man told him to shut up and clamped his hand over Mattel’s mouth.

After kicking Jordan a couple more times, Eve threw a wire out from the tip of her finger. Her technique was masterful, and the wire seemed like it was practically alive as it coiled its way around Jordan’s neck.

“I’m taking you in. Don’t you raise your voice.”

“………”

“If you try to resist, I’ll strangle you and your son both.”

She already had the evidence she needed. Jordan wasn’t going to be able to talk his way out of this.

Monika calmly reached her verdict.

I need to hightail it.

It was time to abandon Jordan and Mattel. She’d succeeded in her mission the moment she got the notebook, and now, she could simply escape out the bedroom window.

Jordan shot a pleading look over in the direction Monika was hiding in.

“Hm? Do you have someone holed up in the bedroom?” The gesture didn’t escape Eve’s attention. “You know, I did get an odd report this morning. One of my agents got taken out by a mysterious assailant. Could it be? Have you already made contact with a foreign spy?”

“Th-that’s, I…”

“I asked you a question, you little worm. Answer it!”

Eve tightened her wire just short of suffocating Jordan and kicked him yet again. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he gasped for air.

Eve wasn’t letting up. It was only a matter of time before he confessed.

Sorry, Jordan. You weren’t careful enough, and now you’re going to pay the price.

Monika inched quietly toward the window.

At least your notebook will get put to good use.

The prospect of him getting executed was a sad one, but as a spy, this was the correct call for her to make.

The mission was complete. There was no need to expose herself to any more danger.

Monika made up her mind to leave the family to die and reached for the windowsill.

All I have to do is throw in the towel. Just like I always have before…

She thought back to how, ever since the joint training exercise, she’d started giving up on everything.

For Monika, getting recruited onto Lamplight was a welcome release from her slothful days of training at the academy.

She had seen her ceiling, but she hadn’t been able to abandon her last vestiges of hope. Maybe someday, she prayed, a well of genius will spring up inside of me. It was a self-indulgent fantasy, but she couldn’t quite bear to rid herself of it.

When she got scouted to join Lamplight, she found her expectations for herself renewed.

I was right, she thought. Being a spy is what I was born to do.

Training with Klaus would be the perfect opportunity for her. She rejoiced at the opportunity to test her skills against the self-proclaimed “World’s Strongest.”

As the other girls attacked Klaus head-on, Monika gathered information, making sure to hide her true strength all the while. Then, once their training reached its final stages, she made her move and went after Klaus for real.

Out of all the attacks they staged during their month of training, hers was the one that came closest.

Everything was proceeding according to Monika’s plan.

“Look, Teach, we’ve got a hostage! If you take one step closer, I’ll light this report on fire!”

“And she’s got a bodyguard, too. How d’ya like them apples? You’ve got no choice but to surrender, yeah?”

Monika chuckled gloatingly as she listened to her teammates’ voices through her radio during the operation’s final stages.

Lily had gotten ahold of a report that Klaus badly needed, and Sybilla was there using her powerful close-combat skills to defend her. Klaus had been forced into a two-against-one situation where he couldn’t afford to lift a finger.

However…

“Magnificent.”

By the time Monika joined up with the others, it was all over.

Klaus had already stolen the report back and was gazing down coolly at Lily and Sybilla. The two of them were on all fours and staring in blank shock.

“Wh-what just happened…?” Lily groaned.

“I simply moved things along like a stream gently washing away a leaf,” Klaus replied like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Seeing him there caused the joint training exercise to flash back through Monika’s head.

In that moment, she realized that she’d hit her ceiling again.

She had taken him on with everything she had, and she’d been completely and utterly trounced. When she looked at the situation objectively, it was enough to drive her to despair.

I could sacrifice my whole life, and I’d still never surpass Klaus.

No amount of effort would be enough to beat him. That much was clear.

She was going to end up as a slightly above-average spy who got used up and thrown away on a whim. That was the sole future that awaited her.

Her heart had beat for a brief moment, but it was rapidly freezing over again.

“Rgh! It’s okay, Monika, next time we’ll get him for sure! Don’t let it get you down, okay?”

“Yeah, she’s right. No sense mopin’.”

Lily and Sybilla were none the wiser, and she envied the way they could devote themselves so effortlessly to their training.

Nowhere but the perverse world of espionage could that asinine, unflagging hardheadedness of theirs thrive.

If only she could be as inept as they were. Then, being a spy would be the only choice she had anyway.

If only she could be as skilled as Klaus was. Then, she would truly believe that working as a spy was her calling.

Instead, though, she was merely competent and nothing more. She was decent at everything, but there was no field where she could compete with true geniuses.

How was she supposed to be passionate under conditions like those?

That was why Monika gave up.

She made the call to flee. She had no motive strong enough to justify going head-to-head against the enemy for the sake of two people she’d only just met.

If there existed a god of espionage, then Monika simply didn’t have their blessing. She would never reach the highest heights. She would never become like Klaus or that examiner. She’d abandoned hoping for that ages ago. She’d given up.

She whispered, “Goodbye,” and leaned out the window.

“Leave my dad alone!”

The moment she did, she heard a cry.

Mattel…?

She reflexively looked back.

Then, her body moved on its own. She approached the door and peered back into the living room.

“Go away, you meanies! Get out!”

Mattel was fighting back with everything he had. He must’ve escaped the man’s grasp.

Now, he was grabbing glasses and forks and everything else he could get his hands on from the kitchen area and throwing them at Eve and the man. His foes seemed bewildered at the fact that a child was hurling things straight at their faces—and accurately, at that.

That there was the rock-throwing technique Monika had taught him. He was fighting to protect his father.

His face was bright red, and he was weeping his eyes out, but he never let up. The moment he picked up a new piece of tableware, he immediately shifted his grip on it to make it easier to throw, then clumsily hurled it.

“You little shit!”

The man flew into a rage and slammed Mattel to the ground. But Mattel bit his fingers and wriggled free.

Monika had a clear view of Eve, and she could see the question lingering in the woman’s gaze.

Why even fight back?

Monika shared the sentiment. No matter how you sliced it, Mattel didn’t stand a chance.

Why was Mattel resisting? Why wasn’t he just giving up? What was driving him so?

“Let my dad GOOOOOOO!”

However, his show of resistance didn’t last long. The man captured him again, and this time, he pressed Mattel’s head against the floor so he couldn’t bite his fingers a second time. Mattel kicked and tried to struggle free.

“Can you please shut the child up already?” Eve spat in exasperation. “Just break his arm and be done with it.”

The only thing Mattel’s fruitless resistance was doing was pissing off his opponents. Yet even so, he just kept on struggling.

Countless “why”s rose up to the forefront of Monika’s mind, and one of them in particular flashed the most intense colors of all.

…Why am I still standing here?

All she had to do was flee. Mattel had been fighting back so loudly that nobody had heard her open the window. It had been the perfect opportunity, yet her feet had refused to obey her.

The more she watched Mattel, the more she saw her teammates and the way they never gave up even when faced with an overwhelming foe.

She could almost hear Lily’s and Sybilla’s cheerful voices.

“Next time, we’ll take Teach down for sure! All the defeats we’ve suffered have been laying the groundwork for our eventual victory.”

“Yeah! We can’t keep losin’ forever, that’d be the pits.”

Whenever those two spoke up, the others would soon follow with their voices full of hope.

“In that case, I have a plan that might be worth testing…” “No, no, I want to try rushing him down again first.” “I-if it’s all right, I have something I’d like to add, too.” “I wanna play with Bro, too, yo!” “This time, my honey trap will bring him down. As they say, hundredth time’s the charm!”

The task was so difficult that Monika had given up on it, yet a bunch of people far weaker than her were giving it another go.

Those voices she’d spent the past month listening to refused to leave her head.

She could feel her body growing hotter.

Something had just flickered to life in her heart.

Was the heat rage? A sense of duty? Whatever it was, it was welling up from deep inside her. She looked up at the ceiling and whispered quietly. “This feels like shit…”

She covered her face with her hand and let out a large sigh.

…I’m not supposed to have passion. I mean, what the heck?

Nothing ever made her heart stir. Nothing was supposed to, in any case. Yet there she was, still standing there instead of making the rational decision. It was like there was someone shouting in her ear. Do it! Stand up! Fight back!

“Have they started rubbing off on me? That’s hilarious.” She grinned a self-deprecating grin. “Like a goddamn virus or something.”

Monika sucked in a deep breath.

She didn’t want to lose this heat. And that meant fleeing wasn’t an option.

There was no need to actually take down the enemies—all she needed to do was get Jordan and Mattel out of there safely.

If she was going to do that, she needed her mind to be as cold as ice and as sharp as steel.

She readied her weapons. In her right hand, she had a revolver, and in her left, she had a broken mirror and her rubber balls. Finally, she made sure the device hidden in her pocket was still where it was supposed to be.

“All right, shitters, looks like I have to actually try for a bit.”

That marked the first step toward her awakening.

Monika charged out of the bedroom and aimed her gun.

Eve and the man reacted immediately. Eve took a nimble leap over the sofa and hid behind it, and the man lifted Mattel up to use him as a shield. They could sense Monika’s hostility. It would take more than a surprise attack to bring them down.

She fired a pair of shots off anyway.

The first bullet penetrated the room’s light fixture and plunged them all into darkness. Monika couldn’t afford to let the hostiles see what she looked like. The sun had all but finished its descent past the horizon, and the faint light it provided was only barely enough to do battle by. Now, it was the twilight that would define their deadly clash.

The second bullet smashed into the room’s full-length mirror. The mirror shattered, scattering shards across the room. Monika followed up by throwing the mirror pieces she was holding so they landed in specific locations.

All her combat preparations were complete. She ducked back into the bedroom and held her breath.

“Now, who might you be?” Eve almost sounded like she was enjoying herself. “A foreign spy, come to protect these two? Or just one of our own homegrown idiot activists?”

Monika laughed. “I’m the kid’s coach.”

As she replied, she tried to use her opponent’s voice to gauge where she was. However, she ran into a problem. She could figure out Eve’s rough location, but she couldn’t pin down the exact spot. Eve must have been throwing her voice.

“You have five seconds to come out, or the boy dies,” Eve said coldly.

The fact her opponents had a hostage put Monika at a major disadvantage.

Now, how to make my way out of this predicament…

She had a clue to work off of—her training with Klaus.

The situations were exactly the same, and despite the hostage, the World’s Greatest had managed to take down Lily and Sybilla both. All Monika had to do now was replicate that feat.

The problem is, I wasn’t there to see how he did it…

By the time Monika got to the scene, the fight was already over. She had no way of reenacting his technique.

“I simply moved things along like a stream gently washing away a leaf.”

That was the only explanation he’d given.

When they pressed him for more specifics on how he did it, he sank deep into thought.

“…I just did.”

I swear to God! How can anyone be that bad at teaching?!

As Monika belatedly grumbled to herself, she noticed a hostile tendril snaking its way around her throat.

“!”

Upon noticing that faint presence, she rolled into the living room.

“Oh goodness, you dodged it.”

“You didn’t even wait five seconds, you liar.” Monika reached up and felt her shoulder. She’d escaped at the last possible moment, but she’d still gotten nicked. “A wire user, huh…”

Monika didn’t know when she’d done it, but Eve had laid a web of wires over the entire living room.

All the wires were extending from Eve’s right hand. That was what she’d used to silently attack Monika. Come to think of it, she’d probably used them to throw her voice, too.

“Taking away the light was a poor move,” Eve crowed triumphantly. “You can’t see a single one of my wires, yet I can still feel the whole room through my fingertips.”

“And you couldn’t have warned me ahead of time?”

Monika was right in front of her foe, but she couldn’t act.

One careless move, and she could find herself tangled up in a wire she hadn’t spotted. Her other foe, the man, had his knife to Mattel’s throat. And Eve’s wires were still wrapped around Jordan’s neck.

She was blocked in on all sides.

Eve took the gun in her left hand and fired off a shot.

There was less than ten feet between them. Monika contorted her body, but dodging the attack was beyond her.

“Rgh!”

The bullet grazed her shoulder. A line of blood ran down her arm.

“You avoided taking a fatal wound? From this range?” Eve laughed, clearly impressed. “How intriguing. I wonder how many more dodges you have in you?”

She fired again.

Monika fixed her gaze on the gun’s muzzle and perfectly calculated the bullet’s trajectory. She had to sacrifice a few strands of hair, but she was able to avoid the shot.

Eve laughed in amusement. She had never been expecting that shot to land in the first place.

“Eve, stop playing around,” her teammate chided her. “Either put her down or capture her already. What happens if her teammates hear those gunshots and come to help her, huh?”

“I know, I know. Spoilsport.” Eve reluctantly stowed her pistol away.

Their misguided caution earned a chuckle out of Monika. She was laughing at herself as much as she was at them.

Oh, I’m not getting any backup. I told Grete I didn’t need any.

She shouldn’t have shown off like that. She should have just accepted the help. Now, the only one who was going to be fighting was her. All she had to rely on was her own cool intellect.

She snuck a glance over at Mattel. The moment his sorrowful gaze met hers, he hung his head.

“Don’t take your eyes off me, Mattel.” Monika put away her gun and readied her knife. “Just you wait. I’m gonna show you something a hundred times cooler than any soldier.”

“Ready to make our stand, are we?” Eve smiled. “Come at me. I’ll strip the skin off your bones.”

Eve began delicately twiddling the fingers on her right hand. Beside her, the man shook his head in exasperation.

This was good. Monika needed her opponents to feel certain that they’d already won. The more they had their guards up, the more danger the hostages would be in.

Monika let out a fierce roar and charged forward. “HRAAAAAH!”

She squeezed her knife tight and swung it at her foes.

“—Caught you.”

However, her body soon froze.

The invisible wire coiled around her right arm brought her attack to an abrupt halt. She gasped in pain and dropped her knife. She tried to struggle free, but another wire soon captured her left arm, as well.

Eve hadn’t been lying when she said that her web of wires stretched across the entire room. Monika’s attack had been doomed from the start.

“It’s no use,” Eve said triumphantly. “Still, I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything more out of you.”

“Rgh… Coward…” Monika’s ensnared arms were hoisted into the air, forcing her into a truly pathetic pose. “This technique of yours hardly seems fair. I’ll have to try it out myself sometime.”

“You aren’t too bright, are you?” Eve sneered. “You really think you’ll have a next time for anything?” She gestured with her right hand, and yet another wire wrapped itself around Monika’s neck. “We’re going to torture you, then kill you. That’s the only future you have to look forward to.”

“In that case, could you do me one final favor?” Monika replied, undaunted. “I wanna know how you do it. How can you manipulate so many wires all at once?”

“Wh—! Do you even understand the situation you’re in, child?”

“Yeah, of course. You said it yourself—you can feel the whole room through your fingertips, right?” Monika shook her hips. “Well, I can do it, too. When you strung up my arms, it told me where all your wires were.”

A rubber ball tumbled out of her pocket, and Monika kicked it, hard.

The ball was a custom-made throwing weapon about two inches in diameter made of a heavy metal core surrounded by rubber. When Monika kicked it, it went soaring directly at Eve’s face.

Eve dodged the initial attack, but Monika had accounted for that. Next, it bounced off the wall and smashed hard into the back of her neck.

“You little…”

The moment the wires went slack, Monika wrenched herself free. After catching her rubber ball on the rebound, she pulled out another one and readied them both. Then, she hurled the two balls with all her might. They bounced around the room unfettered and soared at her opponents’ blind spots.

“She’s firing blind! Don’t panic!” Eve shouted. “They’ll hit my wires soon enough, and that’ll be—”

“Like hell they will.”

While her enemies were distracted, Monika fired a kick at the side of Eve’s head.

She already knew where all the wires were. She had nothing to fear from them.

When Eve reeled back, the rubber ball that had just bounced off the ceiling sank into her shoulder like that had been its plan all along.

“How…?”

“It’s just basic calculation.” Monika grinned. “Once I know where your wires are, all I have to do is bounce my balls between them.”

That was Monika’s true weapon—her calculation skills. The key question was, what angle did she need to throw her ball at to make it hit her enemy, and how many ricochets would it take to get there? By calculating it all out on the fly, she could use the metal balls’ rebounds to defeat her enemies from their blind spots. Her balls were far less predictable than bullets, and there was no way to track the danger they posed.

Right before Monika could finish Eve off, Eve let out a yell. “Kill the hostage!” she shouted. Her hysterical cry echoed through the room. “Kill the kid! Now!”

Monika froze up. Even if Eve was bluffing, the threat alone was enough to get her to stop moving.

Eve smirked. Her plan had worked like a charm.

However, she hadn’t noticed one thing. She had no idea that while Monika’s body was still, her mind was working overtime.

The mirror’s at a 34-degree angle, the balls lose 16 percent of their velocity each time they ricochet… So, if I time it for 2.4 seconds afterward… That wire is a problem… But if I shift it 0.4 inches to the side, I can actually use it to my advantage…

She calculated. And calculated. And calculated. And calculated. And calculated. And calculated. And calculated. And calculated.

By using the mirrors she’d strewn across the room in advance, she could make out the room in its entirety.

This’ll work.

Monika didn’t move. Or rather, she couldn’t afford to. The stiller she stood, the safer her foes would feel. They wouldn’t attack the hostages if they thought that continuing to hold them was effective.

Monika needed to defeat her opponents in a single instant without moving an inch. Right now, those requirements were nonnegotiable.

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

For her next attack, she used the fastest thing in the world.

Light.

The blinding light the device she was holding gave off bounced across the mirrors and struck the man square in the face. Immediately thereafter, she turned to Eve and blasted her in the eyes with light, too.

For a pair of people whose eyes had gotten accustomed to the dark, it was a painful attack indeed. Monika’s two foes groaned in unison, and in unison, they sprang into action.

They were spooked. Right in the middle of a life-or-death battle, they’d gotten blasted by light out of nowhere and been robbed of their vision. It was only human to panic. They immediately began attacking and dodging.

Monika had seen it all. The mirrors she’d set up, the wires, the ricocheting balls, the beams of light, everything.

Her calculations had allowed her to control the entire space.

Tell me, Klaus…

She directed a silent comment toward her absent instructor.

…when you beat Lily and Sybilla, this is how you did it, right?

Eve swung her wires. The man, still holding his hostage, contorted his body to get away from the light.

And with that, the future Monika had ushered in came to pass.

The answer she’d arrived at after tens of thousands of calculations—was a picturesque case of enemy-friendly fire.

Monika wasn’t able to put her opponents down for good.

It took everything she had just getting them to injure each other enough so she could rescue the family and beat a hasty retreat. The wounds her foes dealt each other were bad enough they chose not to press their luck by giving chase.

Once they’d all escaped to safety, Monika handed Jordan and Mattel a note. “I’m going to go cover your escape route. You won’t be able to stay in the Empire any longer. Go to this address and give them this password, and the Republic will give you political asylum.”

Their undercover collaborators in the Empire would help get them across the border. Forcing Mattel to abandon his homeland sucked, but the important thing was that he was still alive.

When Jordan began thanking her again and again, Monika gave him some pocket money for emergencies and urged him to get moving. Jordan gave her one last deep bow, then gave Mattel’s arm a tug.

“………”

However, Mattel wouldn’t budge. He just stared at Monika, transfixed.

“What is it? You gotta get moving.”

“S-so was I was right?” he asked, his face flush. “Do you actually have superpowers, Coach?”

“Seriously? This again?”

“But the way you moved back there, you must have superpowers.”

“Nah. I’m just a little clever on my feet, that’s all.” Monika gave him a wry smile. If she really did have superpowers, she would have been able to make so much sense of her life. “There are tons of folks in this world of ours who’re way cooler and way closer to having superpowers than me. There’s people who’re immune to poison, master pickpockets who can make people forget they’re there…”

“But not you, Coach?”

Monika fished a device out of her pocket.

A clicking sound rang out, and a flash went off.

“Creepshot.”

That was what Monika had used to fire the light—a camera.

“This is my power. Pretty uninspiring, huh?”

Mattel snapped his eyes shut from the sudden blast of light.

That was the technique she’d been keeping a secret, even from her teammates.

By taking full advantage of her calculation abilities, she was able to use mirrors to get her target in focus at just the right moment. Without movements as precise as hers, it would be nigh impossible to take clean pictures while on the move.

“It is handy, though. I got good shots of the hostiles back there. Now, all the spies in the Republic will be able to see these photos, and the enemies don’t even know their faces got leaked.”

A bashful look crossed Monika’s face. “But at the end of the day, that’s all it’s good for. It’s just a shitty ability that’s already found its ceiling.”

The most accurate way to describe her would be as a jack of all trades but a master of none.

There were plenty of girls in Lamplight with stronger specialties than her. Compared to the likes of poison, disguises, theft, negotiation, rearing, tinkering, or accidents, it was almost laughable.

Monika had given up long ago. She could do everything, but she couldn’t do anything. She was going to be stuck as a slightly above-average spy for the rest of her days.

“Y-you’re too stubborn, Coach.”

“Huh?”

It sounded like Mattel had something he wanted to get off his chest.

“And you’ve got too much pride. As far as I’m concerned, you’re already the best spy in the world.”

He clearly meant every word, too.

Monika wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, so she said nothing and patted Mattel’s head.