Free Web Novel“Puff.”
“Puff.”
In the darkness, two dull yet faint sounds rang out, like a paper drum bursting, yet they failed to stir even the slightest ripple in this dark, silent environment.
The air twisted, and the figure in a black formal suit slowly revealed his shape. Behind him, the two guards who had been hiding in the dark had already had their throats slit and hearts pierced in silence, vital points struck true. Terror still lingered on their faces, yet they had not even managed to raise the final alarm.
As the two guards lost all strength and collapsed, it was as if some invisible force gently lifted them at the instant they hit the ground, rendering them incredibly light. They touched down without a sound. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
From the depths of the shadows, the girl holding a parasol approached at an unhurried pace, her posture graceful, as if she were out on a spring outing in the countryside.
Yet in the unseen spaces, ice had already spread, completely freezing the two of them, sealing all blood and any remaining trace of life.
“Such perfect coordination.”
Muen flicked his hand, sending a neat arc of blade-light spinning, then turned back with a smile.
“I didn’t expect the two of us to be so perfectly in sync. Our coordination is practically like an old married co—”
“Shut up.”
“...Oh.”
Celicia stopped walking and examined their surroundings.
“This should already be the depths.”
“Looks like it. Judging by our estimate of how large the underground space of the black market is, we’ve been sneaking in for quite a while—by now we should definitely have reached the core area.”
Muen also looked around.
“This seems to be a factory.”
Through a small glass window, he could see the dark interior of the building, with belt-like platforms similar to conveyor lines and all kinds of workshop tools.
It was somewhat like a factory from his previous life, but in both scale and standardization, it fell far short. The “conveyor belts” were still powered by people pedaling them with their feet, making it more akin to a densely packed, labor-intensive handcraft workshop.
But given the productivity level of this world, this already counted as a well-equipped factory.
“Looks like this is just an ordinary food production plant?”
Muen narrowed his eyes.
Although no one was currently working, from the tools and molds used, it was still clear that this place was used to produce food.
There were even food samples on the racks at the side that had yet to be put away.
“It really is food production.”
Celicia swept a glance over it.
“It’s a type of small cake that keeps for a long time. It’s been popular on the market recently. Producing this here is no surprise.” freēwēbηovel.c૦m
“......”
Muen blinked and looked at Celicia.
You can tell what they’re producing at a glance, and you still claim your prior investigation wasn’t about the cake?
However, though he grumbled like this in his heart, Muen was not yet prepared to play cement play with Celicia, so he kept that line firmly suppressed in his mind.
“Strange. If this really is just a food processing plant, could we have come to the wrong place?” Muen asked, puzzled.
“Heh, why don’t you go tell that to the guards you just killed? An ordinary food processing plant with security this tight—are their little cakes going for a hundred thousand Aimier apiece?”
Celicia let out a cold laugh.
“This is obviously just another layer of cover.”
“True enough. But I should remind you, in the Upper District, there really are cakes that sell for a hundred thousand Aimier each.”
“......”
“Ah, right, right.”
Before Celicia’s ice-blade gaze could stab into him, Muen rubbed his chin, and his expression gradually grew serious.
“The security is already this tight, and they still need to hide things further inside. Whatever they’re hiding really must be something extraordinary, really extraordinary.”
“You don’t need to repeat that. I knew that long ago.”
Without specifying what, exactly, she had known long ago, Celicia continued probing ahead, and Muen followed closely behind.
This time, both of their steps sped up, because they knew that the moment they had been forced to take action against the hidden guards, their time was already limited.
A simple ice-chilling to cover the traces of life would not hold for long; the people here would soon realize something was wrong.
“No. Searching like this is completely pointless.”
Very soon, Celicia suddenly stopped and looked at the corridor around them, which showed no change at all. Her face darkened.
“These people are even more cautious than I thought. We need to know where they’ve hidden the important things.”
“That really is a tough problem.”
“Then I’ll leave it to you. I haven’t prepared any relevant methods.”
As she spoke, Celicia silently turned her gaze toward Muen.
“Me?”
Muen pointed at himself.
“You mean you want me to solve this problem?”
“If not you, then is it supposed to be the well-dressed bastard scumbag standing one meter in front of me?”
“N... no, it sounds like both of those things are referring to me?”
“So you admit you’re a bastard scumbag?” Celicia looked at him with obvious distaste.
“...I’m sorry. I’ll go do it right away.”
Having just been insulted and despised by Celicia, Muen didn’t seem to have taken much damage. The corners of his mouth had just turned down, and then, in the instant he turned away, they uncontrollably curled back up as he headed toward where he had just come from.
Behind him, Celicia watched his confident back. The distaste on her face slowly faded, the cool light in her eyes flickered once, and then returned to calm.
However, at the corner of her lips, a faint curve appeared that even she herself failed to notice.
...
“Sigh, good thing I actually can do this type of thing. Otherwise, what would you all do without me?”
Muen let out a sigh and slowly crouched down in front of the two corpses that had just been frozen.
He raised his hand, and black flame flickered in his palm.
Not far away, when Celicia saw the black flame in Muen’s hand, her gaze sank and her expression grew grave. She looked deeply at Muen, but in the end, said nothing.
Muen sank the black flame into the corpses.
Very quickly, as a black glimmer flashed inside the bodies, within the ice Celicia had just formed... there was only a hollow, human-shaped outline left.
The black flame had already devoured everything within, including the remaining souls.
Muen closed his eyes.
“Black Book.”
In the depths of his consciousness, the Black Book once again floated up and began flipping pages rapidly.
Countless pieces of information surged into Muen’s mind along with the records read from the guards’ souls.
Unfortunately, there were no keywords this time, because Muen himself didn’t know what, exactly, was hidden here.
Fortunately, the Black Book kindly reminded him that he could adjust according to time.
To be safe, Muen set the records’ time to only the most recent year, then quickly read through those already fragmented records.
Even a single year’s worth [N O V E L I G H T] of records was still massive and chaotic, and most importantly, he didn’t have the leisure or time to read them at ease right now.
“Sigh, what can you do—those who can, work more. Since I have the heart to climb to the top, I’ve also got the resolve to work myself until I can’t straighten my back!”
Muen clenched his teeth and actually shoveled an entire year of information into his spirit in one go, swallowing it whole.
Pain.
Tearing pain.
As if some foreign object had been forcibly crammed into his brain.
But along with the pain, messy and shattered images began flashing rapidly before Muen’s eyes.
Training.
Guard duty.
Missions.
Watch shifts.
One bland scene after another. It all looked like nothing more than a nameless grunt working for some faction, with not a shred of information worth lingering on.
Until—
The scene abruptly flashed to this very familiar corridor.
Muen’s spirit gave a jolt, and he forcibly slowed the reading speed.
It was another day of guard duty. But this time, a group of people in white lab coats suddenly passed through the corridor.
All the guards and checkpoints along the way let this group pass without question, showing how special their identities were.
They kept walking until the very end of his field of vision, and then... vanished into the depths.
There was only entry, no exit.
In all the scenes that followed, they never appeared again.
Seeing this, Muen abruptly cut off the information flow and turned his head toward the side of the corridor shrouded in darkness, a cold smile appearing on his face.
“I’ve... found you.”
