Ch.115Episode 6 – The Omniscient Spy’s Perspective

“What on earth have you been doing?”

When I asked with an incredulous tone, Camilla awkwardly scratched the back of her head.

At that moment, a breeze blew by, and I heard the rustling of a plastic bag.

Camilla held up the plastic bag and gave an awkward smile.

“…Chemistry experiment?”

Episode 6 – The Omniscient Spy’s Perspective

After returning to the hotel, I was able to get a detailed account from the intelligence officer from the Mage Tower police who was in charge of Camilla’s protection.

Camilla had disappeared during surveillance for her protection, an explosion was heard in the middle of the city in broad daylight, and when they rushed to the scene with reinforcements, they found her covered in soot.

The cause was…

“You stuffed a bomb into the sewer?”

Mischief.

“Rather than a bomb, it would be more accurate to call it a firecracker—”

“Why on earth would you stuff something like that into a sewer?”

Camilla pressed her lips tightly at my question.

Having just finished showering, she stood with a towel on her wet hair, looking at me with a gloomy expression.

“It wasn’t just for fun. I heard there was a ratman on the way, so I just…”

“Are you saying you threw a bomb to kill a harmful creature?”

“Uh… is that how it sounds?”

This is maddening.

“…Haah.”

I sighed deeply and collapsed onto the sofa in the suite.

It was already absurd that she had escaped the surveillance of the Mage Tower intelligence police, but now she’d been caught playing with bombs. And by the police. Intelligence police, no less.

“You bring trouble wherever you go. What were you thinking?”

“I’m sorry…”

Camilla bowed her head with a very dejected face.

I thought things had been quiet lately, but now she’s creating incidents when there aren’t any.

I was startled when I saw her covered in soot and confronted the police intelligence officer, but when they told me that Camilla had been playing with bombs and got covered in filth, I had nothing to say.

At least they were generous enough to tell me they would omit reporting this and requested leniency. Otherwise, she could have been booked by the police. Then the press would have pounced on it, tearing it apart from every angle.

“Haah…”

I let out a long sigh and asked a question.

“Where did you even get a bomb— no, how did you know there was a ratman there?”

Camilla pulled down her towel and answered.

“Well… I was walking down the street and saw some armed people, so I asked them… they said there was a report of a ratman sighting…”

“And then?”

“They asked if I was a mage, and when I said yes, they asked if I could help…”

“…So you made a bomb and threw it?”

“Achoo!”

“……”

“…Ah, sniff. Sorry. I caught a cold.”

“How wonderful.”

I raised the room temperature, placed a fluffy towel on her head, and listened to her explanation.

Camilla’s account matched what I had heard from the police intelligence officer.

She had been asked for help by mercenaries (adventurers for hire, local PMCs in this neighborhood) who were dispatched to investigate a suspected ratman sighting after receiving a report, and she had stuffed a bomb into the sewer.

According to the police intelligence officer, since the Mage Tower has so many mages, it’s not uncommon for curious or meddlesome mages to offer help in such ways.

I heard it’s mostly locals who do this. Some hunt harmful creatures individually like vigilantes, while others organize militia groups and hunt systematically for small rewards from the government. Or, like Camilla, some just help out briefly as they pass by.

“Did you know it’s illegal to hunt harmful creatures without a license or permission from the local police station?”

“No! Please let me off just this once!”

“I’m not the police, what do you mean ‘let you off’…”

I was a spy, not a police officer.

The Mage Tower police said that given the current situation, and considering that Camilla was from another world, and that mages were generally prone to causing trouble, they would just give her a warning and resolve the matter amicably.

Of course, there was no one among the Mage Tower police who could reprimand Camilla. In fact, there were hardly any people in this world who could admonish her. At most, it would be Lucia or me, and Lucia was a religious figure—a saint from a religious order that didn’t get along well with the Mage Tower.

So what could be done?

I, the easy target, had to do it.

“Sigh…”

I let out a deep sigh. Somehow, I felt like I’d been sighing more and more lately.

“The Mage Tower police have decided to overlook this incident. They’re being lenient because it’s the Mage Tower where there are many mages, but in other countries, this wouldn’t fly. Even if prosecutors don’t get involved when mages are concerned, you’d usually spend at least a day in a holding cell.”

“…Yes.”

“Please be careful. I beg you.”

Leaving Camilla with her gloomy face, I rummaged through the plastic bag I had spotted earlier to get a drink to wet my throat and pulled out what looked like a bottle of beverage.

It was a drink I’d never seen before in my life. The design was quite peculiar, but it resembled a cola bottle.

It was a snack Camilla had bought, but I figured I could have some too.

Just as I was about to gulp down the liquid in the bottle without thinking…

“…Ah, aah!”

“…?”

Suddenly, Camilla jumped up and started frantically waving her arms.

“That’s not for drinking!”

But it was too late.

I ended up spitting out the liquid I had in my mouth due to the pungent chemical smell rising from my throat.

“Pfffttt!!”

Right onto Camilla’s face.

*

To cut to the chase, what I drank was citric acid.

Also known as citrus acid, it’s famous as a chemical often used to add acidity to food, but it’s also one of the main substances used in making explosives, which is why it’s banned in many countries around the world.

The same applies here, but in the Mage Tower, there are no such regulations because all sorts of chemicals are used in magical experiments, including alchemy. It says it all when you can walk into any supermarket and find the chemical section right across from the beverage aisle.

Anyway, in the Mage Tower, anyone can easily get their hands on chemicals, and Camilla had bought all sorts of chemical substances to try out alchemy she had read about in books. And I mistook it for a beverage and drank it.

The outcome was predictable.

I collapsed.

The chemical smell was so strong that even as I was collapsing, I worried if I might die like this, but…

“Are you conscious?”

Fortunately, one of the continent’s top healers was in the next room, so my life was saved.

“Ah. Ugh. Uh.”

“You’re awake.”

When I regained consciousness and opened my eyes, a familiar face was looking down at me. It was an expression that was half concerned, half exasperated.

“…Cough! Ah, ahem. Lucia?”

“Yes.”

“Where am I?”

“At the hotel. Please rest assured and lie down.”

The place where I opened my eyes was the room right next to the suite. To be precise, it was Lucia’s room.

The saint, one of only two on the continent and a top-tier healer, looked down at me with a peculiar expression. She was wearing blue surgical gloves, the kind you’d expect to see in an operating room.

“First nerve poison, now chemicals. You seem to have bad luck with chemistry and alchemy.”

“I’m naturally inclined towards the humanities…”

“Seeing that you can joke, you must be feeling better.”

I sat up on the bed and covered my face with my hands. Lucia glanced at my mouth once, then pulled up a chair.

We sat facing each other, each occupying a bed and a chair, and had a conversation. A spy and a saint. A familiar combination.

As I sat quietly looking at Lucia, she wrung out the moisture from a towel and suddenly spoke up.

“Are you feeling better now?”

“Ah, yes.”

I reached for the glass of water on the side table. As I was wetting my throat with the lukewarm water, Lucia pulled at her surgical gloves and said:

“How’s your shoulder?”

“……”

“Your left shoulder seemed injured.”

Caught off guard by the question, I couldn’t say anything.

Lucia looked at me once, then turned her gaze away and continued.

“I heard you injured your left shoulder.”

“…Who told you that?”

“Earlier, when Camilla was carrying you in, she mentioned it?”

“Camilla did?”

“Yes.”

Lucia nodded mechanically as she organized her tools. Judging by the feeling of the stitches still in place, it seemed she hadn’t treated the gunshot wound.

However, Lucia didn’t ask me why or where I was injured. She didn’t add anything more.

Instead, she changed the subject as if such things weren’t important. Whether she genuinely didn’t care or was pretending not to know, I couldn’t tell.

As she carefully organized her tools, she closed her bag and blurted out:

“I heard you had a fight with Camilla.”

“No, it wasn’t really a fight… There was just a bit of an issue…”

“I heard the story. You scolded her for playing around.”

I was sitting on the bed, adjusting my clothes, when I tilted my head in confusion.

“Does your religious order consider setting off bombs on the street as ‘playing around’?”

“Mages are naturally curious. Especially in the Mage Tower. In this neighborhood, setting off bombs is considered a minor prank. Besides, Camilla is from another world, isn’t she? She’s bound to be as curious as a child.”

“Still, this time the prank went too far.”

“Try to understand. It can’t be helped.”

Even in England, setting off bombs on the street isn’t considered a minor prank.

I was about to say something like that, but then I realized that Lucia probably didn’t know what kind of place England was, so I kept my mouth shut.

“…You’re quite soft-hearted. If you keep letting her off like this, she might cause a bigger accident later. Is it really okay to just verbally admonish her and let it slide?”

“You seem to worry a lot, Major.”

Lucia sat down with a quiet smile.

It wasn’t a smile that suggested she found it absurd or playful, but rather a benevolent smile that reminded me of icons I had seen in Eastern Europe long ago.

“Camilla worries a lot too. Because of you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I saw her crying earlier.”

She calmly told me what had happened after I collapsed.

She said someone knocked on her door, and when she went out, Camilla was carrying me without even wearing shoes. She also mentioned that Camilla kept crying while she was treating me.

“Well, she didn’t sob loudly, just shed a few tears.”

“Where is Camilla now?”

“She went back to her room a little while ago. Actually, I sent her back. She looked quite tired.”

I listened to Lucia’s account as if I were hearing behind-the-scenes stories from a movie.

Lucia brought a kettle from the corner of the room to brew tea, and as she sipped the lukewarm tea, she continued:

“Come to think of it, she cried when you were affected by the nerve poison before too.”

The saint casually mentioned someone crying profusely.

It seemed so natural that I couldn’t help but ask:

“You don’t seem surprised?”

“I’ve seen many people cry, so I’m used to it.”

“In the prayer room?”

“No. In the field hospital.”

“……”

The field hospital she referred to was located near the Imperial-Magical Border conflict zone. That very place where patients flooded in due to local provocations that occurred almost weekly.

The field hospitals near the conflict zone were places that intelligence officers dispatched to the Empire kept a close eye on, and it was also where 17-year-old Lucia had served for two years.

The reason spies were interested in mere field hospitals was to gather information about various medical systems newly developed by the Imperial Army. That’s how many people died and got injured in the Imperial-Magical Border conflict zone.

I had no response to such a heavy answer to a half-joking question. Stories about someone’s death were always heavy, regardless of time and place.

“…Hmm.”

As I remained silent, Lucia smiled as if it was nothing.

“Anyway, don’t be too hard on Camilla. She even shed tears by your side because she felt responsible for your injury after you accidentally consumed something strange.”

“Tears don’t change anything. Things only change when someone intervenes or when one makes an effort themselves.”

“Then will you stop picking up strange things to consume in the future?”

I smacked my lips at the playful question. After much deliberation, what came out was an excuse that even I thought was quite lame.

“Mistaking it for a beverage and consuming it by accident wasn’t my fault. It’s the manufacturer’s fault for packaging it like a drink…”

Lucia looked at me and smiled gently.

“Please be more careful in the future. And take care of your health.”

*

Lucia advised me to rest, but unfortunately, I had no time to do so.

It’s easy to say reduce work and increase sleep, but is that realistically possible? Besides, I had already used my day off.

A civil servant who took a day off and then suddenly wanted to take another day off the next day was essentially asking to be fired from the workplace. And I had absolutely no intention of quitting my job as a civil servant.

In the end, I returned to work after my eventful vacation.

I gave a gift to Lucia to thank her for treating me. I told the hesitant Camilla that it was okay. I exchanged information with the Mage Tower police intelligence officer and Rebecca, the priestess from the Inquisition. I went to the representative office to receive overdue intelligence reports from Pippin and Jake.

Reading documents, signing them, reviewing papers, sending telegrams.

That’s roughly how my daily routine flowed.

A hotel bar with a view of resorts and attractions? Enjoyable times at historic tailors and pubs? Drinking shaken, not stirred martinis with women by my side?

I can assure you, there’s none of that.

No matter what, an intelligence agency operative has set tasks. The work might be a bit special, and when you’re first assigned, you might feel the thrill and fun, but that lasts at most a year. After working for about 4-5 years, it’s no longer fun.

You can’t go home, overtime is routine, foreign travel is barely possible due to counterintelligence agencies watching, the salary is meager, but the workload is enormous.

Moreover, you can’t freely date or marry. If you date or marry a foreigner, you’ll be fired from your job. Even if you date or marry a fellow citizen, you must undergo a background check and receive approval.

So, in the end, employees of intelligence agencies always have to be careful. To put it nicely, it’s about conducting oneself well; to put it bluntly, it’s about looking out for oneself.

Of course, most people work hard without such concerns, but honestly, everyone is somewhat cautious. No one wants to lose their job.

The same applied to me.

Why would I be any different? I might even be sent somewhere soon. So these days, I just do as I’m told, collect what I see, and handle what I can reach.

So, I thought today would be no different, but…

“Damn…”

It seems today is not my day.

“You have a talent for wasting people’s time, Saint.”

“Aww, why are you like this again?”

“It’s disgusting, so please stay away. Let’s keep a distance of about 5 meters between us.”

I pressed my temples as I pushed away the clingy Veronica with my elbow.

In the middle of having lunch after finishing my morning work, I suddenly received a phone call. It was Veronica again. When I asked what the matter was, she just dropped an address and told me to come quickly without any explanation.

“Am I your dog? Is it reasonable to summon someone who’s in the middle of work, not even off duty?”

“Major, you don’t answer your phone after work. Lately, whenever I call, it says your phone is turned off—”

“That’s because you call in the middle of the night, Saint.”

Veronica pouted and slightly lowered her expensive-looking sunglasses.

“I only have time in the early morning…”

“Then what do you do in the evening?”

“Hmm… recovering from hangovers?”

“Oh, give me a break.”

I roughly opened the car door and stepped outside. Half because I had a headache and wanted to breathe fresh air, and half because I wanted to escape being stuck with Veronica.

Of course, it’s not like I could escape anywhere.

“Here we are!”

Veronica, dressed like a nouveau riche, exclaimed with a bright smile.

“Why are we here?”

To my question, Veronica, who had entered the Mage Tower with a forged passport, rested her arm on the steering wheel and grinned.

“I want to introduce you to the person I was going to introduce to you last time.”

I looked around and asked Veronica. It was my first time here, but it looked very similar to a marshaling yard at a port.

We had arrived at a container terminal. It was the gateway through which all sorts of goods from around the world entered and exited the Mage Tower.

In simpler terms…

“…Here?”

“Yep.”

This was a port.

“……”

Veronica, with her sunglasses perched on her head, looked at her wristwatch and said:

“Well, my brother is quite busy, so I’m not sure if we’ll be able to meet him today either…”

“……”

“Let’s check out the goods first!”

She pointed to a pile of containers.

“Shall we go?”