Ch.257016 Investigation Record – Double Compensation (7)

This is quite different from the bars I’ve been to before. The light bulbs emit only a dull, yellowish glow, and the only lively spot is the poker table in the corner.

The men at the poker table look me over. In a bar full of obvious factory workers and laborers, an elf like me was bound to attract such stares.

Still, I could meet their gazes. Most were people I’d seen at that transport company. Even so, I couldn’t just walk up to them and say, “Please tell me what you know about those drivers!”

I found a seat among the people sprawled around the bar. The fact that I came for a drink rather than looking for someone seemed to properly catch the attention of both the bartender and the customers.

The Industrial Spirit buzzed its grinder continuously as if disgusted by the surroundings, but sat quietly beside me without rushing at anyone.

The Spirit of Reason would probably find this scene truly horrific. People drinking themselves senseless is the epitome of irrationality. Yet, he remained quiet.

I couldn’t tell if he was simply not speaking in front of people or if he was trying to test some of the things I’d told him. Still, I gently patted his back in gratitude.

Am I treating him like a dog? Werewolves instinctively enjoyed having the space between their ears stroked and their chins tickled, so treating something according to its created form shouldn’t be that insulting.

A dwarf, probably named Franklin, approaches me. Thanks to the raised floor behind the bar for the dwarf bartender, his gaze didn’t seem particularly low.

“What’ll it be?”

What’s most common? Beer, probably? The only place I’d been to alone was Two Face where Ms. Sarah worked, so while my expression didn’t show it, I felt hesitant.

I’d endured the cigarette smoke that made my senses scream in pain to get here—was I going to let hesitation hold me back again? I scolded myself and ordered as naturally as I could, or at least tried to appear that way.

“Beer, please!”

“We don’t have elven beer.”

Many of my kin couldn’t stand the smell of hops and barley. I was beginning to understand why Father drank regular coffee instead of elvish coffee.

We elves had sensitive senses, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t handle alcohol. And I had a decent tolerance, so I decided to endure it just this once. My sense of smell was already exhausted from the cigarette smoke anyway.

“That’s fine!”

Though I didn’t glance back, I could hear someone getting up from the poker table, dragging their chair. I waited, swallowing the sound of my pounding heart. I briefly pinched the bridge of my nose while waiting.

A beer mug with bubbling carbonation and beads of condensation forming around it was pushed toward me. Since it was a dwarf-sized mug, it was quite large for an elf. I released the bridge of my nose.

During that brief rest, my sense of smell had recovered, so I took a sniff. It was a method Ms. Sarah had taught me—using an elf’s sense of smell, almost as good as a werewolf’s, to detect if anything bad had been added to the drink.

The beer was excellent. Perhaps due to dwarven craftsmanship, it had a proper beer smell despite being moonshine. I understood why the place was full of customers.

Just as I was being careful not to drink something mixed with methanol or beer that was half water, a customer from the poker table sat down next to me. It was a gnoll. Not all gnolls are criminals.

She was not particularly large for a female gnoll. The hyena head, already short and round, looked quite cute aside from belonging to a gnoll, and this one had a particularly gentle impression.

“Franklin’s drinks are pretty good quality. Still, this isn’t really a place for a reporter lady to come alone…”

Her manner of speech was more polite than Giuseppina’s. Female gnolls were a species that didn’t feel like fellow women, but if they were kind, I could treat them that way. They were somewhat ambiguous.

Don’t forget the plan, Rose. With a mind unclouded by alcohol, I spoke more naturally. Since Bar de Rose would be the most suitable bar for an elf, I took out an invitation card from there.

“I was too tired from reporting to go all the way to Bar de Rose… Ugh, what’s with those people?”

The fact that she called me “reporter lady” meant she remembered me. If she remembered me, she probably knew who I had come to interview. She picked up on my casually thrown question.

“Those people… Oh, you mean those guys? Ever since they were directly employed by the Industrial Spirit King, they’ve been acting like they’re something special…”

But somehow, that gnoll seemed to be sizing me up. Though she appeared to be looking down at me gently, her eyes were sharp with calculation. She finally extended her hand to me with a grin.

“Ah, this is… You can call me Carla. So… we’re both people who hate dirty things, right? Things like that. Like messing with truck cargo… dirty business.”

Is it the gnoll who caught the opportunity, not me? She didn’t seem like a mafia gnoll. I thought I’d be getting information, but it looked like this would be an exchange of information and favors.

I needed to find out if their trading of terminals was common knowledge. Pretending to be innocent, I nodded.

“Of course! I’m going around trying to make the world a slightly cleaner place.”

I didn’t show the same blind devotion as before. Still, not many people would speak so boldly in this era, so the female gnoll before me had no way to verify my words.

She let out an unpretentious laugh. Not the typical gnoll cackle. She leaned toward me and began to whisper. It seemed like a very big secret.

“Then… if an anonymous source told you that they were collecting decent terminals when the Idealists’ Hive Mind connection was cut off and selling them to the Amber Room, would you believe it? There’s no evidence besides eyewitness accounts, but the Amber Room has been doing good business lately. What do you think?”

It was a leading statement. If I understood the reference to the Amber Room, which had nothing to do with me, she would know I was deliberately acting. I was familiar with people trying to deceive me this way.

I answered naturally. I wasn’t sure if it would seem natural, but I immediately took out my reporter’s notebook from my bag and said:

“The Amber Room… they don’t seem like people who would transport goods all the way to Europe… Is Amber Room the name of a store in New York? If so, I should visit!”

Next, I imagined asking Michael to visit the Amber Room for me. The term “red-light district” itself wouldn’t make me blush, but thinking about asking him made me feel like my ears would turn red and melt.

The female gnoll watched with satisfaction as I pretended to know nothing. She nodded leisurely and brought her head close as if to whisper again.

“Ah, it’s natural that a reporter lady wouldn’t know… it’s a place in the red-light district. It was notorious for being expensive, but lately they’ve been getting cheaper goods, so customers have been increasing. Plus, everyone at our factory, including those guys at the table, saw the owner of the Amber Room talking in the alley behind our factory. We couldn’t report it because we were afraid we’d get in trouble too.”

When I heard “red-light district,” I made my ears turn slightly red, remembering how he had spoken for me when I was fumbling for words. The gnoll giggled.

I hid behind the fragility and smallness of being an elf, avoiding her piercing gaze. What she wanted was obvious. It was immunity. The same kind of cooperation Michael had given me when bringing down my father.

Reporting to the police might harm the entire company, but if a journalist published an exposé citing company sources, they could specifically target just those individuals.

Is that a bad thing? Using methods that won’t hurt yourself or those around you isn’t bad. Yet somehow… it seemed like the mafia’s way.

Fortunately, she didn’t seem to have any backing. The female gnoll even brought over another worker from the poker table to prove what she said was true. I returned to my seat and faced her.

It’s difficult to read her expression. Especially since she had the features of a beast. Still, I decided to accept the tip… feeling like I was drinking poison. When I nodded slightly, she patted my shoulder.

“Thank you. You’re doing a very good thing, reporter… I think I can call you my friend now. Though not our friend.”

That’s a term the mafia uses. I remembered hearing it at dinner with the Godmother. If she were a proper organization member, she would smell more like gnoll fur, but this gnoll seemed to at least use soap.

Or perhaps her family members were organization members, and she was just familiar with that lifestyle? My sensitive nose couldn’t detect the smell of other gnolls on her. It was probably the latter.

Still… she was a natural-born gnoll. Gentle, yet knowing when to sink teeth into a neck. But it seems we weren’t the only ones listening to our whispers.

From a bit further in than the poker table, the driver I had interviewed at lunch today came out and saw us. More precisely, he looked more at the gnoll than at me, and with an expression like he might growl, he said:

“Ah, this… shit, it’s you again? Why do we keep fucking running into each other, Carla? Why are you bothering our innocent… huh? Our innocent reporter lady. Do you know who I am?”

The fact that he said “again” suggests they had a bad relationship from before. Calling me innocent wasn’t a compliment but a claim that I was on his side. And boasting to a gnoll whose family might be in the mafia probably wasn’t a good idea.

What I wanted wasn’t for this female gnoll to kill someone and become an organization member because of this, but to put away all the people who had diverted terminals, including that driver.

As the driver approached, slurring from alcohol but rolling up his sleeves, the Industrial Spirit began rotating its grinder. It started channeling power into the cylinders attached to its body. I stroked it briefly.

Only when the truck driver came close enough to grab the female gnoll sitting across from me by the collar did I remove my hand from the Industrial Spirit’s back.

It sprang up like a released spring. It rammed into the driver with its metal body. After the driver fell backward from the weight, it completed the subduing by placing its steel-cast front paws on his chest.

After completely subduing him, it began making grinding noises that seemed like they would echo throughout the bar. It was like a beast’s growl and an unpleasant metallic sound that made the fighter lose his will to fight.

The Industrial Spirit was taking out all its frustration from seeing this place on him. The fact that it felt such fatigue was quite human-like. And quite hot-tempered at that.

The driver seemed to be imagining that grinder coming down on his face. He was desperately covering his face with both hands.

I slowly got up, approached the Industrial Spirit, placed my hand on its now quite hot back, and stroked it. The engine noise was rhythmically loud. It knew what it needed to do.

Though I wasn’t worried, the Industrial Spirit came down from on top of him as soon as my hand touched it. I offered my hand to the driver. He didn’t take it, instead pushing himself up from the floor.

Should I bow my head? I had to avoid the gaze of the angry man in front of me, as well as the gnoll who was still sitting on the bar stool as if nothing had happened. I decided to laugh it off.

I think that’s what the old me would have done. Even if he felt bad about a smiling face, there was nothing he could do about it. The Industrial Spirit that had just knocked him down was by my side.

“Oh, this little one must have thought you were trying to hurt me and suddenly attacked. I’m sorry! And Ms. Carla was just concerned about an elf visiting a bar like this. I thought you had some self-awareness as representatives since you said doubting you was doubting the Industrial Spirit King.”

When persuading or pressuring someone, using their own words was most effective.

The driver, who had been relieved at the clean apology and the unanswerable statement, unpleasantly clicked his tongue and turned around. He seemed to have originally planned to leave the bar, but not anymore.

The gnoll named Carla kindly took my hand and shook it up and down. There was sophistication in her expression, but somehow she gave off an eerie feeling that made the back of my neck tingle.

“Ah, thank you for helping. But the fact that I have a bad relationship with those guys… won’t reduce the credibility of my tip, right?”

As if the driver’s approach with rolled-up sleeves hadn’t even been a threat, she was still concerned about the article. I nodded with a smile.

“If enough people saw it! People might be a bit concerned, but if the accusation is true, it won’t be much. Oh, um… could I hear more from you before I go?”

Only then was I invited to the poker table. Originally, the place was full of people smoking cigarettes so heavily that the air inside the bar looked like London, but when I sat down, they all put out their cigarettes.

It seemed there really was no backing beyond the Amber Room. It looked like the drivers, who had been envious of frequenting high-class brothels, had contacted the owner of the Amber Room as soon as they got work from the Industrial Spirit King. Most testimonies said so.

This case will end cleanly too. I returned home after organizing all the information. I finished one beer, so I should be able to sleep well until tomorrow morning.

I decided to believe that being able to sleep soundly was a blessing in its own way. Still, the December sun rose late. Even if I woke up a bit late, I could still see the sunrise. I woke up just as the sun was rising.

While reading through what I had organized yesterday, the phone rang. It was exactly 24 minutes after I woke up. This was almost scary. The voice on the other end of the line was, of course, Michael.

“Husband here. I visited the Amber Room, and they admitted they took them. Is it correct that a total of twenty terminals were diverted?”

“Yes, that’s right! And it doesn’t seem like they have any backing. It looks like the Amber Room people and the drivers conspired among themselves!”

It definitely felt like a conversation between collaborators. After this, I’d probably end up saying something silly or strange again, but for now, I decided to enjoy the feeling of being a reliable informant.