Ch.389Episode 15 – Life is Beautiful

# In the Outskirts of Abbas

On the outskirts of Abbas, barely reached by the capital’s subway network, lies an abandoned factory complex.

Protests by development associations demanding to demolish these defunct factories and build housing continue daily, along with lobbying from construction companies claiming that the poor living conditions in the metropolitan area are insufficient to accommodate all citizens.

However, due to the lukewarm response from the Ministry of Land and local governments, these abandoned factories have been left neglected for years.

A gloomy, ominous abandoned factory.

That’s where I met with my staff.

“You’re late.”

“Sorry, Matt. Traffic was bad.”

The middle-aged intelligence officer who resembled Thanos greeted me as I entered the abandoned factory.

“When I call, you should come running. Your salary isn’t free, you know?”

“I know. Have our kids arrived yet?”

“Not yet. Haven’t even contacted them.”

“What about your team members?”

Thanos nodded toward the inside of the factory, indicating everyone was already inside.

“Come in. Let’s talk inside.”

## Episode 15 – Life is Beautiful

I followed him into an office set up inside the abandoned factory. On the way, I encountered a familiar face.

A middle-aged man dressed in an elegant tailored suit with horn-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He was the deputy team leader of the operations team, embodying the image of a typical British gentleman.

Holding an espresso cup and moving between desks as if he owned the place, he recognized me.

“Oh. You’re here.”

The deputy team leader greeted me warmly.

I bowed my head in greeting as well.

“It’s been a while, Steven. No, should I call you Bill?”

The deputy team leader smiled slightly.

“Call me whatever you prefer.”

Looking back, my first encounter with the Royal Intelligence Service operations team was before the department store terrorist attack, when my companions visited Abbas.

At that time, I thought the company had assigned surveillance for safety reasons and considered it a passing connection.

But my relationship with the Thanos look-alike didn’t end there.

We became entangled again when I got involved in the Royal Intelligence Service’s kidnapping operation in Fatalia, and then once more when eliminating several dark wizards during the northern empire operation.

And during that process, I learned an interesting fact.

That the names each operations team member had introduced themselves with weren’t their real names but aliases.

“Couldn’t you have come up with a more sophisticated alias, Bill? What kind of name is Steven anyway?”

Alias Steven. Real name Bill.

The deputy team leader of the Royal Intelligence Service operations team laughed lightly and joked.

“I didn’t create that name. Matt did. Right, Matt?”

“What? You said it was fine. If you didn’t like it, you should have asked for a different one.”

“Everyone knows your naming skills are terrible. Even if you’d thought harder, you wouldn’t have come up with anything better.”

Matt, the operations team leader, shrugged as if to say “what do you want me to do about it?”

For reference, Matt is his real name, and he claimed to have personally chosen the alias Matthew. He also said he had named the aliases of the other team members.

Deputy team leader Bill chuckled and pointed at Matt with his espresso cup.

“See? Our team leader’s naming sense is as disastrous as the Church’s food culture. And he’s so stubborn, even more assertive than people from the Kiyen Empire. Even dwarves, known for their strong pride, would concede to Matt in that regard.”

It was a joke comparing Matt to the terrible food eaten by Church clergy and the stubbornness of Kiyen Empire men.

Matt, the target of the joke, complained that it was malicious slander.

“Stop talking nonsense, Bill. What’s wrong with Steven? It suits you, looking like a model student.”

“If Steve heard that, he’d probably curse at you first.”

“Let him. We’ll meet him in the field soon, so let’s see what happens.”

“Want to make a bet?”

“Gladly.”

After making the bet with Matt, deputy team leader Bill swiped a card on the factory’s iron door.

Thud. The heavy door moved, followed by the sound of metal colliding. I waited for the door to open and asked Matt and Bill a question.

“So, where is this new colleague you mentioned? Any information yet?”

Matt answered.

“See for yourself.”

*

After waiting briefly in the office, documents arrived.

The person who brought them was the Royal Intelligence Service’s senior analyst, Larry, who had provided information to the field team during all previous operations.

“Long time no see. Here’s the material you requested.”

“Thank you.”

“Listen as you look through it. I’ll explain. Ahem…”

Flip. The paper turned over smoothly.

After confirming that team leader Matt, deputy team leader Bill, and I were gathered, senior analyst Larry tapped his cane and began the briefing.

“Five months ago, an Inquisition agent contacted one of our company executives.”

It was because of the proposal to help find the companions chosen by the Oracle.

The region was the Moritani continent.

“It was a massive operation to search the entire continent. Too burdensome for the Inquisition to perform alone. So our Church friends requested cooperation from companies around the world. The Royal Intelligence Service, National Security Agency, Imperial Guard, Lushan Federation’s General Intelligence Bureau, and even intelligence agencies from the Moritani continent and the East…”

The Royal Intelligence Service senior analyst continued.

“Of course, not everyone cooperated since each company had different priorities.”

“They focus on different issues.”

“With battles happening at their borders, it would be difficult to devote resources to monitoring a distant continent. Especially for Eastern companies dealing with elves from the Great Forest.”

Anyway, let’s move past this since it’s not important.

Larry redirected our attention, calling out a specific page number and asking us to turn to it. Then he began explaining with a rather serious expression.

“About three weeks ago, the General Intelligence Bureau found important intelligence that could help locate your companion.”

“From the Lushan Federation?”

“Yes. See that man in the photo? He’s the General Intelligence Bureau agent who contacted the Inquisition three weeks ago. The one who shared the intelligence.”

He tapped the man in the photo with his ungroomed fingernail. In the corner of a café sat a brown-skinned man, with a woman in a nun’s habit sitting across from him.

As I examined the photo carefully, Matt and Bill slightly raised their heads to stare at Larry.

“Larry.”

“What is it, Matt?”

“If you just needed a photo, why include one of the meeting? Why not a headshot? His face is barely visible in this photo.”

“Haha. You don’t understand.”

Larry pushed up his glasses with a grin.

“Obviously because this is the photo with the best composition!”

“What composition?”

Bill looked at the photo from different angles and said:

“All I can see is the nun’s backside.”

“That’s exactly the point, Bill.”

“This is maddening.”

Deputy team leader Bill covered his face with his palm, a gesture suggesting he’d seen something unbearable. Team leader Matt even muttered a small curse.

“If the nun’s habit is religion’s perfect creation, then the garter belt is science’s greatest invention. Look! The slightly pressed thigh here…”

“Good heavens, Larry! That’s blasphemy.”

“But it’s beautiful.”

Matt pointed at Larry who was arguing with Bill.

“I’m really glad you don’t go to church.”

“A tragic reality.”

Watching the scene, I shook my head. And thought to myself: intelligence agencies are full of weirdos here too.

They must have recruited talent through personality tests, so why do weirdos keep popping up? Did their minds snap while working?

Though I suppose anyone who joins a black company (aka intelligence agency) with qualifications good enough for a major corporation isn’t exactly normal to begin with.

“Anyway!”

The senior analyst, who had been extolling the greatness of garter belts, returned to the main topic.

“Our analysis team selected search areas based on that intelligence. And over the past three weeks, we’ve identified four likely locations where your companion might be. Do you know where?”

“I do.”

“Good. You’ve done your homework, I see.”

Tapping his cane as he approached, Larry personally turned the pages. After quickly flipping through basic information about countries and regions, he got straight to the point.

“The General Intelligence Bureau shared information about ‘mysteries’ occurring on the Moritani continent with the Inquisition. A shepherd witnessing a pillar of clouds, a river split in two, a clay bird flying through the air…”

“Did these mysteries help locate the companion?”

“They helped a little. Better than nothing.”

He spoke while looking at a map decorating one page of the document.

The map was dotted with countless points. Some areas had only one or two dots or none at all, while others were filled with dots like a galaxy.

Larry swept his hand across the entire map.

“This is a map marking where mysteries have occurred on the Moritani continent.”

The data collection period was about a year.

Since Camilla came here last summer, they seem to have compiled mysteries that occurred around that time.

“When mysterious phenomena that are rare in a lifetime suddenly appear in abundance around specific areas, we can reasonably suspect your companion lives nearby.”

“So you haven’t actually pinpointed their location?”

“Technically that’s true, but aren’t these mysteries worth investigating since they started occurring when the Oracle was delivered? Mysteries are phenomena that can’t be explained by science or magic. Perhaps theology could, though.”

Larry pulled up a chair and sat down with difficulty, using his cane for support.

After shifting his ample bottom uncomfortably, he spotted a donut box on the desk, exclaimed in delight, and promptly took out a donut and began eating it.

After consuming about half of the sugar-coated donut, he pointed at the documents with the donut that now revealed thick cream inside.

“Anyway, these regions are currently the most likely candidates. The General Intelligence Bureau believes your companion is in the area where these mysteries occurred. The Inquisition thinks the same.”

While Larry was finishing his donut, Bill, who had put down his espresso cup and was about to take a donut from the box, paused to ask a question.

“What do you think, Larry? Is it really worth searching?”

“There’s no harm in searching those areas. Compared to sitting in an office reading reports from embassies and coloring maps, wouldn’t it be better to go see for yourself?”

“No other information? It’s risky to search based only on information from the Inquisition.”

“Ah, if that’s the concern, I have more good material.”

With the donut in his mouth, Larry recited another page number. 481. As I flipped through the papers, a montage appeared.

A peculiar pattern was drawn, extending from the wrist to the shoulder, almost like…

“…a tattoo?”

It was indeed a tattoo.

With my finger inserted in the page, I muttered, and Larry nodded in confirmation.

“That’s right. It’s a montage secured by the General Intelligence Bureau. They believe the man with this tattoo is your companion.”

“Why a tattoo? What, does it emit light when he flexes his muscles?”

“I’m not sure about that, but they say the tattoo has glowed before.”

“…Huh?”

A glowing tattoo?

“What do you mean? The tattoo glows?”

“Literally, it actually emits light. A General Intelligence Bureau agent investigating the area where mysteries occurred testified to seeing it. What did they say… light flowed from the tattoo and then something powerful shook the ground?”

“Is there any information besides the glowing tattoo?”

“They say he killed monsters with his bare fists. That wasn’t in the information about your companion provided by the Inquisition, but the other characteristics seem to match.”

“It’s hard to be certain he’s my companion based just on that…”

“Then what should we do? How many ‘men with robust physiques’ are there on the entire Moritani continent? When would we ever find them all?”

When I expressed doubt that this person might not be my companion, the senior analyst looked at me as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“What are the chances your new companion, whose whereabouts are unknown, is just an ordinary healthy man? Look at this guy. He’s exceptionally large, male, lives on the Moritani continent, and has strange abilities.”

“Hmm…”

“Let me ask the opposite. What are the chances someone like this is NOT your companion?”

When I think about it, he’s right.

Camilla’s companions were all formidable individuals. Lucia was an outstanding cleric who could treat hundreds of patients in a day, and Francesca was a magician unrivaled in the magic tower.

Even looking purely at combat ability, both were fighters who wouldn’t yield to anyone. Skilled enough to decapitate demons.

From that perspective, a large man with a glowing tattoo and special abilities is very likely to be a companion.

If a spy with absolutely nothing special could be chosen as a companion, why would it be strange for a tattooed magic-wielding brute to join?

“……”

As I rested my chin on my hand, lost in thought, Bill offered me a donut from the box.

“Have a donut.”

“Ah, thank you.”

I accepted the donut Bill handed me, and Matt split the received donut in half.

Then, putting the appetizing donut in his mouth, he stared at Larry.

“So this muscular guy with tattoos appeared in the areas marked on the map? Where the mysteries occurred?”

“Yes. We don’t know the exact correlation, but a man with unusual powers did appear at the site of a mystery. He also matches the criteria provided by the Inquisition.”

“What if we search all four locations and don’t find the target? What if this man was never a companion to begin with?”

It was a reasonable question.

Larry, adjusting his glasses with greasy fingers, grinned widely showing his gums.

“Then we’d have to go back to the beginning and start over. But that’s not the important part.”

The senior analyst suddenly stood up and rummaged through his desk. He pushed aside scattered pens and documents while muttering.

“The Moritani continent was already famous for conflicts. Battles between warlords, tribal frictions, civil wars between government forces and rebels, and so on. But among those, there are a few regions known for particularly fierce fighting.”

“That’s right.”

“And coincidentally, all four regions where your new companion is presumed to be are areas with intense ongoing conflicts.”

The Royal Intelligence Service senior analyst’s explanation didn’t end there. To summarize the wealth of information he provided:

All four regions where the new companion is presumed to live are currently embroiled in conflict.

One of them has no diplomatic relations, so there’s no embassy.

Instead, an embassy in a neighboring country handles affairs for that region.

And most importantly:

“Someone needs to go there and collect information firsthand.”

When he returned, he was carrying a hefty binder with easily over a hundred pages.

With a thud, Larry placed the binder down and leaned on it with his arm, standing at an angle.

I tossed the documents on the desk and spoke.

“It doesn’t seem that difficult.”

“Not difficult? Does this guy have nine lives or something? Those places are too dangerous.”

If I continue like this, I’ll end up living wedged between the Chief of Staff and the Defense Minister. It means waking up every morning to see a four-star general casually emerging from his door after preparing for work, and every evening watching the Defense Minister strolling near the official residence with a string of bodyguards.

Rather than living with such a suffocating view, it would be a hundred times better to go abroad.

“I can go quietly by myself.”

“You want to go alone? I don’t think the company will easily approve that… Why not go with your companions instead?”

I shook my head.

How could I take the kids to such a place?

“Why do you want to go to such a neighborhood anyway?”

“It’s somewhere I’ll have to go eventually.”

What difference would it make to go a few months earlier than planned?

What I needed right now was an excuse to leave Abbas immediately.

“And you know what they say. What moves people is crisis and opportunity.”

Matt asked me:

“That’s a wise saying. Who said it?”

“I’m not sure.”

I vaguely trailed off.

“I can’t remember where I heard it.”

*

Anyway, now that the candidates have been narrowed down, all that remains is the grunt work.

Originally, intelligence agency work might look sophisticated from the outside—sitting in an office, drinking tea, and chatting—but in reality, whether in the office or in the field, it’s a continuous series of tedious and monotonous grunt work, rolling around here and getting beaten up there.

In that sense, monitoring the four regions where Camilla’s companion was presumed to be would be an enormous amount of grunt work.

And it truly was, no exaggeration.

Building an intelligence network is difficult enough, but building one in a civil war zone? To find someone whose face and name you don’t even know?

It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.

However, I had a plan.

-‘Hello, Military Attaché. It’s been a while. What brings you to call?’

“Oh, Francesca. I see you’re still awake.”

-‘It’s daytime in Fatalia right now. Bedtime passed long ago.’

“Ah, look at me… Please pretend you didn’t hear that.”

-‘Shall I? So, what’s the reason for your sudden call today, Military Attaché?’

“I was wondering if you could pass a message to Viktor.”

Jamer-Viktor.

Former lieutenant of the Kiyen Empire’s Ministry of Defense. Current broker dealing in illegal weapons.

And my informant.

“Tell him I’ll see him in his hometown soon.”

-‘Is that all I need to tell him?’

“Yes. He’ll understand what it means.”

I decided to jump into the grunt work myself.

The goal was to establish a local intelligence network and gather specific information about the man presumed to be a companion.

I just needed to find out what he looked like, his name, how many family members he had, where he lived, and then get out. And while I was at it, I could take down some bad guys the company had identified.

It was the perfect plan.

“No.”

“…Pardon?”

In the overseas department director’s office, where I went with my documents, I blinked in confusion at the unexpected response.

“I’m sorry…?”

“Didn’t you hear me? Let me say it again.”

The plan was absolutely perfect.

But as Tyson said:

Everyone has a plan.

“I said I can’t approve your business trip.”

Until they get punched in the face.