Ch.531Episode 20 – Who Threatened You with a Knife?

After punishing the criminal who had swindled Camilla through the outlandish method of third-party face-to-face double payment, we confiscated his wallet full of criminal proceeds and held a small party.

“Wow! Steak!”

“Eat slowly.”

The moment a perfectly cooked piece of meat was served, a smile spread across Camilla’s face.

Gone was her earlier frustration when she had realized too late that she’d been duped, stomping her feet in anger.

After taking a bite of the large chunk of meat, Camilla beamed as if nothing had ever happened.

“…This is delicious!”

Does this girl ever find any food that doesn’t taste good?

As I shook my head watching the grinning Camilla, she suddenly looked up from cutting her meat with a worried expression and asked me a question.

“But are you really okay with this?”

“With what?”

“That scammer from earlier. You not only beat him to a pulp but also took his money. Won’t the police come after us?”

It was a very reasonable and sensible question.

But there was something people commonly misunderstood.

The belief that high-quality police forces would be maintained even in neighborhoods where public safety had completely collapsed.

“There isn’t a single police station within a 10km radius of the alley where I thrashed that guy.”

“Oh.”

“So don’t worry. Robbery is a common crime in this country. Nobody gets caught for this kind of thing anyway.”

Episode 20 – Who Threatened You With a Knife?

Though we were wanderers drifting from place to place, my companions and I still kept in touch with each other. Given the circumstances, we couldn’t gather in one place, but we frequently exchanged brief messages.

The company didn’t interfere with this aspect either. Apparently, it would look more suspicious if we suddenly went silent without clear reason.

Fortunately, things had been peaceful for a while. After the crime organizations and coup forces of the Zamria Federation were successively crushed by our hands, various groups across the Mauritani continent had become extremely cautious.

I could be dragged around here and there with peace of mind.

…Or maybe not.

“Camilla, what brings you here?”

“Obviously, I came to see Frederick!”

Right after our modest celebration ended, I was cleaning up the scattered dishes and food when I gave Camilla a sidelong glance with half-closed eyes.

At that moment, Camilla, who had been leaning back on the sofa, flinched and opened her mouth with an embarrassed look.

“I’m serious…?”

Having eaten to her heart’s content, she had been grinning with her hand resting on her stomach. But now she was hastily adding excuses as if nothing had happened—truly the perfect finishing touch.

I narrowed my eyes and clicked my tongue.

“Anyone can see you came here for the food.”

“N-no, I didn’t! How could you think that…”

“Well, who pushed you to put your hands on my pizza box?”

“Aaack! I told you not to bring that up!”

Perhaps as some post-meal exercise, Camilla flailed her limbs and pounded on me repeatedly. Of course, I didn’t feel any pain at all.

“Alright, alright. I get it, so stop kicking up dust and tell me what news you’ve brought.”

Due to adult circumstances, I rarely had the opportunity to meet face-to-face with my companions. Nevertheless, Camilla would occasionally visit me personally whenever she had free time.

A kind of messenger or courier, you might say.

Of course, as you might guess from the mention of “free time,” her reason for visiting me was nine times out of ten just to hang out. Thanks to a period of peace that was short yet long in its own way, our conversations were limited to trivial updates, and even those stopped whenever I went into the field or Camilla’s activities increased.

For some reason, the Royal Intelligence Agency employees, who had maintained a strict stance of “minimize unnecessary contact with colleagues,” had at some point stopped saying anything about Camilla’s unauthorized visits.

Did they all eat something bad?

It’s truly baffling…

Anyway, thanks to the branch director’s non-intervention that was actually intervention, our meetings continued quite frequently, and today, as always, she had come to visit.

“The Grand Duchess says you should stop staying cooped up in your room and go make some friends.”

“What a boring joke… The Professor would have told me to broaden my horizons.”

“So she really did say that.”

As I clicked my tongue watching Camilla’s chubby cheeks (she was quite sulky) while she endlessly inhaled food like a black hole amid the refreshing breeze and parade of sweet desserts, it had been about 20 minutes.

As I lay on the sofa idling, she suddenly told me an interesting story.

“Well, I partly came to hang out, but actually I’m here today because of the Professor’s request.”

“What request?”

“She says you need to prepare to go somewhere soon. I didn’t hear the details, but from the atmosphere, it seemed like a pretty important occasion.”

“I need to dress formally?”

“Yep.”

“What mischief is she planning now…”

I grumbled for a moment while making a pillow with my arm.

And then a thought suddenly occurred to me.

Wait.

Could this be an opportunity to get out of my deployment?

“…Exactly when are we going?”

*

“What are you talking about?”

The Royal Intelligence Agency branch director looked at me as if I had misheard something.

Despite having new and thrilling experiences every day that left the ashtray perpetually empty, I suddenly showed up asking for “vacation” time? What exactly had I been doing here that I needed a vacation?

It was a statement that made him wonder if I had finally lost my mind, or if I had been slightly unhinged from the beginning.

However, when I provided additional explanation, the branch director finally sighed in understanding.

“I received word from Grand Duchess Alexandra that I need to prepare to go somewhere.”

“The Grand Duchess? Well, this is troublesome…”

Alexandra Petrova’s personality is well-known. Particularly in a negative sense.

For instance, kidnapping civil servants from foreign embassies, or forcibly taking over the Presidential Palace of the Zamria Federation.

While the deployed official made people tired by going out to play every day despite evaluations to the contrary, the Empire’s Grand Duchess was a person who committed outrageous acts beyond imagination with her great magic.

“Alright, I understand. If it’s the Grand Duchess, there’s nothing we can do. Will the other members be accompanying you as well?”

“I don’t know the specific details yet, but it seems highly likely. I’ll report as soon as it’s confirmed.”

“Hmm, very well. I’ll report to headquarters, so you may go. Enjoy your vacation.”

“Yes, I’ll be going now…”

“What is it?”

“Could you possibly process this as official leave rather than personal leave?”

“……”

There was a brief communication issue, but I successfully managed to protect my vacation days. That’s why the civil servant who received the official leave he wanted (or rather, half-extorted) was hopping around happily.

“Hey, where did the liaison officer go?”

“Well, I saw him coming out of the branch director’s office earlier and then he went straight on vacation.”

“Really? Was that him jumping in the hallway?”

“Probably.”

“Wait. Did he properly hand over his duties before leaving?”

“…Huh?”

The Royal Intelligence Agency staff who had finally found peace of mind breathed sighs of relief, and the branch director hurriedly began looking into whether there were any vacancies at other branches. With the grave mission of somehow transferring the deployed staff member elsewhere before his vacation ended.

Anyway, someone was enjoying their freedom on vacation for the first time in a long while, and others were glad that person had finally gone on vacation.

It was a joyous day for everyone.

Except for the junior staff members who were climbing mountains of paperwork searching for handover documents whose existence, like quantum mechanics, couldn’t even be observed.

*

“There weren’t any major issues while Frederick was away. The Professor was with us the whole time. And with the governments readily cooperating with the peacekeeping forces’ requests…”

“Wait, doesn’t the Imperial Family provide caretakers for the elderly? Why is she always alone? She’s well over 100 years old.”

“The Professor says she doesn’t like having people take care of her. Says she’s not that old anyway? Anyway, back to the main point.”

Camilla took a bite of a chocolate bar filled with caramel and steered the conversation back on track.

“Even governments that were originally uncooperative have recently become more collaborative. This is probably due to the Al-Qahir terrorist attack in Nabuktu Province that was broadcast live, and the resulting security issues related to emerging religions that have affected societies across all nations.”

“I heard about that. Those cult groups have been causing serious trouble lately, right?”

“There are ordinary humans who treat their followers like slaves on farms. And there was that insane cult leader who parasitized people with strange fungi, claiming it was the key to eternal life.”

“Ah, that madman who grew mushrooms on people’s bodies? I heard he turned several cities into wastelands. Some small towns and villages completely disappeared.”

“That’s because those areas lacked medical facilities. They were also the first regions to come into contact with infected people who had escaped from the religious group.”

“It’s like ’28 Weeks Later’ all over again.”

I tilted my head in confusion.

“Or is it ’28 Days Later’…?”

“They’re similar movies… Anyway, thanks to Saint Lucia and Saint Veronica taking essential personnel to that country, the situation was resolved without major casualties. They purified the 18th infected area just the other day, so we can consider it almost over.”

“Is everyone safe?”

“They’re saints. One prayer and that pathetic epidemic gets wiped out completely.”

“That’s good to hear. What else?”

“The angels say the northern part of the Mauritani continent is clean now. No demons. Though they didn’t find traces of other angels either. Other than that, there’s not much… Oh! I just remembered, was it last week? Charnoi said he wanted a hamburger set, and the angels said they’d get it, but…”

“…And?”

“At dawn, the police received a report that an armored stranger carrying a greatsword had stormed into the restaurant…”

“Oh shit!”

“…but don’t worry! It almost became a big issue, but I smoothed things over with the store owner and the police officers. I made sure the CCTV footage and police reports were deleted right in front of me!”

On the way to meet our companions.

Conversations always bloom during long journeys.

Camilla, who had come loaded with stories I hadn’t been able to keep up with, unpacked them one by one beside me.

Some were stories I already knew, and others were completely new to me. But what mattered wasn’t simply whether I knew them or not.

“Thank you. Sounds like a disaster almost happened while I was gone…”

“It’s nothing! It happened so suddenly that even if you had been there, Frederick, it would have been hard to prevent. How could anyone stop someone who teleports just to buy a hamburger set?”

As I lay down with a tired expression, laughter hit my ears. It was Camilla’s soft chuckle.

Her gaze, seemingly both bored and slightly excited, lingered on the clouds. Resting her chin on the windowsill, she drew a horizontal line across those white clouds. As her slender finger pushed against the glass with a slight creak, the gray clouds retreated, revealing the hidden railway tracks.

And when a moment’s miracle echoes across the field.

Camilla, her hand still on the window, smiles gently and asks me:

“It’s going to be fun, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I’m already excited.”

The train begins to move, marking the start of our seven-day, six-night journey.