Chapter 18 - Exemption Mission and Non-Mages (3)
「The Administrator's Study」
A personal space that imperial nobles, who must possess culture and skill, invariably have in their residences.
And at the same time...
'In the original story, it's where I find clues about the missing children.'
Therefore, what he had to do was the same as in the original story.
Enoch pulled down his robe's hood and entered the study, taking advantage of the lack of prying eyes in the hallway.
Originally, to find out where the children were kidnapped, he had to explore the various gimmicks installed in this study one by one.
But Enoch didn't need to do that.
'Because I know everything.'
Enoch entered the study without hesitation.
'It was this book.'
He pulled out a familiar-looking book from the bookshelf on the wall, revealing a hidden lever inside.
Recalling the memories of the original story, he manipulated the lever. The sound of gears turning echoed softly behind the bookshelf.
With a small creaking sound, a small door opened in the corner of the study's bookshelf.
─A hidden safe.
It was designed with a purely mechanical locking device, not a magical one, to avoid detection by most detection magic.
'As expected, nothing is different from the original story so far.'
Enoch picked up one of the envelopes piled up in the safe, with a familiar label on it.
「Oscar Mansion Initial Design: Labyrinth Garden Underground Research Facility」
Inside, well-preserved blueprints were revealed. A design of the garden in the mansion's backyard.
But this is not the end.
Enoch picked up another document attached to the inside of the blueprint.
「Leopold Orphanage: Test Subject Supply Contract and Record Log - Vendetta」
'Vendetta.'
Enoch's eyes narrowed slightly.
Opening the contents of the envelope, the same phrases as in the original story appeared, as expected.
「Hereafter, test subjects will be supplied from the orphanage in the form of adoption on each delivery date every month.」
Enoch checked the chart at the bottom.
The latest trends from a few days ago, which seemed to have been written very recently. Those brief records caught his eye.
「Unable to meet the requirements for appropriate adoption by the delivery date. The administrator is requested to supply test subjects in other forms.」
「The mage dispatched to resolve the missing persons case has been subdued. Additional dispatch from the Main House is expected soon for the search. Suspension of biological experiments is requested.」
「Take care of the health of the test subjects until the next experiment. We will resume the experiment based on the return of the Elsyde mages.」
「Emergency. The 13th rank mage dispatched from the Elsyde family approached the whole story of the experiment. Currently suppressed and detained. It is considered that it can be a good experimental material for the future 'Magical Beast Transformation Experiment.'」
The log stopped with this last memo.
But even with this, it was clear how things were going roughly.
'The [Magical Beast Transformation Experiment] mentioned in the document. As expected, it's the same as the original story.'
─Human experimentation.
The 「Underground Research Facility of the Mansion Labyrinth Garden」 that appeared in the document earlier.
In this research facility, Vendetta is leading the human experiments to turn people into Magical Beasts, colluding with the administrator to use children as test subjects.
And when it became impossible to disguise it as adoption, they took the children who would become test subjects by means of kidnapping.
'It seems that the mage who was dispatched in the last mission was also subdued while chasing them.'
Judging from the documents, there was a high possibility that both the kidnapped children and the missing mage were still alive.
'It matches the situation described in the original story.'
It seems that they decided to resume the experiment at the point when the Elsyde family virtually gave up on the mission assigned here.
Everything was as expected.
As Enoch was about to leave, he stopped when he saw something protruding from the inside of the safe.
'...Wait. There's something more?'
Enoch tilted his head.
Something was strange. He was sure that this document was all he could get in the original story.
But in the depths of the safe in front of him, there was another strange bundle of papers.
Enoch was momentarily taken aback as he took out those unfamiliar bundles of paper and checked them.
'Why is this in his safe?'
Numerous letters with crumpled covers and crooked handwriting.
They were clearly private letters that should not be kept in such a hidden place.
Enoch pondered for a moment, feeling an uneasy strangeness, and tilted his head slightly.
'Administrator, it can't be... I should take this too, just in case.'
Enoch gathered the materials in his arms and left the study. He secured the evidence and data.
He had achieved his primary goal.
But at that moment, Enoch encountered an unexpected familiar face on the stairs of the hallway.
"Ah, Enoch-nim. I meet you again here!"
Administrator Oscar.
He greeted Enoch politely, scanning him.
"By the way. What brings you to the main building of this mansion?"
"Ah. I'm not familiar with the geography yet, so I was just looking for my lodging."
At Enoch's nonchalant reply, he tilted his head slightly.
A secret space hidden in the study. The various data stored inside. A bad feeling briefly crossed his mind.
'Could it be.'
But the administrator erased his doubts as he looked at Enoch's black hair.
After all, Enoch is a direct descendant of the Main House, but he is just an incompetent non-mage.
Even the mages who had been dispatched here had not been able to grasp the investigation for a while. There is no way a non-mage like Enoch would notice the secrets of this mansion.
Judging so, the administrator said with a well-crafted smile.
"Ah, there was no separate guidance. The lodging is in the south annex. I'll call a servant."
Enoch nodded once and simply bowed before continuing down the stairs of the hallway.
Oscar, who looked at Enoch's back with an amused expression, moved towards the study.
He had to check it, just in case.
Oscar entered the study and checked the bookshelf. As expected, the books arranged there had not changed at all.
Relieved, the administrator looked at the front of the bookshelf and habitually pulled out a book to check inside.
'Then that's...?'
At that moment, the lever of the secret safe located inside the bookshelf came into view. Oscar's eyes were filled with astonishment as he checked it.
He had a small habit.
A very trivial habit, but one that he always strictly adhered to.
He always aligned the edge of the book covering the lever with the end of the lever.
But this time it was different from usual.
The position of the book was very subtly misaligned.
If he was not the kind of person who pathologically kept this habit, he would not even be able to notice the subtle difference.
But that's why he could notice it.
'He touched it.'
His gaze, which had turned sharp in an instant, turned towards the window.
Enoch, walking casually, came into view outside the window.
And at that moment. The boy's jet-black eyes glanced back this way.
For a moment, the two gazes crossed precisely.
Although it was a long distance, the administrator, who had met Enoch's black eyes, slowly raised the corners of his mouth.
'...Look at this?'
***
Enoch turned his head.
'If he checked it, he would have noticed by now.'
He could guess what kind of expression the administrator, who had checked the safe, would be making.
But it didn't matter if he was caught anyway.
What mattered was that he had the evidence in his hands.
'If I don't collect these materials, there will be no evidence to solve the case later.'
Rushing straight to the laboratory without considering the consequences might be a method. But if he did that, there was a possibility that the administrator would immediately destroy the evidence related to Vendetta.
Therefore, securing these materials was a priority.
'However, there is one thing.'
Even though he had secured these pieces of evidence, there were still some points that bothered him.
'To complete the mission and save them, I will eventually have to enter the underground laboratory directly.'
As long as the administrator is cooperating with Vendetta like in the original story. If Enoch, who is currently dispatched alone to Leopold, suddenly requests reinforcements from the family, the administrator will immediately notice and make a move.
In other words, it is certain that the only solution is for him to enter the basement directly, as in the original story.
'But I don't know how many enemies will be deployed in the basement now, which is earlier than the original story.'
He must not forget. The enemies in the laboratory he experienced in the original story were only the situation 5 years later.
It is impossible to rule out the possibility that they have deployed unexpected ambushes or additional forces in the underground laboratory, or set up some kind of trap that he does not know about.
If he charged straight ahead recklessly, he didn't know what kind of mishap would happen.
'Of course, I have made some plans for each situation, but I'm not completely sure yet.'
He had to make up for the shortcomings somehow. But that was something he could think about slowly after finishing the urgent business.
In the first place, he could roughly guess the scale of the enemy in the underground laboratory.
'By the way, Administrator Oscar, he pretended to care about non-mages so much in front of me earlier. Does that mean that he eventually built the orphanage with the intention of using the children from the beginning, under Vendetta's orders?'
Enoch wore a cynical smile.
The reason the administrator founded the orphanage was ultimately just a facade to create Vendetta's human experimentation laboratory.
Of course, the exact details were not directly presented either in the original story or now... But judging from all the evidence, that must have been the case.
Enoch stopped thinking and turned his gaze.
A huge labyrinth garden cultivated behind the mansion.
Since it was lunchtime in the middle of a sunny day, all the children had excitedly come out to play in the garden.
Without even knowing what was lurking in the underground below.
'...It's a scene I passed by without thinking in the game.'
Enoch looked at the children in the orphanage for a moment.
Except for the difference that they had a genius talent for swordsmanship instead of magic, those children and Enoch were the same non-mages.
Enoch, who inherited the excellent blood of the Main House but could not develop magic because he had a talent for swords, was treated as a failure of the family and hidden in a corner.
To be recognized, Enoch turned away from the sword and desperately clung to magic that he could not even develop.
But in the end, he was just a sacrifice of the Magic Empire's system, who could only meet a miserable death in all routes.
As he blankly watched the children playing innocently, the fact that he had become such an Enoch now came to him with a renewed sense of reality.
'To be honest, I don't fully understand Enoch's actions that he showed in the original story.'
Enoch must have known himself best.
Even just looking at the numerous swords lined up in the training ground, he must have known for sure that his talent was in swords.
'Then, why did Enoch give up everything and abandon the sword around the age of 13?'
What exactly was the reason why Enoch had to cling to magic that he couldn't even develop?
Was it simply because of the gaze and pressure of the Main House, which is a magic prestigious family?
Or….
"Look over there! That hyung has black hair!"
At that moment, cutting off his recollection, one of the children chattering from the side shouted.
"Wow, it's true! And he's so handsome!"
The children found Enoch and ran up to him, looking at him with wonder.
One of the children who was wandering around, with a curious expression, bowed to Enoch's side and asked.
"Excuse me! Are you a mage from the Elsyde Main House?"
"Wow! I didn't hear that another mage was coming this time!"
Enoch reluctantly nodded. Well, strictly speaking, he wasn't a mage.
"Then, do you know where the mage uncle who came here last time went?"
Enoch stopped for a moment.
The other children also seemed very curious, and they stopped playing and were all looking at him.
"Mage?"
"Yes! He was a fun uncle who played well with us. He said he was from the Elsyde family too..."
Was he talking about the mage who was dispatched here before?
It seems that he, who is currently missing, had contact with the children of the orphanage after coming here.
The adults probably didn't bother to tell the children what happened to him.
Enoch slowly shook his head.
"I don't know."
They probably don't know what the situation is yet, so there's no need to say anything about missing or anything like that.
Looking at the children with slightly disappointed expressions, as if they had been expecting news of the mage who had been dispatched earlier, Enoch started walking again.
Even if they were children, there was no reason to mix words unnecessarily.
"Wow..."
But at some point, the children's attention was all focused on Enoch's back this time.
A child, who had been staring blankly at Enoch's back, cautiously asked Enoch.
"Excuse me. But, who is that super pretty maid sister behind oppa?"
Come to think of it, it seemed that many other kids had already had their eyes taken away by Lien.
Enoch reluctantly looked at the place the child was pointing at.
There, Lien was still silently guarding his back with an expressionless face as usual.
"Wow, that noona is really like a doll..."
Another boy next to him muttered, losing his soul.
Enoch just smiled awkwardly at the children's pure admiration.
Certainly, Lien's beautiful appearance seemed to be enough to capture the children's attention.
But Enoch's impression was slightly different from the children's pure admiration.
'She's really keeping an eye on me, ready to burn anyone who does anything to Enoch's body.'
A strange feeling that was somehow reassuring and chilling at the same time.
At that time.
A child said, as if he had just thought of it.
"Ah! Come to think of it, that mage uncle said that he had something to leave to the other mages of the family... Did you receive it by any chance?"
Enoch stopped abruptly at those words.
"Something to leave?"
"Yes! Didn't you hear?"
It was the first time he heard about it.
In the official history, this orphanage was the first place to be devastated by the Magical Beasts that came out of the underground experiment.
In the first place, there was no way that the children who would tell him this would remain in the original story.
'I was just regretting that there was no more information.'
If the mage who went missing earlier was trying to leave something to the other mages of Elsyde, he might have already noticed that he would go missing.
If it was information left in such a situation? It was highly likely that it would be useful.
He couldn't miss this unexpected information.
"What is that thing he left behind?"
But the children shook their heads.
"We don't know what it is either. We didn't see it ourselves. But Chloe sister probably has it."
Enoch's eyes widened for a moment. The name that came out of the child's mouth was a quite familiar name.
'Chloe? Could it be that "Chloe"?'
The name of a character who also appears in the original story.
「Chloe Ivbia」
A 14th rank mage who appears in <Magic Empire Atlas>.
She was definitely a common, elemental-type mage as her main force.
Chloe is one of the characters that the protagonist can welcome as a Follower Family. She is one of the basic characters.
In the in-game, she is unexpectedly not bad performance for a 14th rank, but she does not particularly involved in the main story. And she wasn't a very important mage in terms of the story's impact or related settings.
For her name to come out here.
It felt quite strange somewhere.
'Chloe was a mage in the original story. Why is that Chloe here, in an orphanage where only non-mages gather?'
Even though she is called a 14th rank in the in-game, where monsters of 10th rank or higher are rampant, she is a talent who is over 15th rank when considering the proportion of the entire imperial citizens.
He didn't guess that such a woman was from an orphanage where only non-mages gather.
Of course, her origin didn't come out in the original story, so it wasn't that strange that Chloe was from this orphanage.
Well, there probably wasn't just one or two people named Chloe. He would know exactly when he met her.
"Where is Chloe now?"
"Ah, Chloe sister always sits on the chair behind the garden at this time! She doesn't play with us well."
"I see. Thank you for letting me know."
Enoch immediately headed to the place the children had said.
If there was something that the previous mage had left behind, it wouldn't hurt to find it.
Above all, it was 5 years before the start of the original story. There was a high possibility that the situation was different from that time.
'If he was trying to leave something to the mages who came later, it wouldn't have been useless at least.'
The back of the garden that the children pointed to was surprisingly quite far.
When the chatter of the children who were playing earlier faded away, Enoch finally found the place the children had said.
'Here.'
The back of the garden.
But it was a secluded and quiet place, hidden by the shade of the orphanage building and trees more than he thought.
As he surveyed the area and moved forward, Enoch stopped for a moment.
'This is?'
A row of dolls made of pebbles, shaped like various animals, caught his eye in the flower bed. They were crude, but there were quite a lot of them.
Enoch picked up one of them.
'A rabbit... shape?'
The shape looked like a rabbit that had been in five traffic accidents, but it was probably a rabbit.
But the important thing was not that.
'She made it with mana.'
Surprisingly, he could feel the faint mana energy remaining in the stone dolls through 「Sense of Mana」. He didn't know that it was possible to check things like this with the Sense of Mana.
In any case, it was certain that they were recently made.
And Enoch, who stood up holding the doll, saw an amazing sight beyond the flowers in the flower bed.
'……?'
A young girl was sitting on a chair.
She looked no more than thirteen years old.
Bright, light brown hair hanging down to her shoulders, and a neat and pretty face suitable for her young age.
It was definitely the person he had seen in the original story.
Chloe's young appearance.
But the reason why Enoch was more surprised was different.
Woo-
Luminous particles of light were arranged in the air, forming a faint magic circle shape from the fingertips of the sitting girl.
And in front of her, a pebble was floating in the air, shaping a form.
Enoch tilted his head slightly as he looked at it.
This fact was the strangeness he had felt when he heard the name Chloe earlier.
'Why is Chloe, who is so obviously a mage, here?'
This should be an orphanage where only non-mages gather.
Of course, since her origin was not mentioned in the setting, it was not very strange that Chloe was from this orphanage.
But honestly, it was surprising in many ways.
Enoch looked back and forth between the girl and the magic circle in front of him for a moment.
The girl, who had noticed him, tilted her head as she looked at Enoch and said.
"...Thief?"
Enoch paused at the sudden words.
Her face was much younger than in the original story, but it was definitely her.
Chloe.
One of the characters who appeared in the original story.
A character who was treated as around 3 tiers in the character tier list that was circulating in the community.
A mage who had no special features other than the fact that she had a small number of hardcore fans among users in the community because of her pretty appearance.
Such a person was actually standing in front of him.
Of course, in a much younger form than in the original story.
"That."
Jerk.
She suddenly pointed at the hand holding the doll, looking at him blankly.
"I made that doll. Give it back."
Enoch swallowed the words that he wasn't going to steal such a stone piece and glanced at the doll in his hand.
Come to think of it, Chloe's initials were also written small on the back of the doll. It was certain that she had put some effort into this doll.
'Anyway, Chloe. How should I treat her?'
She was definitely a character who appeared in the original story.
Still, he roughly remembered her because she was a character who could be recruited into the party... But it was a bit awkward to actually meet her like this.
Of course, it was also because she was a much younger version than in the original story, but it was because he had never recruited Chloe into the party much in the first place.
'Above all, her performance was really bad!'
In the first place, her performance as a mage in the original story was 14th rank.
The overall skill set was disappointing to put in the party composition, but there were no particular merits either. She was simply an ordinary side character.
Even if he brought her into the Follower Family in the in-game, it was difficult to use her for missions because she was pushed back by other 1st and 2nd tier characters.
Again, he was an extreme performance junkie.
'She wasn't an attractive character. She didn't have much importance in the story either.'
Even though she appears quite early in the original story, it is safe to say that her presence is so weak that it is not as much as Enoch, who is a supporting character.
But now, such Chloe was an important person holding the information he needed right now.
Moreover, there was a separate reason why he had to pay particular attention to Chloe.
'According to the original story, Chloe has a very upright personality.'
She has a clear sense of what she likes and dislikes, in other words, you could say she has a stubborn personality.
The reason why he remembered Chloe, who didn't have much importance in the original story, was because of her smart personality.
Of course, it's not that she's unusually venomous on a regular basis, but if things go wrong, she might pout and not give him information.
'Then the best thing to do is not to offend her!'
In order not to offend her, Enoch handed out the doll as politely as possible, saying.
"I was just looking at this rabbit for a while because it was well made."
But suddenly Chloe's pretty face became distorted at Enoch's answer.
"Ra, rabbit...?"
And the next moment, she shouted with a very wronged expression.
"It's obviously a fox!"
"……."
...Geez.