Although the gold pounds he collected were less than expected, they still significantly boosted Varina's spirits.
He continued searching and soon found a black-covered notebook in the first drawer on the right.
Opening it, he found the contents to be a jumbled mess: insights into interpersonal relationships, gang secrets, incoherent ramblings, and even praise for the "True Creator"...
Varina flipped through a few pages before belatedly realizing—he had been too reckless.
This was the notebook of a follower of the "True Creator"!
Was it something he could just casually look at?
He quickly put the notebook back and tapped his chest four times clockwise with his right hand, "Goddess, protect me."
This was the first prayer Varina had uttered since awakening to another set of memories.
He had been reluctant to pray because he didn't want to be exposed to the gaze of those higher beings; he didn't want to be like Klein, constantly struggling within a nearly fixed framework, advancing through the cracks.
But now the situation was different; he had come into contact with items related to the True Creator.
Although it was almost impossible for this to attract attention, he decided to offer a prayer anyway; although such a hasty and imperious prayer was almost impossible to be answered, he felt better afterward.
After praying, Varina resumed his work, searching the last two drawers before turning his attention to the desk.
Several documents were scattered on the desk, mostly reports related to the association's daily operations.
Out of curiosity, Varina looked at some of them, and although he only skimmed through them, his understanding of the union deepened considerably.
Roughly speaking, they signed transportation contracts with factories, received monthly commissions, and then used a small portion of those as cash payments to direct workers under their control to complete transportation tasks.
It was precisely because of this conversion between monthly and cash payments that a certain amount of cash was kept in the chairman's office.
While flipping through the documents, Varina suddenly came across a very interesting one.
It was a contract that was both formal and informal.
At first glance, the entire contract appeared well-structured and clearly defined, clearly a template drafted by a professional lawyer. However, a closer look at the handwritten portion reveals that the contract is completely invalid.
This is because the terms it stipulates are illegal.
The contract states that Party A (blank) commissions Party B (illustration) (to eliminate Eugene, the leader of the Grey Rat Gang), with a full prepayment (£250), and completion within one month, along with several binding clauses.
Varina chuckled. This Party B was truly creative, using a template contract to stipulate such an illegal act as assassination.
Sensing the irony of this contrast, he suddenly had a flash of insight—perhaps this meant Party B had a large and reputable business, to the point that such illegal activities had developed into such a mature and standardized process?
This Party B was not simple.
With this thought in mind, Varina looked again at the illustration representing Party B on the contract—
a simplified outline of a human head with two overlapping daggers, easily mistaken for a crossed-out circle.
He carefully memorized the emblem, while simultaneously searching the contract for any hidden markings or clues.
He wanted to find this "Party B."
The reason was simple:
this "Party B" was clearly a sophisticated assassin organization. Could a real "assassin" have infiltrated it, profiting while playing the role?
Even further, could this assassin organization be an outpost of the "Witch Cult"?
Varina sat at his desk, intently staring at the contract in his left hand, his free right hand resting on the table, his index finger lightly tapping the surface.
He had examined the contract repeatedly,
but found no hidden markings or contact information. So the question was, how to find this "Party B"?
After racking his brains without success, Varina finally turned his attention to another receipt.
This was a casino chip exchange voucher, the only thing kept with the contract. Now he could only hope that the two were related; otherwise, the trail would go cold.
The information on the receipt indicated that the casino was located in the Boiling Blood Bar on Green Road.
Varina happened to know the location of Green Road; it was between the dockworkers' union and the Weston textile mill, and he had passed by twice that afternoon.
There was indeed a pub there.
"I can go check it out after work tomorrow."
He folded the receipts and contracts together and put them in his left trouser pocket, along with the 80 pounds he had received earlier.
There wasn't much else to see. Varina wandered around the office, making sure there was nothing else of interest, before sitting down at the coffee table.
He casually picked up *The Stormy Mansion* from the table, finding the novel's grammatical structure too cumbersome for him, unlikely to pique his interest.
But he continued reading anyway.
He had nothing else to do; as long as the two next door hadn't left, his best option was to stay. Of course, the author, Miss "The Magician," was also one of the reasons he was reading the novel.
"Ding, ding, ding..."
The clock struck ten, and before he knew it, it was ten o'clock at night.
A little while later, the two next door finally finished their work, chatting and laughing as they left.
After they walked away, Varina got up and went to the office door. He unlocked the door from the inside and returned to the corridor, the whole process relaxed and natural, as if he were the owner of the office.
However, this "owner" persona crumbled the moment he stepped out of the office.
Varina was caught in a dilemma—should he check the archives? Or search the main office? Or should he just take
what he could and leave? Every option was acceptable; it was just a matter of choosing.
After a moment of hesitation, Varina suddenly realized that he wasn't truly confused, but rather that his subconscious was reminding him—there were things left undone, and he couldn't leave the chairman's office yet.
"Is this a spiritual reminder? Can someone like me, a 'half-extraordinary,' receive spiritual reminders? Whatever it is, it's a very strange feeling."
Varina returned to the chairman's office with a faint smile on his face. He already knew what to do next—to wrap things up.
He couldn't just take the gold and the contract like that, because that would leave traces that could be investigated, potentially putting him in danger.
He wanted to wrap things up and make it seem like the incident had nothing to do with him.
If he were an extraordinary being, the cleanup would be quite easy. For example, the Seer pathway could use paper dolls to counter-divine, the Reader pathway could destroy clues, and the Assassin pathway could burn the "connection" with black flames...
But he isn't, so all he can do is—mislead.What is misleading?
It's using tricks to guide people's perception of things in the wrong direction.
How to achieve misleading?
Simply put, it's about creating a conspicuous false direction while concealing the true direction.
So, regarding Varina's actions tonight, what is the true direction?
It's theft; his target is the gold pound.
Concealing this target isn't difficult. Because of the gold pound's special nature, it easily becomes an add-on to the main objective.
Therefore, as long as a more convincing, more "real" target is found, the true direction can be easily concealed.
And this more "real" target is precisely the false direction Varina needs.
So, what kind of target meets the requirements?
Varina is also thinking about it.
He sits at his desk like a "master," trying to put himself in the role of the chairman to find an impactful target, to find the kind of scapegoat that a real chairman would instinctively think of.
This is actually somewhat difficult for Varina.
Because he's not the real chairman, he doesn't know much about the dockworkers' union or the Dead Eel Gang; much of what he knows is only what he just learned from those documents.
Fortunately, he has enough information.
Varina's thoughts raced, finally returning to the contract.
Who could possibly provoke the chairman's nerves more than the assassination target—Eugene, the leader of the Gray Rat Gang?
Was there a more perfect scapegoat?
"Nothing to think about. I've decided. You'll take the blame, Eugene."
With that decision, Varina began making arrangements, placing Eugene as the target in a more prominent position.
He didn't do much; he simply took out a black notebook from the right drawer of his desk, flipped to a previous page, and laid it open on the table.
Varina picked up the dark red fountain pen on the table and pressed it onto the notebook—this was the final "finishing touch."
After completing this step, he walked out of the chairman's office without looking back, retracing his steps and leaving the two-story building.
Open the window, climb through the window, close the window.
He completed this series of actions with fluid grace.
His past, fabricated stealth experience, combined with his current, genuine physical attributes, had propelled Varina from an ordinary person to one of the top thieves below the superhuman level.
"Heh, Ghost Stealth, challenge complete."
Varina walked a long way along the main gas pipe before leaping to the ground.
He frowned upon landing, realizing he couldn't make his body as light as a feather as a true "assassin" near the ground.
"I'm only half an 'assassin,' it's normal not to have abilities like 'Light Feather Fall'…"
He shook his head slightly, then moved his slightly numb legs and walked into the night streets.
Varina didn't return to his small apartment until midnight.
Taking off his coat, he unhooked his gun holster, patted it, and muttered, "I'm glad you didn't need to be used."
He hid the weapon under the bed, grabbed his pajamas, and went into the adjacent communal restroom.
…
The next day, after eight in the morning.
Dockworkers' Association.
A large, somewhat greasy-looking middle-aged man entered the hall amidst a series of greetings, scanned the room with a sharp gaze, and went straight upstairs.
During this time, the entire hall quieted down considerably, intimidated by the man's aura.
On the second floor, the man first went to the door of the large office at the end of the corridor and asked a red-haired man, "Kirk, anything wrong?"
"No."
Kirk was already prepared to answer this question. He immediately stood up and
respectfully said, "Everything's normal, boss." "Hmm."
The man nodded, making a nasal sound, then took a few steps to the door of the chairman's office and took out his key to open it.
Something was wrong.
The key didn't go into the lock as he expected; instead, it forced the door open, which should have been locked.
The man's expression suddenly changed, revealing a hint of ruthlessness.
He forcefully pushed the door open, strode inside, and quickly searched the room, discovering the most glaring change—
his notebook, which he usually used to vent his emotions, was open on the table, with his pen on top.
"This is a provocation! Who did this?!"
The man barely suppressed his anger, not touching the notebook on the table, but continuing to search for clues.
Soon, as the man's gaze swept over the moved documents on the table, something suddenly occurred to him, and a suspicion arose in his mind.
He reached out and fiddled with the documents, discovering that the commission contract was indeed gone, just as he had suspected.
At that moment, he noticed a detail he had previously overlooked.
The content written on the open page of the notebook perfectly matched the target of his suspicion. An even clearer clue was the pen; the cap was off, and the nib was pointing directly at a name—
"Eugene."
The man flew into a rage and immediately shouted,
"Kirk, get in here!"
"You fucking explain to me, is this what you call 'everything normal'? Someone's boots are stepping on your face, and you, you damn bastard, didn't even notice?"
"What the hell are you good for?"
Kirk relaxed after his boss left, fiddling with the pen to pass the time.
He was barely literate, relying mainly on his self-taught management skills and his boss's trust to secure his position as the union's second-in-command.
He thought today would be an ordinary day, but he didn't expect that his boss would issue an angry summons after only being gone for a few minutes.
His boss was furious, and the consequences would be severe.
Kirk rushed into the chairman's office the moment he realized what was happening, but before he could even see what was going on, he was slapped across the face.
"Smack!"
The sound was crisp and loud.
Kirk's left cheek quickly turned red, then visibly swelled up.
Bewildered and terrified, he covered his cheek and tentatively asked, "Boss, what happened?"
Then, he received another slap.
Kirk felt the pain in his left cheek and the numbness in his right cheek before he heard his boss's reply.
"Someone broke in last night!"
"It must be the Gray Rat Gang. They took an important commission and even provoked me!"
"And you, you idiot, didn't notice anything!"
Kirk understood somewhat; he'd messed up.
"What are you standing there for?" The middle-aged man pointed to the door. "Aren't you going to investigate? Go find the brothers who were on guard duty last night and ask them."
"I need to know every detail."
Kirk nodded repeatedly and fled as if escaping.
…
A little after nine, at the Xilun Textile Factory.
An uninvited guest arrived at the flat-roofed hut where Varina worked—
Quide, who had helped with deliveries yesterday.