The night passed. Under the warmth of the morning sun, Isaac was found seated on the lone chair of his room, in front of the table where Henrick had presented the map.
It was visible in his sight. [The Prism], in accordance with Isaac's will, recorded its entirety thoroughly the moment it captured it. On the seemly empty table, he was reading the vast and detailed content of the map.
He was thinking, trying to simulate the future based on what was available to him.
Unfortunately, the session hasn't been fruitful. His mind was hazy. Many events that happened on him over the past few days were getting tangled—clearly, the lack of sleep was starting to get him.
Then, a knock came by the door. It appeared to be lighter than what he received from Vesper and Magnus a day ago, which indicated that he had different visitors.
His expression went blank, instinctively concealing his fatigue. Standing up, he reached and opened the door.
He found two individuals.
Evangeline Velvet was in the corridor in her wheelchair, with her blonde hair catching the morning light from the window at the hallway's far end. Beside her, standing in a composed posture, along with [Glamour] in the background as per usual, was Irine.
Isaac looked at them.
"Imagine my surprise when I learned that you live in Golden Repose," Evangeline said flatly, as if finding Isaac and Golden Repose a mismatch. "I do not have the knowledge of its layout."
"So I led her here," Irine followed in her usual monotone.
"I see," Isaac said. He looked at Irine briefly. She returned his gaze with the direct attention she always brought to him. "And the reason for your visit?"
Evangeline raised an eyebrow as if finding his question dismissive. "Banquet details."
He paused. Acknowledged that he missed what he shouldn't have. Nodding, he stepped back from the door. "Come in."
Evangeline rolled her wheelchair through the entrance with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been navigating doorways her entire life.
Irine then followed without being invited. Isaac, although intrigued by her entry, didn't comment on it but decided to let her be.
He gave over the desk chair to Irine and sat at the edge of the bed.
Evangeline positioned her wheelchair at the room's center. She looked around the room and muttered in envy, "Isn't it nice to have space?" The question was rhetorical. "Even the air feels fresher."
"Indeed," Isaac said.
Evangeline stared at him flatly. Then commented, "You are a dry man." Stared at him for a bit more, before moving on, "The banquet schedule was released last night." She revealed a folded document from the bag at her wheelchair's side. "I assumed you hadn't seen it."
"I was occupied," Isaac said.
"Of course you were." She rolled her eyes as she unfolded it and set it on the desk. "I'll get straight to the point. Attendance is expected from the sixth bell onward. Prince Gladius's speech is scheduled for the eighth bell. Mandatory presence until its conclusion." She looked at him. "As a former Valerius, you know what that means."
"The speech is the formal conclusion of the banquet's official proceedings," Isaac said. "After it, departure is permitted."
"Correct. Rather, departure is encouraged for outcasts like us." Evangeline spoke naturally, as if having expected him to answer as such. "We will meet at the Academy's eastern gate at the fifth bell and a half. After the conclusion of Prince Gladius's speech, we will disband immediately."
Isaac had no issue with her suggestion. "Agreed," he said.
"But do not be mistaken. Our circumstances aren't the same." Evangeline looked at him coldly. "We are attending together because the situation demands it. Just a year after, I will be someone entirely different. Meanwhile, you won't undergo the same luck of defeating Silas Fulgur and entering a higher class. In the banquet, our interaction will be kept minimal, just to the extent that the event requires."
Isaac sighed inwardly.
Pride, he thought bitterly, it's the biggest vice of you, the nobles.
"Sure," Outwardly, he said, for he couldn't be more bothered with what he considered pointless.
Irine watched him in silence.
Evangeline held her gaze on his eyes for a moment, which he returned with his own. Eventually, she clicked her tongue, "how spineless." She picked up the schedule and returned it to her bag. Then, she suddenly mentioned, "I will handle my own transportation to the eastern gate. I don't require assistance."
"Suit yourself." He replied, flatly.
Evangeline looked around the room briefly—at the iron charm on the desk's edge, the knife in its sheath, and the window facing the courtyard. She then returned her gaze to him, "then our talk is over."
She turned her wheelchair toward the door.
Isaac stood and opened it for her. She passed through without acknowledging the gesture.
Irine, who had been at the window the entire time, turned and walked to the door.
She paused at the threshold. Her blank expression then produced a slight distortion that appeared rather apologetic.
"Rest," she said to Isaac. The tone of her voice sounded warmer than the usual.
She left.
Isaac stood at the open door for a moment. The corridor was quiet.
He closed it.
…
The Free Ground's fourth day was different from the past three days. Although the stalls and vendors stood at the same locations, people were murmuring about something. The festival spirit, although still there, diminished.
Isaac overheard them mentioning "public library."
So it has begun.
Isaac moved through the crowd, toward the library's direction.
The commotion was visible before the library was. A crowd had assembled at the northern district's main street; it was the specific clustering of people who had arrived with a purpose and found it blocked.
Royal guards stood in a line across the library's entrance, the institutional bearing of people performing a function rather than enforcing a preference.
A notice had been posted at the entrance column.
Isaac read it from the crowd's edge without approaching.
Temporary closure due to a dangerous device being detected within the premises. Entry prohibited until further notice - by order of the Royal Guard.
The crowd's ambient noise had the quality of people processing something they found alarming and were deciding how alarmed to be.
"Um… shouldn't we be getting away as far as possible from here?"
"Relax! The royal guards got this. Do you know how many operations of this nature they've done in the past?"
"Uh, excuse me! Is whatever is written here true?"
Isaac watched the crowd.
The closure has begun since the morning. He thought. It is still held near the fourth bell in the afternoon. Did they manage to find anything? He couldn't tell. He would need to see Henrick to gain a sense of the current progression.
Then, he turned and walked toward the Hearthstone.
"Hey, Isaac!" Henrick waved at him widely as he has done in the past three days.
He sat. They chat and ate. Everything went normal, nothing different—except Henrick's expression. It carried the contained quality of someone managing a result they hadn't expected.
"Is something wrong?" Isaac asked as Henrick appeared to be zoning out.
"Oh, nothing much," Henrick replied, quickly masking his expression with a wary smile. "I lost my prized watch just yesterday night. I was trying to search it the whole day today, and still wasn't able to find any trace of it."
"…Is that so," Isaac's eyes narrowed. "Well, I hope you find it before your departure."
"I hope so."
The library search had produced nothing. Whatever the royal family had been looking for wasn't there.
Isaac ate his meal. He said what needed to be said in the coded register. He left at the appropriate time and walked back toward the Academy.
…
At the night, Isaac sat at his desk. The map that Henrick briefly showed him just a day ago was vivid in his mind.
Isaac placed his right hand on the desk. His fingers traced the marked lines, of red and green, of the map that was on top of the desk, visible only to him.
Lord Hedron's movement pattern in red, Lord Clodia's in green… public library is the recurrently overlapping joint.
Therefore, Henrick concluded that something must be hidden in there.
However, it is too vulgar. As if it was intended to fool the royal family. A layer of defence, if anything.
Today's lack of finding gave a support to this thought of his.
The royal family discovered that Lord Hedron is a betrayer. They must've been monitoring not only him, but also the majority of nobles under suspicion.
Then,
What if… the enemies were aware they were being watched?
Henrick wasn't aware of Serik Clodia's surveillance. It was definitely possible that the guards responsible for surveillance were instead being monitored.
If so, they intentionally directed the royal family into seizing the public library.
In other words, they played right into enemies' hands.
Then what? Isaac closed his eyes. A thought surfaced. If they wanted to hide a location… how would they do that?
The assumption that the enemies tricked the royal family into taking over the public library meant that Lord Clodia and Lord Hedron were indeed the traitors. The information that the royal family collected wasn't entirely wrong—just partially.
These paths that they traced for a year… still stand true. Those two individuals did physically go from place to place, walking these exact paths.
Isaac opened his eyes. Viewed the map within his memory. Placed a sheet of paper on the desk, just underneath the vision of the map that was in front of his eyes.
He then began to mark the locations that Lord Hedron and Lord Clodia had both consistently avoided instead.
After all, if they were to be aware of the fact that they are being monitored for an evidence, they would naturally react by intentionally avoiding the crucial locations.
The first exclusion zone was the poorer district's residential area. The second was the eastern market's wholesale section, which is the commercial district reserved for bulk traders rather than retail buyers. The third was the southern filtration infrastructure—the maintenance tunnels and operational facilities that Marcus had worked. All these three were consistent with their images as prideful nobles.
The fourth exclusion zone, was the district adjacent to the Order of Acacia's primary temple.
This was rather intriguing. However, Isaac couldn't bother to linger on this finding for long, for he discovered something that made his heart drop.
The fifth and last exclusion zone… was none other than the Hearthstone.
He looked at it for a long moment.
Hearthstone. Free Ground, western quarter. Ground floor of a building that had been serving the same clientele for decades. The location Henrick had selected as their daily meeting point because it was the royal family's secure operational base. The location where Isaac and Henrick had been exchanging coded information across five days of festival meetings.
Lord Hedron had never visited it. Lord Clodia had never visited it.
It didn't make sense. A bar that withstood the withering for decades tend to attract nobles.
Hearthstone was avoided by a pure chance. Or, it was avoided because it was too relevant, because visiting it would be too risky.
From the start… they knew. Isaac let out a deep breath. Then, produced a counter-argument, but then, how come [The Prism] didn't sense their surveillance?
Isaac set down the pen. Lifted the paper that had nothing but five random marks on its blankness.
With [Condensation], the paper quickly became soggy. He crumbled it up. Evaporated the fluid—the markings, smeared all over its crumbled inside, would no longer be recognizable. He threw it in a trash can.
He then paused.
…I see. I couldn't sense or be aware of them because there was no skill involved.
He thought about the bar's ambient noise. The festival crowds filling it beyond its usual capacity. The round tables and worn chairs and the conversations that overlapped and the staff moving between tables and the regulars who came every day and carried on their ordinary interactions.
[The Prism] read mana. It read atmospheric signatures. It read micro-expressions and physical tells and the specific quality of someone performing an emotion.
It could not read a person who was simply sitting at a table and listening.
Isaac sat with this for a long time.
It was the most old-fashioned intelligence method in existence. It was the one that truly produced no output for any measurement system to read.
Skills that the World Tree didn't grant, but… were acquired through trainings of their own.
Either way, a new hypothesis was formed.
They are hiding something in the Hearthstone.
He looked at the window. The festival's lantern light was still visible at the far edges of the courtyard.
He needed to tell Henrick.
Now? Then he shook his head, remembering that the third party was overhearing. That they decided to push on with their own intuition to close the public library, against his opinion.
Tomorrow, he would tell. In the Hearthstone, in their daily meet.
Isaac leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. Suddenly, the thought of Evangeline and Irine's visit in the morning popped up in his mind.
Banquet… banquet, huh. Isaac couldn't help but chuckle. How pointless.
The night continued.