[Under your utterly brutal sparring, Simon completed a combat lesson, and his fighting skills improved significantly.]
That evening, Elisa got out of bed and stretched luxuriously.
That felt great!
She examined the lesson summary carefully and discovered that Simon had failed to increase his [Combat] level this time.
A twinge of guilt struck her.
Could it be because I was too busy settling a personal score to teach him properly?
But the summary clearly said that the male servant’s fighting skills had improved significantly.
It must be because, after reaching [LV3], it’s difficult to level up through a single lesson. That makes sense. Who could possibly learn that quickly?!
She opened the [Simon Log] again.
[Simon woke with a start from his dream, drenched in cold sweat. He had dreamed that he was being beaten up by a pack of red-eyed, golden-haired dogs and curly-haired baboons.]
[Through his battles with the golden retrievers and baboons, he became more proficient in combat techniques.]
Who are you calling a golden retriever baboon?!
Elisa punched the light screen.
Outside the bed curtains, the personal maid Eve attending her noticed the movement. She drew back the curtains and helped Elisa straighten her clothes.
After dinner, Elisa pretended to be tired and went to bed early.
Once their mistress had retired, the servants also went to sleep. Late at night, when everything was quiet, she got up on tiptoe and opened the balcony door.
Clouds obscured the night sky, leaving the ground unusually dark. It was the perfect time for a little breaking and entering… No, the perfect time to take care of some business at the police station!
Tsk, the male servant took the [Finger Bone], yet I, his mistress, have to clean up his mess. Honestly…
Once I get back, I’ll go to the male servant’s room, take the [Finger Bone], and replace it with another transcendent item. That should give him a good scare!
When the male servant wakes up tomorrow morning and discovers that the [Finger Bone] has turned into a different transcendent item, he’ll be startled, shocked, alarmed, and terrified, just like I was this morning.
Imagining the male servant’s bewildered expression put Miss Elisa in a delightful mood.
She took out a gray talisman, held it between her thumb and middle finger, and softly uttered “Shadow” in Hermes.
The shadow beneath her feet began to stir. It climbed up her ankles and spread over her entire body until she became part of the shadows.
The Blood Ritual was unsuitable for infiltration; the Shadow Ritual was a better choice.
Moving through the shadows, Elisa soon reached the police station. She climbed over the wall into the courtyard, kept close to the walls as she moved, and studied the station’s layout, searching for the detention cells.
As she approached the building, she stopped and looked inside in surprise. She dispelled the Shadow Ritual and pushed the door open directly.
On the chairs in the police station’s main hall, two officers on duty sat with their eyes open, staring straight at her, their expressions twisted in agony.
She approached the two officers and examined the bloody holes in their lower abdomens. Their blood was still warm, and their spirits had not yet dispersed.
She took out an emerald ring, slipped it onto her finger, and held it above one officer’s wound.
“Heal,” she uttered in Hermes. The emerald ring lit up, and the wound in the officer’s abdomen rapidly closed.
“Recall Soul.” She took out another talisman, this one dark purple. The talisman dissolved, and the officer’s chest began to rise and fall again.
Elisa wiped the sweat from her forehead. Both officers had already had one foot in the realm of death. If they hadn’t encountered her, they would certainly have been beyond saving.
To prevent the two officers from waking up, Elisa used another talisman, [Sleep].
She recalled the wounds she had just seen. They were as wide as a fist, with ragged edges. A hand had pierced through each officer’s lower abdomen from behind.
No ordinary person or beast could have done that. It had to be a transcendent.
Why would someone attack the police station?
Elisa cautiously made her way down the corridor. The two officers were the only ones on duty at the police station, and they did not seem to have been the killer’s intended targets—or at least, not the only ones.
In the detention cells, three prisoners lay in pools of blood. They were Sheldon, Charles, and George.
Their spirits had already dispersed.
Elisa sighed. How cruel. Every one of them had been stabbed through the heart. Even in the Archipelago, murders this brutal were rare.
This royal capital was probably no more peaceful than the Archipelago.
Then again, that was only natural. Wasn’t I, someone who is planing to kill the king, hiding here too?
Elisa had seen plenty of death in the Archipelago, and by the time she left the police station, her mood had soon returned to normal.
I wonder what the attacker was after. Was it that [Finger Bone]? But he killed Sheldon and the others outright.
Forget it. This has nothing to do with me.
Tonight’s objective has been more than accomplished. Sheldon and the other two have now thoroughly “forgotten” about the [Finger Bone].
Next, I need to return to the manor and retrieve the [Finger Bone]. I’ll just replace it with some other transcendent item. What should I use?
I have five transcendent items on me right now. Two of them aren’t especially useful: [Purification] and [Healing]… Actually, they’re both quite useful. I’m a little reluctant to part with either of them.
Why not just take the [Finger Bone]? What belongs to the servant belongs to the master!
Elisa grew conflicted. One voice in her head insisted on an “equivalent exchange” while another said, “Hand it over!”
Still wavering, she returned to the manor and used a [Shadow] talisman to slip into the male servant’s bedroom.
She discovered that there was no need to hesitate anymore, because she searched the male servant’s room from top to bottom and even performed a [Find Object Ritual], yet still failed to locate the [Finger Bone].
Where did you hide it?! Elisa glared at the sleeping male servant.
She opened [Simon’s Log] and quickly flipped through it, searching for information. But the log only showed that Simon had hidden the finger bone before going to sleep. It never mentioned where he had hidden it. Damn it!
Elisa expanded her search to the servants’ dining room and the butler’s quarters but still came up empty-handed.
This makes no sense!
Where on earth did you hide it?! Why doesn’t the [Object Finding Ritual] work either? I never taught you the [Anti-Finding Object Ritual]!
Elisa clutched her head, forced to accept a certain reality.
I can’t find the [Finger Bone] at all. I have no way of stopping that male servant from doing whatever he pleases in the manor!
He could spy on my private life at any moment, just like he did this morning… This feels strangely familiar. I think I do the same thing to him every day.
No, wait! How can a master be compared to a servant?! Elisa cast the self-reflection out of her mind.
What am I supposed to do now…
Miss Elisa spent the entire night worrying, keeping a close eye on the [Simon Log] to monitor Simon’s movements.
[Simon woke from his sleep. It was not yet light outside.]
After sending the edited information over to Elisa, Simon stretched and carefully examined the furnishings in his room.
The window, the desk, the paper and pens… Everything was as usual, with no trace of an intruder. As expected of a master thief with [Theft LV7], she had left absolutely no evidence behind.
Although he had no proof, Simon knew perfectly well that the great thief Elisa had entered his room last night.
He had slipped a crude tracking program into the [Ultimate Male Servant Training Plan].
As a seasoned programmer, leaving himself a few backdoors was simply professional practice.
The reason Elisa could not find the [Finger Bone] was that he had decomposed it into [Transcendent Data] and stored it in his program’s settings.
He needed the [Finger Bone] not merely because its invisibility ability was interesting, but because it was an important plot item. Invisibility was only the [Finger Bone]’s surface-level function.
To put Miss Elisa’s mind at ease, he restored the data from the backend into the [Finger Bone] and used it again.
[Simon decided to continue studying his newly acquired mysterious item. He took out the finger bone.]
Where did you take it out from?! Elisa was utterly baffled.
No, that’s not important right now. What matters is what you’re planning to do with the [Finger Bone]!
[Simon used the finger bone and left his room.]
Don’t come over here!
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