Chapter 45: Requitas, the Lawless Zone (5)

Chapter 45: Requitas, the Lawless Zone (5)

Isha didn’t wake up until around noon the next day.

I leisurely played chess with Sirien when we heard movement from inside.

The timing was perfect. I was on the verge of losing my seventh game in a row, but thanks to the interruption, I only lost six.

A saintess should be merciful, after all.

But Sirien still showed no mercy in competition.

It felt like I might win if I tried just a little harder...

After a light knock, we entered the room to find Isha sitting quietly on the bed.

The loose bindings were still intact, so she untied them herself.

Sirien, who had followed, sat down next to Isha.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m better, thanks to you.”

“That’s good to hear. But don’t overdo it just yet. You’re not fully healed. The god I serve isn’t particularly skilled in healing.”

“So you really are a priest?”

Isha touched the side where she was injured yesterday and stood up.

The girl standing solemnly before us bowed deeply.

“I didn’t have the chance to properly thank you yesterday. Thank you so much for saving my life.”

It wasn’t just out of the goodness of our hearts. We had our own reasons for helping.

“I know. What do you need me to do?”

Sirien and I exchanged a glance.

What we wanted from Isha was already decided.

“Let’s start by hearing your side of the story. Can you eat?”

There was no need for her to answer.

The moment I finished speaking, Isha’s stomach growled loudly.

Sirien chuckled, and Isha’s face flushed red as she looked down at the floor.

“Looks like you can. Let’s go.”

“Yes...”

Crescent Moon was a guild that dealt in information throughout the empire.

But how did this guild gather its information?

Unlike in modern times, where technology was advanced, almost everything in this world was done by people.

No matter how powerful a noble or the imperial family might be, they still needed people to survive.

The larger the household, the more servants they employed. The information Crescent Moon dealt in came from the mouths of these people.

Even the smallest, most trivial information was valuable if it was interesting or seemed important, and they paid well for it.

The common folk, always buried in work, wanted money, and the wealthy nobles needed information.

Crescent Moon had branches all over the empire and made money by selling information or keeping secrets.

“It makes sense. I’ve heard that some servants are like that. They sell information as soon as they learn something.”

“But it would be risky if they got caught.”

“If they could catch them, they’d be kicked out, but that’s easier said than done. Just in our castle alone, there were hundreds of people coming and going. You can’t keep track of everyone.”

Isha glanced at Sirien.

There weren’t many families in the empire that employed hundreds of servants.

She seemed curious about Sirien’s identity, but that question never made it to her lips.

Sirien rested her chin on the table.

Despite going through that trouble, the rats had still sent people after Isha.

This was obsession—a fixation on finding Isha at all costs.

There had to be a compelling reason for going so far as to manipulate her childhood friend to capture her.

But it seemed Isha couldn’t guess what that reason might be.

Then it was up to us to find out.

“Crescent Moon was a guild that dealt in information.”

Sirien fell into deep thought.

I decided to wait for her to think it through.

When it came to brain work, Sirien was much better at it than I was.

The villainess who had served as the final boss alongside me in the original story.

My saintess had not let me down.

“Since it was information from all over the empire, there’s no way they could remember everything. They must have recorded and stored it somewhere, and they would’ve categorized the important stuff separately. Who knows the location of the archive?”

“Only my father and a few select employees knew. I doubt any of the employees survived.”

“That must be it.”

* * *

When the sewer rats first emerged as a group, they weren’t even aware they were one.

The name was nothing more than a derogatory term people used for them, a name they ironically adopted while acknowledging the grim reality of their existence in the filth.

At that time, their base was indeed near the old sewers. Though now it’s a place of indulgence and pleasure, back then, it was a breeding ground for rats and insects.

In a dimly lit, dark room, only the red glow of the lights cast a faint, sensual hue, mingling with the curling tendrils of cigarette smoke. A woman’s whining voice echoed from near someone’s feet.

A man, Milrun, lit his cigarette, exhaling a short sigh.

“Ha.”

His hand absentmindedly stroked the woman’s head, but his gaze was elsewhere.

Where his cold eyes settled, a man knelt, battered and bruised. His voice dripped with anger.

“Did I give you a difficult order?”

“N-No.”

“Or was my support insufficient?”

“No, not that either.”

“Right. So, isn’t it strange? It wasn’t a difficult order, and I gave you plenty of support, yet you let that defeated woman escape. And three of the men I sent after her are dead?”

A cloud of white smoke billowed from his mouth, a pungent aroma wafting through the air, swirling like a dream.

The women in the den seemed entranced by the haze. When the man stood, the bare bodies on the floor squirmed in response.

“Phew. Any idea where she might be?”

“I’m sorry. She vanished without a trace. We searched the entire city, but we couldn’t find her.”

“You searched everywhere?”

“Yes, absolutely. We searched everywhere except the south, but there was no sign of her.”

“Then you didn’t search everywhere, did you?”

The man smirked.

Milrun reached out with his thick, scarred hand and shoved something into his subordinate’s mouth.

“Useless fool. I’ll find her myself now.”

“Aaack! Gurg—kyaaaaaah!”

That day, a headless corpse was tossed into the sewers.

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