The hours passed quickly. Both of the Solvers immediately halted their personal activities and commenced their observation.

Another hour flew by before the mysterious person had, thankfully, appeared. It was an elf, with a black dot on his relatively pale arm, in the same position as the image. He was scrawny, around the age of 16, and looked less mature than his peers. Kibo ordered Rey to contact him until he had finished his meal, just in case he was an average student who got marked for no particular reason.

The elf ate fast, they didn’t have to wait long. He slowly approached the elf and said, “Hello. I have some questions I want to ask--” The elf instantaneously wrapped himself a few meters away, started running, then wrapped himself again, this time even closer to the elevator.

As he was only a few steps away from his escape, Kibo suddenly jumped out and blocked the elf’s way, stunning him for a second. That one second allowed Rey to catch up and use a restriction spell to stop him from moving. He started screaming when he dropped into the ground after losing his balance.

“Get away from me you gangsters!!” The Demi’s feet found its way to the side of the elf’s face. He then crouches and attempted to calm him down, “Easy there, buddy. We’re Solvers, we’re not here to hurt you,” He promptly brought up the Solver variation of The Analytical Mind insignia using his Circulum, “See this? If we’re like the ‘gangsters’ you speak of, I can’t own this insignia.”

The elf composed himself, but remained skeptical, “How do I know for sure? There’s a possibility you managed to hack...whatever you need to hack to get it.” Rey was sure the elf felt stupid for asking that question.

“Unless you have the single most important secret in all of Speir at the palm of your hand, I don’t think anyone would want to hack Arthur Bell’s system.” Kibo stared down seriously at the elf’s evading eyes.

“Rey, release the spell.” The Demi helped him got up to his feet after the spell was broken. Out of nowhere, a human approached the three of them from the crowd and spectacles before he spoke loudly.

“Excellent work, gentlemen. Now, would you kindly hand him over to me?” Rey turned his head towards the owner of the voice and his face immediately turned into 😒. The human had a prideful demeanour but his facial features were quite plain. Rey could already tell what was going to happen next. It’s too predictable.

“Who are you?” Kibo glanced at him, “I’m Huai, and I’m a detective hired by the Student Council to investigate a smuggling case that has been going on since the start of the semester. Now, please hand him over to me. I suspect he has some valuable information concerning the case I have been working on.”

“Really? Are you deliberately breaking the rules? You do realize whoever get to the suspect first has the right to interrogate them before anyone else, right? Including people hired by the Student Council?”

“So what? I’m certain whatever case you Solvers are working on is less paramount than MY case, which is capturing smugglers smuggling drugs into the Academy. Now please, before I get angry, hand me the suspect!” He rudely grabbed the elf’s arm and tried to leave. However, Rey already had his hand, the one with the Circulum, beside his ear.

“Hello? Enforcers? My name is Reynard Foxtale, I’m a Solver in-training. I have apprehended a suspect, however, a detective has--”

“Wait, wait! Alright, you win. I will let him go now, just remember to call me once you're done with him. Hey, lizard Demi, give me your number.” That was incredibly rude, but Kibo thought it was too troublesome to argue with someone like that.

“My name is Kibo.” Number sent.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” He walked away as fast as he can.

Of course, they didn't just randomly find a table and sat down to talk. Kibo asked the management there if he could borrow a private space for the interrogation. They ended up in one of the guest room. He also gave his apprentice a lecture about ‘appearing nice’ will less likely to tip off people. It seems someone's going to spend some time with his roommate in acting class.

“We also want to get this over with quickly, so please answer truthfully. First off, what is your name?” The elf sat on a couch while Kibo stood in front of him. The Demi was the one doing the interrogation; he’s not letting Rey handling this anytime soon.

“Call me Tel. Is this about what I saw yesterday? How did you guys know about it anyway? Or are you actually--"

“What about yesterday?”

“So you guys don't know? And here I am, terrified of what I think you're trying to do.”

“What do you think we're trying to do?”

“I dunno, torture me maybe? Anyway, how did you guys managed to find me anyway if you're not here for what I think you are?”

“We came across a silhouette image of you when we were conducting an investigation. We wanted to know why. This is the proof.” Kibo showed him the image and he instantly jumped up.

“It’s you guys! And here I thought I’m having a bad day!” He frantically dug into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper, “Here.”

“What’s this?” Rey, who was standing beside his mentor, grabbed the paper and asked.

“Two days ago, I received a message. It told me to send a piece of paper lying in front of my door to whoever came to me and let me look at an image of me. I’m pretty sure that message means you two.” He swung his forefinger back and forth between the two Solvers.

“I assume you have some benefit from doing this?” Rey was only paying half attention to the conversation and has been examining the paper. There was nothing on it and there were no traces of anyone writing or drawing something on it, even if they use special inks. Maybe something was printed on it with invisible inks?

“Yes. Whoever sent the message gave me a hundred Credits. A hundred! Just for delivering this paper to you guys by putting it into my pocket every day.”

“Thank you for your cooperation. Have a nice day.” They shook hands.

“No problem. *Sigh Now I got to deal with that stupid detective.” He let go of his hand powerlessly. Just the thought of talking to that pretentious human made him sick.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” The older Solver said as he sends a message to Huai, “Why did the detective come for you? What ‘valuable information’ did you have? I’m quite curious.” Message sent.

“Hmm, let me think about it for a sec.” He scratched the back of his head for a second, “*Sigh I still don’t feel like talking about it. Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize. If you don’t want to say it, then I won’t pry any further.” He winked.

“Thank you.” The door slid open at that exact moment, and Huai began to speak.

“Since you two no longer have business here, I would suggest you two to get out from this room ASAP.” The two Solvers sauntered out of the room while rolling their eyes. What a dick, even Hinoko thought the same.

Once outside the room, Kibo decided it was time to suspend their work.

“It’s getting late, Reynard. I suggest we continue our investigation tomorrow morning. Keep the paper. If you find anything, remember to tell me, understand?” Rey nodded. He sent a message to Eli soon after they parted ways to see if he had finished his classes. His reply was that he still have a few minutes left. Rey agreed to wait for him and went straight back to his dorm’s cafeteria.

As he waited for his roommate, he was getting frustrated for not being able to crack the secret of the paper. He rarely interacts with paper, excluding the time he spent in the temple, and that’s saying a lot from a person who lived in the Outer Regions. Long before his wrath would erupt, Eli appeared and the two of them proceeded to enjoy their dinner. Eli kept on talking about his day while Rey just listened since he can’t say anything about the case and he pretty much spent his day not interacting with other people.

After they returned to their room, Rey lied down on his bed, stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to start looking for hints about what the paper actually is. Since he was getting nowhere, why not close his eyes and…….

Eli was doing his homework. He was focusing hard, hands moving on the holographic keyboard as fast as they could when suddenly Rey leaped out from his bed and landed on the ground hard, essentially breaking Eli’s concentration. He turned around and watched his roommate dashed into the kitchenette. He wanted to follow, but Rey ordered him loudly not to do so.

What’s he going to do now, continue doing his homework? He can’t pull back his attention after Rey’s mysterious actions piqued his interests! So, the next logical move was to watch some videos to shoo away his intense desire to know what his roommate is doing.

Now, in the bathroom, with his familiar, he took out the paper and commanded Hinoko to transform into human form.

“Hinoko, listen carefully. After I cast a barrier spell, I want you to set the entire interior of the barrier on fire, with the paper in the middle. However, you have to set the temperature of the fire as low as possible, only raise the temperature when I said so, okay?” She nodded enthusiastically. He cast the spell, creating a ‘bubble’ that took up more than half the bathroom’s space, not before he used a levitation spell to fix the paper in the middle.

“Do it now.” She raised up her hands and a bright flame came into existence within the bubble. Nothing extraordinary happened. Rey gestured her to raise the temperature with his finger. As the fire gets hotter and hotter, words began to appear. Eventually, her master stopped her from cranking up the heat once the words became legible.

It was another coordinate, followed by these words and numbers: USE THE RECORDER 011820 080119.

After the flame had vanished, the paper was gone too. Hinoko transformed back to a fox, Rey retreated from the bathroom and called his mentor.

“You knew that was a Flame Card from the start?” The door beside the keypad opened as Rey turned around and questioned Kibo.

“You learned something new, didn’t you?” His mentor walked past him and into the room he went.

“You wasted my time.” He wasn’t angry, but he was greatly annoyed by his mentor’s actions. It was a pointless act. He closed the door once inside the room. Hinoko used her paw and patted Rey’s head to calm him down. He showed his appreciation by grinning slightly.

His instinct told him that this room was used for storage purposes, yet there were large empty spaces for the two of them to roam around. On the table, at the other side of the room, was a PC with high processing power. From the looks of the ‘hole’ in between the tightly arranged boxes hidden from plain sight, it seems the PC was taken out from there by someone else and relocate it so that the two Solvers don’t need to spend time finding it.

Once Kibo switched on the PC, a large collection of camera footage was shown on the screen. He wanted to enlarge one of the footages, but no matter how hard he tried, he can’t control any aspects of the PC. It was obvious that someone else was controlling it; even more so when a section of footages was chosen to take up the entire screen.

Through the camera footages, they could see two groups of people were discussing something in a humongous cargo hold, which was to say that they were in the Academy’s underground area. One group had a lot of sinister-looking people behind a bald, tough orc while the other only has ten, all in dark hoods. Behind the hooded gang was stacks of small containers on a floating cargo transporter, where most its members were. They were guarding it.

One thing that caught the two Solvers’ eyes was a suspicious person stealthily advancing towards the small containers. The PC automatically zoomed in on that individual. They can’t see the individual’s face, but it was definitely an elf.

The elf continued on until he was close enough to the containers while still remaining out of sight. Then, he grabbed something out from his pocket and put it on the ground. The device, after being activated, levitated for a few seconds before going invisible, flew towards the space between the base of the transporter and the ground.

After that, the elf did something with his Circulum. When he deactivated it, one of the camera on screen, the one closest to the two groups, suddenly stopped functioning. From the other cameras, it appears that the camera which was shut down has fallen onto the ground. As soon as that happened, the elf quietly retreated back to the larger group.

At first, there were little to no reaction. The orc slowly stepped forward and examined the unknown item. After that, he started shouting at the hooded gang. The leader of the hooded people shouted back. This continued back and forth for some time before the heated argument cooled back down. As they were debating in a serious manner, the cameras slowly ceased to function one by one in the same manner as the first one. Soon, all of the footages cut to black, not before a series of numbers, 19050318052019, ran across the screen.

“Those numbers, it spelled S-E-C-R-E-T-S. Secrets. Rey, what did the numbers from the Flame Card translates to?” He was getting uneasy. What did the person who lead them here want? He hated getting involved in this kind of cases. Too ‘dirty’.

“Art has.” “Art has secrets?” He stayed silent for a few seconds, “The audio file in the recorder had a coordinate embedded in it. By this logic, could the image we found also had a secret?” Kibo pulled out the image through his Circulum, but he didn’t do anything because he wasn’t sure where to start.

“Ideas?” Rey immediately activated his Ingenium and touched his head with his hand. A split second later, he had answers.

“Maybe something like a QR code.” “Hmm, highly probable. I thought it would be something similar to the audio file, where we have to break down the structure of the image.” He allowed a program to rotate the image in different angles to find if there was indeed a matrix code inside.

“Unlikely. We didn’t spend more than a few hours to figure out each and every clue.” “True.” One minute passed. The program gave out a satisfying ‘Ding’ once it has finished analysing the image.

Kibo brought out an extra Circulum from his PDS and used it to scan the matrix code which was indeed hidden in the silhouette picture. It was a basic precaution.

A few moments later, the screen of the extra Circulum became wrapped and twisted before it returned to normal and with a writing software opened.

Hello. Someone was remotely typing those words into the software.

Hello, hacker. Would you mind explain why we’re talking by words while I’m standing in a storage room? Not that I’m complaining, being in a dark room with no idea what is actually going on is pretty comfortable, although it would be a great help if you do. The sarcastic words the Demi typed in was in a different colour so neither of them would get confused who’s ‘talking’. Rey glanced at Kibo with slight disbelief at his change of personality before the hacker replied and grabbed his attention.

My reason for setting up this elaborate plan was to ensure no one else other than the person who possesses the recorder can find his or her way here.

And the reason we are currently standing in front of a PC displaying footages of a meeting between two probably malicious group is because…?

I had recently discovered an ongoing illegal drug tradings within the Academy. What you saw just now was merely one of the scheduled trading between the Skulls and an unknown group beyond the walls of our sacred school. Sacred school? Really? Rey couldn’t help but cringed a little. I am determined to uncover this ugly business to the public. However, due to my, unfortunately, troublesome circumstances, I cannot do that. Hence, I devised a plan that would not only achieve my goals, it would also protect my anonymity at the same time.

That’s a solid plan, I admit, but I suppose you don’t think we would do this for free now would you?

I already gave enough money to the cyclops to cover your expenses.

He requested us to find out the truth behind the recorder you gave him, which we did. So, since your request is different from his and you are essentially another client, you’ll have to pay separately.

…If it will convince you to bring these bad people to justice, then I shall give it to you. I will send you an account number once you have completed my request.

Thank you very much, but I don’t trust strangers to hold their end of the bargain, especially if all I know about them were from a bunch of words on a screen.

…...Fair enough. Here’s the account number for half of what I can give you. Kibo quickly memorized the following numbers and alphabets and checked the account to see if it’s valid.

Alright, your account number checks out. So, what do you want us to do?

“I appreciate the trust you place in us. We have checked the area thoroughly. This time there won’t be any more cameras around.” Said the dwarf with a skull tattoo on his arm. The hooded person didn’t have any reaction, which made the dwarf even more paranoid.

“We’re very sorry to even suspect--” The hooded person raised up his hand to stop the dwarf from speaking any further. Then, he activated his Circulum and the Trade window was displayed on his screen. The dwarf quickly brought up his Trade window and both of them began to fill in the details of their trading.

“Gentlemen, sorry to interrupt, but I don’t think the Student Council would allow such activities happening under the Academy.” The door abruptly opened and followed by Huai’s sudden speech.

Both of the groups immediately drew their gun on him. However, their attempt to get themselves out from this sticky situation as large numbers of Defenders flooded into the titanic room from behind Huai has failed when more Defenders phased through the walls and have them surrounded.

“If you guys are smart, then I’m sure all of you won’t be stupid enough to try attack to us and getting yourselves even longer sentences.” He smiled smugly and victoriously. Once he heard two pairs of footsteps approached him, he swirled to his back.

“I thank you both very much. If not for your help, this operation would go on much, much longer. If either of you ever need my help, just say the word,” Rey impassively drew closer to Huai and uttered, “If that’s the case, would you mind lifting your arms up a bit?” “Okay?” He raised both his arms up until his chest,“Thanks,” and was rapidly cuffed by Rey holding a metallic, slender cylinder between the detective’s wrist. A bright lump of ‘energy’ extended from both ends and wrapped around his wrists while his expression transformed from confused to shock.

“What is the meaning of this?!” He recovered from his astonishment and rage spread across his entire body.

“What does it look like, Huai?” A skeleton wearing the official uniform of the Student Council sauntered into Huai’s vision. Although his skeletal appearance was a bit menacing, the white and blue patterns of the long sleeves shirt and trousers, the kevlar gloves and boots, his green cross ‘eyes’, and his awesome skull which seems like it came straight out from an action movie made sure he looked as good as any humanoids with flesh, “You are under arrest.”

“For what?!” He was getting agitated. He pointlessly tried to break the cuffs but to no avail.

“For allowing the illegal drug trading to continue even under your surveillance and conspiring with one of the members of the Skulls to sell those very same drugs.”

“What?! I did NOT conspire--”

“So you DID turn a blind eye at the illegal drug trading.” Rey grinned. The other human began to panic and stutter.

“I--NO! I! DIDN’T! You WILL release me this instance you little brat!” He switched his attention to the skeleton, “And you! To think you would spout nonsense to make me a criminal just because you hate me!”

“It won’t be nonsense if I had proof.” “Oh yeah?! Show it to me then!” Rey and the skeleton glanced at each other. Then, the young Solver ambled towards the hooded group’s leader and uncovers his face.

“Tel?” The dwarf uttered once he saw the elf’s face, “Son of a bitch! You’re the goddamn traitor!” The dwarf was furious; his voice laced with anger. The defenders had to silence him before he caused any more commotion. As for the elf, Rey pushed him towards Huai cause he was reluctant to move.

Tel stood beside Huai with a frown whilst the latter spoke again, “Well?! Does anyone wants to give me an explanation as for why my hands are still bounded?! >”

“Shut up Huai. Let the boy talk.” The skeleton’s gaze was quite frightening for the pathetic human to handle.

“Well, I would go the extra mile and say that your motivation for doing all this was to bribe both of the Skulls and the hooded group by ordering Tel to use the information he gathered and place your cameras at each meeting spots. I would also say that since you were getting greedy, you set up a scheme to steal all the drugs via Tel’s help and sell them to the Skulls. I could go on and on about your elaborate plan and how every part of it works,” Huai’s face turned grim. The situation wasn’t looking good for him.

“But I won’t. You want to know why?” The boy’s grin evolved into a devilish smile.

The detective gulped, “Why?”

“Because we have this video.” He activated his Circulum and pressed on the latest video file. He flipped the screen and let the two criminals take a good, long look at it.

The video showed the two of them speaking with each other after the two Solvers had walked out from the room where they interrogate Tel. All of them could hear the two criminals conversing with each other about their plan. This video was provided by the hacker, though they didn’t mention how they managed to sneak in a camera into the room unnoticed or that they KNEW the Solvers would go there in the first place. Rey wasn’t curious enough to ask whilst Kibo wasn’t motivated enough to do so.

“Heh, heh heh. How do I know that you two didn’t manufactured this video to frame me, huh?! There are a lot of programs on the web to synthesise a video like this!” He tried his damn best to not show his rising anxiety on his face.

“What if I told you that we also get a hold of your secret PC that has been observing the illegal drug trading? I’m sure it would be enough to convince everyone that you have no intention of ending these tradings when you already have enough evidence to put these traders down.” This, coupled with Kibo’s smug face and Rey’s mocking grin, completely threw the rogue detective into total despair. Although he wanted to know how in hell does those two bloody Solvers figured out his flawless plans and discovered his perfectly hidden PC, he was too depressed to even give a shit.

“Take them away. Send a report of their interrogation to me as soon as possible.” The skeleton said to the Defenders escorting the criminals. When Tel went past Rey, he saw the elf giving him a split second sinister glance. He caught that look, and so did Hinoko. She acted aggressively towards him. Rey could tell his familiar was also feeling the uneasiness lurking between them.

Anyway, once they were out of sight, Hinoko calmed down, and the skeleton turned back and stared at the Solvers.

“I thank you both, from the bottom of my aetherial heart, for finally ending this exhausting operation. Huai has been giving us both true and, now that I realize it, false leads to lengthening his case and I finally know why. Say,” Though he has no flesh, his ‘eyes’ could perform the action of squinting them, “How did you two have so many intel on this whole thing, especially the location and time of the meeting we just raided? And how is your case connected to this one? I demand an explanation.”

“If you can swear not to tell anyone about it.” The Demi negotiated.

“I know you have rules to protect your client’s secrets, but the Student Council can and will override that rule if necessary. So, tell me what I need to know and I’ll decide if I would tell the higher ups about it.” The sentence was made even more intimidating when a spooky scary skeleton said it.

“We’ve been investigating about a strange occurrence that has befallen on a cyclops. We followed the clues and we eventually found out that a hacker was the one responsible for leading us to Huai’s PC. They revealed that they have been collecting evidence for the recent smuggling cases but had to find someone else to hand the evidence to the authority due to personal reasons. So, we accept his request and did just that.”

“I see. Then what do you know about this unknown samaritan? I assume you have a reason to call this individual a hacker.”

“Yes, I do. It’s quite a long story though.”

“Hmm. If that’s the case, send me a report. You would have to write one anyway, won’t you?”

“That is correct.”

“Alright, you can go. I won’t say anything about your client for now. However, I would advise you not to undertake any more underground requests in the future. If this hacker is proved to be a potential threat, you’ll be brought in to be investigated. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“But we managed to crack the case you couldn’t, didn’t we? This would be a sufficient prove that it’s not illogical to take some risks, even if the undertaken case wasn’t meant to serve justice.” Rey retorted. He hated those kinds of dumb advice.

Kibo glared at his apprentice. Is he stupid?!

The skeleton gazed into the boy’s eyes silently. Then, he spoke.

“I suppose that’s true. But remember, win too many gambles and you will eventually slip up.” He ambled past the Solvers once the last word has been uttered. Then I’ll make sure I never do, Rey swore to himself.

“....And that is how it all went down.” Both the younger and older Solvers had finally finished alternatingly recount the events that had taken place during their investigation to their client.

“Wow. I definitely did NOT expect all of that to happen. I thought you guys would find out that it was someone pranking me but this is much more interesting! I feel like I’ve contributed a little to putting an end to these illegal drug tradings even though all I did was handing you guys a weird case.”

“Your contribution to maintaining the peace of the Academy is more than you think, Mr.Rudas.” Kibo smiled.

“If you say so, heh,” A short pause ensued, “So, how much should I pay you guys?”

“Since the hacker gave us quite a lot of money, I’ll take 200 Credits as payment.”

“Wow, that’s…really cheap?”

“Well…not really.” The Demi’s expression strangely turned guilty. “What do you mean--” His eyes became wide open when he saw the Credits he had, “What the hell?! I just lost 400 Credits!” Kibo sighed and lowered his head while Rudas was terrified and shocked.

“I had a hunch that the hacker might pull out the Credits he gave you and then gave it to us themselves. Don’t worry, you can just give us the remaining 100 Credits and this case will be officially closed.” The cyclops’ eventual disappointment turned slightly into relief and paid the money.

“Goodbye, Mr.Rudas. I hope we have the chance to meet again.” Kibo said as he left the room like a walking corpse.

“Okay,” The mentor stretched his arms, “Time to write a report. Remember Reynard, don’t spend too much time writing it like you’re a professional writer. Just keep it simple and quick.” He then used a ‘pen’ to write his report instead of typing it.

“Something doesn’t feel right about this.” The apprentice suddenly said. This causes the fox he was gently touching on his lap perked up her head. The mentor moved his screen further to the left so he could see Rey, who was sitting on the couch. “Why would the hacker do so much of unnecessary work just to end the illegal drug trading? No matter the reason holding them back for publicly release their findings, it couldn’t have interfered with their ability to search for a much more efficient way to achieve their goals.”

“Don’t put too much thought into it, Reynard. It’s pointless to think about questions you have no answers to.”

“It’s not just that. Did you notice how Tel looked at me when he walked past me? It was as if he wasn’t the same person we saw when we first met him even though his aura was the same….”

“Reynard, look at me.” And so he did. He stared right at the Demi’s eyes. “Tell me, what are you trying to do? What will the answers provide you? A closure to your ‘conspiracy gut feeling’? Or is it satisfaction? Reynard, as a Solver, we would encounter many weird things during our cases and it’s hard not to feel as if something was wrong. I’m not saying it couldn’t be right, this is the land where impossible is possible after all, but we can’t waste our energy on every single suspicion you have. If you have evidence to support your claim, then that’s fine; even if it seems ridiculous, as long as it is valid, then it’s not a problem.”

“So, now you have two choices. Either you spend real time searching for clues that will answer your questions and hopefully uncovers something unexpected or you stop daydreaming and write your report. Arthur would be disappointed if you didn’t hand in the report faster than I did, you know?” He put up a childish grin. He went back to work immediately while Rey turned his attention to his familiar.

After staring silently at Hinoko for a few more seconds, he grabbed her and put her on the empty space beside him. He then activated his Circulum and wrote the report as fast as he could.

✵End of Chapter 11✵