Chapter 421

Round 1 has ended. So before moving on to the next location, it would be best to return to the core of the matter, using the questions I had raised earlier as a starting point.

Let me go through them in order. It was a shame I didn’t have the time to grab a pen and paper and draw out a game tree.

1. I was dropped into an area with no New Humans at noon in the middle of winter, in December. Unusually, the snow had piled up to my shins today. Pleroma was on the verge of collapse. Under these circumstances, the participants should naturally have two questions.

(1.a) What possible reason could the government have for sending a mage here while Pleroma was falling apart?

(1.b) Why were we sent here on a day of heavy snowfall?

2. This follows from (1.a). There were no Rampagers in the area. Why?

From this, we could tell that the person who designed the exercise intended this to be an information war in the narrow sense, rather than an all-out war or a physical confrontation.

That was the key. We had to prevent the remnants of Pleroma left in the city from rekindling their dying embers and attempting to rebuild. That was the actual problem we had been given.

Naturally, this led the participants to another question.

(2.a) What could the Pleroma remnants, who were trying to rebuild, be doing in this area?

At this point, we could consider several possibilities: they might be transporting new drugs like vitriol to a main base, establishing a main base here, or producing or transporting important artifacts.

3. This follows from (1.b). What is the biggest factor that interferes with an investigation?

I would say, first, the lack of investigative expertise resulting from the New Humans’ glorious achievement of bringing the violent crime rate down to nearly zero; second, the government; third, people’s destruction of evidence; and fourth, the weather.

When it rains, footprints left behind disappear and mana disperses. When it snows, movement becomes difficult, while traces from before the snowfall become extremely difficult to find and identify. When there is fog, visibility drops drastically. A criminal could actively make use of these environmental factors when planning a crime.

Now that I understood why the designer had placed us in weather conditions unfavorable to investigators, it was only natural to consider the advantages and disadvantages that heavy snowfall would bring to Pleroma in point 2, from the perspective of a criminal.

(3.a) Advantage: 30 centimeters of heavy snowfall makes it easy to conceal traces of a crime. Things that could be hidden include specific codes written on the ground or on objects, thin letters containing messages, and small objects—as long as none of these are placed somewhere they are likely to be damaged by being stepped on. Footprints from before the snowfall could also be concealed.

(3.b) Disadvantage: Fewer people will be out on the streets. Committing a crime and blending into a crowd is impossible or extremely difficult. With 30 centimeters of snow, it becomes difficult to distinguish cargo or changes in the level of the pavement at a glance, and movement slows down, making it harder for the perpetrator to escape as well.

That covers the hypotheses one should establish one by one as soon as they assess the test environment. By narrowing down the range of possible actions based on them, we can determine what methods the culprit might use. That was why, at the newspaper stand, I asked for the oldest newspaper available and confirmed that the enemy had known about today’s heavy snowfall at least three days in advance.

Now that I had found the answer to Round One, I could draw a conclusion: simply combining points 2 and 3 was enough to solve half of Round One’s problem.

That was as far as I had gotten at the time before I began connecting the information in earnest. From here on, I could start putting together everything I had read in the newspapers.

Ordinarily, if I went through each thought one at a time in sequence, I would inevitably have to go back over my previous reasoning whenever I needed to refer to an earlier point. But this was not a written exam. It was a battle of strategy, and because of that, I could never let the different lines of reasoning become disconnected.

The better approach was to divide my active thoughts into a foreground and a background, leaving the premises in the background—this did not mean stopping myself from thinking about them, only compartmentalizing them—while developing two lines of thought simultaneously in the foreground. It was more efficient both for conserving my energy and for solving the problem.

So from this point onward, I would keep every thought from points 1 through 3 running in the background without leaving anything out, and continue my reasoning from there. Only then could I arrive at the correct conclusion without making mistakes.

4. The personal advertisements in the newspaper had to contain information crucial to solving the exercise. Why did I think that? When faced with a problem that says, ‘Accomplish something with absolutely no clues,’ what is the most basic approach someone can take? Hide your own information and gather information from outside.

Of course, there was a risk of becoming too focused on gathering outside information, but regardless, that was important too. So I figured every A-Class member had opened the newspaper as their very first move. The designers would have anticipated that as well, which meant they couldn’t afford to treat the newspaper as a throwaway resource.

Therefore, (1) the conclusion of point 4 is derived. (2) I hadn’t come all this way just to arrive at such an obvious conclusion. We had already concluded in point 2 that the Pleroma remnants who had yet to be dealt with were plotting a reconstruction. From there, it was easy to figure out what we needed to look for in the newspaper.

There were the articles, practically the mouthpiece of the newspapers themselves, and then there were the personal advertisements. They were censored too, of course, but nowhere near as heavily as the articles. Between the two, which would be more useful for tracking the movements of the ‘remnants’?

Considering what the designers intended, I had to give more weight to the hypothesis that codes had been planted in the personal advertisements. They were more accessible to ordinary individuals from both sides, and in the 19th century, personal advertisements served as an important means of communication.

At this point, anyone from the Headquarters had no excuse not to know this. More importantly, they couldn’t afford not to know it.

5. What conclusion did point 4 imply? That there was a good chance the Pleroma remnants were passing their codes through the personal advertisements.

So I checked the personal advertisements and picked out the ones that stood out among the countless others. Let’s go through every detail that crossed my mind at least once.

First, (5.a) an urgent advertisement seeking a tutor. It had been posted throughout Berlin. They said the family name would be revealed once an interview had been arranged. That was somewhat unusual for an ordinary tutor recruitment ad. They called it urgent, yet they intended to conduct as many as three rounds of interviews.

(5.b) an advertisement seeking job as a tutor. This one had been posted throughout Berlin and in Pankow. Violett Brot were both existing words. If I matched their meanings, it came out as ‘violet bread.’ If I had to put it into Korean terms, it would be something like Kim Bora¹. Of course, Violett wasn’t exactly a common form of the name in Germany.

(5.c) A chef certification exam. What thoughtful marketing, using culinary terms to attract people. Thanks to my etiquette education, I know what the French culinary terms mean, but, crucially, I’ve never prepared for a cook exam, nor do I have any interest in one. My interest quickly fades, and my eyes move on to the next column.

In truth, even after I moved on of my own accord, I suddenly felt a little guilty. They must have paid for the advertisement either way, so a thought crossed my mind: wouldn’t it have been better to put the ad in a cooking magazine? Still, if I were to make excuses for myself, what else could an ordinary reader like me do? Whether it was a chef certification exam or anything else, there was little reason for me to take a closer look. For commoners with little access to aristocratic or bourgeois education, French culinary terminology would be even further outside their interests.

(5.d) Typewriter rental. Since the advertisement was printed today, I suppose they should be able to find someone willing to rent one out before the weekend.

(5.e) Owl walk. Did ‘walking an owl’ mean tying a string to its leg and taking it for a walk? Or carrying it around on one’s head? Personal advertisements were charged by the number of characters, so those truncated #### must have contained the price per letter.

(5.f) Fishing, cash only. Was there even a lake at the University of Berlin? Were they talking about fishing for coins? After dealing with what I had to, it might not be a bad idea to stop by the university.

(5.g) Orange Lily Garden. It reminded me of how, when I was in elementary school, we used to cut lily stems in half, put them in flasks filled with colored water, and leave them there.

(5.h) Chess. There’s prize money involved, so I wonder if there’s an audience or some club organizing it. It feels like someone looking for an opponent to play janggi with.

That was everything. I had my answer to the first step. Now, I brought all the elements I had considered earlier to the forefront of my thoughts and put the clues together.

So, let’s figure out why I had to go looking through the snow.

Keeping point four in mind—“There must be a code hidden in the personal advertisements”—it becomes obvious what I should pay attention to when looking through (5.a) to (5.h). The Pleroma remnants cannot use an obvious code, so they have to hide their code in something that looks ‘natural.’ What method could they use?

The two tutor advertisements both had something deeply suspicious about them. The sheer number of times they had been posted was already heavily emphasized, but even setting aside that detail, the problems with them were obvious: one refused to reveal the family name, while the other was looking for a tutoring gig under the name ‘Violett Brot.’ Those were the decisive points that stood out to me.

That brought to mind the traditional methods of clandestine trade and espionage used in small communities. Someone would leave information or an item with a shop or an intermediary, and a designated person would come to the shop later to collect it.

With that hypothesis in mind, I could make another assumption based on the ‘URGENTLY SEEKING’ line in (5.a) and the line saying that the family name would be disclosed once an interview was arranged. That undisclosed family name was probably the destination.

In other words, the ‘interview’ means visiting the shop and hearing where I need to go—or as the ad phrases it, ‘scheduling an appointment.’ To schedule that appointment, I first had to find the intermediary. I connected this with ‘Violett Brot’ looking for a job, and the mention of ‘[Nationwide] [Pankow]’ led me to suspect that something related to ‘Violett Brot’ could be found in Pankow.

However, I subsequently ran into a problem. First, I had to find this intermediary, ‘Violett Brot,’ and get the information from them. The problem was that I had no way to prove that I was one of their allies. Second, another advertisement had caught my attention. One that contained a code.

À point, à cœur, amuse-bouche, assiette, lyophilisé.

I looked more closely at the chef certification exam tutoring advertisement in (5.c). It had two characteristics. First, most people would have no interest in it. Second, it did not look like a code. And that was exactly the point. I had naturally skimmed past (5.c). The enemy had plenty of reason to take advantage of that tendency.

The moment I interpreted the literal meanings of those words, I realized that Pleroma really was on the verge of annihilation. They were running out of people, they had lost their means of communication—telegrams and letters would be censored by the government—and they were under enormous psychological pressure.

To avoid government inspections at all costs, they had not left anything that could incriminate them, especially objects or letters, with even an intermediary like ‘Violett Brot.’ If a traitor were to report them and suspicious items were discovered after a sudden search, the authorities would undoubtedly scour every inch of their minds with divine power. So the courier had to be someone willing to risk their life. They had to find the item themselves and deliver it to ‘Violett Brot.’

The terms above respectively mean ‘cooked to just the right degree,’ ‘the core of an ingredient,’ ‘a small bite-sized dish served before a meal,’ ‘a plate for a single serving, or the food served on it,’ and ‘freeze-dried.’ Once I had gotten that far, there was another piece of information I could connect them to. What had the exercise designer intended by dropping us into an unusual weather phenomenon with 30 centimeters of heavy snow? What could we infer in this strategy game where all sorts of codes were being used?

I came up with the hypothesis that each cooking term corresponded to a different message: ‘the time has come to begin the operation,’ ‘there is something inside something else,’ ‘an item to be used before the main operation, or something divided into portions’ (uncertain), ‘something divided into portions’ (uncertain), and ‘literally freeze-dried.’ I then connected the ‘freeze’ in the final term, lyophilisé, to the heavy snowfall that had been forecast three days in advance.

Pleroma could make active use of the advantage in (3.a), while also turning the disadvantage in (3.b) to their benefit. At this point, it wasn’t difficult to see what kind of hypothesis I had formed.

That was where my thinking at the newspaper stand ended. It took me a while to lay out in a straight line the thoughts that should have occurred simultaneously and naturally. Even then, I hadn’t included everything I had considered at the time.

All that remained was to test my hypothesis, so I set off to search through the snow. I planned to send a telegram to the address listed beneath the ‘Violett Brot’ advertisement—even though it was probably a fake address, there was no harm in trying—and to search the neighborhood for ‘Violett Brot’ and the ‘freeze-dried,’ ‘divided’ something. Honestly, I was prepared to spend two hours on it. If I had to circle the entire neighborhood, that was about how long I would need, wasn’t it?

And before long, I found a bar of lyophilisé soap. They had taken advantage of the heavy snowfall that had been forecast at least three days in advance and buried the item somewhere where no one could hold it against them, while also choosing a spot where retrieving it would seem natural. It must have been placed there just before the snow began, then buried under the thirty centimeters of snow. And with the snow expected to continue for another two days or more, it would soon be frozen solid.

According to the code in the cooking exam advertisement, there had to be something important hidden inside this dark-brown-dyed bar of soap. Pleroma must have been so concerned about someone picking it up and selling it as an ordinary product that they had even damaged its value as a commodity. They had even taken the trouble to wrap it back up, albeit rather sloppily.

At this point, I should stop and check my reasoning. Could someone really have mistaken this for chocolate or jelly? Why would anyone attach this much significance to a red-bean-jelly-colored bar of soap with a bite taken out of it? Was I just being a lunatic and seeing hidden meaning in a completely innocent cooking exam advertisement?

Obviously, if someone bit into soap, they would spit it out. There should inevitably be traces of it around the spot. But as I had already confirmed after clearing away the snow, there were no remnants there. Which meant the damage to its value had been deliberate. Afterward, just in case, I searched the neighborhood a little longer and found a bakery with a purple sign.

And at this point, we should acknowledge that there was an important loophole in the reasoning so far. But for now, let’s set that aside.

The baker standing before me turned the soap around, then held it out to me again.

“…There is an eight-year-old Old Human in the GutsMuths family.”

That was the information the baker—the ‘purple bread’—was supposed to pass on.

I had made it. Now, to become the tutor, I had to go to the GutsMuths family for an interview and…

[3:28:59]

Outside, I pulled my hat down over my head and looked around. I still had three hours and thirty minutes.

‘I need to think.’

Why had they given us so much time? I could understand there being plenty of variables in the middle of the city rather than some small, isolated building. But judging by the fact that the item had been hidden only twenty to thirty minutes from the starting point, the Headquarters had never intended to make us waste time on pointless detours in the first place.

With the heavy snowfall, hardly anyone would be out on the streets, and everyone would have their windows shut against the cold, so there would be few witnesses. If I wanted to find the “bread,” all I had to do was use concealment magic, warp from place to place, and sweep away the snow with my staff. For a mage, twenty minutes in any direction was hardly a long distance. Hadn’t there been a time when I had to warp all across Berlin just to get around?

The difficulty is fairly average. This exercise is meant to train us for criminal activity that could actually occur in the real world, so it was not designed to be absurdly difficult or pushed to an extreme without regard for the participants. I only went through my thoughts one by one just now, but human thought is actually continuous, and the gaps between each thought are so small that they happen almost simultaneously. It shouldn’t take everyone that long to get this far. Even at the most, they probably would have figured it out by the time they left the newspaper stand. So why give us four hours?

Thirty minutes for the previous problem, and three and a half hours for everything else. I might have to do more than I expected within those three and a half hours.

I bit the inside of my lip and slipped into the back of an alley. The ‘bread’ I had put in my pocket was still there. I couldn’t sense any strange fluctuations of mana in the area. The windows were all tightly shut because of the gusting wind, with the curtains drawn as well.

Snap—

I snapped my fingers and cast a concealment spell over myself, then stomped my foot and warped to the front of Steglitz Station. After carefully making my way to a secluded spot, I dispelled the concealment and walked out.

Finally, Round 2.

I had come to southwestern Berlin. I glanced at the ground, still buried under snow, and continued walking forward.

“You there.”

“…….”

“Hey!”

I stopped abruptly at the call and turned around. Two New Humans in Police Department uniforms were approaching me, motioning with their hands.

“We’re going to search you for a moment.”

“…….”

Their deep-blue coats drew closer.

I couldn’t help thinking about the bar of soap in my right coat pocket. The hand holding the bag, which had only been cold moments ago, began to sweat. At the same time, I kept the same calm expression as before.

‘So this is why Pleroma didn’t leave the item at a shop.’

The people who had been given investigative authority were spread throughout the entire city. The wary looks the Old Humans had given me when they saw me wearing the Association’s uniform had all been justified.

A faint trace of mana seeped from the two police officers as they approached. They really were New Humans. Without saying a word, one of the officers took my bag from me. I raised one hand, furrowed my brow, and said, “Please wait a moment.”

While the police officers looked me up and down, I pulled a sheet of paper from my other pocket.

“I am with the 101st Unit of the Association. I am currently on a mission, so please let me through.”

“Oh, what brings you here? Then why are you dressed….”

Why am I dressed like this? Sure, I bought these clothes at a secondhand shop in the slums, but that didn’t mean everyone there went around wearing nothing but ragged clothes. What I was wearing now wasn’t obviously made from expensive fabric, but it was an ordinary enough suit that any worker in this country could reasonably wear.

Anyway, I suppose it looked strange to these noble bastards. I had no choice but to give them an answer tailored to the situation. I almost let out a hollow laugh, but stopped myself and answered seriously.

“I am afraid that is classified information within the Association. I have some business at the district office, so I will be stopping by there before I return.”

The two police officers exchanged glances with ambiguous expressions before saying what they presumably had to say.

“I see. Our apologies.”

“Yes, then…”

“Wait a moment. Come with us for a second.”

‘We can’t just let you go, not at a time like this.’ That was what they said as they went so far as to contact the Association and verify my identity. Unwillingly famous as I was, anyone outside Mimesis could probably recognize me just from the color of my eyes, but thankfully, that wasn’t the case here.

There was no need to hurry. The baker had said he expected me to come at three. I only needed to approach the eight-year-old Old Human on Gutsmuthsstraße after three.

And now, I had three hours left.

I walked toward Gutsmuthsstraße, piecing together the clues I had read in the newspaper earlier.

‘Three tutor interviews. A small amount of food. A plate for a single serving.’

What could I infer by putting these three pieces of information together?

One could interpret it simply and intuitively as meaning that I had to take three tests. But considering that there were still unexplained elements in the cooking-term code, and that the division of roles I had encountered so far had been laid out in meticulous detail, it was more likely that three people would come to meet the eight-year-old Old Human on Gutsmuthsstraße, each carrying an item ‘divided into single-serving portions.’ There were other possible hypotheses, of course. I was only mentioning the most likely one.

But the real problem lay here.

‘Why did they have to announce that in the newspaper? Something as trivial as that could have been shared among themselves.’

The answer was simple. The eight-year-old Old Human waiting for us on Gutsmuthsstraße, along with his accomplices, had no way of sharing information with one another by letter. At the same time, they were taking orders from someone higher up. Someone higher up had placed an advertisement in the newspaper to send instructions to the remnants in GutsMuths and the remnants in Pankow.

That meant it was now clear why there were three separate interviews for the position of tutor to the eight-year-old Old Human from the GutsMuths family. There were three applicants.

‘Hmm.’

Finally, Gutsmuthsstraße. Familiar letters were beginning to appear on the signs along the road.

After walking all the way there, I spotted a young Old Human in the distance, dressed almost exactly like a noble child. He was playing with the snow in the park along Gutsmuthsstraße with a 40-something-year-old Old Human who appeared to be a nanny. Strangely enough, even while playing, the child kept sneaking glances at the building behind him.

As soon as I appeared on the street, the middle-aged Old Human began watching me closely. When I approached her, her brow gradually furrowed. After a moment’s hesitation, I spoke in a tone that made it painfully obvious I was acting.

“I’m here for the interview, ma’am.”

“…….”

She narrowed her eyes as she checked her watch.

“You’re early?”

“Ah, well—”

“You must have had quite a journey getting here. It’s very cold today, so let’s get inside.”

Before I could say anything else, she stood up with a kind smile and took the child with her. Then she headed toward the building the child had been glancing at earlier. I shoved my way through the snow that reached my shins and followed her inside. Since it was best not to give the other side any information, I kept my mouth shut until she spoke first.

“I’ll give you the payment now, but I need permission first. I’ll bring you some tea, so please wait a moment.”

“Ah, there’s no need for tea.”

I gave her a short answer. Once we entered the narrow hallway, she turned around and held out her hand. I handed her the wrapped bar of soap. The Old Human smiled faintly, then turned around and led me toward the kitchen. Despite my telling her that tea was unnecessary, she prepared a cup herself and held it out to me.

“It would be rude not to offer some hospitality to a valued guest who has helped us. Please wait just a moment. I’ll be right back.”

“…….”

I quietly looked at the clear black tea set down in front of me and smiled. By now, both the child and the Old Human in her forties had moved elsewhere. They said there would be three interviews. Where were the other two? Were they lying down somewhere else, or had they simply not arrived yet?

I said there was a loophole earlier, didn’t I? Why had they only given the baker the information that someone carrying the soap would come by at three? Why not designate a specific person in advance, like, “Mr. Hans will stop by the bakery at three”? This was such a closed-off group of remnants that they probably all knew one another. Wouldn’t it have made sense to at least share that much?

Which meant Pleroma had never designated the ‘courier’ who would take the red-bean-jelly-colored soap to the bakery and then come to Gutsmuthsstraße. The reason was…

Creak—

The Old Human in her forties came down the wooden stairs into the kitchen. I unbuttoned my coat and glanced toward my waist. The Old Human noticed my untouched teacup and asked, puzzled, “Hmm. You haven’t had your tea yet.”

“Ah, yes.”

“Why is that?”

“Pardon?”

I gave her a puzzled look and stared straight into her brown eyes.

“I’m sorry, but I already said earlier that—”

“No, you don’t have to drink it. I suppose I was making you uncomfortable.”

The moment her hand moved behind the waist of her dress, my hand went to the holster strapped to my right thigh. It seemed all that training had paid off after all. I was the first to point my wand at her. A brilliant red light burst out right before my eyes.

BOOOOM—!!

“…Urgh…!”

This was why they didn’t designated a courier beforehand.

They weren’t using one of their own people as the ‘courier.’ Their plan was to lure in some impoverished person by offering them money to deliver a package, then turn the person who came carrying it into a member of Pleroma. At least, that was the plan of the remnants in Pankow.

The Old Human in her forties, who had been slammed against the wall, quickly lowered the arm covering her face and looked at me. Her eyes were filled with utter shock. I slowly lowered my wand and muttered, “You’re using vitriol, ma’am.”

Translator Note

1. Bora means purple in Korean. ↩︎