The morning arrived.
Already, it was the fifth day into the festival. Including today, there were three days left until the week's end. Two days left until the banquet's arrival.
To Isaac, this week was more stressful than any other week that he's encountered. The awareness that his life was at stakes was mentally eroding him.
He knew, that even after the festival concludes, the thoughts of "what-ifs" would continue. He had to get used to this persistent tension, for it will become chronic.
All because of the war. He thought, then again, the kingdom has always been a warring nation. He couldn't help but wonder, why did the first king let the Solari Empire live?
Currently, from what he could tell, the Aetherion Kingdom was on a difficult era. The fact that the head of House Hedron of the higher noble defected, and that on top of that, there exists a chance that Terra Patriarch defected as well, suggested how dire the situation was.
It was ironic, for the Aetherion Kingdom currently possesses five wielders of S-rank skills. Historically, five was a very huge number. The kingdom's military strength is greater than ever, and yet, they were losing.
Presumably, because of one man who is rumored to wield a SS-ranked skill. Someone entitled as the Hollow King.
Isaac looked at the corner of his desk. There sat the sheathed knife, one that was given to him ever since the start of the weapons training.
For five days, he had left it behind, because carrying it during the festival may read signal his awareness. Now, it was a different story. Enemies should be more aware of what happened to the five assaulters whom he and Henrick dealt with. Serik Clodia would have woken up and relayed what he had experienced.
If needed, Isaac thought to himself as he reached for the knife, I will be ready to leave this kingdom. Although departure didn't guarantee survival, it would be better than the chaos that would ensue.
He placed the knife at his waist.
…
The Free Ground had an ongoing sense of uneasiness.
Isaac moved through it at his natural pace.
The library's entrance was still sealed. The royal guard line remained in position, the institutional bearing was unchanged, and the notice was still posted at the entrance column.
The crowd that had assembled yesterday had thinned overnight and reassembled today, but with a different quality—less alarmed and more frustrated. They seem to have concluded that the situation was more of an inconvenience rather than a danger and were finding the inconvenience less acceptable with each passing hour.
"—three days I've been waiting on a reference I need—"
"—they haven't even given an update. What kind of device takes two days to—"
"—my thesis submission is in a week, and all the needed papers are on the third floor—"
Isaac listened to the ambient frustration. The royal family had found nothing but had not yet acknowledged finding nothing, which meant they were either still searching or had decided that acknowledging failure publicly was worse than maintaining the closure.
"Someone—help!"
Then, there was a shout that earned his attention.
"A fight broke out!"
Isaac moved toward the commotion with the crowd.
At the center, two men stood facing each other with a vivid hostility that stemmed from who-knows-what. One was a merchant type—the specific presentation of someone who had come to the festival with commercial intent and had been frustrated by three days of disrupted foot traffic near the library. The other was younger, and seemed to have decided that someone needed to be responsible for his inconvenience.
"—said move out of the way—"
"I heard you the first time! I was here first—"
"You've been standing in the same spot for an hour blocking the entire—"
"Because I'm waiting for the library to reopen, which wouldn't be necessary if certain people weren't making the whole district—"
The younger man's hand moved. Slammed into the merchant's shoulder. Said hand was covered in a layer of stone, D-rank: [Stone Fist].
The younger man paused, staring at his own hand. It didn't appear to be a deliberate activation, but instead the accidental activation of a skill responding to elevated emotional output before the conscious decision to use it arrived.
The merchant staggered one step back. Looked at his shoulder. Looked at the younger man.
"You just—" His face reddened in fury. "You just used a skill on me."
"H-Heh, so what?!" The young man shouted back, with an anger of his own. "You deserved it!"
"You son of a bitch…" A layer of fire burst into the existence on top of the merchant's hand. It was the well-known characteristic of D-rank: [Cinder]. He then struck back, which caught the younger man's forearm.
With a yelp, the younger man staggered back.
"You want to have a go?!"
"Bring it on, bastard!"
The crowd quickly expanded outward with the instinctive dispersal of people who had been present during the skill use and were putting distance between themselves and the output.
"Get them apart—"
"Someone call the patrol—"
"It's just D-rank, calm down—"
"D-rank in a crowd is still—"
The two men were circling now with the specific quality of people who had gone further than they intended and were trying to determine how to stop without appearing to back down. The merchant's shoulder was reddening. The younger man's forearm had a minor scorch mark. The minor dispute seemed to have developed into a duel.
Neither of them looked like they wanted to continue. Neither of them knew how to stop.
"Hey! Quit it!"
Two festival patrol guards then pushed through the crowd's edge, with the institutional bearing of people who had been handling exactly this kind of situation for five days and had developed an efficient approach to it.
"Break it up. Both of you. Now."
The two men separated with the specific relief of people who had been given a reason to stop that didn't require either of them to concede.
"He started it—"
"I don't care who started it," the guard said, with the flat delivery of someone who genuinely didn't. "Names. Both of you."
The crowd contracted again to observe with the satisfied quality of people who had witnessed something and had a story for the evening. The ambient tension that had been building since the library closure found its release point and dispersed into the ordinary noise of a festival crowd that had processed a minor event and was returning to its established rhythm.
Isaac watched the dispersal.
Violence too is a form of an entertainment, he thought based on the crowd's reaction, how ridiculous. I would believe it if this brief fight was staged by the royal family.
He checked the time and found that the fourth bell was nearing. He was about to walk away.
Then, he saw Cassiopeia.
She was at the dispersing crowd's northern edge with her notebook under her arm, with the mild interest of someone who had observed a sequence of events and was assessing them without urgency. She noticed him at approximately the same moment he noticed her.
She, as if it's the normal thing to do, walked toward him with the unhurried quality she always brought to movement that had a direction.
"Isaac," she said.
"Has everything been well?" He greeted back, to which she nodded.
She looked at the space where the two men had been standing, now occupied only by the patrol completing its administrative function. "D-rank: [Cinder] and D-rank: [Stone Fist]," she said. "The frustration is apparent. I didn't know that library was that much of a deal to them." She looked at him. "How have you been spending the festival?"
"Moving around. You may have seen me here and there," Isaac said. "You?"
"Reading, mostly." She opened her notebook with the ease of long habit and looked at a page without writing on it. "The Terra family's obligatory meetings were cancelled this year. I was expecting to spend the first three days in attendance." She turned a page. "The cancellation wasn't announced in advance. We were informed the morning of the first day."
Isaac processed this.
Terra family meetings cancelled without advance notice on the first day of the festival. The same period during which Donaston Terra hadn't left the Golden Repose. The same period during which the royal family had been extracting information from five unconscious operatives and running parallel operations that Isaac wasn't being briefed on.
He filed it.
"Unexpected free time, then," he said.
"Yes." Cassiopeia looked at the library's closed entrance across the street. "I've been using it well. The academy's library has been great, but I wanted works that were more… lay rather than advanced." She paused. "The library closure is inconvenient, therefore." Another pause. "Do you know anything about it?"
"Only what the notice says," Isaac said.
"…Something tells me that you are lying." She looked at him with her default, stoic expression. Then, broke it into a light smile, "but then again, that's because you always seem to know what you're doing." The notebook in her hands shrank, which she pocketed.
"The festival ends in two days," she said. "I heard that you found a partner. I'll see you at the banquet."
"Yes," Isaac said.
She turned and walked back in the direction she had come from.
Isaac watched her go.
Terra family meetings cancelled. Donaston not leaving his room. The royal family running operations. The pieces were assembling in a direction he couldn't fully see from where he was standing.
He turned and walked toward the western quarter.
…
Isaac entered the Hearthstone at the fourth bell.
Henrick was already at the second table from the back left wall, with the wide smile assembling as Isaac crossed the room. The practiced performance of five days still ran—the easy warmth, the familiar greeting, and the ambient conversation of two acquaintances enjoying a festival.
"You're here," he said.
Isaac nodded as he sat.
He looked at the table's surface. Then at the bar's ambient population. There were the regulars occupying their usual positions, the festival's additional crowd filling the remaining space, as well as the usual noise of a place. Nothing was off.
He had been having coded conversations in this bar for five days. The idea of the coded conversation appearing as nothing but everyday chatters was under the assumption that Henrick's true identity wasn't known. If Henrick's identity is already known by the enemies, which was highly likely based on his assumption, every exchange that they had so far may have been audible to anyone sitting within reasonable proximity.
He looked at the regulars.
The man at the corner table who had been there every day at this hour. The woman near the window who ordered the same thing each afternoon. The older couple at the back who spoke quietly and consistently and had never once looked in Isaac and Henrick's direction.
They reproduced the same pattern every day. This meant that they paid barely any attention to actions of their own. Their true focus was on Isaac and Henrick's conversation.
You got to be kidding me. Isaac felt like sighing. For now, he set this aside.
"Oh, and I wanted to ask," Isaac spoke.
Henrick looked at him with the easy attention of the public persona. "What's on your mind?"
"Do you remember how you talked about the watch you lost yesterday?" Isaac looked at the table. "I assume that you didn't manage to find yet."
Henrick produced a sigh, "yes, it's still lost."
"I just thought of a way that could find you the watch."
"…What do you mean?" Henrick frowned thoughtfully, "elaborate, please."
"Probably, up until now, you tried to guess the watch's potential location by retracing your paths. Tried to overlap it with the time at which you think you lost the watch to pinpoint its accurate location."
"Precisely, yes."
"What you need to try is to flip it around. Instead of keeping your perspective locked on the traced paths, omit them entirely."
Henrick paused. "…What do you mean?"
"The traced paths indicate what you searched. You didn't find your watch. Then, naturally, the watch should lie in one of the locations where your paths didn't go through."
Henrick blinked. Froze. The smile was still present. The warmth was still present. But underneath them, something had shifted.
Then, he finally responded, "That's… a good point. Thanks."
"I hope it helped."
"Oh, it definitely did. I didn't think of that. Aren't you smart, kiddo." Henrick looked at his cup. Turned it once. Set it down. Then, paused, "hold on." His head turned toward Isaac with a swift motion. It appeared that he realized, "could it be here? This is where I lost my watch in?"
Isaac raised an eyebrow. "Were you here yesterday morning?"
"No, but it may have been before that that I lost my watch." Henrick groaned. Then stood up, "excuse me for a moment. I am going to check the washroom."
He stood and walked toward the bar's rear corridor, to the passage that led to the washroom.
Isaac watched him go.
Then he looked at the bar.
The man at the corner table had his eyes on his own drink. The woman near the window was looking at the street outside. The older couple at the back were talking quietly about something entirely unrelated.
None of them were looking at Isaac. However, they were listening.
Sipping the cup of water, he listened to the bar's ambient noise—the conversations overlapping, the staff moving between tables, the festival noise from outside mixing with the interior's established register—and understood that this had been true since the first day.
The moment he and Henrick had performed their public reunion at the second table from the back left wall on day one, the moment the performance had begun, the bar had been listening. Not to the coded content specifically—successful decipher of the coded content would've given them a better preparation for their assault during the second night.
Rather, what they overheard was the pattern. The frequency of their meetings. The duration. The idea of two people coming every day at the same time and staying for the same duration and speaking in the register of people who were being careful about what they said.
The royal family's secure operational base had been a room compromised by the enemies before their operation even began.
Isaac emptied the water. Set the cup down.
He looked at the rear corridor.
Henrick was still in the back. The duration had exceeded what a washroom visit required.
"Still searching, huh," he muttered.
…
Henrick returned after some more minutes. He sat with the easy quality he always brought to the table and picked up his cup.
"Sorry about that," he said. Poured the entire content of the cup into his mouth, looking frustrated. "Damn it, I couldn't find it."
"No issue," Isaac said. "You still have three days left to search. You'll find it eventually."
"Perhaps, it's elsewhere. I'll be searching some more after."
Isaac paused. Then, he replied, "good luck to that."
They finished the meal. The conversation ran at its ordinary register—the festival's final days, the western quarter's morning crowd, the kind of ambient content that a surveillance observer would file as the ordinary conclusion of an ordinary meeting.
They parted at the bar's entrance with the easy wave of two acquaintances heading to different parts of the festival.
Isaac walked back toward the Academy.
He had a small dinner at the Golden Repose's dining hall, not being as starved due to his meal with Henrick.
By the time the ninth bell arrived at the night, he was at his desk. The knife was at his side. The teleportation device was in his pocket.
He meditated. Ensured that he was at his best form. Waited.
Past the midnight, his pocket moved.
A portal opened ahead of him, which indicated that the device activated from the other end. Henrick pressed his counterpart.
Isaac picked up the knife. Placed the iron charm into his other pocket. He stepped into the portal.
The dark and empty scenery of one of the back rooms, past the staff entrance, of Hearthstone was present. Henrick was waiting, dressed differently from the afternoon. He wore something darker, having decided that visibility was a variable to minimize.
"Ready?" Henrick said.
Isaac looked around. Then said, "yes."