Chapter 764: Unexpected Familiar Encounter
I made sure to stay hidden as the cloaked figure stepped into the clearing a few steps away from this Sherry person I was following.
“What have you found?” The masked person asked.
“There have been a few missing person reports but for now, none of the reports are being taken seriously.”
“That’s within expectations. Anything else?”
There was a slight pause from the futa’s side before she answered, “I cannot be sure but I believe there are a few people who are watching me. I’m not sure if they realise who I am working for but someone came quite close to following me here tonight.”
The masked person took a step back, “Hmm… Unfortunately it seems like you would need more training… Because they managed to follow you here after all.”
I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand and I wondered if I should just leave right now.
Before I could decide though, the masked person was suddenly wrapped up in shadows and disappeared.
I reacted on instinct and spun around, my hand shooting out to grab the wrist that was reaching out towards me.
I tried to pull the person down to pin them below me but I found myself being flipped instead.
The world spun around me and I braced myself to hit the ground. But instead of hitting the ground, I found myself being hugged by the masked person where they prevented me from actually falling on the ground.
I prepared to attack them when the masked person said something that stopped me.
“Young Mistress?”
My fist froze in the air as soon as I heard that.
She then took off her mask and I realised it was just a simple mask meant for concealing a person’s identity, not the one that Rex guy was using.
She pulled me back up on my feet before she quickly prostrated on the floor, “Please forgive my rudeness, Young Mistress! I did not know it was you and attacked you! I will accept any punishment!!”
“E… Eh? Ah… No… It’s fine, I… Ummm… It’s ok, please get up.”
I wasn’t really sure how to answer and just said that out instinctively.
The woman quickly got on her feet and stood at attention, prompting Sherry to quickly join her side.
“Melanin of the Field Ops Team greets Young Mistress!”
“S… Sherry of the Field Ops Team greets Young Mistress!”
Both of them bowed at the same time while introducing themselves in turn.
I blinked before pointing a finger at them, “Are you… Maids from the Nilm Family?”
The one named Melanin straightened herself, “That is correct Young Mistress. More specifically, we are part of the Field Ops Team.”
“Er… Yes, I heard that part… But what does the Field Ops Team do?”
“We deal with threats outside of the Family Mansion, Young Mistress. Either to resolve conflicts or potential conflicts through force or subterfuge.”
“Ok… Why are you two here then?”
“We are investigating the missing persons cases that have been happening around this town in particular, Young Mistress.”
Missing persons? Those must be the victims of that Rex guy I guess? But there’s just one thing I don’t understand…
I tilted my head at her, “Why are we even involved in this?”
“Our leader had received news about this case where the circumstances seem too suspicious to ignore. Thus, she sent us here to keep an eye on the cases,” Melanin explained.
“Ok… And what have you found?”
Sherry answered instead, “I’ve stayed in the town for a while and kept an eye on everyone that I could. From what I could gather, it seemed like people who were living alone or were loners disappeared first before those who were considered to be scum of society disappeared. In total, there’s been at least three dozen or so disappearances.”
Damn, that many? It doesn’t even seem like the people here are even concerned about it… I’d think if you had more than ten people disappear suddenly, you would at least notice it.
“And no one ever saw how they disappeared? Not even being dragged outside the town or something?”
She shook her head, “Unfortunately not, Young Mistress. It would be like they had gone home for the night but the very next morning, they would have already disappeared.”
I considered what I should do and decided that it shouldn’t be a problem for me to tell them.
“Are you aware of Off-Worlders?” I asked.
Both of them looked at each other before turning back to me.
“We are aware of them, Young Mistress,” Melanin answered.
“Well… Then you might want to sit down for this because I’m going to tell you two something pretty weird…”
I went ahead to tell them what I had told the others when I met up with Linette, except I also gave them what I knew about him being an Off-Worlder and the skills he had as well as the fact that I was hunting him for the King.
The two girls listened to me with serious looks on their faces and fell into deep thought when I finally finished.
“This… Is more complicated than we thought,” Melanin admitted.
Sherry nodded, “Since Young Mistress is here, please allow us to aid you as well!”
Well… I guess I wouldn’t mind getting more help and I certainly wasn’t expecting to see maids from our family all the way out here.
Also… Field Ops Team? Just how many teams do we even have?
Sure, I know our family does the spying, the assassinations and all that stuff as the shadow of the Royal Family, but I didn’t think our network would be this extensive…
And I most certainly did not expect us to have people investigating things like this.
Then again, Justinia had already hinted that Mother would be handling the other Off-Worlders that I wouldn’t be taking care of so I guess this was what she meant.
Actually, seeing that I’ve never seen these two before… I have another question…
“How did you know who I was?”
Melanin blinked, “All servants know about Young Mistress. The Madam had made sure that every servant of the Nilm Family knew about you, Young Mistress.”
Right… Should have expected something like that.
“I wouldn’t turn down help I guess. For now, I could use some information about these people. Could you tell me about them?”
I pulled out my map that I had drawn with the suspicious people that Greia had identified for me marked on it.
Sherry immediately pointed to the mark that was meant for her, “Is that supposed to be meant for me?”
I nodded, “Yeah… I got this map from a merchant friend who is a local around here. They were taking note of anyone who was acting weird I guess?”
Melanin turned to give Sherry a look, “How did you get yourself noticed by others?”
Sherry gave Melanin a panicked look, “I… I don’t know… I made sure to always sneak out and sneak back into the inn! I didn’t even interact with anyone and kept a low profile the entire time!”
I scratched my cheek, “I think that might be the problem actually… There’s people who know that you are in that inn and see you sneak out… But your sneaking skills are so good that they lose you after you sneak out and they aren’t able to see you return back to the inn afterwards. So they tagged you as suspicious…”
Sherry groaned while Melanin sighed.
“Seems like there’s a disadvantage at being too good huh…” The futa maid whined.
Melanin patted her colleague on her shoulder to comfort her, “At least this shows that your skills have actually improved, Sherry! Unlike the last time where you were so bad at it!”
She really was suffering from success huh.
I then proceeded to tell them what Greia told me for each of the remaining four people that she had deemed as suspicious to ask them about what information they had on those people.
They immediately started listing out what they knew about them in the same order as Greia did.
“This one… I believe it would be the woman who only leaves at night to purchase food and coop herself up in the room for the rest of the day? She’s here to catch her lover cheating on her and she’s staking out the inn that she believes he would be staying at,” Sherry explained for the first one.
Melanin pointed to the second one, “For this guy, I believe he was flagged as odd because he goes to the market everyday but purchases nothing, correct? We know that he’s a spy employed by one of the other store owners here to check on his competition. Really bad at his job though.”
“This one is the futa Mahun who keeps picking up people to have sex with, right? She’s a daughter of a noble family who is taking a vacation away from home to go on a sex trip.”
“And this one is the female who claims she’s looking for work but never actually going to get one, I believe? I would say she’s the most suspicious one because we have been unable to find anything related to her in her background checks… We don’t even know where she came from.”
Huh… Well it sounds like I might have found my next target to stalk then.
I just want to say though… They’re really good at gathering these types of information huh… How did they even know one of them was trying to catch their cheating lover?
You know what? I don’t want to know…
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