Episode 33: Find the Kidnappers
Since evolving into an Assassin Cat, I had been enjoying a carefree cat life. There were hardly any places a cat with Presence Concealment and Magic Concealment couldn’t infiltrate. Besides my usual routes, I’d even sneaked into schools and the Royal Castle.
The schools were interesting, with their unique characteristics, including martial arts schools, magic academies, commercial schools, and agricultural schools. Only the magic academy had teachers with Magic Detection, so I had to use my Magic Concealment skill there.
I thought infiltrating the Royal Castle would be difficult, but it was surprisingly easy, which worried me a little. I didn’t know if there were any monsters capable of doing what I could, but I realized I could easily assassinate the king if I wanted to. Not that I would.
After realizing that, I started checking occasionally to see if any strange monsters were entering the Royal Capital. Since so many people lived in the Royal Capital, I tried not to use my detection skills too broadly. The amount of information was overwhelming, and even with Thought Acceleration, it gave me a headache.
However, I found that as my Thought Acceleration level increased, I didn’t get as much of a headache for short periods, so I used Life Detection at key points while moving around the Royal Capital.
So far, there hadn’t been any situations where powerful monsters were lurking, but there were rat-type monsters in abandoned houses in the slums, and slimes living in the sewers.
While eliminating these dangers in the Royal Capital, I also enjoyed my life, getting Orc meat from Ochcho-san and being given a fruit called “Pine-a-po” that looked exactly like a pineapple from a fruit vendor.
About two weeks into this life, an incident occurred.
It was when I went to donate food to the orphanage. In the usually deserted chapel at lunchtime, people were moving around frantically. If it had just been the sisters of the orphanage, it might not have been so strange, but for some reason, there were also adventurers there.
The children were thankfully not there, but seeing the adventurers talking with the sisters and others walking around the building as if searching for something, I roughly understood what had happened.
To confirm if my bad premonition was correct, I quietly concealed my presence and eavesdropped on the conversation between the adventurers and the sisters.
“Yes, she was definitely there when we put her to bed last night,” I heard a sister with disheveled hair and swollen red eyes say. There was no mistake. A child was missing.
From their conversation, I learned that the kidnapped child was a girl named Amy, who had just turned four. She was there when they put her to bed last night, but she was gone when they went to wake her up in the morning.
All the other children were there, and one child had seen Amy get out of bed in the middle of the night, leading them to conclude that she had been kidnapped while going to the bathroom at night.
“We’ll go look for those who kidnapped Amy-chan. Sisters, please search the orphanage again, just in case.”
“For D-Rank adventurers to come… thank you so much. But, um, we don’t have enough money here to pay a reward…”
Hmm, these adventurers are D-Rank. And that voice sounds familiar.
“Sister, please don’t worry about it. After we were saved in a certain Underground Labyrinth, we wanted to help people in need, like the Kabuto… who helped us.”
“Oh, thank you so much, Eric-sama!”
It’s you guys again! When did you come to the Royal Capital? And you’ve been promoted to D-Rank. But to see them helping people in need like this, it makes me feel like it was worth saving them.
Alright, I’ll leave it to Eric and the others, and I’ll go search for the kidnappers myself. To be able to kidnap so efficiently, it must be the work of experienced people. I don’t want to think about it, but it means there are people in this Royal Capital who make a living by kidnapping. They probably have some kind of detection skills as well. It’s a bit too much for D-Rank adventurers to handle.
Besides, from my investigation of the Royal Capital over the past two weeks, I’ve noticed suspicious people living in the slums on the outskirts of the city. At first, I thought they were just a family who had moved into an abandoned house, but the five men in the dilapidated house didn’t look like a family at all. What made them suspicious was that they lived without lights at night, as if trying to hide their existence.
Now that I think about it, those must have been the kidnappers.
Now that I know, it’s time to take action!
Using Presence Concealment and Magic Concealment, I quietly headed for the slums.
(There are five people inside now… but three of them are children.)
I hid on the roof of the building two doors down from the abandoned house, using Life Detection and Appraisal to observe the situation inside. When I checked before, there were five men, so the other three must be out. The two men inside seemed to be lookouts. By the way, the two men each had Life Detection Lv6 and Magic Detection Lv5 skills.
(So they did have detection users. Well, their levels are low, so they won’t notice me.)
To understand how many accomplices the kidnappers had, I decided to observe the situation for a while. An organization with two people who have rare detection skills. It’s probably not a small organization. If I’m going to do this, I want to catch them all properly.
I took out some fruit from my Item Box and started monitoring the building while eating, observing the people going in and out of the hideout.
(So, there are six kidnappers in total.)
Besides the five I had previously confirmed, there was a man who seemed to be a liaison. While the other five looked like fallen adventurers, this liaison was dressed neatly and looked like a minor noble from somewhere.
No, he might actually be a noble from the Imperial Capital. They would be easily tracked in the Royal Capital, and the Tronbalen Republic, which is further south than Gargandi, is an allied nation with this Verdelin Kingdom. They wouldn’t allow such foolishness.
On the other hand, they seem to have bad relations with the Mystia Empire on the eastern continent across the sea. Apparently, the Mystia Empire is a military nation, and they are plotting to conquer the world with their military power. This is information I obtained when I infiltrated the Royal Castle.
Even so, the Empire can’t openly attack because there is an S-Rank adventurer based here in the Royal Capital. It seems he’s currently on a high-difficulty quest and not in the Royal Capital, but for one person to prevent a war, how amazing is an S-Rank adventurer?
While I was thinking about that, they seemed to have started moving. They were about to take out the three children they had probably locked up in the basement.
It was already dark, so they might be planning to escape the Royal Capital under the cover of darkness.
But I wouldn’t allow that. I melted into the darkness and infiltrated the target building through a gap in the roof.
“Hey, hurry up and put them in the bags!”
The bald man, who was the largest of the six, was ordering his subordinates. He didn’t seem to notice me watching from the ceiling.
“Boss, we’re ready!”
One of the subordinates who had been stuffing the children into bags called out to the boss.
“You idiot! I told you to call me leader here! You don’t know who’s listening!”
“Come on, there’s not even a rat, let alone a human, in this whole area.”
The man with Life Detection calmed the leader, who was yelling at his subordinate’s mistake.
(Well, there’s a cat, not just a rat, though?)
While mentally retorting, I moved to rescue the children.
First, I activated Lightning Cloak and quickly tackled the two detection users.
With a crackling sound, the two collapsed to their knees. I reduced the amount of lightning I was using, so they weren’t dead, but they wouldn’t be able to move for a while.
“What!? Hey, it’s an enemy attack! Be on guard!”
The leader, seeing the two fall, immediately raised his voice in alarm. Their quick response made me realize that they were not just any ordinary thieves. The other subordinates quickly readied their weapons and were on guard.
But I was an Assassin Cat, after all. My stats far exceeded theirs. Without being seen at all, I neutralized the subordinates one after another, like a lurking assassin.
“Who is it! Come out! That’s cowardly!”
The leader, putting aside the fact that they were kidnapping weak children, called me cowardly. Five of his subordinates were lying on the ground around him, leaving only him.
“Guh!?”