Chapter 84 - Ayumis Office (1/2)

It was after three in the afternoon in Vasconcelos, and Luke quietly made his way to the second floor as if he were going to take a sauna bath after another long practice session.

The shift changed time for the kitchen and cleaning staff, so the mansion was considerably less busy.

When he found himself in front of Ayumi's office door, Luke hesitated for a moment but moved on. He turned the knob and pushed the door forward. The knob latched.

'Yeah, obviously a Matriarch's door would be locked, dumbass.' Luke mocked his past self.

He looked both ways down the long hallway and focused his eyes on the staircase ahead. With his hearing sharpened by the focus of his vision, Luke did not detect a single breath in the surroundings.

Relieved, he knelt down and opened his inventory. 'I didn't bring a lock pick, but I think this should do the trick in opening this simple lock.'

He pulled out a large bone from a kobold from the inventory, which looked like it had been part of a leg by the strong shape. Luke then removed a small fraction of that bone and saved the rest to perhaps sell.

'Who knew that would come in handy.' Luke thought as he watched the sliver of bone is inserted into the lock.

The makeshift lock pick fitted perfectly into the lock's channel. Immediately, Luke began to force the bone shard upward while looking to feel for spring. As soon as he felt the spring tension, he kept pressing upward, and in a straightforward motion, he forced the spring back.

Tlec! The latch sound of the lock receding announced that the door was unlocked.

'Looks like I'm rusty anyway...' he judged himself, even though the series of movements took less than 10 seconds.

After opening the door, Luke did not find the tidy office he always found when he needed to discuss something with Ayumi. There were papers all over the floor this time, and the window, which was behind the Matriarch's big chair, was open.

The half-wolf closed the door slowly and went to the window to close it. However, before closing the window, Luke went back on his decision and kept it open; after all, he couldn't waste time tidying up the room, and it would be bizarre for someone to find the place messy and the window closed.

Careful not to leave footprints on the carpet and the sheets of paper on the floor, Luke's feet gently touched the floor, not making any noise.

Among so many papers, only two of them caught the eye of an illiterate Luke because they were not on the floor but on weight on the Matriarch's desk.

The first of them had a guild stamp, which was just a circle with a knife in the middle, both in red ink.

From the fresh smell of the ink, Luke could tell it was a recent stamp. He also identified the patterns of the odd symbols to see if it was a mission and concluded that it did not appear to be.

'A request for a private escort? No, it must be something more important.' He judged as he saw that on the paper, there was a much larger amount of text than on the posters and mission contracts.

Paying a little more attention, Luke noticed that there was another symbol underneath the Vasconcelos guild stamp.

This older stamp was a crooked tree whose diagonal trunk resembled the bonsai trees that the half-wolf used to see in the backyards of the wealthy part of Oukiwa.

After widening his eyes, he finally remembered where he knew this stamp from. 'This is the symbol of the Central Palace, or rather the council...'

The Central Palace is Oukiwa's main building and is located right in the center of the vast city.