Inside a room at the back of the Marschel residence. Pree looked at a gem in her hand as she smiled.

The entire room was adorned with gems, it was truly a spectacle that would be best described as a garden of gems.

In order to fully admire the gems, the lighting had also been adjusted in various ways that suited Pree’s standards.

「No matter how you look at it, it’s a deep blue that seems to draw you in. Even looking at it like this is more than enough……today’s ritual will make you even more beautiful. Will your colour change? Hurry up and show me something even more beautiful than now.」

Pree admired her gems with an enchanted smile.

Fortuantely, the sacrifice for today’s ritual was a fairly famous adventurer. As succh, the brilliance of their life would polish the gem even more beautifully.

A sweet moment spent with the gems she loved. Normally, it was a blissful time where she would never let anyone disturb, but the sound of the door suddenly opening forced her to gather her senses.

「Master, intruders.」

At those words, Pree’s hand, which had been stroking a gem, suddenly stopped.

「Intruders is it? Let those fanatics from the Church of Holy Light deal with it.」

「Some of them have a lot of magic power though.」

The words that came from the doll’s mouth made her stop admiring her gems again.

The words the doll spoke were hard to hear, but as expected of their creator, Pree seemed to be able to hear them without any problems.

「High magic power? Could it be Elena-sama, who came here the other day?」

「No, it’s not. However, there is at least one person who has more magic power than her. Although not as good, there is also another person with high magic power.」

At this point, the doll paused before speaking again.

「In addition, Byune Fraut is with them as well.」

At the doll’s explanation, Pree’s displeasure from being interrupted in her blissful time seemed to disappear as a smile appeared on her lips.

However, her smile wasn’t a nice one, rather it would make people who saw it have an omnious feeling.

「Byune of the Fraut family? ……That’s right. I didn’t expect her to come straight into our hands. Besides, there’s also someone with more magic power than Elena-sama and someone who doesn’t have as much but still has a high amount of magic power. Is this because of my daily deeds and the blessing of the Goddess of Holy Light?」

While muttering mockingly at the goddess she didn’t believe in, Pree turned to the doll that had entered the room.

「How many members of the Church of Holy Light are still in the mansion?」

「About 20 people. 30 of them had gone out a little while ago.」

「Does that include Oricule?」

「Yes.」

Hearing the doll’s words, Pree lit up all the rings on her right hand against the light in the room as she spoke with a wide smile.

「Then, work with the other dolls to capture them. About 40 dolls should be enough. Those two, with high magic power, should definitely be the best materials.」

She turned to look at the gems that adorned the room with an enchanted gaze.

Over towards two gems, one orange red gem and one light blue gem.

「Let’s take this chance to let Byune meet her parents. If I remember correctly, she must be around 10 years old, so she must still miss her parents.」

The doll seemed to understand what their master was thinking with just those words. The doll bowed its small head before leaving the room.

After glancing at the her loyal doll, Pree’s gaze turned to the gem in her hand again as she contemplated the precious material she was holding.

In the midst of all this, she thought of Vosk, the head of the Silva family, one of the governing families of Exil.

At first glance, he seemed like an opponent that could be deal with easily as a muscle brain. But, in reality, he had instinctively avoided the traps she had set multiple times.

「It would be troublesome if that man came out, but……considering the Levisor family, I don’t think we can afford to make any careless moves.」

After muttering to herself, she concluded that there wouldn’t be any problems.

If she had considered asking about the identity of the intruders in more detail, she might have found out that the person with the very high amount of magic power was Rei, also known as Crimson, and that Elena was related to him. She might also have connected the fact that they were connected with Vosk, due to working together on the matter of dealing with the abnormal species.

However, after hearing that one of the intruders was Byune, who she had been targetting for a long time, Pree’s mind had been completely filled with the thought of obtaining new gems.

This could be considered to be Pree’s weakness, her obsession with gems.

Telling herself not to worry, Pree convinced herself that she would get her hands on the finest gems, as she returned to her gem loving bliss.

 

 

「……There’s really no one here.」

Rei and the others entered the mansion, but they couldn’t sense anyone else.

On the walls of the hallways, magic lamps were installed at regular intervals, but Nakuto and Byune, who had been trained to spot traps on darker floors in the dungeon, were able to see fine without them. Although his night vision wasn’t as good, Rei still wasn’t a hindrance to them. As for Vihera, she could see better than ordinary people in the dark as well.

「Nakuto, Byune, where do you think someone would be held in a place like this?」

When Rei asked, Nakuto replied with a difficult expression on his face.

「Normally, you would think of something like a basement……」

「Mm.」

Voicing a sound of agreement with Nakuto, Byune turned her gaze down the corridor.

In fact, Rei had also thought the probability of that was extremely high as the the adventurers kidnapped by the Church of Holy Light had also been held in the basement in their hideout.

「Better yet, why don’t we just destroy rooms randomly? If we do that, people will come from the other side and we can catch and interrogate them.」

Vihera, who didn’t have much relation with Tivia, muttered that.

She was an acquaintance of Rei, which was why she was lending a helping hand. But, from Vihera’s point of view, the Marschel family was one of the three families that ruled Exil, so she had thought they would have formidable people to fight.

However, after sneaking in, there wasn’t even a single servant in sight inside the mansion, let alone someone to fight, so she had become impatient.

「I’m sorry, but I would like you to hold off on rampaging for now……」

Knowing Vihera’s title of the Mad Beast within Exil, Nakuto tried not to make her angry.

「……I knew. Really, it might have been more interesting to go over to the Silva family.」

「If you went there with Elena, there would definitely be a disturbance, so please don’t do that. Anyway, if the basement is a suspicious place, we should try looking there.」

Deciding that if they kept talking here, they would just be wasting time, Rei placed his hand on the door of a nearby room.

And, when he opened the door……

「What, nothing?」

Rei muttered without thinking.

Yes, there wasn’t even a single piece of furniture in the room, just a beautifully polished floor.

It seemed to have been cleaned without cutting any corners. As far as he could see, there was barely a speck of dust or garbage in any place illuminated by the lights in the corridor or the moonlight from the window.

「For an unused room, it seems to have been cleaned very thoroughly.」

Nakuto looked into the room from next to Rei with some confusion.

「It might be true that there aren’t many servants, but it’s a little questionable that even a room that isn’t being used would be cleaned as well……but, considering it’s the Marschel family, maybe it isn’t so strange?」

「……That might be so.」

「Anyway, if you can’t find anything after looking around here, we should check another room.」

Hearing Vihera’s words, Nakuto and Byune immediately nodded as they went inside to investigate.

Rei also looked around inside, hoping to be of some help, but Vihera refused to move from her position at the entrance of the room.

Rei glanced over for a moment, but realising that Vihera was facing out the hallway, he understood that she was on guard while they searched the room.

Then……

「Hey, you got to be kidding me?」

Nakuto’s voice echoed inside the room as he was examining the walls.

Everyone turned to look at him, but Nakuto didn’t seem to care at all as he fumbled with the wall. It opened up, revealing a staircase going down.

「……I can understand your feeling of wanting to say it was a lie.」

Rei muttered as he looked at the set of stairs that had suddenly appeared in a corner of the room.

In a mansion of this size, there was a hidden staircase leading down to a basement in the first room they had stumbled upon.

No matter how they looked at it, they couldn’t help but feel they had been set up.

「But, it was just a coincidence that we decided to enter this room, wasn’t it? If we had entered the mansion from another entry, we wouldn’t have checked this room. I think it’s just a coincidence there’s a hidden staircase here. Are we just lucky?」

「……Mm……」

Byune tilted her head at Vihera’s words.

It was true that there were various suspicious aspects, but as Vihera said, it had been purely coincidence that they had decided to search this room. However, she still couldn’t help but feel it had been intentionally set up. That hesitation was what made Byune tilt her head.

「And……in the first place, even if this was someone’s plan, do you think they could set up a hidden staircase like this after we infiltrated the mansion?」

「……That can’t be possible.」

Since they couldn’t argue against those words, they could only assume that they had been lucky enough to find the stairs to the basement in front of them.

「Anyway, we’ve found the stairs, so let’s go down. And, if there is some sort of trap, we’ll just have to fight through it.」

Everyone else had no objections to Rei’s words and nodded as they changed their minds. There was no point worrying about things here.

From Nakuto’s point of view, there was no need to hesitate rescuing Tivia and Vihera felt that there was a high possiblity of facing a powerful enemy if she went down. As for Byune, she just didn’t like the Marschel family.

Each of them had their own reasons, but they had no more hesitation as they went down the stairs.

They went down in the order of Byune, Vihera, Rei, and Nakuto.

The reason was Nakuto was at the back was because he thought that someone might come at them from behind as they went down the stairs.

In terms of detecting signs of people, Rei was also confident. However, if someone did that as their main job, he decided that it would be better to leave it to them as he left the rearguard to Nakuto.

Going down the stairs in that formation……after a few minutes, they reached the bottom, where there was a door in front of them.

「Here we go again, just a door. ……What do we do?」

Vihera asked that question, but at present, there was nothing else to do but to open the door.

Byune and Nakuto looked at each other silently, exchanging opinions as thieves, before Byune quietly reached out for the door.

Seeing this, Rei and Vihera became vigilant, ready to respond to anything.

Luckily, the door didn’t seem to be locked and it opened with a metallic creak……Rei and the others’ faces were all filled with surprise when they saw what was inside.

「This is……」

A large room was spread before their eyes. From Rei’s view, it was about 65 square meters.

「It’s nice that it’s so spacious, but there’s nothing in here, just like the room above.」

Passing through the doorway, Vihera muttered while looking around the room.

In fact, there were several tables and chairs inside the room, but other than that, it was just a pointlessly large space. ……However.

「Just looking at the wall over there, I can understand to some extent why we found a hidden staircase.」

Rei’s gaze was directed towards the countless doors attached to the walls of the large room.

Numerous doors were lined up against the same wall as the door they had just entered.

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