A black figure landed silently on the rooftop of the house where Cid was temporarily staying. He opened the rooftop entrance, slipped inside, and made his way to the bed.
Turning around, he let his body relax and collapsed onto the soft mattress.
"Ah... I'm mentally exhausted..."
He had spent the entire night raiding criminals, yet barely found any organizations with money. The sheer emptiness that left him with was bad enough, and having to squeeze in time to teach Asia and Nagisa Akatsuki only made Cid feel even more drained.
Thinking back on how he had finally found one promising hideout, only to storm inside and discover nothing but flashy, impractical structures that couldn't even be sold for money, his irritation flared up again.
Were those people insane?
Private monuments were nothing but a waste of money. If they had that much cash to burn, wouldn't it have been better to give it to him?
"Phew... Calm down. It's not worth getting angry over a bunch of idiots. Really, it isn't..."
After reassuring himself several times, Cid exhaled and got up from the bed. He pulled out a scroll and unfurled it, revealing a chaotic mess of patterns that looked like meaningless scribbles.
"These are Olympus's defensive measures. This is the layout of Asgard's Nine Realms. These are the Three Realms of Tianzhu, and this is the layout of Takamagahara in the island nation..."
Muttering under his breath, Cid used an ink brush to add a series of peculiar markings to the diagram.
Only he could understand the symbols scattered among the overlapping lines and patterns. From the beginning, he had only ever intended for himself to read them, so whether they looked neat or not was completely irrelevant.
What the scroll contained was nothing less than the secret layouts of the world's major powers, all casually recorded by Cid while he wandered around that night.
There was no question that if anyone managed to decipher the information on this scroll and spread it around, every major faction in the world would immediately be thrown into turmoil and placed on the highest alert.
As for why Cid was collecting such information, it wasn't some sudden whim.
Earlier, First Princess Iris had mentioned that the major powers were constantly making underhanded moves on the World Battlefield, sabotaging one another and dragging each other down. Cid had remembered that.
He had also decided that he would personally stir up trouble for the world's major powers and put some pressure on them, forcing them to unite.
The scroll lying on the table was the result of an entire night's work.
Admittedly, he still had absolutely no idea how he was supposed to pressure the entire world. He didn't even have the equivalent of a PowerPoint outline yet, and he had no clue what use these defense maps would eventually serve.
But that didn't matter.
He had only collected them on the side while strolling around and raiding criminals anyway, so he might as well keep gathering information for now.
Surely his future self would eventually figure out how to make use of it.
"So what should I do next?"
After finishing the last incomprehensible symbol, Cid casually tossed the ink brush aside.
Now that he was completely free, he suddenly had no idea what to do.
Should he train using the Triple Magic Power Training Method?
Cid glanced at the clean white bed and thought for a moment before discarding the idea.
The Triple Magic Power Training Method was extremely effective, but now that Eta had refused to provide him with milk, he needed an entire hour to adjust his physical and mental state before he could enter the necessary state of complete concentration.
There simply wasn't enough time.
Dawn was less than two hours away. He would actually gain more by spending the entire time using the Single Magic Power Training Method.
Then what should he do?
Cid asked himself the question.
Normally, even if he only had a tiny amount of free time, he would squeeze every possible second out of it just to gain the slightest bit more strength.
Yet for some reason, today he wanted to find an excuse to skip training.
No.
Cid knew exactly why.
"Bang!"
His fist clenched violently.
Ever since leaving for Itogami Island, he had gone almost an entire year without returning to the Kingdom of Midgar to raid criminals.
As he had expected, after surviving the previous major purge, the kingdom's criminal organizations had flourished again. A whole new crop of terrorists had emerged.
And yet, for some inexplicable reason, Cid had practically "strolled" across the entire Kingdom of Midgar tonight, only to discover that every terrorist group he encountered was either completely broke or busy constructing some hideously ugly monument.
"Thud!"
His furious fist slammed into the table with a tremendous crash.
After taking an anger-fueled blow from one of the strongest beings in the world, the wooden table nobly endured for several seconds, shook a few times, and finally declared itself beyond repair.
A few seconds after the table collapsed, the entire Royal Capital trembled almost imperceptibly.
On the opposite side of the planet, across an ocean that could be considered directly aligned with the Royal Capital of Midgar through the planet's core, it was as though a massive depth charge had detonated on the seabed.
A wave ten thousand meters high erupted from the previously calm sea.
"Phew..."
After throwing that punch, Cid's runaway emotions finally settled down somewhat.
It wasn't as though he truly cared about the money he made from robbing criminals.
After his previous windfall from all those kind-hearted donors, Cid could confidently say that he had enough money to live comfortably until the next time modern currency underwent a major overhaul.
At this point, raiding criminals had simply become a habit. He treated it like farming mobs in the wild.
But that was precisely the problem.
He had raided more than a dozen terrorist hideouts tonight, and every single one of them had been building some unbelievably ugly private monument.
His mentality was genuinely starting to crack.
Even farming mobs wasn't supposed to go this badly.
"Nothing's gone right since I got back."
Cid muttered under his breath.
Ever since returning to the Kingdom of Midgar, not a single good thing had happened to him.
First, his parents tricked him into coming to the Royal Capital to take the blame in his Nee-san's place.
Then he joined a "thriving" and "unbreakable" alliance.
And now he had gone out farming all night and gotten absolutely nothing for his trouble.
"Hmm? What's this?"
A golden gleam flashed among the broken pieces of what had once been the table.
Cid made a curious sound, bent down, and picked it up.
It was an extravagant gold card bearing the words "Royal Mitsugoshi Premium Bar Membership Card."
Oh, right.
He remembered now.
Apparently, after Gamma and the others at the Mitsugoshi Company took control of the alcohol industry across the nations of World No. 3, they had given this to him as a commemorative gift.
Supposedly, it was to thank him for providing them with the knowledge that made it possible.
A storm of thoughts suddenly swept through Cid's mind.
He remembered how he had felt that afternoon at the post office when he learned that people from his territory had mysteriously vanished.
He remembered Christina telling him who was responsible.
He remembered Kanade explaining the [Thirteen Nightblades], the powerful Society that effectively ruled the Kingdom of Midgar.
And most importantly, he remembered the unmistakable look Eliza had given him, the kind that made it obvious she had already committed his face to memory.
A faint smile appeared on Cid's lips as he looked down at the golden card.
"I hope Gamma and the others will give me a little help, considering we grew up together and used to play games together. Worst case, I'll even forgive them for stealing my ideas."
Of course, there was practically no chance they would refuse.
It might sound strange for him to say that, especially since Cid himself admitted he had already benefited quite a lot from Gamma and the others, but his bond with the Seven Shadows was genuine.
Even though they had already withdrawn from Cid's game, leaving him to return to the single-player mode he had started with, and there even seemed to be some friction within their little group, their feelings toward him had never been fake.
Surely they wouldn't refuse something as trivial as a little information.
"Still, this is going to be a bit of a hassle..."
That was what Cid muttered, but the smile on his face only continued to grow.
He sprang from the bed.
Pitch-black slime surged from within his body and spread across his skin, forming a black coat around him.
Cid jumped onto the windowsill, pulled out the golden membership card, memorized the address written on it, checked the direction, and immediately shot toward his destination.
Less than two hours remained before sunrise.
Damn it.
He had cast his line more than a dozen times tonight, and all he had reeled in was garbage.
Not a single big fish.
How was he supposed to accept that?
At this point, even if he had to deliberately waste time going out to buy a fish, he would accept it.
He was going to need a fish eventually anyway, so he might as well buy one now.
No matter what happened, he absolutely refused to come back empty-handed.
...
"I suppose I should say, 'That's just like you people.' At Shadow Garden headquarters, theoretically the most heavily guarded place we have, you somehow managed to let someone from another world knock all of you unconscious and escape. Eta still hasn't even woken up."
With a cold expression, Zeta set down the document in her hands.
It contained a complete account of the disturbance that had occurred in Alexandria, Shadow Garden's headquarters, two days earlier.
She stretched in a distinctly feline manner before addressing Beta, whose expression had already turned ugly.
"Enough with the sarcasm, Zeta. Help me figure out how to find No. 712, Akane Nishino. Gamma is using everything she has to search for clues about No. 712, but Itogami Island sees far too many people passing through every day. We still haven't found any trace of 711 or 712."
Beta had no way to argue with the facts Zeta had just brought up, no matter how much they gave her a headache.
Akane Nishino had indeed single-handedly knocked both her and Eta unconscious before escaping from the heavily guarded Shadow Garden headquarters.
"That has nothing to do with me. I have no interest in that otherworlder, and I'm very busy myself. The only assistance I can offer is to tell my people to keep an eye out for anyone who resembles 711 or 712 and might be using a disguise."
Faced with Beta's perfectly reasonable request, Zeta unexpectedly refused.
Beta, who had assumed Zeta had come here specifically to help, immediately stared at her in disbelief.
"We've been arguing about this all afternoon, Zeta. What exactly do you mean?"
"Exactly what I said."
Zeta's answer was simple and direct.
Her blue eyes glanced at the stern-faced Beta, completely unfazed by her expression, before she calmly continued.
"I'm busy. I don't have time to play this childish game of chasing after people from another world with you."
Childish.
Yes, that was genuinely how Zeta saw it.
In her opinion, everyone, Eta included, was making far too much of the situation.
One person from another world had escaped. That was all.
Why were they acting as if Shadow Garden headquarters itself had been blown apart?
If she ran away, then she ran away.
It wasn't as though Shadow Garden had ever forbidden anyone from leaving. It was simply that no member of the Garden had ever voluntarily asked to leave before.
In fact, whenever they rescued victims of Demon Possession, they always made sure to ask them first before bringing them into the organization.
"Are you serious, Zeta? You're saying we should let an otherworlder who knows the location of Shadow Garden's headquarters and is carrying a pile of extremely dangerous equipment roam around freely?"
"If that's how you want to interpret it, Beta, then go ahead..."
Zeta looked at Beta for a moment, then turned away and gave a small nod while picking the report back up.
"And as for what you just said, don't bother trying to scare me. If I remember correctly, that otherworlder was confined inside Alexandria the entire time. She never left even once."
"Even if she wanted to leak the coordinates of Headquarters, she would first have to locate the small spatial teleportation backdoor Eta left behind, then trace it in reverse to determine the location. Don't act like I know nothing about these things."
Zeta analyzed the situation calmly.
It was precisely because she understood such matters so well that she had no interest in this problem, particularly not in Akane Nishino.
All they had to do was destroy the location Akane Nishino had teleported from. After that, the idea that she could somehow leak their location became meaningless.
Wasting an absurd amount of resources searching for Akane Nishino would be like looking for a needle in the ocean, and in Zeta's opinion, she simply wasn't worth that level of effort.
Not to mention that Akane Nishino had taken all of Eta's equipment with her, making her ridiculously difficult to catch.
As far as Zeta was concerned, anyone willing to waste that many resources on the search simply had too much free time.
"Zeta, you really..."
"That's enough. I came here because I need access to Shadow Garden's resources in the Kingdom of Midgar. The Cult of Diablos has been making some major moves in the Therianthropes Kingdom recently. According to my investigation, the Cult of Diablos in several other countries has also begun moving, and the trail behind those operations leads back to the Kingdom of Midgar."
Zeta made no attempt whatsoever to hide the fact that she wanted authority to mobilize Shadow Garden's personnel in the Kingdom of Midgar.
Even though Beta knew perfectly well that Zeta was the expert when it came to this sort of work, she still frowned.
"Your request is reasonable, Zeta, but mobilizing personnel in the Kingdom of Midgar isn't within your jurisdiction. If you want temporary authority, you'll have to submit a report to someone above us..."
"Report to whom? Alpha? Shadow-sama?"
Beta's words were cut short by Zeta's cold question.
Everything Beta had been about to say died in her throat.
She was right.
Given Shadow Garden's current half-paralyzed state, even if Zeta wanted to submit a report, there was no one available to receive it.
Alpha wouldn't respond.
And Shadow-sama had explicitly withdrawn.
Zeta had no interest in Beta's reaction. Her gaze remained cold as she continued.
"You and I both know exactly what state Shadow Garden is in right now. If I insist on following every regulation to the letter, I might as well stop doing anything at all."
"Things have already reached this point, so there's no reason to obsess over every rule. Make things easier for me, and I'll make things easier for you. That benefits both of us."
Zeta tried to reason with Beta.
If possible, she didn't want to damage her relationship with one of her companions over something this minor.
"But..."
Seeing that Beta was still hesitating, irritation appeared on Zeta's face.
She had been extremely busy lately, occupied with unifying the Therianthropes Kingdom. If the Cult's movements hadn't become too significant to ignore, she wouldn't have come here at all.
"Looks like I came at a bad time..."
Just then, the door to the private bar room, which had already been cleared of everyone else, opened.
Cid appeared before the two women in the middle of their argument.