He hadn’t really intended to say that to anyone, but Youko reacted and immediately rejected the idea.
At the same time, she also advised him honestly and expressed her shock.
“Probably. Those screams she was making after I showered her with Divine Ki belonged to a woman. It could be an effeminate man, but it’s most likely a woman… What are you sighing for?”
“Nothing. I just pray that her heart’s recovered now and that seeing Masquerade hadn’t traumatized her.”
Again? Youko seemed to be implying in the way she spoke. Shinichi couldn’t really refute her, though.
Shinichi frowned and tacitly asked her with his eyes ‘Are you saying it’s my fault’, but she ignored him.
“Enough of that. Have you found out what Nameless’ main objective is yet? You’ve been looking at nothing but unrelated information.”
“…I already found it after investigating another matter, so I was just playing around.”
Youko smoothly brought back the conversation in track and Shinichi readily replied.
Not expecting him to say that, her eyes twinkled with surprise.
“Huh? You found it already? And from a different case? But didn’t you say there were too many candidates, so you couldn’t figure it out?”
Shinichi had already gotten used to Mana Hacking. Not only has he infiltrated the Countermeasure Department’s database without leaving a trace, he’s even infiltrated the school’s host computer.
In fact, it was him who was most scared of what he’d easily accomplished.
But Shinichi was someone who would use anything to accomplish his goals, as long as he didn’t have any issues with said method.
He was already in the system, so he took this opportunity to investigate the things he was curious about, and see how they differed from the official story.
It was then that he managed to uncover some important information from a different case.
“It’s true that there’s too many candidates if I just base the candidates off the newspapers and the TV.”
Since he already knew that the department store incident was nothing more than a diversion, he immediately investigated the other incidents that occurred on the same day.
With a radius of 10km from the department store as the criteria, Shinichi looked up the various incidents, accidents, and disputes that occurred on that day, and the number of results made him frown.
There was a demonstration parade that didn’t put emphasis on status and instead demanded that people observe the law. There were three cases of bank robbery. There were two cases of suspected arson on public buildings. A case involving an accident with a truck loaded with chemicals and a related vehicle fire. Cases of power failure in some areas due to a staff operation mistake at the energy transmission facility.
The major incidents were already so many. If you included even the minor ones, there’d be no end to them.
It would have still been fine if Nameless’ main objective was among those, but if that main objective was a simple deal or negotiation, then there probably wouldn’t be any traces left to pursue.
“You said that the most suspicious of those incidents are the bank robberies, right? As the amount of effort required and the reward gained didn’t match.”
But of the incidents that left traces, those were the most suspicious of all.
Three banks in mostly the same region but different locations were attacked on the same day.
Few would consider something like that to be a mere coincidence.
It’s just that the amount of effort it took to make the diversion happen and the rewards they could gain from those bank robberies didn’t match.
That’s why Shinichi thought that these bank robberies may not be it… Or at least that’s what he thought until he found out what was inside the safe-deposit boxes.
“Yeah, but it turns out these bank robberies were in fact their main objective. As for what they were after, it’s these.”
Shinichi adjusted the screen so Youko could see it. On it were several jewelries.
He had pulled this data off the countermeasure department’s database from the inventory of items stolen from the safe-deposit boxes.
“That’s what they wanted? I mean sure they look fairly expensive, but… That can’t be all, right?”
Shinichi wryly smiled at how sure she was that there must’ve been more to this just from the fact that he was certain this was their main goal.
“Yeah, that’s not all. This is the reason why I think this is their main objective.”
The ornaments built around the pink diamond-like jewels could surely fetch a great sum, but money wasn’t a good enough reason to cause such a huge commotion.
In fact, these ornaments have already been sold to other people over three months ago.
Shinichi wasn’t certain of it, but half most likely went to Nameless, while the rest may have gone to the Garesto government.
“These are Garesto jewelries. The stones being used all came from their world, so because of their rarity, they’re rather popular among the wealthy. Right now, though, it’s one of the methods used to acquire foreign currency from Garesto. But one of the jewels commonly used in these jewelries – those pink-colored jewels in particular – were found to have a special characteristic just a few years ago. You’ll be surprised to know that the person who discovered said special characteristic was none other than our Teacher Frank.”
“…That man openly jealous of his younger sister?”
“The one and only.”
Despite his behavior, he was actually trying to hide that fact. Fortunately, since no one really had any interest in him, only Shinichi and Youko aside from the person in question were aware of his jealousy.
“Well, I can’t exactly talk about other families’ situation. Anyway, these stones turn white when exposed to electromagnetic waves of certain frequencies. In that state, they are apparently able to neutralize photon energy.”
“Neutralize photon energy?”
“Behind the scenes they’ve come to be known as Anfotonium. For people like us, though, we’d refer to them as Anti-Magic Material. Does that make more sense?”
“You mean those things used in the golems that sometimes come out in the old ruins?”
“Yeah, those. My nemeses that can repel any kind of spell or magic attack.”
The ancient ruins of Falandia. Particularly, the ones with the word ‘real’ attached to them have golems of all sizes to repel intruders.
Their armor uses anti-magic material, which repels all magic, including things that are clad in mana.
For someone like Shinichi who uses various spells along with the Magic Raiment Battle Law to fight, they are troublesome opponents.
But when Youko heard Shinichi say that, she just made a fed up face.
“…What~ do you mean, nemesis, Master? Just who was it who used the Form of Gentleness to knock those things out and caused even the ruins to collapse, then took advantage of the fact that their armor repelled all magic by pushing a dense lump of mana onto them to send them flying, and then cut them down with Orol Crystal Claw, looking as invincible as ever, and leaving Lilisha’s group picking up their jaws?”
“Ha ha ha… I was really young back then.”
“It was like 3 or 4 months ago!”
At the time, Shinichi didn’t think there was anything strange with what he did.
But after some time and after people pointed it out to him, he realized just how absurd he was being.