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A short ride in an unmarked carriage later, I found myself getting off at the servant's entrance of the Langston estate. And waiting for me inside was a man in his fifties, immaculately dressed in a butler's uniform.
The young butler went ahead of me and whispered into the older butler's ear. After the old butler nodded, he turned to me, "Mr. Lima, welcome. I am Head Butler Giles. I presume you are here to take a look at Young Master Ambrose's room."
I just nodded in reply, and Giles said, "Please follow me."
As I followed Giles throughout the mansion, I noticed a distinct lack of people. Even a baron family like mine has servants all over the place doing chores. Now, it was only the two butlers and me.
Giles noticed me looking around for the missing people and said, "Master Victor has cleared out the rest of the staff. The fewer people who know you were even here, the better."
We soon entered Ambrose's room, and it was a mess. It looked like someone ransacked the place.
"When we entered the room, it was in this state. We have already done a physical and magical search of the room and found nothing. The next step is to bring out hounds to follow the scent, but that would mean more people learning of the young master's disappearance. We are hoping you would be able to find something we missed." Giles said.
I just nodded and asked them for some space to work. Giles excused himself and left the room with the younger butler.
When the door closed, I buried my face in my hands. How the fuck am I supose to find this lordling prick?
After taking a few deep breaths, I decided to search the old-fashioned way. After ransacking the room a second time and finding nothing, I decided to rely on old tropes I watched in movies and TV shows back in my old world.
Like a drill sergeant looking for the lightest speck of dust to use as an excuse to chew recruits out, I dug my fingers into every nook and cranny of every piece of furniture and checked every drawer for false bottoms, but found none.
When I got to the bookshelves, I was starting to lose hope of finding anything. That was until I came across a book with a piece of paper sticking out between the neatly cut pages.
"Let's see… 'On the Coin and Grain of the Calus Realm: Volume Two', I had never heard of this Calus Realm before. Seems like it is some kind of economics book." I said to myself as I pulled out the book, which felt lighter than it should have been.
When I opened the cover, I found that the book had been hollowed out and stuffed with folded papers. I went through the folded papers and found letters of correspondence with a woman named Aveline. Reading them in chronological order, they started out friendly, slowly became flirty, then turned into love letters, and eventually evolved into this Aveline reminiscing about the nasty things they did in bed and how randy she was feeling while writing the letter.
I could feel the cringe creeping up my spine as I read, so I just skimmed through all the raunchy parts to find more clues, but nope… this was just the equivalent of two horny teens sexting.
After I was done with the letters, I found what looked to be a flyer. On the top of the page was the logo of an eye caressed by a crescent moon on its right. As for what the flyer says, it was hippy shit like 'This is a gathering for all who seek, serenity of the spirit, fellowship with like-minded souls, reflection guided by ancient rhythms, and quiet communion beneath the open sky.' and other shit like that.
The only other information I got out of the flyer was that the group organizing this get-together was called The Eclipsed Eye, and that they met on a hill with a huge tree just outside the city every other midnight.
This is a lead I can work on. I was about to call out the butler and report my findings, but I stopped myself. There was a chance that if I informed them, they would take action before I did and compromise the situation. So instead, I just exited the room and said, "I got what I needed to start the search."
Head butler Giles just gave me a questioning eyebrow raise like he was asking what I found, but after a moment of me not elaborating my findings, he just nodded and escorted me out of the estate, where the carriage that brought me here fetched me back to my inn.
From there, after the carriage left, I went to find the local alchemist and bought some dye to stain my armor black so as not to reflect any light and blend into the darkness, and went back to the inn to prepare for my stakeout tonight.
When night fell, around three hours before midnight, I was at the hill described on the flyer. I looked around for a nice place to hide and spy on this so-called Eclipsed Eye but found slim pickings. There were only a few shrubs that would have me sticking out like a sore thumb if I were not concealed properly. I would rather not risk getting peed on if one of them decided to take a tinkle in the bush where I was hiding. That left the tree on top of the hill as my only hiding spot.
Oh well, beggars can't be choosers, so I scurried up the tree and tested a few spots that would make me blend in with the foliage the best. When I found a spot I liked, I got comfy and waited.
***
After a few hours of chilling in the tree, I saw lights in the distance coming towards me.
When they got closer, I counted forty-three people in hooded cloaks, and along with them was a hand-pushed cart loaded with two barrels.
When they reached the top of the hill, they stopped a couple of meters away from the shade of the tree I was in. So just to be safe, I shrouded myself in darkness mana to provide myself extra concealment.
After they parked the cart at the trunk of the tree I was in, using the roots to make sure the cart does not roll anywhere, they all gathered in a circle and put their lanterns in the middle. Then, one of them stepped forward to the middle of the circle and addressed the rest.
"Brothers and sisters of the Eclipsed Eye, we gather once again to be one with the moon and nature, and to have fellowship with one another." the hooded man said. "Come, join me in meditation under the eye of the night sky."
The hooded man sat on the ground, followed by the rest of the gathering, and the man in the middle of the circle started chanting in a language unknown to me.
This had better not summon some shadow beast form hell or something, otherwise I am going to request a bigger reward.