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Chapter 99: Elf District, A Different Space

“Maybe I should show you both something interesting.”

Grana led Schenna and Kishana to a place without other people.
Schenna felt like he was about to pull a prank on them, but Kishana followed him without doubting anything, so she had no choice but to follow after them. When they were alone, Grana chanted his subspace magic and carried the three of them into a different space.

“I see a large map and a bunch of numbers carved…”

Schenna’s surroundings had shifted to a pure white, with a giant map and multiple numbers engraved to the ground.

“Welcome to my secret base. You two used to be guys, so you are curious about things like secret bases, right?”
“I grew up in the countryside, so I remember making a secret base together with my friends.”

Kishana began reminiscing about her past and how she would go to a secret base every day after school.
Schenna had been raised in the city, so she never had the opportunity to make a secret base, but she had always dreamt of one.
After living a carefree life until middle school, Kishana’s parents had to move to the city due to their jobs, and that’s when she met Schenna and they became best friends.

At first, she thought that calling a mostly empty space like that a secret base was tasteless, but Granna snapped his fingers and colors filled the space, a line of round tables with chairs around them appearing, giving the place the appearance of a meeting room.
But all the desks and chairs were like holograms, they could not touch them.

“I guess it looks a bit better like this.”
“Your magic is always really amazing. It must have taken you a lot of work to master all that magic. I deeply respect all your knowledge.”
“Well… It’s just the result of studying every magic book I could get my hands on.”

Kishana was unaware of the sandwich incident, so Grana tried to cut his words short.
Schenna also felt that prying too much could be rude, so she let it go.
After clearing his throat with a cough, Grana began explaining the meaning of the map.

“This map is the continent of Halcentius. The numbers represent the strength of every country, and the territory of every country is delimited like this.”

Grana clapped his hands and lines appeared crossing through the continent to show where each country was, together with their names.

The numbers showed how many rulers, generals, military strength, number of soldiers, and the number of weapons each country had, showing the overall strength of every country. The numbers were enormous on Priden and Rinsr. Then Hashel, Swead, and Gafenna followed after them.

“This feels almost like a strategy game. And as far as the map shows, the presence of the Hero’s Party in Priden helps stabilize its position.”
“This is only a numerical representation of all the information I could get my hands on. This just shows their military strength, but there are these numbers as well.”

Grana clapped once again, which made the whole map change to show only the fortress city of Shalteaux in Priden.
There were numbers inside the commercial district there as well.

“This shows the value of different businesses. The restaurant is slightly below average, but considering it was only opened a short while ago, it has the highest growth rate. Reesha really admires your work.”
“So we can also see this stuff!”
“As long as we can get information about it, many things can be quantified like this. All the information about the countries’ strength or the business information are all things I found out about in the archives of the palace in the administrative district.”

But Schenna thought, wasn’t that kind of information supposed to be kept a state secret?
If it could be analyzed just like that, it could easily be used for more nefarious purposes.
Full of worries, Schenna moved closer to Grana.

“It’s bad to do things like that for no reason. It could be a big problem if other countries were to find out about this.”
“I was entrusted by Reesha to analyze all that data. And as long as other people don’t get inside this place, no one will be able to get their hands on the actual numbers. And there isn’t anyone in the whole world who would attempt to do something like that, so it’s okay.”

Even if he had been entrusted with all of it, showing it to someone who was not Reesha was something he should ask for permission to do, or at least Schenna thought that.

“I brought you here because I thought that if you knew this information, you would be able to make the restaurant flourish even more. That, and I know that you and Kishana have really tight lips, so I know we can keep this a secret between men.”
“Alright! It’ll be our secret then. You’re okay with that too, right Schenna?”
“…Okay okay.”

Schenna wanted to keep complaining, but Kishana was clearly satisfied with the way things Grana put them, so she agreed to keep the existence of that space a secret between the three of them.