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Reid left the living room to escape the gathering, and moved to the rooftop.

He had returned to his home so he wanted to relax in his room, but Fina’s situation left him in no state to relax. That said, staying in the room would only lead to more pestering from Letina and he could end up revealing something.

Thus, he decided to sunbathe on the rooftop to calm down.

It was definitely not because he couldn’t follow the difficult conversation there, he thought to convince himself.

Of course, he had a thread connected to the living room and used a cup as a megaphone so he could relay his voice at any time.

Every one of the Six Heroes was fully aware that he wasn’t being apathetic about this situation.

But the others… in other words, the soldiers dispatched here, weren’t the same.

“What’s with that guy?”
“It’s him, Reid of the Six Heroes. I heard he got revived with the reincarnation spell.”
“Really?! But still, his friend’s daughter is in this situation and he’s…”
“Sleeping on the rooftop. Maybe he takes life lightly being an assassin.”
“In the end, half-demons really can’t be trusted, huh?”
“Shhh, you’ll get demoted if Lady Ashella hears you.”

Ashella was in opposition to the half-demon discrimination. However, the temple knights that she brought along didn’t fully share her ideology. Particularly this improvised squad that was gathered on the spot had quite a few people who had different opinions on the matter.

Reid could of course hear their conversations.

“They sure are saying whatever they want. But that much is still a trivial thing.”

Having been discriminated against since he was a child, this kind of attitude from well-bred temple knights felt nothing more than backbiting from the masses. And he wanted to keep the fact that he was eavesdropping a secret.

Because he held these abilities, he was often a target of distrust.

In the first place, he was using it unintentionally, but that showed the level of his spy abilities.

It wasn’t hard to imagine how tremendous his Thread Manipulation skill was which allowed him to sense the faint oscillations of voices in the air and deliver it to his ears.

Such minute and accurate Thread Manipulation techniques were beyond even Marquis Yowi’s spy, Sullivan.

But for Reid, it was something that he could use as a light trick.

This was due to his experiences, like when he failed the knight entrance exam, and then met transcendence like Aste—Wind God Hastur and Lyell.

After getting involved with people that went beyond common sense, he ended up developing the habit of evaluating himself unfairly.

“Still, never thought they would outwit Cortina and Maxwell.”

As he lay on the moderately warm rooftop, its warmth spread to him, calming down his frayed emotions a little.

In the living room, Cortina and Maxwell were still debating over things, but Reid decided to try thinking about Fina’s whereabouts on his own too.

Maxwell’s Search spell could detect things within a ten kilometers radius.

Around three hours had spread from the time they received the threatening letter until Maxwell cast the spell.

You would need to get quite reckless to manage to escape that radius while taking a child and a Carbuncle along.

“I guess it could be possible with just adults alone but…”

The Search spell could also detect clothes and accessories that a person wore. In order to escape from this spell, you had to get rid of the person’s belongings. So sometimes, people were kidnapped while stark-naked.

“Did the kidnappers take Fina naked as well? But they would need to take care of the clothes like that. Did they use horses, after all?”

But even with that, Reid was still not fully convinced. The kidnappers most likely infiltrated the village through the caravan that opened the fair here.

As long as the merchants weren’t collaborating with them, it would’ve been extremely suspicious for them to hide the horses nearby the village.

“As for other possibilities… Maybe they had a way to deal with the Search spell… Maybe they can use the teleportation spell like me?”

He voiced it anyway, but it was realistically very dubious.

Anti-search magic items were very pricey, so if they had money to buy it they wouldn’t need to resort to ransom, to begin with. Teleportation magic was the same. If they could use this spell, there would be enough work for them to never worry about money.

Even if they couldn’t carry anything heavy with them, even taking just a single letter would already give them a lot of utility value.

“The keyword here is that they asked Maria to go to Kolbo village. I suppose it’s highly possible that they are not in for monetary gain.”

He was even doubting whether they really escaped the detection radius. The Carbuncle was by no means a weak monster.

Kidnapping Fina, while she was protected by it and hiding, without any witnesses on top, was something even Lyell would have trouble accomplishing.

“Well, I guess I could do it. S̲h̲i̲t̲, if I knew this would happen I would’ve trained Kabby some more!”

The Carbuncle accompanied Nicole during her early days, so it had grown stronger than an average Carbuncle.

However, most of their adventures occurred in the forest. In other words, in the wild. Dealing with people aiming at them from the crowd was completely out of its expertise.

Naturally, this was just Reid venting his anger, but there was no one there to correct him.

“Remember this. When you’re back I’ll put you under a hellish train-… Huh?”

Suddenly, Reid detected a strange silhouette.

It was a man moving near the backyard while avoiding the soldiers’ eyes.

He was holding a lot of luggage so he might’ve looked like a servant, but Reid who had spent a lot of time in this mansion since the young days couldn’t possibly mistake him.

He had his hat pulled over his eyes so he couldn’t see his hair or facial features, but among the servants that had been hired so far, there were no men at least.

“Did Lyell hire one… I don’t think that’s the case.”

Maria generally went to buy the ingredients for their mansion herself. Going on shopping with Nicole and Fina was a precious time to soothe herself.

It continued to be the case even after Fina was born.

“Well, that’s a suspicious guy if I’ve seen one.”

Reid judged that the clue had come on its own, and contacted Cortina.

“Tina, there’s a suspicious guy near the mansion. I’ll tail him for a bit.”
“Okay, will you be fine on your own?”
“Naturally. Who do you think I am?”
“An incompetent assassin who fails during critical moments.”
“You little! I’ll show you when I’m back!”

He shouted back and jumped down the rooftop.

And by the time he landed, he activated his Stealth Gift and erased his presence.

The soldiers observing him from the alley lost sight of him in an instant, and then returned back to their posts as if they lost interest in him.