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Starting with that, Mira explained their progress so far, including the assistance offered by Écarlate Carillon.

‘That’s quite a lot of progress Grandpa! But I got the situation, I’ll make the request and a courier should arrive at your location in around five or six hours.’

「Mm, I’ll wait then.」

With those last words, Mira hung up. From what she had seen, the urgent deliveries had to be requested by Kagura herself, and a courier would pick up the parcel at the branch.

(I’ll get bored waiting here, I might as well use the time to see how Arlon and Sero are doing.)

Thinking that, she stood up from the couch and went upstairs. After telling Mattie she would be back in a few hours, she left the building.

Mira was lost at what to do some time after reaching the commercial district, which was filled with people like always. When she entered The Gourmand’s Indulgence, she could not find anyone familiar there. Thinking about it, it was still a bit past noon, so everyone was probably still out hunting for information.

(Well, no rush, no rush. I might as well investigate a bit while I’m here too!)

Without much other option, she quickly changed her plan and began walking through the city, still hoping to run into anyone she knew. Still, Mira knew this was her mission, so she was serious about it. She did not let it get to her head, only pretending to be a detective in her mind.

And so, after several stores checked out, or infiltrated as she told herself, she happened to overhear a rather interesting conversation.

「It’s almost time for that auction again. Did you save up for it?」
「Yeah, somehow. I can’t wait.」

Mira hid in a nearby shadow as she listened into that hushed conversation between two large men.

(Oh, an auction? Where things are gathered, people gather, so information should also concentrate there.)

Using feeble logic and instinct Mira reached that conclusion and decided she had to know more about the auction.

「Hello there, sorry to interrupt but I’d like to ask something.」

Mira walked up to the two men and began asking about the auction they mentioned earlier. But the two looked bothered and uncomfortable, pretended not to know what she was talking about and quickly left that place.

(Huh, what was that? It didn’t look like they got nervous seeing how cute I am either. Hmm, maybe there’s a reason why they can’t mention it openly.)

In other words, it was likely the sort of auction that had to be kept shrouded in darkness and anonymity. Guessing that from the men’s reaction Mira smirked in the store’s corner.

(A black market auction! That sounds so exciting.)

Mira could smell the fishiness of it all already, so she summoned Worthramble to camouflage her optically. She focused that power onto the two men, making her able to listen into their conversation without issue.

Using her mission to investigate as a pretext to invade their privacy, she found out multiple details about the black market auction through the course of an hour. First, the auction would take place a week later. Second, most of the people selling at that auction were adventurers.

Apparently the main objective of the auction was to let them sell hard-to-trade items obtained in dungeons or from other adventurers. But some of the items would sometimes not only be hard to trade, but straight up illegal items. Like cursed Magic Wares, organs from monsters classified as sacred beasts, banned books, or poisons that had been taken off the market.

The people organizing the auction were also proficient at it, similar auctions being held more than ten times in the past, serving more than a thousand people each time, and not a single time had there been legal interference. On top of that, no one knew who the main organizer was.

(It just keeps getting more suspicious. A thorough investigation seems warranted.)

It seemed like a large part of the audience would be adventurers, so she decided to broaden her investigation to include more of them too.

Quite a few minutes later Mira had managed to find out where the auction would take place, and she went there. She was not fully hidden like with Complete Suppression, currently only invisible, but she knew how to sneak around without making a sound, and managed to enter the private property.

The place was in the suburbs, and after entering she saw multiple prefabricated houses there, around ten in total, and big enough for four people to live comfortably in them.

On the outside, that place was used as the living quarters and resting spot for the workers of a nearby warehouse facility. But according to the information she had gathered, the rightmost house had a secret basement, and the auction took place there.

Looking around, she noticed multiple people wearing tidy and clean clothes, which did not look suitable for heavy lifting in warehouses.

Mira guessed they were probably related to the auction, so she decided to follow the one who looked the most important from the bunch into the rightmost house. There was only a plain room inside. But the man walked up to an ornament on a wall, pushing it to make a hidden staircase appear. The moment he walked down, it closed behind him.

(Hmm, I’m starting to feel like there’s a trend with having hidden things around lately…)

Mira figured that it would be too weird if the hidden staircase was activated right after the man, so she decided to wait for a while, looking down with Life Sensing to make sure there was no one looking when she went down.

The basement was far larger than she expected, calling it underground facility being a far better description for it.

(Hold on… that’s a spirit’s light.)

The corridor reinforced with stone walls she walked through was brightly illuminated, looking almost like there was daylight down there. When she looked up, she felt spiritual power coming from the bright lamp.

A lamp that used spiritual magic. She had seen something similar at the entrance to the Graveyard of War Memorials. Noticing that correlation, she smirked.

(I may have hit the jackpot here.)

There were more people down there too, some of which passed by right next to her.
Mira went from pretending to be a detective to a thief, stealthily walking on tiptoes so no one would notice her.

In one room she found all the items prepared to be sold in the auction. There were some items she could identify at first sight, many she could not, but there really were a lot of illegal items there.

Trying to obtain even more information, Mira decided to find people who looked like they were in charge and eavesdropped into their conversation, while ’Examining’ them at the same time. She was invisible to them, so it was easier to look straight at their faces.

(Huh? That’s…)

Carefully advancing through the corridors, Mira saw someone who she recognized.
A young man with an extremely handsome face which Mira disliked passed right by her, not noticing Mira.

(Isaac Meyer? Oh… right, back then.)

After Examining his face, she saw his name was Isaac Meyer. The same magician she had seen while rescuing Angelique from Melville’s warehouse.