Chapter 30: So Many Visitors Tonight…

Gawain stood by the window for a moment, waiting until he was sure the scent of that “My Little Pony” had completely vanished. Only then did he exhale and quickly start closing the window.

Just as the window was about to shut, a shadow suddenly shot up from below, accompanied by Amber’s loud shouting: “Hey, mister! I just saw a little thief… thud!”

Gawain: “…”

A moment later, the thoroughly battered Miss Amber finally landed safely on the ground. The unlucky half-elf was clutching her forehead, an ice pack pressed to her face, glaring angrily at Gawain. “Don’t pull that kind of stunt on me!”

“How was I supposed to know you’d suddenly jump in through the window?” Gawain glanced at her. “What’s with everyone today? Doesn’t anyone just use the front door anymore?”

“I’m a thief, you know! You want me to use the front door? Are you disrespecting my professional pride?” Amber huffed. “Besides, I just got punched and thrown through the air! And you haven’t even mentioned how you’re going to compensate me for my work injury. Are you nobles always this stingy?”

Gawain looked at Amber, who was still lively and bouncing around despite the earlier collision with the window frame. Clearly, she wasn’t seriously hurt. He shook his head. “I don’t have money right now, but once I do, I’ll make it up to you.”

Before she could respond, he added, “I’m your elder. I’m not lying to you, okay?”

Amber glared. “You said that yourself—I’ve got a good memory!”

Gawain waved her off, telling the noisy half-elf to behave herself for a while. Then he turned to the desk, eyeing the crystals spread out before him.

There were five crystals in total. One was the item Miss Melita had just handed over—a relic from seven hundred years ago. In theory, it should have been an important artifact entrusted to the Mithril Treasury by Gawain Cecil himself back then. Yet, strangely, Gawain had no memory of it at all. The other four crystals had been taken from the secret Mithril safe in the study.

But Gawain had no idea where those four came from.

He had memories of the Mithril safe, but only of one item inside it—the platinum disc. That disc was actually a key, capable of opening a warehouse that, by now, probably no one even remembered. As for the other crystals… all he could recall was seeing Gawain Cecil place them into the safe long ago. Their origin was a complete blank.

It was as if all memories related to these crystals had been wiped clean.

Gawain fiddled with the crystals. They were made of the same material, but in shape, the one from the Mithril Treasury was clearly intact. It was perfectly symmetrical, roughly the size of a palm, shaped like a spindle without pointed ends. At its center, a faint blue glow shimmered. The other four crystals, taken from the safe, were clearly fragments—remnants of another spindle-shaped crystal. Gawain tried piecing them together but could only form about two-thirds of a spindle.

“What’s this?” Amber, who had been standing nearby for only a few minutes, was already bored and hovering close. “Crystals, huh? But they look so dull… they don’t seem worth anything.”

Without looking up, Gawain said, “Good thing they don’t look valuable. Otherwise, I’d have silenced you by now to stop you from scheming.”

Amber dramatically clutched her chest. “Wow! You nobles are so cruel!”

Gawain gave her a curious glance. “You keep talking about nobles all day. Do you have a grudge against them?”

“No grudge,” Amber rolled her eyes. “But isn’t it natural for the poor to curse the nobles? There’s nothing else to blame, so whether it’s birth, death, illness, or disasters, it’s always the nobles’ fault.”

Gawain smirked. “You don’t sound like a real poor person. The truly poor don’t have the guts to say that.”

Amber beamed with pride. “Of course not! Ordinary poor folks can’t Shadow Walk like I do~~~”

Gawain ignored the half-elf’s nonsense and waved her off to fetch Rebecca.

“Call that little lord?” Amber blinked, then glanced at the crystals on the desk. “Wait… are these really valuable things?”

Gawain didn’t know how she made that connection. “Why do you think that?”

Amber laid out her reasoning confidently: “The timing, the atmosphere, and that Mithril Treasury agent you mentioned earlier—it’s obvious you’re about to hand over an inheritance. Could it be that the Cecil family’s centuries-old legacy is actually tied up in these crystals?”

Gawain broke out in a cold sweat. “If you don’t go now, I’ll pin you to the wall with one sword!”

With a swift motion, Amber melted into a shadow and vanished into thin air.

Gawain exhaled slowly. With that noisy half-elf finally gone, he could truly settle down and focus on the nagging question beneath his unease—what exactly was behind his “resurrection” or “possession”?

At first, he thought it was all coincidence. He had simply drifted in the sky until some device reached its lifespan limit, then was ejected by an escape system and happened to crawl out of someone’s ancestral tomb. But now it seemed… maybe his arrival was accidental, but Gawain Cecil’s resurrection was not.

Someone destined to have a limited lifespan, who truly died young, wouldn’t have purchased permanent storage in the Mithril Treasury.

Unless he already knew he would one day reclaim his belongings.

Of course, it could just be a waste of money… but that possibility was too slim to consider.

Gawain’s fingers absentmindedly traced the desk, writing three Chinese characters in his mind: Who am I?

Gawain, from Earth, died in a plane crash in a past life, transmigrated here. Though the mechanism was still unclear, he had hung in the sky for tens of thousands of years, watching this world’s rise and fall, then possessed a body and become Gawain Cecil—only a little over two months ago.

His memories were intact, personality unaltered, and his thinking clear.

So it wasn’t himself he worried about.

The problem must lie with Gawain Cecil—was his resurrection somehow botched by this unexpected visitor from the sky?

Come to think of it, a man whose body hadn’t decayed after seven hundred years was already suspicious. Maybe that legendary hero had arranged seven centuries ago to be resurrected on a certain future day—perhaps when his unworthy descendants were about to ruin the family legacy, or when those nation-destroying monsters returned to breach the defenses, or maybe both disasters struck at once. He intended to serve his country faithfully even after death. But he forgot one thing: a soul possessed by a satellite just happened to fall from the sky…

When you put it that way, it made a lot of sense.

Gawain frowned, running through countless possibilities in his mind, most of which couldn’t be verified.

The only thing he could confirm was that he was still himself.

He didn’t bother pondering overly complex and meaningless questions like “subconscious changes that can’t be perceived, just as the brain can’t sense itself thinking, or how affected thinking can go unnoticed,” because he felt it was a waste of time to trap himself in philosophy.

As long as his thoughts remained free and clear, he could continue with what he needed to do.

Footsteps outside the study interrupted his thoughts. He heard Amber chattering at the door: “I’m telling you, your ancestor was acting all mysterious, meeting a Mithril Treasury agent in the middle of the night, then suddenly demanding to see you—I’m pretty sure he’s about to hand over an inheritance… Oh, and that agent punched me too, so you owe me compensation for my work injury…”

The crackle of a fireball forming sounded.

Amber added, “…Of course, I’m not asking for payment right now…”

The door opened, and Rebecca appeared, with Amber peeking around the corner.

“Ancestor, you wanted to see me?”

Rebecca asked while sizing up Gawain. Although Amber’s wild stories were hardly trustworthy, the practical-minded young lord instinctively checked the old ancestor’s expression to see if he was really about to hand over an inheritance…

Gawain looked at Amber. “Guard outside. Don’t let anyone get close. If anyone sneaks in again, forget about work injury pay—I won’t even give you a salary.”

Amber pouted, heading toward the window while muttering, “As if you ever paid me a salary…”

Gawain: “Why do you have to go through the window?!”

The ever-professional Miss Amber once again slipped out through the window to her post.

Gawain sighed, realizing reasoning with this walking embarrassment was pointless. He turned back to the desk, carefully putting away the crystals whose purpose he still didn’t understand, then pulled the platinum disc from his pocket.

“Amber’s not entirely wrong—I do have something to entrust to you,” Gawain said quickly, emphasizing, “But it’s definitely not an inheritance.”

Rebecca looked curiously at the disc in his hand. “What’s that?”

“A key. It can open—”

Before he could finish, a shout came from the roof: “Thief! I caught you again!!”

Footsteps pounded across the rooftop, but surprisingly, there was no “ouch” from Amber being thrown this time, which startled Gawain.

Could it be a shadow-walking goose on the roof? (Highly unlikely.)

He immediately reached for his weapon on the desk, ready to join Rebecca and check things out. But before he could move, a shadow suddenly surged inside the study. Amber leapt out of the mist, holding a young man in black leather armor who looked unconscious.

Gawain glanced at the newcomer and couldn’t help but think: Tonight… there really are a lot of visitors.

(End of chapter)