The Storm Kingdom.
This kingdom left people with only one impression—chaos.
In this country, strength was the only measure of anything.
There weren’t many laws here; as long as you had power, doing whatever you wanted was no problem at all.
Only the royal capital and the cities near it held even a shred of order.
In the other cities—especially the remote outskirts—you wouldn’t so much as glimpse a single officer of the law.
A boy who stole a loaf of bread was beaten to death out in the open, and no one lifted a finger to stop it.
Everyone watched it happen with cold eyes.
This was the sorrow of the powerless who lived here.
In a tavern nearby, a handsome young man in a black tailcoat leisurely savored fine wine, smiling as he watched it all unfold.
“So you just handed something that important over to some idiot?” said the man beside him—a hulking figure two and a half meters tall, carrying a spiked club nearly as long as he was, his face flat and expressionless.
This brute and the tailcoated man really didn’t belong in the same picture.
The brute wore almost no cloth at all—just a thong on his lower half, with a scrap of fabric dangling in front to preserve his modesty.
He was bald, too, with a blue tattoo inked across his face that ran down his solid arms all the way to the backs of his hands.
“What do you mean?” The tailcoated man set down his cup and licked his lips.
“You know what I’m talking about.” The brute showed no anger at the man playing dumb.
“That stone.”
Hearing this, the tailcoated man gave a helpless shrug.
“Well, you couldn’t expect me to deliver it to Ur City in person, could you?
If Chris ever found me out, now that would be fun.”
“In the end, you’re just scared,” the thonged brute sneered.
“This Chris frightens you that much?”
“She’s dangerous, all right!” The tailcoated man threw on an exaggeratedly terrified expression.
“Ten years ago she nearly finished me off…
though I hear she took in a son these past few years.
No idea if that’s even true…”
“So what do we do now?
‘That thing’ is out of our hands.”
“Doesn’t matter.
It was never important to us to begin with, and it’s plenty dangerous besides…
Dumping a little trouble on Ur City doesn’t sound half bad.
Hahahaha…” By the end, the tailcoated young man was cackling in a thin, shrill voice. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
The brute gave him the look one reserves for an idiot.
“The wine’s gone. Barton, pay the bill!”
The brute the young man had called Barton glared at him furiously, but still obediently dug the money out of his thong and shoved it at the horrified bartender.
Ur City, Locke Street.
Sak and Carlo were peppering Aisha with all sorts of questions, dead serious, while Mir stood outside the alley zoning out and playing with a fish, and Xia Ye stood beside him watching him do it.
“This is the professional?” Xia Ye eyed the slacking Mir with contempt.
The fish Mir kept stroking in the water had already lost a whole patch of scales, and even the fishmonger watching from the side broke into an awkward sweat.
“Usually when we go out for field training, the investigating never falls to me anyway. I just wait for them to find the culprit, then rush in first thing and beat him to death.”
Watching Mir go on tormenting the fish, Xia Ye didn’t know what to say.
“Are you actually going to buy the fish or not? You’ve petted it so much I can’t even sell it anymore!” The fishmonger looked at his brutalized fish, heartbroken.
Mir didn’t answer the question.
Instead he turned and looked at the man seriously.
“Do you know how to make fish soup?”
“Huh? Yeah, I do,” the fishmonger answered, bewildered.
As a fishmonger, of course he knew how to cook all sorts of fish dishes.
“Mm, good.” Mir thought it over.
“I’ll buy this fish.
You go stew it.”
“Huh?” The fishmonger felt a little lost.
“I sell fish, I’m not a cook.
I only sell them, I don’t stew them!”
“Tch—swindler!” Mir grabbed Xia Ye and made to leave.
The fishmonger hurriedly caught hold of him.
“Hey, hey, you can’t just walk off like that!
You scraped all the scales off my fish.
If you’re not buying it, then there’s no way I’m letting you leave today!”
“You sure?” Mir looked at the fishmonger with a pitying gaze.
The poor fishmonger still had no idea what kind of person he’d just offended, and Xia Ye beside him couldn’t bear to watch anymore.
“You have to buy that fish today!”
“Mm~” Mir called toward the murder scene down the alley.
“Captain Aisha! I’ve found a very suspicious fishmonger over here!”
…
Mir and Xia Ye successfully got to drink fish soup stewed by the fishmonger’s own hands.
The fishmonger looked at the two of them, aggrieved.
Who’d have thought this girl in red, pretty as she was, had such a black heart. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“We’re over there breaking our backs discussing the case, and you two are over here drinking fish soup without a care?!” Aisha came over, leading Carlo and Sak.
“Want a bowl? It’s about noon already.” Mir tapped his bowl and handed it to the fishmonger, signaling for a refill.
The fishmonger: …
Aisha glanced at the watch on her wrist.
“Fine, it’s about time to eat anyway.”
She turned and called out to the busy officers, “Everyone! Take a break, come get something to eat!”
Then the officers gradually gathered at the fishmonger’s stall to buy fish soup.
The fishmonger: …
At this moment, let us congratulate the fishmonger on his successful career change to full-time cook!
Should he go find one of those poison fish—the kind where one bite kills a grown man—and use it to wipe out this pack of deadbeats?
It was the first time the fishmonger had ever wanted to kill someone this badly.
But he gave up on the idea in the end.
After all, his shop didn’t sell that kind of fish.
Just as everyone was happily drinking fish soup in the shop, Aisha suddenly felt a violent buzzing from her pocket.
“Mm~” Aisha let out a soft, flushed little sound, then pulled the communication crystal out of her pocket.
“Hello?
Mm, all right, understood.”
“Someone’s come to the station to file a report—it might be connected to this case.
The rest of you stay here; you four, come with me.” Aisha pointed at Mir and the other three.
She wasn’t about to leave them here—if they wrecked the scene, that’d be bad.
“Huh?” Mir was a bit put out.
“I’m not even full yet!”
“Let’s go! You’re the only one who eats so much!” The other two boys grabbed him, trying to drag him along, but couldn’t budge him.
Mir rolled his eyes, shook off their hands, and walked ahead on his own.
He really wasn’t full.
His doll form got its energy replenished by converting the food, but his child form only felt the faintest bit of replenishment.
At this rate, he might well go hungry again once he changed into his child form.
“You lot are a whole police station and you don’t even have a car?” Mir had no desire to burn off the energy he’d just eaten by walking.
The other four eyed him with disdain.
“It’s that short a walk and you want to take a car? And you’re supposed to be the strongest one here!”