One Last System

They would tell her only when they would be ready for it. Inquiring about the topic right now would only make the opinion those two had of her falter.

During their entire tour back to the auction hall, not a single one of the trio uttered a single word.

Mia was too scared to bother the two clearly important figures. As for Ackhart and Andrea, she could only guess what their reason for the silence was.

"Finally home," Andrea muttered when their small group passed through the set of columns that decorated the entrance to the auction hall.

Her shoulders dropped the second she released a deep sigh, indicating that she was tense all over through the entire journey back to this place.

\'Was there some sort of danger lurking outside?\' Mia guessed, attempting to make sense of the small things she could notice.

Those details were nothing more but small dots in the dark. For now, there were too few of them for the girl to paint a clear picture of her own situation.

That didn\'t mean, though, that Mia wasn\'t going to try doing just that!

"Let\'s get deeper into the hall," Ackhart finally said something. His forehead was all wrinkled, his eyelids covered half of his eyes.

\'He doesn\'t feel safe here,\' Mia thought, marking yet another dot in the mental map of the situation.

What did it mean? What she could learn from it? For now, Mia didn\'t know. But she was more than willing to seek the answers to those questions.

"You are right," Andrea nodded her head, her formerly relaxed face tensing up again. "We don\'t know who might be listening here," she said out loud, causing a wrinkle to appear on Mia\'s forehead.

\'Is this something that you should admit out loud?\' she asked herself, too scared of infringing on the face of those two to ask this question out in the open.

\'Well, and if I did ask this out loud, it would be the same mistake that my question would be pointing at,\' she thought, biting down on her lips and keeping her mouth shut.

"Who knows what kind of friends that bastard has," Andrea added in a hushed yet clearly audible voice.

\'So that\'s the case,\' Mia breathed out a sigh of relief when she finally managed to complete a small portion of the mental picture in her head.

\'Rather than alerting the potential spies that she knows of their presence, she is justifying her actions against them,\' Mia thought.

Whatever one said in a normal voice, most of the spies wouldn\'t care. After all, if the person they were spying at wasn\'t trying to hide something, it likely didn\'t hold much value in the report they would later write.

On the other hand, what Andrea said in a hushed voice was at least important enough to find its place on their reports!

\'And right now, they will think she is careful about Arganar\'s influence,\' Mia thought to herself, only to squint her eyes as she noticed the question that her realization implied.

\'But if she\'s not worried about Arganar\'s spies... Then whose spies is she wary of?\'

Once again, Mia had no other choice but to keep the question deep in her soul as she followed the two of her saviors deeper into the auction hall.

Only when their small group entered the room furthest down the corridor and closed the door did Andrea\'s face relax again, returning to the state that it initially assumed when she entered the building.

"Here, no one should be able to listen to us," the female clerk muttered, only to turn around on her heel and cast a long glance at Mia\'s face.

"If I may ask..." Mia spoke out in a low voice, not sure if she was in a position to even raise her voice. "But what is this place?" she stated her question when she didn\'t notice any frowns on Ackhart\'s or Andrea\'s faces.

"This is a private room of an auction hall," Ackhart replied just as Andrea opened her mouth to do the same.

"Hush," the woman quickly turned her head to look at the man. Her raised left eyebrow indicated that Ackhart would come to regret jumping the gun later. She then turned her face back, once again locking eyes with Mia.

"Just like he said, this is an auction hall," Andrea confirmed Ackhart\'s words. Then, an amused smile appeared on her lips. "Yet, at the same time, this is the main hub of the Royal control over this location," she added.

\'Well, that makes sense,\' Mia thought, gulping down her saliva.

After the display of authority and throwing royal-related words all over the place back on the streets, she would have to be an idiot not to notice the relation.

\'She called herself a Royal deputy, didn\'t she?\' Mia thought, recalling the recent events.

The girl then shook her head, amazed by how seemingly random events led her to this point.

"I\'m a Royal Deputy," Andrea stated just like she did back on the street. "He, on the other hand, is one of my retainers," she added as she glanced over at Ackhart.

Mia, once again, swallowed down her saliva only to take a deep breath a second later. A single calming ritual of her wasn\'t enough to keep her mind chilled.

She saw the display of Ackhart\'s power. She heard Arganar calling him a mature enlightened.

\'Even if I don\'t really know what stage it is,\' she thought, tensing her fists, \'I can say for sure that he is damn powerful!\'

"I bet you didn\'t even know there was a kingdom that governed this land," Andrea said, her face twisting in an obvious grimace of dissatisfaction.

"Ugh..." Mia grunted, lowering her head in preparation for the lecturing that was bound to follow. "I\'m sorry," she added, averting her eyes.

"Andrea!" Ackhart shouted over as he sat down on one of the chairs. "You know it\'s not her fault," he added, clearly trying to placate his companion.

"I know, I know," Andrea muttered, shaking her head. She then moved her eyes back on Mia\'s face. "Listen, girl, the royal power within the kingdom is extremely limited," she stated. "Outside of the capital itself..." the woman hesitated for a little as she thought about something, "yeah, not a single other city is under a direct control of the royal family," she added a moment later.

\'Why is she telling me this?\' Mia thought, desperately marking new dots appearing all over her mental image and then attempting to connect them.

\'Auction hall is a source of power in the lands that royals don\'t directly control,\' she thought, turning what she just heard into simple, straightforward statements in her head. \'And only capital is under the direct control of the royals,\' she added, uncovering another part of the greater picture.

"I\'m a Royal Deputy," Andrea repeated herself, not paying any mind to how focused Mia was. "In other words, I\'m a person responsible for managing this location and enforcing Royal will in it," she explained.

"Excuse me, if I may ask..." Mia finally managed to form up a question in her head that would fill the gaps in her knowledge. "Is this sort of scheme extrapolated over the entire... kingdom?" she asked.

\'How big is the Kingdom? Is the Tuxi sect a subsidiary? A vassal? Or maybe just an organization within the Kingdom\'s sphere of influence?\' Questions continued to pop up in Mia\'s head.

Yet, even though she now had more questions than ever before, it would be a lie to say that she knew less than in the past. Rather than that, she only became increasingly aware of just how vast the lapses in her knowledge were!

"That\'s right," Andrea nodded her head, a small glint flashing in her eyes as she looked at the girl.

"Then..." Mia coughed, clearing her throat. "Why do those... Royals," she said, quickly raising her eyes at the woman to confirm that she wasn\'t straying from the right path as she spoke. "Why do they exert their control in such a roundabout manner?"

Being a royal implicated that a group of people wielded a power supreme to all those under them. And if that was the case, then why didn\'t they use that power to directly control what they were interested in?

"Girl," Andrea muttered in a soft tone, just as if a naive kid stood before her and asked why people won\'t just coin more money to lift everyone from poverty. "Who controls the trade, the flow of money, controls everything," she stated.

"Reporting on this matter is going to be a pain in the ass," Ackhart suddenly said, bringing up a topic completely unrelated to what the two girls were talking about.

Andrea turned her head to the side, sending Ackhart yet another cold glance.

"Can\'t you see that I\'m trying to explain something?" she asked in an angry voice.

"Yeah, I can," Ackhart replied defyingly before shaking his head. "But you can always take your time to explain this stuff. On the other hand, I should be ready to report on this situation at a moment\'s notice!"

Instead of bashing on her retainer, Andrea swallowed her words and took a long look at the man\'s face. She then released a deep sigh followed by her shoulders plummeting down.

"I don\'t know, can\'t you just lie your way out of it?"