Chapter Sixteen: The Unexpected

Page 1/3

Starting with Julia was far preferable to dealing with Fletcher. Julia was just a girl of sixteen or seventeen, much easier to handle. Once inside Julia’s room, gaining access to the study wouldn’t be difficult.

There were two possible approaches.

The first was to try to persuade Julia. The advantage was that at night, he could enter the study directly through the window, giving him ample time to investigate. The downside was that convincing Julia would be difficult and carried great risk.

The second was to wait until Julia was at school, then sneak in and climb through the window into the study. The benefit was avoiding too much contact with Julia, but the drawback was that during the day he was constantly under Fletcher’s watch and had no opportunity to leave.

For now, he couldn’t decide which was more suitable and had to pursue both paths simultaneously, taking one step at a time and making a decision once the situation became clearer.

As the night deepened, after sorting out his thoughts, Velaric finally relaxed and lay down to sleep.

Over the next few days, he worked on both plans, with the second showing slightly better progress.

He only saw Julia during breakfast and dinner, and with so many eyes watching, it was almost impossible to engage her in meaningful conversation. Their exchanges were limited to brief greetings; any attempt to say more felt inappropriate, so the interactions remained stiff while he waited for a better chance.

The second plan also bore fruit after persistent effort. Fletcher put Velaric through several days of intense training. It wasn’t just Velaric who was exhausted—Fletcher, confined to his bedroom, grew restless and frustrated teaching what seemed to him to be very simple tasks.

From the third day onward, Fletcher began leaving the bedroom frequently, letting Velaric study on his own and returning periodically to check.

Velaric tried to discern Fletcher’s patterns of leaving and soon realized that while the times were random, the durations outside were gradually lengthening—from ten minutes to half an hour, then an hour.

Friday, July 21.

That afternoon, Fletcher assigned Velaric his next tasks and left. Velaric glanced at them and figured that under normal circumstances they would take about an hour to complete. Even if Fletcher returned early to check, it would be at most half an hour ahead of schedule, meaning Velaric had a safe window of thirty minutes to go out.

Today was the perfect opportunity. Julia’s school hours were from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon, and weekends were off. If he missed this chance, he would have to wait until Monday to make another plan. Waiting for Mera and Kellerman to go out together was also unlikely—they had irregular schedules and rarely left simultaneously. Who knew what next week would bring?

Page 2/3

The best course was to seize this perfect moment and act promptly.

So, just minutes after Fletcher left, Velaric quietly slipped out. At this time, the servants were not wandering the corridor, and Velaric safely reached Julia’s door. Fortunately, Julia had not locked it, and Velaric entered without trouble.

Julia’s room was neat and tidy, more luxurious than Chris’s bedroom, with a few dolls piled on the bed. Velaric had no interest in these; he quickly scanned the room’s layout, then took off his shoes and walked straight to the window. After ensuring no one was outside, he peeked over at the study window next door.

Fortune smiled on him once again—the study window was open.

Without hesitation, Velaric climbed through the window, steadying himself with one hand on the sill and the other grasping the study window frame, then boldly leapt inside Carmine’s study.

“Phew.” Once inside, Velaric steadied himself, making as little noise as possible, then looked around.

On the left wall stood a massive bookshelf covering the entire wall; on the right was a display shelf for collectibles. Near the window sat an exquisitely crafted, expensive desk. After mentally noting the layout, Velaric fought his pounding heart and hurried to the desk to examine the papers on top.

He skimmed quickly, flipping through pages without spotting any keywords, moving on to the next. The documents on the desk were soon finished, but nothing of interest lay openly displayed. He pulled open drawers and cabinets for a deeper search, but again found nothing of value, which struck Velaric as odd.

Something was off.

It made sense that Carmine’s drawers were locked—Velaric expected that. But now there was no security at all, as if everything could be shown to anyone openly. That just didn’t add up.

If nothing valuable was here, why bother locking the study door and having Fletcher hold the key?

Only one plausible explanation remained: this room must have a hidden compartment like Chris’s bedroom, where the truly important items were concealed. Velaric hadn’t suspected a secret room because after observing the study’s surroundings over the past days, he was sure there was no space to build one.

Having reached this conclusion, Velaric proceeded as he had in Chris’s room—tapping and feeling surfaces to detect any abnormalities in the floors or walls.

Pressed for time, Velaric decided not to hastily tap everything. Accepting the possibility of no discovery today, he chose to carefully inspect one wall rather than rush and risk missing something, so that even without a find, he could confidently rule out that wall as hiding anything.

Time ticked by, and Velaric suppressed his unease, steadying his nerves as he finished examining the wall holding the collectibles.

Page 3/3

No clues emerged.

The bookshelf side was more likely, but the workload would be greater. Unfortunately, the safe half-hour window had passed, and for safety’s sake, Velaric had to retreat and save the detailed inspection for another time.

Just then, sounds came from outside. Velaric’s expression tightened as he moved to the window and cautiously looked down.

Two figures stepped down from a carriage in front of the mansion: one was Fletcher, and the other was none other than Dumps!

Velaric’s eyes widened.

A flood of questions overwhelmed him.

In his memory, Fletcher had never brought Dumps to the mansion before—why now in this lifetime?

Nord was still confined to the inn, yet Fletcher only brought Dumps here. What had happened at the inn?

Velaric had a bad feeling about Dumps being brought here. Fletcher was not the type to act kindly, and surely he hadn’t traveled all this way just to witness a tragic reunion between old friends.

Once Fletcher and Dumps entered the building, Velaric quickly climbed back through Julia’s window and hurried to Chris’s room, closing the door behind him.

Just then, footsteps approached in the corridor.

Velaric hurriedly put on his shoes, sat down at the desk, took a deep breath, and began flipping through his booklet.

Two seconds later, the door opened, and Fletcher stepped in.

“How’s it going?”

“Not bad, these two pages—” Velaric had barely started when he turned to look behind Fletcher in shock, unable to speak at the sight of Dumps standing there.