Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic

Because Captain Lades had scheduled an evening visit, Shard had no other plans for tonight.

After returning home, he placed the bottle of Holy Water in the hidden space of the basement. Then he went out with his cat for a hearty dinner, after which he used the time before Captain Lades' visit to write up yesterday's investigation report for Locke Laurel, Lawyer, and mailed it to the client Mrs. Lemer.

With that, the commission only had the signing with Mrs. Lemer left.

Captain Lades, who had made an appointment to visit, did not knock on the door downstairs until seven o'clock in the evening.

The captain's entire demeanour was different from before. When he came for the visit, he brought a bottle of expensive-looking wine as a gift.

He excitedly told Shard about what he had witnessed while recording statements at Riddlevitch Field and repeated the news he had already mentioned in the letter from a friend.

Finally, with his large, rough hands, he firmly grasped Shard's hand and shook it ceaselessly, his face flushed with excitement as he thanked the detective for his help:

"I have met many people in my life, but detective, you will be a friend for life."

"Captain, it was your own choice. Yesterday, I didn't invite you to come and help Mrs. Cook and me. It was your own choice to follow along, and your kindness that changed your own fate."

Shard was happy for him, but even so, the captain still believed it was Shard who had changed his fate.

This middle-aged man, of military origin and relatively kind, wanted to thank Shard. But having not much money, he could only come here to express his gratitude verbally and promised to never forget Shard's kindness.

This made Shard somewhat embarrassed.

On Friday morning, he received a letter from the client; Mrs. Lemer had already made an appointment with Lawyer Laurel to accept the inheritance from a distant relative next Friday. According to the commission contract, Shard was to go with her.

The appointment being set for a Friday was because Lawyer Laurel needed to contact the City Hall notary office to confirm that the inheritance transfer could take place. Given that it involved a significant sum of money, the process would be somewhat complicated.

The commission was not urgent for the moment, and getting a new key made also required waiting, so life seemed to become leisurely all of a sudden.

So he left home at eight in the morning to ask the Black Raven Library about the Arcane Technique, "Echo." The library indeed had the knowledge Shard needed, and the "Echo" was not a rare Spirit Rune. However, the problem was that the Arcane Techniques they offered, while practical, were prohibitively expensive.

Even though Shard had close to 400 pounds in cash that he could spend, he balked at the "Power of Echo," which cost 700 pounds including material value, and the "Echoes of Nature's Void," which cost 1200 pounds without materials.

Shard knew that he had no intention of studying the "Echo" Spirit Rune in detail, and for the time being, he couldn't see how this rune was related to "Space-Time" and "Silvermoon." So unless he came across a very practical Arcane Technique, he would not spend so much money to buy knowledge, even if the Queen's Ruby Ring and the Roder Card in his hand could be cashed in.

There was no gain from the Black Raven Library, but the Saint Byrons Library might have cheap Arcane Techniques. Unfortunately, although he still had last week's library catalog, the Arcane Techniques listed in the catalog were only related to "Silvermoon," "Space-Time," and "Gluttony." Stay updated through empire

Therefore, he would have to wait until tomorrow, Saturday, to further inquire about the materials.

He rushed back home at nine-thirty, and after one final check that all sensitive items were hidden in the basement, he welcomed the Dawn Church's exorcists at ten o'clock.

Shard thought there would be a highly-ranked Circle Sorcerer, but when he opened the door, he was met with a team of people.

"Nine people are all Circle Sorcerers, and the man closest to you is ranked even higher than your Doctor friend."

Meaning, to show their importance to Shard, who had just joined the church, Dawn Chapel had arranged for an entire team of Circle Sorcerers to perform the exorcism.

The squad leader was a man of few words but very action-oriented. He introduced himself as Hers Nedrow, a full-time exorcist of the Dawn Church in the Tobesk Archdiocese. After his brief introduction, the team went straight to the second floor.

Mr. Nedrow took out a somewhat rusty black iron key from his pocket and, after assuring with Shard that the lock was intact, used the key to open the door.

"No, Mr. Hamilton. We will first send in half of the people, and you can enter after we confirm it's safe."

He held back the door and said to the young detective holding the cat, clearly a man of rich experience.

Five members of the exorcist team entered in a single file, and only after a while were others allowed in from outside.

The second room on the second floor, like the initially sealed Room One, had its gas and steam pipes completely cut off, and windows had all been sealed with wooden boards. Dust covered the floor, stirring up as anyone walked across it.

They first removed the wooden boards from the windows, then the nine of them worked methodically to inspect each room.

Shard was requested not to wander, but he was still able to stand in the living room of Room Two and observe the layout of the house. Empty with no furniture, but at least the decorative wall was retained, and the room layout was identical to Room One where Shard and Mia lived.

There were no traces of the mass suicide event of the last homeowner visible here, and after the windows were opened, the moldy smell and dampness inside the house were somewhat alleviated.

```

After looking around, there was no suspicious sign inside the room. So he asked himself mentally, but the response was just that everything was normal.

The church's Circle Sorcerer squad had come prepared, and they carefully inspected each room. And, having made sure Shard wasn't peeking, they closed the door to perform arcane techniques and sorcery for exorcism, to ensure that even if there were any evil spirits present, they definitely could not survive.

The whole exorcism operation lasted for over an hour, and it was not until half-past eleven that it finally ended. The "Exorcist Squad's" reply was:

"It's safe here, there are no evil presences, so it can be used normally."

Shard was skeptical of this conclusion, after all, the church had also found nothing amiss about the basement. So, after the church's Circle Sorcerers had left, he immediately returned to room number two, whose door had been opened.

"Echo of the Past!"

Five times in a row, he heard no suspicious sounds.

"Echo of Blood!"

Huge swaths of faint blood-red halos spread on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, the brutality of the collective suicide event that took place decades ago was far beyond Shard's expectations. But those overlapping blood colors didn't provide any valid clues; he barely made out some blood-stained footprints but couldn't discover the value of the footprints as he did in the basement.

Having had the "experience" in the basement, he finally tried to summon the Ring of Fate, using the Spiritual Light of "Space-Time" to shine on every part of the walls in succession.

This was a big project, and Shard busied himself for a full half-hour. It was not until Mia came out from room number one, meowing impatiently for lunch, that he didn't manage to find any more hidden walls.

"It's probably a good thing. If every floor of the house had issues, that would be the strange thing."

Standing in the middle of the living room, looking at the empty room, the worry disappearing, a joy he couldn't quite express surged in his heart:

"The usable area of the house has increased quite a bit."

"But you and the cat won't need so much space."

"Seeing the house get bigger makes me happy from the bottom of my heart. You probably can't understand how, in my hometown, it is nearly impossible to own such a big house."

He stroked the walls of the room, contemplating the usable area of his home. For an outlander, the feeling of having a stable abode of one's own, having a home, is indeed very important.

But looking at the dust on his hand from the wall, looking at the footprints in the dust on the floor, he couldn't help worrying that cleaning would become more troublesome as the house got bigger.

At this thought, the image of the black-haired maid, Miss Tifa Servet, suddenly jumped to his mind. He immediately shook his head:

"That's someone else's maid, I probably need to spend money to hire a housekeeper to come clean the rooms once a week... maybe also help with laundry."

"Do I need to remind you that the one staring at you at the door is also someone else's cat?"

Her voice was very charming.

"It's not the same, how can people and cats be the same."

Shard said to himself, receiving only laughter in response.

"Meow~"

Mia sat obediently at the door, wagging her tail, waiting for Shard to take her out for delicious food. The small orange cat knew very well that if there was no cooking in the kitchen at this time, it meant they were definitely going out to eat.

Lifting her right paw, she rubbed her fluffy face, the cat disliked going out, but she liked to eat out.

After a leisurely morning, the afternoon schedule was already arranged. Tobesk University Union advertised in the "Steam Bird Daily," inviting public individuals to attend an academic seminar.

Shard had planned to attend the seminar so he set off after lunch. As for Mia, she continued to watch the house at No. 6, Saint Delan Square. The timid cat didn't like outings, and she liked summer outings even less. Shard made her a bowl of snow and weighed it down with another bowl of water and heavy objects to prevent the cat from accidentally eating it.

Mia would likely spend a cool afternoon.

The academic seminar, funded by the Kingdom's cultural and educational departments, Tobesk City Hall, and a few nobles, was organized by the Tobesk University Union and held at the Draleon Royal Mechanical College.

The academic seminar started at half-past one that afternoon and continued until half-past eight in the evening, with different sessions according to academic disciplines. Scholars from the Academy and the surrounding areas of the Kingdom, even from Carsonrick, would appear. But overall, this was not a large-scale event.

```