After ironing out the details of their monitoring plan, which included grabbing a map of the city and turning them into grids, Dia called the officer back in and asked for the two of them to be stationed in the middle of Nachtville. It didn’t take long for the officer to arrange their accommodations and after a few minutes, the two of them were walking down the streets of Nachtville.

The streets were unusually deserted. After asking the nervous guards that were escorting them to a suitable house, Dia found out why — an advisory to stay at home and lock the doors had been issued. It was a measure that essentially asked everyone to bury their heads in the sand and hope that they wouldn’t be targeted, but it did seem to be effective; no murders had happened at night.

Somehow, Dia had the feeling that the fact that the murders happened in broad daylight were very important, but there was too little from that angle. In the first place, what was the point of killing this openly? Was the murderer someone who simply had a compulsive desire to shock the world by killing in front of other people?

Or did the killer harbour a darker motive?

Troubled by those thoughts, Dia let her legs move on their own. Before long, the small group arrived at a rather shabby house. It had a small, overgrown garden, and the garden gate itself was hanging off the hinges at a very crooked angle. The small fences around it could be traversed with a simple jump, and…

“My apologies, Your Excellencies,” said one of the guards. “Nachtville has been troubled by cash flow issues for the past year, which is why most of our lodgings for professionals have been neglected.”

Dia had a feeling that the interior of the house was equally neglected too, but with Percuti’s light falling on them, she didn’t quite want to make any comments that could potentially stir their anger. Placing a hand on Risti’s shoulder, the two of them pushed the gate open — which proceeded to fall apart at their touch — and entered the premises of the small house.

The two guards stared at the broken gate, before trying to fix it. After a few feeble attempts to reattach the garden gate, which only served to turn the thing into splinters, they made some excuses and left, the blush on their faces obvious even under the light of the red moon.

Shaking her head, Dia returned her attention to Risti, who was pushing the door open slowly. However, aside from the very ominous creaking that followed, the interior of the house was at least…passably clean. Sure, there were a few mounds of dust here and there, but it was at least better than sleeping on the streets.

The two got to some preliminary dusting — Dia’s father didn’t believe that his children should be spoiled rotten by not giving them any chores to do — and after wiping down any surface they intended on using, the two flopped over to the newly-cleaned table, which proceeded to creak under their weight.

“Well, at least we did secure a base of sorts.” Risti took out some writing materials.

“What are you writing down?” Dia asked.

“My observations of Nachtville,” Risti replied. Her voice was especially devoid of any emotions when she said those words, and for a moment, Dia thought that the person before her had been possessed by a jaded old man. It was a surprising comparison, given that Risti was essentially a lookalike of herself, but that impression was particularly hard to shake off.

This is Risti when she’s truly invested…Dia’s initial impression of Risti as an obsessed admirer had been weakened over time, but this particular side of her was particularly striking. She was giving off a weighty aura right now, an air similar to something that radiated off Farah when the latter was saying something serious.

In fact, Dia had the feeling that disturbing Risti right now was an incredibly bad idea. It was something her instincts told her, but as a swordswoman, her instincts were usually very on-point. Therefore, instead of going through the plan with her, Dia chose to take her sword and move to another room.

She was tired, but after today’s scare, Dia knew that sleep wasn’t going to be easily obtained. Doing a few practice forms to calm her nerves, Dia switched from style to style, her sword moving at a slow, leisurely pace. Her stiffened muscles loosened up slowly, and before long, whatever fear that had hidden within her was forced out, and her heart felt all the lighter for it.

With Risti doing her work, and no one else to talk to, Dia found herself bored. While she was in Moon Mansion, there was always someone to talk to, to relax with. Other times, she would be training the lower-level members of the Moon Lords, acting as a combat instructor for the vanillas. If push came to shove, she would just borrow a book or read a newspaper, but…

“This is really boring,” Dia muttered. “What should I do?”

For some reason, Claud’s exhortations to stay prepared echoed inside her mind, and to her displeasure, she couldn’t get them out. After letting herself be tormented by his echoing words for a few minutes, she sat down and pulled out some skillstrips.

Claud had a point. However, of her six skills, only Sword Dance and Sword Sense were worth duplicating; the rest…she didn’t dare to duplicate them. If someone else obtained skillstrips with her last three skills on it, a disaster could follow. To begin with, Sword Fall and Domain of Swords were very rare skills, skills that she was only able to learn due to her being the daughter of Duke Lustre.

Of course, because she favoured fighting over administration, the more important skills to running a dukedom had gone to her brother. Before this Thief of Time business went down, Dia had envisioned herself to be Lustre’s sword and shield, fending off enemies for her brother, who would handle the finicky issues of administration.

In a sense, that vision had come true, since she had been implicated in Ruler Umbra’s murder in place of her brother, but…

Shaking her head, Dia sheathed her sword and wandered over to an unused bed, which had been cleaned by the two of them. Sitting on it, she closed her eyes and began to condition her mind with a bout of meditation. Her lifespan was long enough that furthering her second mana circuit wasn’t going to kill her anytime soon, and given the danger that stalked Nachtville, it seemed appropriate for her to continue burning her mana circuits.

Blue and green light intertwined with each other. Statistically speaking, it was far better to use lifestones to improve one’s mana circuit, but since she had no lifestones on hand…

Making a mental note to ask for some lifestones when she got back, Dia focused on her mana nexus. The mana nexus was a term to refer to where superimposed mana circuits were linked, which accounted for dense networks of mana on that particular area.

They usually appeared on the heart too, which was rather fitting, considering that the mana nexus was quite similar to the abovementioned organ.

Time stretched into a blur as Dia began the long process of drawing a mana circuit. Drawing a second mana circuit required two hundred years of life; even though her second circuit was almost complete, she didn’t want to take any risks. Twenty-four years were a lot, and given the recent trend of drying lifestone mines, Dia had a feeling that judicious use of her current lifespan was the way to go.

Furthermore, the threat of being attacked by that devastating terror still remained. Dia would rather complete her second mana circuit at a snail’s pace, in case something interrupted her session and the lifeforce she withdrew went to waste.

Extracting another year’s worth of lifeforce — the minimum unit of conversion — Dia willed it to become the purest of mana, before etching it on the extremities of her second mana circuit. This was another reason why progressing in the hierarchy of life was so hard; for a mana circuit to be complete, it had to cover the entire body, even the fingertips. As a rule of thumb, burning mana circuits into fingers and toes were the hardest jobs to do; a single lapse in concentration and the pure mana would deteriorate and become unusable.

The sun rose as Dia finished burning four years of her life, bringing her Mana Circuit Superimposition level to 1.9. It was a small increase from her previous superimposition level of 1.88, but every 0.1 was a minor boundary. Her mana reserves had expanded once more with that, but as to how useful it was…

Dia glanced at Risti, who was snoozing away in her chair, and decided to wake her up gently.

The sun was up, and it was time for work.