“Actually, speaking of studies, I believe I had read somewhere the process of how one can make secret messages appear through using magic,” Ume then says.

“How does that fit in with the Demon King’s secret message?”

“While there is magic used to attack enemies and other effects in battles that are shown in our skill and spell lists, there are other kinds of magic one can use aside from Null Spells for specific purposes. Magic that can be applied to alchemy is an example of that.”

Nyra contributes.

“As we were going through the experiments earlier, something was tickling my memories as I saw those secret messages appearing by your magic. I think you have to do something during the process of making those messages in order to achieve that specific outcome. If I look back into the books I keep in my [Storage] that describes that instruction, we may find a clue as to what kind of person the Demon King is or what her aims could be. I can try to skim through what I have tonight and tomorrow over our free time and see if I find anything before we set out on our quest.”

“Hey, at this point, I think anything can help if it involves with the Demon King in some way. I would help, but I can’t read Padimonian yet, so is it all right if I leave it to you, Ume?” I ask.

“Just leave it to me!” she exclaims while pounding a fist to her bosom in pride. “Oh! Should we fill the others in on what we found, too? This is a pretty big thing since you need to see the Demon King, anyway, something that we’re all aware of.”

Just as I open my mouth to respond, an image of a certain Arch Imp’s big smiling face pauses me briefly.

“… Everyone in our party, right? Not including Sue?”

“Huh, now that you mention it, does she know about us seeing the Demon King after our quest here?”

“Hmm … hey, Kenaka, Mametama, you two still up?” I ask aloud while using my Telepathy skill.

“It turned out well, surprisingly. We are on our way back now but what’s the situation with you guys?”

Just for a quick moment, I refer to the zoomed-out map that shows the entirety of Palocaesy from my Insightful Mapping skill while applying Detection and Size Up to figure out where she is … only to remember I couldn’t even see her name or status from our first meeting, the same goes for Roll and Sue. I do see two dots with blank names grouped with my party members and Julius around the area where our inn is located. Considering my familiars’ testimonies, I could only imagine them to be Roll’s and Sue’s locations. I have yet to see Kisaki’s, though, and even after zooming out my search area as wide as possible, I do not see any sign of her at all. Whether she’s somehow outside of Palocaesy or doing something to hide from even a broken skill like Insightful Mapping just further raises the possibility of her being a Champion and a dangerous one at that.

Wait, she couldn’t be working for the Demon King as part of the secret service … could she?

While my Telepathy was still on, Kenaka and Mametama had overheard my thoughts that I wasn’t sure to share with the others yet.

“A-Ah, I’ll explain later. By any chance, have either of you overheard their dinner conversation mentioning anything about our meeting with the Demon King?”

Mametama answers first.

Kenaka warns.

While keeping that in mind, I make a quick mental note to have a word with Sue about what should and shouldn’t be said with others outside of our group, too. “Right, good to know. Ume and I will be taking our time getting back to the inn so could you please let them know we’ll be there momentarily?”

Kenaka and Mametama answer respectfully.

“Yep, see you soon.” With that, I mentally deactivate my Telepathy skill.

“Nyra linked me to your telepathic talk. It sounds like things might get a little complicated,” Ume says.

“Yeah, it would be best that we keep this between us until Sue is not present. I kind of don’t like intentionally keeping her out of the loop like this, but …” Wait, with all of this timing, could even she be … ugh, now I’m uncertain of practically everything now.

“Uh, Sue is sleeping in the same room as us, and with Kalline and Mametama there, too …”

“I do think it’s a good idea to let yourself unwind from all of this stress, but doing that to pull info from Sue? What do you think, Jin?” Ume asks me.

… I won’t lie, I hate how it sounds so wrong and manipulative while being completely genius at the same time. While this is a delicate time for me, any information of sort would be useful to help me and my party get by at this point, but I feel uneasy using a skill like Seduction after I max it out with Skill Point Conversion to force something out of Sue. I’m conflicted about what I should do under these current circumstances.

At any rate, I do need to give some attention to Erizora for her efforts today and I’m feeling quite hungry for some Human-Ogre cleavage tonight. Maybe some ‘stress-relief’ would be a good thing for me right now, after all.