Chapter 452: Obstruction
North Coast of Conquer Sea, Adria.
In the famous tourist attraction of Pure Flow Church in Adria, outside the doors of Crown Hall, Doro stood in a spot where the radiant light could not reach, seemingly admiring an antique dish with a missing corner displayed in a glass case, while her mind drifted elsewhere. Her gaze swept over the exhibition introduction, which bore information about the donors, affixed outside the glass case, yet her thoughts were far from it.
‘The exhibits inside Crown Hall… constantly illuminated by the Emmanuel Crown, if any extraordinary marks were to appear on them, they would be immediately exposed. If Azamu is determined to donate that divination tool to the Church and not to Garib, it would be best to place that divination tool in a place that Garib would not dare to enter easily, allowing the tool to cool down so that it could be thoroughly confiscated by the Church. There is no location more suitable for this requirement than Crown Hall…
‘But the current problem is that if the divination tool is placed in Crown Hall, not only would it be difficult for Garib’s people to access it, but it would also be hard for me to investigate. The illumination from the Emmanuel Crown within Crown Hall is much stronger than that outside the church. Whether it’s me or a zombie puppet going for a stroll inside, it will likely consume a considerable amount of “Shadow.”’
As she circled around a vase, contemplating this, Doro thought that although she had an approximate idea of the divination tool’s whereabouts, she did not intend to spend a lot of “Shadow” to scout inside. Gradually, she moved away from the doors of Crown Hall, wandering to other areas of Pure Flow Church. After exploring several circles within the church, she exited through an exit.
Using the Veil Ring, Doro quickly distanced herself from Pure Flow Church under the illumination of the Emmanuel Crown. After crossing an archbridge, she left the church square and returned to the city. She did not head straight back to the hotel but instead boarded a small boat at a small dock, having the boatman take her to explore other parts of Adria.
Following an experienced guide, Doro visited the old lord’s mansion, the armory, the water stage, and the Bridge of Sinners, finally spending quite some time at the largest library in Adria… After a solid half-day of tourist activities and some serious relaxation, the sun began to set.
At dusk, Doro chose a restaurant along the waterway for dinner. Many of the pasta dishes left a strong impression on her, especially the Adria macaroni and Iwig pie, which she quite liked.
Doro had been traveling for some time, visiting numerous countries and cities. Overall, the cuisine of each country and city satisfied her, which might be attributed to her low expectations of food after staying too long in Prit.
After finishing dinner, Doro took a brief nighttime boat tour of Adria, ultimately returning to her hotel amidst the twinkling lights along the river. Once back in her room, she removed her shoes and lay face down on the bed for a while. After a moment of internal conflict, she finally pushed herself off the bed, donned the slippers by her bedside, and went to the table by the suite’s window. After reflecting on her afternoon adventures, she let out a long breath.
“If this trip were purely for leisure, how wonderful it would be…”
Once she expressed her sentiments, Doro concluded her tourist time and began to focus on the main business that brought her to Adria, contemplating how to acquire the divination tool from Crown Hall.
‘The divination tool is most likely stored inside Crown Hall… If I want to get my hands on it, I must act before the three-year period for the divination tool is up, or else the Church will discover it and transfer it.
‘While the detection efficiency of the Emmanuel Crown in Crown Hall is quite high, according to my calculations, it’s not excessively so. If I act quickly within Crown Hall, my “Shadow” reserves will be more than sufficient… But the crucial problem is that I don’t know what the divination tool looks like. There are dozens of exhibits of various sizes in Crown Hall; I can’t take them all back. It will take quite some time for me to silently unlock a locked display case; I can’t afford to spend that much time on all these cases.’
Looking out at the church square from the window, Doro thought, overall, her reserves of “Shadow” could not support her lingering too long in Crown Hall. Without the ability to package all the Crown Hall exhibits, she could only implement precise theft, but the problem was that she still didn’t know what the divination tool looked like.
‘Actually, all the labels on the display cases inside Pure Flow Church bear the names of the donors… If I knew the alias used by Azamu when donating the divination tool, I could identify it among those display cases. However, the information I got from Beverly didn’t mention the alias used by Azamu.
‘More crucially, I don’t know Azamu’s alias, but Garib’s people do. If he choses to act and steal, he would be at a significant advantage…’
While pondering this, Doro pulled out her satchel, opened it, and took out a bundle of items, which turned out to be a large roll of newspapers.
Doro unfolded the newspapers and scanned the dates, which were mostly from the previous year—therefore, they were old newspapers.
She had acquired these old newspapers from the Adria City Library that afternoon, and she was quite interested in the outdated news they contained.
“On September 20, 1359, the Moran City Museum was robbed… On October 9, 1359… the Lonia City Museum was robbed, with the stolen artifacts all being donations… On November 26, 1359, the Kaidenna Museum was robbed, with several artifacts missing…”
As she read through the articles on those newspapers, anyone else might have envisioned a group of thieves specifically targeting museums to steal artifacts. But Doro knew these thieves were not ordinary; they were the Boneyard Society, Garib’s subordinates. Their frequent thefts from these museums were aimed not at ordinary items, but at Azamu’s divination tool.
To cover their tracks, Azamu donated artifacts to seven museums under different aliases, mixing the divination tool among them. To find the divination tool, Garib had already stolen from six museums apart from Pure Flow Church.
According to Beverly’s intelligence, the Boneyard Society had been gearing up at this time in previous years to plunder new ruins of the Star Number Repair Association, yet now they showed no signs of activity, indicating that Garib had not found what he wanted in those first six museums. Although Garib’s six failures seemed irrelevant to Doro’s current target, they actually revealed some important information to her.
‘Garib took suspicious items back before the divination tool’s cooldown was fully completed. There are two possibilities: either he possesses a means of identifying the divination tool without using the Radiance Lamp, or he is simply recovering all the artifacts donated by Azamu, intending to gather them all before the cooldown period ends and easily utilize the Radiance Lamp to locate the divination tool.’
