Chapter 85
Auditing On A Train
Chugga-chugga.
The Midnight Hunter’s personal train began its way barreling down the rails away from Crossroads and out into the future, again. Once again, I was stuck with a rather young attractive female as my traveling companion, though I hoped this one would not be nearly as crazy as the last. To be honest, I would accept someone half as crazy and call it a win. As honestly, I would assume that most anyone would go crazy after being trapped in a confined space with me for too long.
Silence.
Tap-tap.
My foot taps idly on the floor, while Mallory reads a book. Though the only problem is it is an interesting book, so I can understand why she is reading it, but it is so boring. At least at the pace she is reading it is boring.
Tap-tap.
Page flip.
When combining the components of such highly volatile components, it is always important to note the resonance frequency of the items you are adding.
Take for instance:
Seeing the image and diagram, I realized something. First the resonances being displayed are off, not so much to be completely wrong, but off enough to make it so the concoction being made would be a waste of components at best, and a volatile explosion at worst.
“That’s wrong.” I blurt out, then immediately cover my mouth, realizing I have given away a few things by stating that.
At that Mallory, who has apparently been slow playing this just smiles coyly and puts a bookmark in her book and looks up, before closing the book. Then she looks over to me and asks, “oh, so you have read Sir Humphrey’s book on Advanced Chemical Formulas?”
As she asks, she places her hands over the cover of the large book.
Now I don’t want to say that I’ve been shoulder reading her the entire time. Though I do think she knows something about my Angel’s Sight, which allows me to see everything around me within a three-kilometer radius right now, thanks to my improved Perception.
There is a painfully awkward silence, it is clear Mallory is both very social and used to using silence as a weapon in discussions. Seeing her like this, I figure it is best to know what I am working with, and how much lying to her would be worth ultimately.
“Let me ask you something, out of curiosity, how much of my daily activities are you aware of?” I ask, trying to be somewhat discrete, but at the same time I want to know exactly what I am working with.
“My sources speak very highly of you. I assume you have unlocked a bloodline of sorts. I was there the day you stopped religiously wearing your EGGs and let your beautiful green eyes show to the world. I do believe from that alone that your eyes are somehow directly linked to your bloodline, which in turn is reflected in your soul. Know that I got from my own observations. That said, know that my granddaughter has machinations of her own here, and will attempt to bind our two families together. That is part of why I am doing this. As you are aware, I told you that both your daughter and your son are attempting to join. Your daughter is working with my granddaughter to be both yours and my own granddaughter in game. Her goals are to be able to have both your bloodline and that of my own linked together in a fusion of sorts. Whether this works or not is not my concern. I just figured I’d let you know that at the very least she has been watching your progress and is very interested. So, she has seen both you, and thereby your family as an investment that she is willing to throw resources at. This means that you, and by extension your personal portfolio, have been sought after and scrutinized. To have someone like my granddaughter show such interest is a huge accomplishment on your part, and now that resources have been spent, it is within my and thereby my family’s best interests to both keep you alive, while also keeping you close to our interests.” Mallory began.
Hearing that, I paused.
There was a lot to unpack in that, but at the very least Mallory’s sudden interest in me made a lot of sense. I was a business transaction, a future resource of her granddaughter that would be used via my own daughter to not only set up her life here, but my grandchildren out there, in the real world that is always watching us. Hearing that, I relaxed slightly.
While I didn’t like the idea of people spying on me and knowing all my secrets, the fact that this knowledge was helping my family in a way, made it so this was so much more bearable.
“So, in a way this makes us familial grandmothers to be?” I ask.
At that Mallory nods. “That it does. Honestly, I have been waiting for the day that my granddaughter could join us, she has worked so tirelessly to build up our empire in the real world that she does deserve a reward of sorts. Her ability to come here and be part of two royal bloodlines is important.”
At that I pause, “wait, you are only a royal bloodline?” I ask, feeling a power from her that clearly radiates a much higher threat than my own.
Chuckle.
“Hahaha, no. I am a Legendary Bloodline if you must know. My son, however, only inherited the Royal ranking, meaning my daughter would be the next in line for our empire, should I fall. My granddaughter knowing of this, has decided that her way to gain further importance is by the mixing of two equally powerful bloodlines.”
At that I nod in understanding.
In a way I feel terrible that my daughter might be little more than a political pawn in all this scheming, used only for her potential lineage ability and then discarded, but she is a grown woman and should know what is best for her. At this point all I can hope is that she is confident in her choices and moves on from there.
Silence.
I apparently let the conversation drop as I am mentally going over everything that was just laid out on me.
Chuckle.
Mallory laughs in a cultured aristocratic way that demands attention, but in a subtle way. Hearing her, I can’t help but think of the voice of the mad Queen, the one who Rahul truly fell for, the one that was forever outside his realm. No, she wasn’t truly mad, that was just the title given to her by her opponents, one that she helped to foster. I don’t want to spoil the story for you, but suffice it to say, she was truly amazing and worth following. Hearing the way Mallory talks, I can’t help but think of the parallels between her and the Queen who had too much power for such a tiny strip of land.
“Sorry, I just realized I distracted you from your point you were making about the recipe in this book being off?” Mallory asked, patting the book in her lap gently to draw my eyes and attention back to the original topic.
“Right, so. I have read the book, at least up to the chapter you are on.” I admit, realizing that I can’t go too far, but I have already committed myself to this course of action. Also, truth be told I kind of like Mallory, I don’t know if she likes me, or if this is just a mutual transaction, she stays with me, helping me climb the tower, while I stay safe long enough for my child, or children to join me here and become true inheritors of my unique bloodline. A bloodline that my daughter has already sold access to, to help her and ultimately my grandchildren. Knowing all the stakes makes this a lot easier, I know that she does like me, and truly wants me for her guild, but at this point I am more of a future investment in ensuring that her family will be set up to be exceptionally powerful when they arrive.
“You have?” Mallory asks, a faint smile tugging at her lips, as if she knows a secret I don’t and is just waiting for me to step in it. Still, I cannot let her make something completely destructive.
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“I have, and I have to say the magical resonance frequencies that are being described in those books are off.”
“Oh, which ones?” Mallory asks in a way that makes it seem like she is playing along for curiosity’s sake. That or maybe something more.
Still, my ethics as a healer all but demand I make sure she knows that making such a potion would be costly at the very least and ultimately dangerous.
“All of them.”
At that Mallory raises her eyebrows, that faint trace of a smile never leaving her lips. “Do go on.” She says, still holding the book closed on her lap as she peers at me with keen interest.
Fortunately, I don’t need the book for reference. In this case, I can perfectly recall everything from that page, well from every page in the book, she read it so slowly that I could read each page four times and still had time to get bored.
“Okay, so the first item, Oricalcum Powder, is listed as having no magical resonance. This is false, it has a magical resonance, but it will take on the properties as an amplifier, if interacted with by properly charged materials. Meaning, if you want the Oricalcum Powder to work as described in the text, it will first need to be coated and charged separately in Silverite, of course at that point why not just use Silverite. Secondly, the resonance variances listed are off, while they can be forced, and some rarer or more powerful examples of materials can reach those frequencies given, that to me is a waste of valuable resources. Secondly, the book makes assumptions that all the new frequencies will be able to mesh together, thanks to the use of the stabilizing agent Obsidian Abstract, but that would only account for two off frequencies at most, not five as are clearly being displayed. Meaning that at most the potion will have a success rate of one in ten, at most.”
“That is if you made it?” Mallory asked.
“What, no. If I made it, I would substitute, for a simple potion like a flight potion, you could easily go one grade lower in quality, while finding items that actually meet the resonance needs of the potion.”
“You are only an Apprentice level member of the Apothecary guild; how can you know all this?” She asks, not quite challenging my knowledge, just curious about why I haven’t gone higher in the guild.
At that I just lean back in my seat and smile, “who can afford to take those tests, and for what someone to tell me that I know what I know.”
At that Mallory just nods to herself. Then she cocks her head slightly to the side as she asks yet another question. “Though I do have a question for you, how did you know that this was a Flight Potion?”
She asks in a gentle tone that I can feel that there is a slight catch, as in she is testing me, but I can’t quite figure out how. Still, I doubled down on the lie, as I find it would be rather rude to say I was effectively reading over he shoulder, well not just her, but everyone in the entire train car. There were a lot of books being read by everyone in the Midnight Hunter’s guild, but I didn’t need to let Mallory know that I knew this. Nor did I need to let her know that the Treasurer was clearly skimming off the top of the books.
Skill Gained: Auditing has reached level 1. Skill Auditing is a Perception, Intelligence, and Willpower based skill.
There we go, a new skill, which reminds me I have six others that I just gained that I need to grind, Enchanting, Advanced Enchanting, Master Enchanting, Blacksmithing, Gear Protection, and finally Gear Infusion. I don’t think Mallory will be up to me trying to change the resonance of the gears of this train, let alone while the train is running. Though I did manage to try it out a bit in both the Hospital wing and the Guild Master’s office.
In the Hospital wing I managed to make it so that my Simulacrum could channel a bit of mana into certain parts of the floor, which would activate Spirit Vision on the table, thus making it so my knowledge of how to cast spells was easier for my Simulacrum. It wasn’t a perfect fix, but it would be enough for her to bring people back to life, or possibly purify people of the Blight, if they showed up. At least that was the hope.
Still there was a lot going on, and I was somehow able to watch it all and take it all in.
“Well?” Mallory asked, drawing my attention back to her with a question.
I pause, trying to remember what she was talking about, right now my mind is seeing the discrepancies in her accounting books, and I almost wonder if this is a test of sorts.
“All right, I assume you are already aware, or at least suspect something about my sight?” I hedge.
All the while, I watch either the worst accountant in the world butcher their books, or watch a swindler try to cook the books in a circuitous manner, though having seen everything play out and develop from the beginning, I easily see this for what it is. They are double posting the same information twice, meaning the margin of income will be double. This is based on the fact that they have two sales of receipt that were mirrored, and a date changed at the bottom of the slips being the only thing noting two different sales, but the ink and alignment of the words clearly indicates that the second is an exact forgery of the first, something that is almost impossible in the day and age. While there is a printing press, these documents were forged by hand. Either the writer is impeccable, without need for a machine, or there is chicanery going on here. I should know, I did quite a few of these tasks myself, for the Thieves Guild, they are simple and an easy way to justify taking an item that was purchased back.
“Yes, though I am now curious about how advanced your sight truly is.” She states.
I hold up my hand in a calming gesture, trying to get her to slow down a bit. “Well, let’s just say it is pretty good.”
I pause, almost wondering if Mallory is in on this scheme, if she is, then my outing her might not be advised. Though, if not, this could go a long way towards possibly helping out my daughter and son when or if they come here, hopefully as more than just one time breeding materials that are then cast aside.
“Hypothetically,” I begin.
At this Mallory just raises an eyebrow. “Hypothetically now? Oh, this should be good.” She says as she sits back and lets a smile plaster on her face.
“Assume for a second I could read documents over a distance.” I begin.
“Okay,” she says nodding as if she already expected this fact.
“Now, before I go any further, know that this is not meant to be seen as coercion or extortion of any kind.” I say.
At this Mallory shifts in her seat, the look of calm on her face suddenly missing. “Oh?”
“Calm down, I am fully comfortable with our arrangement, and want nothing more. Thus, I offer this as a proposed olive branch. Which is why I will preface this with a few questions to make sure I should inform you of this.”
At this Mallory is very aware, her body is loose, but her focus is clearly on me. “Go on.”
Gulp.
At this, I realize just how powerful Mallory is her stare alone is enough to make me pause as I try to think about how to word this next part. “Are you planning on making your Guild go public?”
“No.” She says, with a slightly quizzical look.
At that I nod, good we are on the right track. “You do not have any creditors coming up that you wish to borrow huge amounts of money from?”
“No…” Mallory answers, her eyes going slightly wider as she can see where this line of questioning is going.
“So, hypothetically, it would be a good thing if I pointed out to you that your bookkeeper was cooking the books, double noting receipts, where one was clearly a forgery of the second with a slightly altered date at the bottom to justify the second line. Then there are rows upon rows of misnumbered prices, that are off by a percentage point, not enough to notice at once, but overall shows a totality of assets that are not truly there, but theoretically should be there?” I ask.
Whoom!
Mallory was gone.
Badump, badump, badump.
My heart is racing as I can barely begin to process the speed and quickness of Mallory, one second, she was before me, the next second she was charging through the train, right towards the bookkeeper that was cooking the books.
There is a moment where Mallory looks down at the book that the bookkeeper was working on, then she looks up and around. I wonder what the cause of that is, but then realize she is likely looking to see if I have some sort of surveillance equipment there. I of course do not, as I am my own surveillance equipment, but that is beside the point.
Mallory then goes to a bunch of people. One cuffs the bookkeeper in cuffs, another starts searching the room, apparently for surveillance equipment that might or might not exist. The then once the first one finishes cuffing the bookkeeper, the three of them, Mallory, the bookkeeper, and apparently the Warden? Come forward and come back to the cart I was in.
“This is clearly a ruse.”
Mallory just takes the huge ledger that the bookkeeper had been working on moments ago and thrusts it out to me.
“Show us, what you are talking about.” Mallory says her words are spoken as a command more than anything.
This is important, in BiPrism, we are as good as our word. So, if we accuse someone of doing a crime, we must be able to prove said crime was actually conducted.
Nodding, I take the book, and then first pull out the slips of papers that are in the back. “Here are the receipts. This one is the primary, while this one is the clear forgery.” I say, holding up the two documents.
Then I proceed to show what the prices of certain items are, and when they changed due to market fluctuations. Then I go through line by line showing how false prices were listed on the wrong days. This could be a simple accounting error, but over time, I show in quick mathematical shorthand how the numbers add up. A dollar here, fiver there, then the biggest of all was the double entry for the same products. In the end, I show a loss of just over a hundred thousand gold on this ledger alone.
By the end, I realize everyone is staring at me, the bookkeeper who had been protesting his innocence all this time is now quiet, as the mountain of evidence is fairly damning at this point. I almost wonder if this was some test set up by Mallory for me to out the true extent of my skills, but that is quickly dismissed by the random system message.
Hidden Quest Complete: Auditing the Bookkeeper: You discovered that a thief had made their way into the upper echelons of the prestigious Midnight Hunter’s guild and were able to ‘cook the books.’ You even managed to prove the loss of over a hundred thousand gold cronin. Uncover more books to see how far the corruption goes. Rewards: Experience, New Skill (already learned), new Badge.
Experience Gained: 500 / 500
New Feat Recorded: Catching a master thief (100). You singlehandedly caught a master thief who managed to steal hundreds of thousands of gold from a Guild.
I have to say, after the prestige of creating a Tier X spell, only getting a hundred for noticing, reporting, and then proving a master thief was at work was a little disappointing. Maybe it was the fact that with the person already in cuffs, there was no sense of intrigue, as the thief couldn’t try to make a mad dash away.
“Hahhahhaaa!” The chained bookkeeper started to cackle like a bond villain. “So you caught me. But you know you cannot do anything to me, I have connections.”
Crack!
There was an intense thud, as the warden who had been holding the restrained bookkeeper all this time knocked him out with a well placed knuckleduster to the back of the head.
“Well, I told you.” The Warden said this time speaking to Mallory.
At that Mallory nodded, “yeah fine. You were right. We can’t trust NPCs just because they come from prestigious houses and have good references. I get it.”
There was a pause, as the Warden turned to me. “What about her?”
“She’s fine. She is a regressor like us, and she is soon to be part of the family.”
“Oh?” He asks.
“Yeah, her daughter and my son will bring my granddaughter to the world.”
“So she?” He pauses, apparently trying to ask a question that likely shouldn’t be asked.
Mallory nods, “yes, she does meet my qualifications and more. Also, pass it along that she is to be treated as a guild officer.”
At that the Warden nods his head. “As you wish, now what should I do with him?”
Hearing that I almost squirm trying to see if he truly meant those words. Mallory for her part didn’t seem to notice the meaning behind his words, or just chose to ignore them.
“Lock him up in solitairy confinement. Also, get me the rest of his ledgers. You saw the quest notification, right?” She asked him.
“I did, about checking to see how far this rabbit hole goes.” He answered.
“Exactly.” Mallory says.
With that the Warden nods, “a pleasure meeting you, and welcome to the guild.” He says, before hoisting up the unconscious bookkeeper up with one arm and carrying him out of the car.
I was about to say that I wasn’t a member of the guild yet, but then decided to avoid that awkward conversation.
Once he was gone, Mallory took a second to compose herself. This was done by her making a few paces through the car, before she came back to her seat and apparently saw her book that was laying neatly on her seat. Seeing the book, a look of recognition crossed her eyes, as she swooped into the seat, placed the book on her lap like it was some sort of cover, and then stared intently at me.
“Now, what was this about you knowing this was a Flight Potion?”
And like that, I felt like I was suddenly submerged in a cage surrounded by sharks. “Well…”