As Lily went on to talk about the murders that were going on at Nachtville — for some reason, Farah and Schwarz were very interested in hearing about them — Claud got up and left the living room after making some random excuse. For the first time in a few days, he was truly alone, without anyone at his side.

This was his default state of being, but he had a feeling that this trip had made him more susceptible to bouts of loneliness forever. Was it a good change? Considering that he had envisioned his long life to be one of loneliness, it didn’t seem like a good development, but he had joined up with the others to begin with.

“A silver for your thoughts,” Schwarz said from behind him.

“You know that I have the tendency to reflect on every journey I take, right?” Claud replied, eying the bartender. “Also, I want apple juice.”

“Your home has at least five barrels of them, plus a bunch of drinks that I don’t know about,” he replied. “I don’t see why you feel entitled to my remaining barrels of apple juice.”

“Remaining barrels? What, you can’t get anymore?” Claud replied.

“Yeah, that’s about it. Most of the major cities are beginning to restrict trade of essential foodstuff,” Schwarz replied. “That unfortunately includes apple juice.”

“And the reason?”

“Preparing for war. The nobles under the three major dukedoms have received standing orders to prepare for war. They will arrange their own logistics, which includes food and equipment, and are expected to carry out their personal supply train,” Schwarz replied.

Claud looked at the bartender, who seemed a lot older than he last remembered. Clearly, Schwarz had overworked himself in the past few days, which could account for why the poor fellow looked so tired.

“It’s that bad?” Claud asked.

“Yes. The coronation of Ruler Istrel is around the corner,” Schwarz replied. “The first day of the new year, to be exact. The New Moon months are clearly destined to be one of great strife.”

“Or a herald of change,” Claud replied.

“Why not both?” the bartender asked, before shaking his head. “New Moon won't just be one of crops, it will also be one of blood. And when the harvest of blood ends, Grandis will see sweeping changes once more.”

“The whole of Grandis?” Claud narrowed his eyes. That didn’t make sense; this inter-dukedom war shouldn’t have much effect on the other sovereignties. However, from the way Schwarz put it, the next few months or years were going to result in sweeping changes throughout the entire continent. “Why?”

Schwarz stared at Claud evenly. “How much do you know about the three sovereignties? Specifically, things in common?”

The master thief thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head. “Not much. I know that the other sovereignties are also as huge as Umbra, with a great deal of subordinate territories under them. They’re all also under the direct command of Emperor Grandis, but he doesn’t exercise that authority much.”

“Good enough,” the bartender replied. “It’s not like I expected much from a hermit like you.”

“Hey!”

“What, am I wrong? I’ll let you bite me if I’m wrong!” The bartender chuckled. “Anyway, the key point behind Emperor Grandis’ rage is the fact that the rulers he appointed — Umbra, Nihila and Voidum — were…”

His voice trailed off, and one of Claud’s eyelids twitched. “Go ahead and leave me hanging. It’s fine, really. I can exercise my metaphorical arm muscles to deal with cliff hangers like those. Totally fine.”

“Shut up and stop being obstreperous.” Schwarz lowered his volume. “The three rulers are said to be childhood friends of the Emperor himself, friends who survived the Third Godsfall with him.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Friends?”

“Real friends. Not the fake-ass ones we hear about in Triple-D the whole time. I’m talking about life-and-death friends; the kinds that would take an arrow to save their buddy,” Schwarz replied, his voice still very quiet. “That’s why Emperor Grandis was so angered at Umbra’s death.”

“Then he should know that Ruler Umbra did not die because he was missing a Pure-life Gem or two,” Claud replied. “What is he playing at?”

“Sniffing out the true killer, probably.” Schwarz shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that bit, though. The Profiteers aren’t yet able to hear the thoughts of the other rulers and Emperor Grandis himself yet.”

“Are you saying that your buddies can hear the inner thoughts of almost anyone else?” Claud rolled his eyes. “Well, whatever. Anyway, it’s good that you came out. I wanted to show you the spoils of, uh, war.”

“War. Right. You have the weirdest words for things at times, do you know that?” Schwarz looked around the garden, before plonking down on the lawn directly. “So, what did you get?”

Following suit a second later, Claud unslung his backpack and took out a smaller bag for it. The smaller bag was full of lifestones that varied from low to high-ranked ones, and after sparing a sad glance at those baubles, he handed the bag over to Schwarz.

“No pure-ranked ones?” the bartender asked.

“One or two,” Claud replied. “I stuffed them down my throat, though.”

“I mean, you are entitled to such a course of action. No need to be this defensive,” Schwarz replied. “Bummer, though.”

“What’s wrong?” Claud asked. “High-ranked lifestones in this quantity should be enough to fund our operations for the foreseeable future, right?”

“It’s not that.” The bartender sighed. “It’s about Farah. Her lifespan’s drawing to a close, but middle and low-rank lifestones no longer have an effect on her.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” Schwarz had a troubled look on his face. “She doesn’t want to tell us, but from the way she’s acting, I’m reasonably certain that Farah has at most a year or two.”

Claud narrowed his eyes. Lifestones were items that increased one’s lifespan by a fixed amount when ingested, with the exception being Pure-Life Gems, which were capable of growing. In an ideal world, a pure-ranked lifestone would yield one month’s worth of lifeforce. However, impure lifestones yielded lower amounts of life. Furthermore, the yielded life, by virtue of being impure, would be less accepted by the consumer, and future applications of similarly-impure lifeforce would be less effective.

Therefore, for low and middle-ranked lifestones to be ineffective on her, Countess Farah must have done the same thing Claud did — she probably consumed low and middle-ranked lifestones to the point of satiation. However, the fact that her life was coming to an end could only mean that she didn’t consume many, or even any, pure-ranked lifestones.

Furthermore, she didn’t have the support of Crown during the process of burning mana circuits. With all these factors in play, it was natural that the countess was nearing the end of her lifespan.

Claud thought about it for a moment, and then took out a Pure-life Gem. It was the one Crown had spat out two weeks ago, when they were busy raiding the Julan treasury.

“What’s that?” Schwarz asked.

“I picked it up when I was having fun inside the Julan treasury,” Claud lied. “It’s a Pure-life Gem. I’m not sure how old it is, or how much life it has inside, but giving it to Farah will definitely help her out greatly. If she eats it right before her time is up, that’ll be the most efficient use of it.”

“That’s worth a lot of gold,” Schwarz replied quietly.

“Would probably yield lots of lifeforce too, given enough time,” Claud added. “But what can I do?”

More importantly, Crown could apparently make lots of those Pure-Life Gems. Giving one to Farah wasn’t that big of a deal, considering that the little violet box had no requirements on the base product’s quality.

His pocket twitched at that point, prompting Claud to roll his eyes. The little fellow had been rather sedentary for the past two weeks; it had been napping away in his pocket and making ‘meep’ sounds when he was far enough from Lily.

“Are you sure?” Schwarz asked.

“Yes, I am. You know what? Follow me. I’m going to give this to her personally, and then have her owe me some favours or whatnot,” Claud replied. Puffing himself up, he returned to Moon Mansion, where Lily and Farah were talking things over tea, before striding right up to the countess.

“Need something?” Farah asked, blinking twice.

“Yeah,” Claud replied, just as Schwarz caught up with him. “Here, catch.”

Tossing the small gem over to Farah, Claud cricked his neck. “Heard that you don’t have much time left. I found a Pure-Life Gem when travelling with Lily, and decided to give it to you.”

“To me?” Farah repeated, before rubbing her eyes. “A Pure-Life Gem? What are you playing at?”

“You’re a valued member of our team,” Claud replied. “And a lot of people will be sad if you pass away. Therefore, I’m giving this to you. Keep it until the last moment, and then ingest it for maximum efficiency…efficiency…”

“What’s wrong, Claud?”

The master thief didn’t know who asked that, but there was a very good reason for his sudden stutter. A sudden thought had struck him when he was handing Farah his gift, a thought he couldn’t quite dispel.

Is it possible that…Ruler Umbra had been nurturing a Pure-life Gem for a very long time, only to have it stolen at the last moment? Or rather…replaced with the one I later stole?

Taking a deep breath, he took his leave once more and returned to his room.