The Elusive Sorcerer

Chapter 175

Following the woman in secret and relying on passing customers and auction staff as cover, Arsène Lupin entered a secluded room within the Ountakana building.

'What exactly is she planning?'

That was what he was thinking as he watched the woman glance left and right before continuing on her way, as though she were searching for something.

For a moment, Arsène Lupin's gaze wandered. With eyes different from those of ordinary humans, twenty percent of his perception allowed him to see and sense the presence of people in dark rooms like this one. Strangely enough, he could see nothing except the usual furnishings found in a reception room.

'It looks deserted, yet beautiful things like this still exist here?'

At first, he didn't believe it, but after realizing the woman had disappeared, he took the initiative to look for her.

However...

Arsène Lupin's steps came to a halt when a sharp knife stopped just inches from his neck.

He stepped back, but the blade followed wherever his neck moved.

The woman emerged from the darkness on the left side of the room, standing behind him and threatening him.

"...Who are you?" she asked coldly. "Are you from that organization?"

'That organization? This is the first time I've heard of it.'

Slowly but surely, Arsène Lupin tried to look at the woman's face, but stopped himself when fresh blood began dripping from his neck where the blade touched him.

"Talk! Or I'll kill you, okay?"

Arsène Lupin chuckled upon hearing those foolish words.

"...Do it," he said flatly, showing no sign of fear even though the sharp blade was poised to slit his throat.

Provoked, the woman growled and happily pushed the knife against his neck, pressing deeper and deeper.

Arsène Lupin's head was severed while his body remained standing, spraying blood everywhere for eight seconds before collapsing onto the dirty floor. Blood soaked his tailcoat and pooled around his body.

The severed head lay on the ground, its eyes still open, allowing the woman to stab both of them with a knife the size of an adult's palm until they closed.

The woman flicked the knife, sending droplets of blood onto the shelf and sofa to her right before growling.

She wiped her face with her sleeve, then turned around, considering reporting to her companion that her disguise had been exposed.

Two steps toward the corridor's light, the woman stopped when she heard a small sound from inside.

A click of the tongue.

The woman slowly turned around and steadily stepped back as her pupils widened.

The knife she had been about to tuck against her thigh slipped from her hand and struck the corridor floor with a metallic clang before silence swallowed the sound.

Stammering, she asked, "You... how are you still alive? Didn't I..."

"I slit your throat, right?" Arsène Lupin continued, his gaze sharp as though he no longer wished to play games.

Seeing the woman trembling, Arsène Lupin took a deep breath and suppressed a groan as he approached her.

"What are you doing? Back away or you'll die."

Arsène Lupin ignored the woman's desperate shout. Then he fell silent, standing two meters in front of her while trying to do something far ahead.

Through the entity positioned at the center of a corridor connected to four different hallways leading to various locations, the box jellyfish in the lower corridor granted Zavi vision, allowing Arsène Lupin to pull the box jellyfish toward him.

"What organization are you talking about? Where is it now? Who told you to disguise yourself? And furthermore..."

He could not continue.

The woman merely stared at him after hearing several questions thrown at her at once.

Fearing the person who had sent her, the woman kept her mouth tightly shut.

'Not willing to talk, huh?'

"Fine. If that's what you want, then so be it," Arsène Lupin said as he continued walking forward.

He pulled out his revolver and pressed the barrel against his own forehead.

Standing against the wall beside the kneeling woman, Zavi suppressed a snort as he began creating a clone that would play the role of James Moriarty.

The woman, shocked, found herself speechless as another man wearing a bowler hat and spectacles hanging from a chain appeared on her left.

She immediately stood up, stepped back, and carefully watched the movements of the two men before her.

'Why? What are they trying to do?'

Moments later, the revolver was transferred into the hands of the clone playing James Moriarty, who proceeded to shoot Arsène Lupin until the chamber was empty.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Only four shots, but enough to kill him, at least for the next few minutes.

The weapon was real, and the echoes traveled through the corridor. Guards who had previously been patrolling the lower hallways hurried toward the source of the gunfire.

The woman was stunned and slapped her cheeks as though she were hallucinating.

James Moriarty manifested his revolver through spiritual power, causing Zavi, who was controlling the clone, to groan inwardly and order James Moriarty to leave immediately.

Moments later, the silhouettes of several guards appeared. Zavi, who was still sitting in his seat, immediately moved his hand. He looked at the suitcase beneath his feet, its surface peeling apart rapidly with only a slight push of spirituality.

He glanced at Evelina, who was talking with the man in black sunglasses. For the moment, he chose to remain silent because he wanted to make the corpse appear real.

Five guards entered the left corridor and caught a woman apparently in the middle of something.

Murder.

"There's been a murder!" one of the auction building guards shouted.

The other guards from the right and upper corridors rushed toward the voice and saw the reinforcements entering the left corridor.

"Catch her."

Seeing the woman run toward an empty room, the guards immediately raised their pistols.

"Fire!" one of the guards shouted loudly.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Every bullet missed and vanished into the darkness of the abandoned room. The sound of shattering glass followed shortly afterward.

The five men who fired had no idea whether any of the bullets had hit their target.

"Hey, what were you even shooting at?"

"That woman is incredibly agile," one replied bluntly.

"You idiot!"

"Having self-awareness is important, bro."

"Huh? You want to fight?"

"You're adults, but you act like children."

"All of you," one guard said firmly. "Do you want the boss to fire you?"

The three immediately shook their heads, knowing how difficult it was to find work these days.

While the four guards argued among themselves, another guard entered the dark room expressionlessly and noticed a trail of blood leading forward toward a shattered window.

His eyes narrowed slightly as he realized the sound had come from a window standing two meters above the floor.

"Trying to escape, huh?"

The guard adjusted his military cap and walked toward the window, searching for footing.

As soon as his head emerged through the opening, he saw the woman crossing the grass, blood covering her arm, before disappearing into the dense trees surrounding the auction building.

"Leave her alone," he whispered, turning to his approaching companion.

"Did she get away?"

The man nodded and replied, "Yes, she escaped."

The broken window allowed rows of light from far ahead to spill into the room.

Afterward, he decided to leave the abandoned room and inspect the corpse.

Ten more guards who had previously been stationed throughout the corridors arrived.

At first, they had assumed there was only one intruder.

What they didn't realize was that another intruder had already taken advantage of the situation.

The man who had seen the wounded woman stumbling away while clutching her right arm was shocked to find twelve people surrounding the corpse.

His squad, or rather the two squads accompanying him, felt exactly the same.

"...What are all of you doing here? Why aren't you guarding the exits?" he asked, nearly raising his voice.

The ten men, five guards from the upper corridor and five from the right corridor, remained silent.

"Oh no, how could you forget?"

The guard responsible for the upper corridor turned and answered his colleague.

"You ordered us to investigate the gunshots."

His three companions nodded before each of them hurried back to the corridors they were assigned to guard.

Meanwhile, the guards from the lower corridor decided to summon an expert to investigate the death.

Originally, Zavi had intended to lure the woman away, but the intruders had already entered and encouraged other thieves to make their move.

As the corridor guards returned to their positions, none of them realized that the enemy had united and disguised themselves as customers of the Ountakana auction.

Zavi Actitus had made a fatal mistake without realizing it.

That mistake caused him, sitting in his seat, to feel a suffocating sensation spread through his body.

He had mastered the first-tier ability of Error and obtained his own identity, allowing him to unlock all of his Error techniques.

Inside the grand auction hall, Evelina Kalderan was busy conversing with Tiara Castilla's guard, who wanted to discover Zavi Actitus's identity and learn who he truly was.

The guard was particularly cunning. He tried to make Evelina feel comfortable through casual conversation while waiting for the right moment to accomplish his mission.

"Your boyfriend is quite unique, Miss," the guard said.

"I suppose he's bold enough to annoy your young lady," Evelina replied with a smile.

However, that wasn't the only reason she felt that way.

Earlier, she had sensed an unsettling feeling from the guard's gaze.

The guard chuckled after hearing the amusing response.

"I was hesitant to approach your boyfriend at first," the guard remarked calmly.

"Yeah," Evelina replied softly.

Several minutes passed, and Zavi finally regained complete control over his body and paused to think.

...

Outside, several hundred meters from the Ountakana auction house, four men stood at a stall owned by a merchant in the underground black market.

One of them appeared eager to enter the auction house, which was guarded by hundreds of security personnel.

"What about Nuken?" a brown-haired man asked in confusion.

Nunken, the fallen noble, shook his head briefly and replied, "Think logically, come on."

The other two frowned upon hearing that.

They stood at the stall, pretending to be customers.

A Guard, a Receiver, and a Hollow were hiding deep underground, though none of the three knew that except Nuken Monelli, the fallen noble.

"The initiator's mission isn't finished yet," he said quietly. "But is the diversion team safe from the armed guards?" Geron asked in a low voice.

For a moment, Aris, his bald head hidden beneath a bowler hat, glanced at the crowded street before him and fell silent for several seconds.

"...They're gone."

Without realizing it, Aris had spoken those words aloud.

The other three turned toward him.

"How do you know?" Fatir asked immediately.

Nuken, misunderstanding the situation, answered,

"I heard four gunshots earlier."

Afraid of James Moriarty's threat and having already found a way to enter and sell the gold and jewelry through the auction house.

"Those four people are completely useless, damn it!"

"Right?" Fatir glanced at the cursing Geron.

Nuken adjusted his glasses before walking away with steady steps.

"Where are you going?" Geron and Fatir asked simultaneously.

No answer came.

The three exchanged glances before hoisting the heavy sack onto their shoulders and following him.

A curse nearly escaped Nuken's lips as he remembered they had not been paid for their hard work, despite risking their lives to exchange gold and jewelry for money.

The merchant beside them watched the four men curiously.

He had absolutely no idea what they were planning in this black market.

...

Inside the grand hall where the auction was being held, the customers had now returned to their seats.

Each of them hoped to obtain the finest items available.

"What good item do you think will come next? Do you have any clue about the fifth item?"

"I don't know," replied the man in seat 56, sounding rather indifferent.

"Damn," cursed the man who had asked.

Other customers, especially the conglomerates and lower-to-middle-ranking nobles, voiced their own thoughts.

"It'll be a problem if that young noblewoman takes the item I want," one businessman said, unwilling to be outdone.

"Not to mention the others haven't even gotten serious yet. They probably have more money than my entire fortune." The thin-mustached man complained.

"Yeah, she's from the Caistilla family. What noble doesn't have a lot of money, huh?"

Another man, hearing that, replied sarcastically,

"A fallen noble? Surely not."

The man who had spoken earlier blinked.

"How did I only just remember that?"

He chuckled to himself.

Meanwhile, outside the hall, the auctioneers and guards were pacing back and forth after discovering that something had gone missing from the storage room just as the auction was about to resume.

Inside the storage room.

Seven armed storage guards had discovered a mysterious masked figure who had successfully breached the auction's tight security.

Although the corridor guards had been briefly distracted when Zavi followed a woman from the organization, the guards deeper within the auction building were entirely different from those three squads.

"Who are you?" asked a guard wearing glasses.

'Didn't she hear him? Or is she just pretending?'

The masked figure, who had merely glanced at them before, now turned around, looked directly at them, and raised both hands.

The man who had spoken and served as the leader of the six guards beside him was startled.

'A woman? How did she get in here?'

He glanced at his subordinates with a serious expression and ordered firmly,

"Make sure that woman doesn't escape!"

"Yes, sir," the six men murmured almost in unison.

Each of them raised their weapons and watched carefully to see what the woman would do next, despite her surrender-like gesture.

The woman silently observed them, her face showing no fear whatsoever of their long-barreled firearms.

'Damn it, how dare they make a woman like me into bait!'

The woman complained inwardly while waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

"Surrender!"

The woman's pupils widened as black-and-white smoke suddenly began filling the storage room.

"Hey, hey, hey, are you trying to kill me?"

Seeing an opening as the black-and-white smoke spread through the storage room, the woman recklessly charged through the seven armed guards ahead of her.

Tap...

The guard captain waved his hands and coughed as he tried to retreat from the worsening situation.

'That intruder isn't alone? Where are the others?'

He noticed his subordinates backing away as well, while the woman passed right by him through the smoke with a serious expression.

Instinctively, one of them pulled the trigger.

Bang!

"Agh..."

"What?"

That voice clearly had not come from the woman.

The guard who fired immediately searched for the source and found his injured companion.

It was obviously not a gunshot wound, but a slash from a sharp object across his shoulder.

While the man endured the pain, three of them gave chase to the woman.

Inside the auction hall, where the customers were waiting for the auction to resume.

"It's taking a long time, isn't it? This is strange," said a tired man.

"Is something wrong?"

"Why does the air feel so suffocating in here?" one customer asked bluntly.

Without warning, two guards slammed open the doors above them.

Bang!

Though breathing heavily, one of them immediately delivered the news.

"This is bad! There are intruders in the auction."

The customers were shocked, including several distinguished guests on both the lower and upper levels.

Hearing this, Zavi immediately stood up. His gaze swept across the nearby customers who had already decided to leave through the emergency exit at the lower right side of the hall.

'I knew there would be intruders. So, a Receiver, huh? No, more like a Hollow.'

After a moment of thought, he looked at Evelina and said firmly,

"You should get out of here."

Evelina frowned at Zavi's statement.

"What?" she asked firmly.

Zavi stared at her, completely unable to understand her reaction.

"Obviously, I'll be leaving with everyone else," she replied quietly.

Evelina felt foolish as she rose from her seat, descended the stairs, and said without looking back,

"Take good care of yourself. Otherwise, how are you going to protect me later?"

Slightly surprised by the statement, Zavi gave her a somewhat apathetic look.

"Since when have I been protecting her?" he muttered quietly.

Then he took his suitcase, immediately went out through the top door and...

'Steal those valuable items from them.'

Despite the risks, he always had a plan and knew how to take advantage of the circumstances around him.

Several minutes after walking through the deserted corridors, Zavi became alert when he sensed a sharp presence around the bend ahead.

Not knowing what it was, he continued forward.

From the corridor to his right came strange, cheerful murmurs, causing Zavi to quicken his pace.

The meeting between legendary thieves began when four people found themselves staring at a long-haired man wearing a bowler hat.

"Who are you?" one of them, a man, asked.

"That's what I should be asking..."

Zavi opened his suitcase and took out something he had no desire to use.

It was a Tier 4 artifact, the Hoisline Fan, from the category known as "The World."

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