67: Cracks and Scratches

At the outskirts of the Moore mansion, the chariot stopped and Vivian jumped off. She turned to Voros, who followed her patiently with his eyes, and the two seemed to understand what would happen.

"I'll pull an all-nighter looking through the documents that we got. For now, you head to the headquarters immediately and hide the horse and chariot behind the building."

"Mhm." Voros nodded before patting the chariot, "Work on?"

"Do as you wish." Vivian turned away while giving Voros the green light to do whatever he wanted with the chariot, "Just don't make it look outlandish."

"Right!" Voros nodded and had a wide grin before urging the horse to move.

As for Vivian, she was right outside the wall of the Moore mansion near one of those blind security spots she had designated. All she needed was to throw her grappling hook over the wall and climb over but as she did so, her eyes spotted what goes on inside the mansion grounds.

"Uh-oh!"

The mansion's garden was almost dotted with lights. Servants, footmen, guards, and even maids were running all over the garden.

"Lady Vivian!"

"Young Lady!"

"Miss, where are you?"

Vivian lowered her head behind the wall and took out her watch to see that she had been gone for almost two hours now and it was right at midnight.

Things will get troublesome if she gets caught outside the mansion. She had to find a way to get herself out of trouble. That way will involve a great deal of sneaking into the house of the richest man of the Empire with state-of-the-art security measures and details.

So…

"Just another Thursday night it seems."

Without wasting time, Vivian dropped into the garden and lowered her posture behind the hedges before starting to make a headcount of the servants.

"Hmmm… they are sweeping the area in pairs. They split up sometimes but converge again. I need a distraction."

The garden of the Moore mansion was large but not too large to the point where the staff would spread thin. So, Vivian kept crouching and running into the hidden hedges as she was still dressed in her Night Stroll outfit that was fashioned for stealth.

Still, the situation seemed tricky and if some of the elite guards like Roy and Rusty showed up, Vivian wouldn't be able to escape their superior senses as Aura users… speaking of which…

"Sir System, show me the new aura stuff."

« Opening Profile! »

Seeing the usual profile screen, Vivian found that the most important latest entries are the "Level" and that trait called "Combat Mode". The latter was the thing that gave her information about the enemies during combat but the system said it can do much more. Since Vivian wanted to avoid combat, she ignored it for now and tapped on the value of the Level, the "1-star Bronze ِAura". At that moment, a large screen was displayed.

[Upload Here!]

"Now would you look at that!"

There were a lot of details in just one screen and Vivian was thoroughly impressed by it. She had some understanding of what goes on with the Aura system but this screen set some new information for her.

As is the case with all system screens, whatever she taps on displays more information and she has to understand what is going on here before attempting to use any of these options.

First off, there was the Grade (Rarity) of each Aura Manual that had something to do with how many levels its users could rise to. For example, a common grade aura manual can only train Bronze level fighters while an uncommon grade can train up to the Silver rank. Vivian's Medjay Aura Manual is a rare manual that can train up to the Gold rank.

The next thing to take note of is the Mastery Points, which is something embedded more into the practitioner and as Vivian experienced, these are the points she allocated into her stats when she got to the first level of the Bronze rank. The stats are Attack, Control, Defense, Speed, and Stealth. While they are an unusual combination, they don't include other critical factors like the Stamina and the Perception. From what it seemed, the Stamina depends on the individual ability of the user since it has its own foundational training and methodology. As for Perception, it is actually embedded in each of the five states of the manual; for example, the more one grows their Stealth ability, the more one becomes able to perceive Stealth, the same goes for Speed as once one's speed grows, the perception of speed becomes way quicker as if one can see others go slower and react to things with incredible timing.

The other thing about Mastery points is what these numbers meant. As Vivian inspected, 1 means the realm of average humans while 2 is twice as good, and 3 is thrice, so on and so forth. For example, if one's speed state is 2, one can run with the speed of two adults and if one's attack is 3, it means one can attack with the power of three adults. All of that is possible while not igniting the Aura.

Of course, other factors were at play such as weight class, gender limitations, and some biological and physical limitations of the human body but as far as the Aura manual is concerned, it can give its practitioners more power, speed, and control over their bodies.

Vivian closed the screen for now as there was nothing useful to make her pass without a trace and decided to make good use of her Speed and Stealth to travel through the garden undetected.

Nineteen years' worth of memories in this house helped Vivian to be the most agile fish in the bond. She walked in the cover of hedges, disappeared above certain trees, and found herself near the mansion from the southwest in no time. Still, a problem arose.

The closer she got to the mansion, the tighter the security got and the more servants and knights started to show up. This will put her in trouble not only if she gets caught, but also if she succeeds at sneaking into the mansion and trying to explain to her father where she was and what she was doing.

Vivian's thoughts accelerated and amidst the chaos of her mind, she spotted a certain servant not too far from her position. He was someone she was familiar with and found him a bit more isolated than the others as was searching near the flower beds nearby.

Vivian snuck through the garden and crawled until she was on the other side of the high stone flower bed which was large enough to hide her as she sat down. Vivian looked at the young man, who was undoubtedly Oliver West, her errand boy, and then threw something in the opposite direction for him to notice.

Raising his lantern to illuminate the source of the noise, Oliver cautiously proceeded forward. Lost in concentration, he inadvertently passed by Vivian without noticing her. Vivian silently followed Oliver, copying his every move, until he discovered the coat dress she had discarded moments before.

Oliver saw the dress and realized it was one of Vivian's unique dresses, he walked a step closer and got on one knee to inspect it but suddenly…

"UMMF! UMM! UFF!"

… a pair of hands held him from the back and muffled his mouth. As he tried to struggle free, he was taken down on the ground with his attacker on top of him and saw a blade emerge in front of his eyes.

"Shush! Not a single whisper." A feminine voice spoke to him.

It was then that he realized that there was a female right behind, sticking her body right on his back.

He could feel… quite a lot actually.

His heart froze for a few different and conflicted reasons but then, he saw a familiar face on the reflection of the well-polished blade.

"What's up, Ollie?"

That was undoubtedly Vivian's voice whispering to him.

"Ma… my lady?" Oliver replied quietly.

"Yes, yes. Get up, keep your head low."

Vivian dragged Oliver up from his clothes and walked him behind some of the hedges as she sat him down and sat in front of him.

"My lady! Things are crazy! Where have you been?" He asked.

"Shush! None of your business. Right now, I need to get inside and act as if nothing happened." She said.

"Ho… How? I think they searched every part of the mansion."

"That's none of your business. Tell me, has anyone been into that large room, the one with really tall windows? Have you seen any lights there?" She asked him.

"I'm… I'm not sure. Maybe they looked through it while I wasn't there."

"Hmmm… that will be quite the gamble. Father locks it at night so I don't think anyone has been there." Vivian thought a bit out loud and then turned to Oliver, "Hey, I want you to do something for me."

"What? Please, my Lady. Just let me take you home." Oliver tried to find a leeway out of whatever trouble Vivian was brewing.

"You'll do something for me. I wasn't asking, honey." Vivian said as she patted Oliver's face and inspected his height, "You're the same height as me. How old are you?"

"18."

"A year younger, huh? Not relevant anyway." Vivian said and took the dress she had just thrown to distract him, "Wear that!"

Oliver looked at the dress, looked at Vivian, and looked at the dress again.

"No, thank you." Oliver refused right away.

Vivian didn't reply and stared at him without any reaction. The look in her eyes conveyed not a single emotion and just kept staring at Oliver.

A second passed, another, a third… With each second, Oliver experienced just how unnerving the stare of the violet-eyed villainess can be.

A few moments later…

"Over there! It looks like the young lady!"

A footman shouted as he spotted a figure dressed in a colorful dress and had long fluttering black hair running into the garden.

"Lady Vivian! Wait!"

"Over there! Hurry!"

Vivian saw the group of people near the mansion all move in unison chasing after who they thought to be her. This left one side of the mansion completely unguarded for a brief short period. Vivian rushed towards the mansion and had her grappling hook ready. She tossed it toward the balcony and on the first floor and started climbing like mad until she slid in.

Right away, she approached the door of the balcony, picked the lock, and walked inside to the place she was aiming for.

The Study room.

Immediately, Vivian changed her outfit using the System options and got into her home outfit. At that time, the System notified her that the dress and the black scarf she lent to Oliver had been returned to her Storage Purse since they were bound to her.

Oliver must have kept running until he reached the farthest distance possible for the items left on him to disappear on their own. As it would be difficult to catch him in the dark, he would be alright since he could just pretend he was searching in that area and saw no one running through.

As Count Julian is a collector of things, his study was a place where many artifacts were lying around in displays. Like any Elgardishman of the time, he practiced the fine art of preserving artifacts from other cultures that came into contact with the Empire's vast armies east and west. Some Avalai war masks, southern stone tablets, Adnani tufang firearms, and draconian black jade blades.

Vivian can't say she's exactly proud of her father's practices but these were minor artifacts that he mostly acquired through purchase as the Moores weren't exactly keen on sending their troops to fight or loot.

Vivian wasn't planning to look around or anything but as she was about to descend from the first story of the study, she noticed something out of order. A circular window with a frame with its glass cracked and all lying in a far corner of the study. Usually, such a thing wouldn't pique her interest especially as she started to head down to the ground level but then something about those cracks looked familiar.

Vivian turned around and headed up immediately before going to that cracked circular window and examining it. Since the light of the moon was illuminating the study well, Vivian couldn't help but see those cracks glimmer but on a closer look, the familiarity hit right away and she took out the Mithril coin that was passed to her by her brother James.

"Son of a…"

The cracks on the circular, the scratches on the mithril coin… almost perfect match.

Vivian picked up the window from its heavy metal frame and tried to inspect where it would come from. Certainly not from any nearby frame she could remember but the style of the metal itself looked like most of the window frames that can be found around the house.

So, what is it? What does it do? What does any of this mithril have to do with House Moore?

On top of it, Agatha Moore told Vivian that the coin could grant her one wish if she found its source. Now that Vivian has four coins and one shattered coin, what can these coins do in a set?

Vivian retrieved the other coins she took from the overseer's safe and examined them under the moonlight. They shimmered quite splendidly as the light of the moon hit them and started to display some sort of an aura. It was a known characteristic of Mithirl how it reacts to certain lighting conditions but as Vivian checked, she found that the other coins were also scratched the same way as the one she had first.

The scratches were similar yet had minor differences from one another. It means that whatever purpose they serve, they can't be used as funds unless they were to get smelted as Ian was trying to get the Duergar to do it.

However, the acquisition and trade of Mithril are illegal without proper procedures according to the Mithril Act signed by the League of Nations. If someone was found with these unregistered Mithril coins, even if it is Prince Liam, the consequences would be severe. 

But in regards to Vivian, she had little interest in these laws. Currently, there is a mystery that she tried to avoid at first since her father and brother seemed to be against her involvement but when she looks deeper, she finds it vital to understand whoever is behind this if she wants to find out about Voros and potentially block the Prince's funds of Mithril coins.

As she was currently in the study, she descended from the first story and walked to the door of the study, ensuring that it was locked. She swiftly picked the lock again and rather than going back to her room, she returned inside the study, picked an interesting book, sat at a reading corner on a comfy armchair, made sure the candelabra beside her was lit, and laid her head back to doze off to sleep.

An hour later, she was found by a servant, and the whole situation wrapped up as someone must have forgotten to lock the door to the study and Vivian slept from exhaustion while reading.