Cicero Almost Spoiled the Whole Book

“If you want to find the kidnapped children, report to the Wyvern,” I said, moving the plate before Cicero could swipe the snack. “If you want to get drunk with folktales, go pay some minstrel in a tavern. We are an orphanage.”

One of the running kids bumped me, throwing cheese fingers everywhere. One finger fell down, landing on a girl’s book. Furious, the girl threw the book. It hit the blind-folded Vesile, who was chasing a boy. Vesile activated her mini-tornado, blowing food everywhere, and the dining hall erupted in a food frenzy.

“Krasimir is heartless, but I have to agree with him, Cicero.” Arystan caught a flying meat fillet, and started munching. “At best, Vesile and I are just sellswords. We have our own shares of encountering authority. Unless you can provide us official documents from an established guild—”

Arystan glanced at me. I shrugged. “No, I haven’t. Sanela—well, the Fox—didn’t approve my application, remember?”

Cicero’s eyes lit up. “So you want to establish a guild. Why not just join me? Guilds are just semantics. You can still do detective work.”

I flung my mace to pull down a floating boy back to his seat. “Focus. Detective, sniffing around vodenjak? Are you the type that hunts their wives to marry?”

“It just happened to be the case! Vodenjak does not exist! It must be humans abusing myths to cover their misdeeds.” Cicero steadied the same girl who threw the book. She had picked the book and mourned the cheese splattered last page. “Oh, I know this epic! Hilferding wrote this. In the end, against the blood-red sunset, Ilya the Hero—”

“Go back home.” I grinned as the girl swatted Cicero’s face with her book for almost spoiling her. “You’d get along better with the Lynx, if you despise the kingdom’s official guild.”

“But I want your brain!”

Arystan picked his head from his plate. “Excuse me? We’re eating.”

Cicero unfurled a scroll on the table. It was a map of the kingdom—a southern land full of peninsulas and islands near the Doreiachic Sea. Several spots on the map were marked with question marks.

“The Secrets of Sukiclavenoi,” Cicero announced grandly, catching my gaze. “All the marks signify mysteries over the ten years after The Unification War!”

I hated my ears because they reddened to the mention of the war. Not wanting Cicero picked up, I pretended to be interested, poking my index finger on the marks one by one.

“The Marriage of Evil on Tankoluvara Basin,” Cicero announced on every random mark I had pointed, “The Shadow Troupe on Jadoredoreanska Highway, The Draconic Ley Line, The Nocnitsa on Urecica Primeval Forest, and The Lost Library of Toskantinopolis. You have a good eye on mystery, Saviour! Those are the most enigmatic secrets in the Land of Sukiclavenoi!”

“Stop calling me Saviour, or I’ll tell Vesile to fly you out,” I warned. “I can see that you are keen on legends, but they don’t matter to me.”

Cicero pursed his lips. “You need a sigil of recommendation, right?”

My eyes squinted.

“Each of the mysteries brings headache to the kingdom. Solve one, and I know you’ll earn a sigil.” Cicero grinned. He knew I could not pass the opportunity. “Help me through the cases… Partner.”

I drank extra slowly, then said, “Rejected.”

Cicero stomped his feet. “But, why!? The mysteries have them all: enigma, ties to institutions, even hints to Q-level skill users!”

There it was again. It was impossible for Cicero to know about my own reservation against the war, so he had meant another event: the rise of Q-level users. He probably suspected that the illustrious users were manufactured.

“I don’t understand.” I traced my cup’s rim. “What is it for you if we join you?”

“Uh, count us out,” Arystan chimed in. “Management and paperwork are your businesses.”

Cicero went embarrassed. “Well, there’s the lucrative payment…”

I snorted. “You’re going to say for the safety and all the noble values of this kingdom next.”

“Alright, I picked you because no one would want me, alright!?” Cicero ruffled his own hair, making the cheese stuck. “I liked mysteries and I wanted to help my people, but nobody finds detective work profitable!”

“Shocking.”

“I know, right?” Cicero shut his eyes. “My skill is boring, and even without the guilds, people naturally flock to those with flashy and tremendous power! They ignored commoners that have to spin their own mills, not relying on brain-powered wind! No offense, Miss Vesile.”

“None taken.” Vesile joined us eating. From her gaze, I knew that she was making a headcount on the children. “I think it is admirable, utilizing whatever we have to help the people, despite our limits. You should learn from him, Krasimir.”

“You don’t need to tell me, Mum,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You might have skipped the fact that both detective and guild work need obscene resources. For you, Cicero, sleuthing without proper channels is stalking.”

Cicero laughed mirthlessly. “You can say that again.”

“I will help you, however.” I started cleaning up the plates. “Just for one case that I pick.”

Cicero sighed. “Thank you. I don’t mind washing—wait, what!?”

My gaze lingered at one question mark on the map, close to southwest of Netsuretsuva River. Cicero had written it with ‘missing river’ along with jotted recent time marks. I brushed my finger at that question mark.

“You were loitering around the river to investigate every disappearance, right?” I guessed, peering at several notes across the neighboring cities that listed the missing children. “Arystan and Vesile chased off wolves because of their rampage against the local farms. If we look at the map, the wolves’ den should be in this forest…”

Cicero followed my gaze. Next to the forest was the ‘missing river’ mark. He clapped his own forehead. “I see! The wolves were looking for the closest water source since theirs was dried up. It mimicked the children’s disappearance!”

“Yes…” And that was when I saw the pattern. Every instance of a river drying up had occurred across on the opposite side of where a child had gone missing. “You were saying the children may be kidnapped?”

The most recent case was just uptown of Moshitar City, on the northern site of the bridge. That river branch was where Arystan and Vesile hunted the wolves. The next case should be southern…

“Weird,” Vesile mumbled, turning to the girl with the spoiled book. “I haven’t seen your sister. I was playing with her just now.”

“Jelena went to the river just now,” the girl said, raising a silver butterfly trinket. She pointed at the window. “You blew away her filigree, Miss Vesile. Look, there she found her filigree. A man was helping her, too, it looks like.”

I shuddered. A creature clad in a cloak towered before Jelena. Hands reached out for the girl.

***

I couldn’t blame Arystan for smashing the window with his sword.

“Skill…” Arystan’s sword glowed hot.

“You’ll kill everybody inside, dolt!” Reflexively, I pushed down his blazing blade. Ouch. I withdrew my hand and grabbed the window, full of broken shards. Double ouch. “Wait Vesile’s mark. From outside.”

Ignoring the cuts on my fingers, I hauled myself out from the window. Jelena’s small stature saved her from being captured right away; the vodenjak missed hugging her. Jelena yelped, and the vodenjak stunned. That was just how destructive little kids shrieking can be.

Tearheart—my mace—landed on the vodenjak without a satisfying crunch. I had heard crunching sounds so much in my lifetime that the crunch-less sound was almost relieving. Usually, after the crunch, the silence of death followed. This time, the vodenjak stood—no, stomped his feet on the ground. The erratic movement prevented me from tying his figure with my chain.

“Outside!” I heard Arystan bellowing behind me. “Skill!”

Uh-oh. The battle-hardened idiot just wanted to let his steam off.

By steam, I meant literal steam. Arystan’s skill is Thermal Pressure, in which he could use his own heat to an extreme point and control it. Arystan only knew this instinctively, but the sword did more than just roasting his opponents. In windy days, he could control the air pressure to—

“He cut the space!” Cicero had joined us, jumping with excitement seeing Arystan had slashed the air, the ground, and a chunk of Netsuretsuva River with one swing. “Whoever named him Arystan is a genius! This Arystan can rival the Arystan from the Unification War!”

“Because historical lessons are what we need now!”

I left the embarrassed Cicero and dove towards Jelena. Arystan swung the second air cannon by the time I pressed Jelena’s head on the ground. I saw her butterfly trinket nearby and pocketed it, turning to see how many slices the vodenjak had turned into.

The answer was zero.

The vodenjak withstood Arystan’s blow. Twice. He had raised his leg and the inhuman slash was rendered into two, leaving crescent-shaped wounds on the riverside across. That was new to Arystan, so he was too stunned to speak.

“It… hurt!” The vodenjak growled.

He stomped once more, and Netsuretsuva River trembled. Twin river updrafts shot from the river unto us, like serpents made of waterfall. I pulled Jelena to my embrace and rolled as one of the serpents crashed upon us. The water pressure did not hurt as much as the shock from the sudden cold. My senses went numb. I focused to keep my grip on Jelena’s tight.

Then the pain arrived.

The vodenjak had closed in on Jelena and me. He kicked my jaw, numbing my brain even further, and pulled Jelena from my embrace. The second kick hit my stomach squarely, hurling my dinner.

Who knows vomit can save the day? Because that was what happened next.

The projectile from my stomach landed on his face, shocking him. Vesile flew close, using the air current to pummel the vodenjak with her mini-tornado. The vodenjak staggered, and his grip on Jelena loosened. Lying on the ground, I saw Arystan had finished executing the water-made serpent; steams danced beneath his feet.

“This one’s strong,” Arystan commented. “Lend me a hand, Vessy.”

“Don’t call me that!”

But Vesile complied. Arystan activated his skill, heating the air, and propelling a gust upward. Vesile used her own skill to amplify the wind, spiralling them into a gigantic spear made of gust.

“I am so glad I am not a vodenjak…” Cicero murmured, awestruck.

“Not yet,” Vesile said. “With this scale, it will hit Jelena, too.”

“For your information, I am not dead yet,” I mumbled, still dizzy from the hit. “Consider not to hit me too, thanks.”

Even in the dark, I knew Vesile was smiling. She twisted the wind spear into a concentrated thin string of gust. Then she launched it to the vodenjak. It pierced him with an enjoyable crushing sound (finally), but his other hand remained steadfast on Jelena. The vodenjak knelt.

Arystan ran towards them, sword at the ready. Then it happened.

Behind them, Netsuretsuva River was suddenly enveloped in green mist. It was not the regular river mist, I suspected, since not even a mountain’s mist was that thick. I smelled power inside. That, and a huge river ship emerged from behind the mist.

The vodenjak sounded panicking. “Wait! I have secured a girl!”

Odd sounds then echoed across the river. Then, a chunk of Netsuretsuva River suddenly disappeared. Not really dried up—a gaping black square had replaced the river’s greenish surface. Then the sound erupted once more, and the shore next to ours disappeared.

Vesile had sensed the oddity, too. She pulled another tornado of water and wind, but the water suddenly disappeared. Poor Arystan was soaked by the falling water after just getting out of the mist. The vodenjak used the catastrophe to jump into the ship.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

I gave up tying the vodenjak with my chain, so instead it encircled Jelena. I pulled her, allowing Jelena to fall on the confused Arystan as a human-cushion. The vodenjak desperately tried to pull her back in the air, but instead, he spun the chain in the wrong direction and tugged me instead.

I floated weightlessly through the mist and headbutted the vodenjak mid-air. We fell aboard the ship. Vesile had pulled my mace along with Jelena, leaving me unarmed in a cryptid enemy vessel. She shrieked, “Krasimir—”

I could not hear the rest of her sentence, since a void had opened up below the ship. Then, just like the river, the ship vanished into the abyss of water and shadow, dragging along the vodenjak and me.