Inside the study.
Webster stood in front of Ron's bookshelf, scanning it up and down.
Suddenly, a few suspicious books caught his eye—books without any visible titles or markings on their spines.
He reached out, a serious expression on his face, and pulled one out.
On the cover was an elven woman, her posture enchanting and her expression seductive, wearing little more than threadbare silk.
Webster's expression froze.
He pulled out a few more of the untitled books—each one turned out to be a similar illustration booklet.
"Tch…" Webster's eye twitched slightly.
"What is it? Did you find something?" Vosbites, who was rummaging through a cabinet on the other side of the study, walked over curiously and glanced at the illustration book in Webster's hand.
Webster shook his head and raised his hand to put the books back. "Just some vulgar material."
But Vosbites' eyes were sharp. The moment he got a good look, he immediately recognized what they were. His expression shifted to one of righteous indignation as he snatched the booklets away and began flipping through them in detail.
"You're too careless! It's exactly this sort of lowbrow material that could be hiding secrets! Don't you even know such basic investigative principles?"
Webster glanced at Vosbites' upward-curling lips as he lowered his head to read and suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. He growled quietly,
"We're here to investigate. Could you act a little more professionally?"
"Ahem…" Vosbites cleared his throat, suddenly adopting a serious expression. He pulled out a Replica Book from his spatial tool and began copying the entire contents of the illustration booklets into it.
"I'll take these back and conduct a thorough investigation later. Not a single detail must be overlooked!"
Webster didn't bother replying and returned to flipping through the bookshelf.
Unfortunately, aside from those questionable illustration booklets, the rest of the shelf was fairly standard.
Beginner's Guide to Magic, Battle Aura Overview, The Rise and Fall of the Goblin Trade Union, Elven Reproduction, A History of Human Currency, Gold Reserves: From Inception to Popularity, Prophecies of the Gnomes, Records of the Beastkin Royal Court...
The books were a mixed collection, but all bore signs of having been read. A few even had Ron's personal notes scribbled in the margins.
This caused the two Legendary figures to regard the Seventh Prince a bit more highly.
Despite having little real power, he still kept up a diligent study routine—something rare and commendable.
Ironically, those risqué booklets seemed far less important now.
After all, one of these Legendary figures was clearly quite taken with them... Webster shot a sidelong glance at Vosbites, still silently judging him.
With nothing useful on the bookshelf, there were no secret letters, hidden messages, or coded commands from mysterious sources.
Not willing to give up, the two of them turned to Ron's desk.
The desktop was neat. Other than Nora's carefully recorded ledger and a few pens, there was nothing else of note.
Vosbites opened the drawers one by one. When he pulled open the third drawer, he immediately found a suspiciously folded white sheet of paper.
"Hey! Look what I found!" Vosbites raised an eyebrow and unfolded the sheet on the desk.
Webster leaned in, eyes narrowing.
Drawn in thick black ink were abstract shapes and flowing lines that seemed almost alive. The patterns formed mysterious symbols with an otherworldly aura.
"What is this supposed to be?" Webster frowned. He couldn't make sense of it at all.
The writing system on the Rixis Continent was similar to English—words formed from letters, structured into sentences.
But to him, this looked more like meaningless doodles.
"Could be some kind of magical sigil? Maybe it describes the flow of energy through the meridians?" Vosbites examined it intently, scrutinizing every inch.
"You sure? I'm pretty familiar with body meridians, and I don't see anything here that makes sense." Webster raised a skeptical brow.
Although warriors weren't known for scholarly pursuits like mages, Battle Aura had to flow through the meridians to synergize with muscle and bone—so Legendary Warriors like Webster were highly familiar with human anatomy.
But nothing in this paper resembled anything close to real meridian paths.
"Then maybe it's a code? Some kind of ciphered message that can only be deciphered in a specific way?" Vosbites guessed again, turning to look at Webster. "You work for André, right? Shouldn't you be familiar with this sort of thing? Doesn't the Empire use specialized scripts for confidential messages?"
The reminder made Webster frown and study the paper more closely—but after a long look, he still shook his head.
"There are three standard ciphers used within the Empire's inner circles. This matches none of them."
"How strange. So… did he just draw this for fun?" Vosbites scratched his beard, still suspicious. He ended up copying the strange symbols into his Replica Book anyway, just to be safe.
Thus, the Replica Book gained four new lines—phrases that, if translated from Ron's original world's language, went something like:
Hoeing grain under the midday sun
Along the River During the Qingming Festival
Drawing the bow to shoot the great eagle
Herbal Compound — Grass Coral
The mishmash of phrases—part random, part poetic—couldn't even be called proper doggerel. If anything, it sounded like a jumbled tale of tragic love between eight random characters.
In short, it had absolutely nothing to do with any flower shop secrets.
Ron would never have guessed that the nonsense he scribbled down during a moment of boredom would be taken so seriously by two Legendary-level investigators.
If he had known, the water he just drank would've been sprayed all over the floor.
—
"No idea what they're doing in there…" Ron took a sip of water, resting for a moment on the couch.
After breakfast, Nora obediently cleaned up the table and went to wash the dishes in the kitchen.
Ron followed his usual routine—drinking a glass of water and checking the time before getting up and leaving the shop.
In the study, the two Legendary figures had kept their senses locked onto him the entire time and immediately noticed his movement.
"Ron just left the shop," Webster said as he folded the paper back up and returned it to the drawer. "Today's the weekend. He's probably headed to the Temple of the Goddess of Harvest for his weekly prayer—he's done the same thing every weekend so far."
"Then let's follow him," Vosbites said, putting away the Replica Book and raising Mirror Inversion again. He floated out the window with Webster, rising into the air.
With their strength, it was effortless to avoid detection from the people below.
They tailed Ron openly, without a trace of concern for being seen.
[System: "Two Legendary-tier individuals are currently following you from above. Please maintain proper posture."]
"…They're still following me?" Ron was speechless.
These two really weren't letting this go, huh?
Was it really that big a deal? It's just a flower shop!
Of course, what Ron didn't know was that, to these two Legendary figures, the situation now touched on diplomatic tensions between the Empire and the Chaos City Magic Academy.
And at that level, it was no surprise they were taking things this seriously.