Whispering Verse

Miss Carina was indeed as busy as Shade thought. Even if Agelina wanted to see her, she would have to wait at the door of the office for a full 30 minutes. But there was nothing that could be done, because the people talking to her aunt were her father, Larousse III, and the kingdom's Minister of Health and Social Security, Earl Huntlier.

The little princess held the silver cat and sat on the bench in the corridor, swaying her legs under her skirt, basking in the sunshine coming in from the window on the other side, enjoying the peaceful afternoon. Servants walked up and down, and attendants carried documents through the office buildings of the palace.

Everyone would say hello to Agelina, but Agelina Cavendish was not anxious about the wait, but hoped that the wait would be longer. On this unexpected Wednesday, she got what she thought was the best gift.

At about two o'clock in the afternoon, the door of the office was pushed open by a servant, and His Majesty the King walked out first. Seeing Agelina standing up from the bench in the corridor, he smiled kindly, and then walked towards the west side of the corridor with the count following behind him.

Agelina asked her maid to help smooth the wrinkles on her skirt before entering the office.

The Duke's servant was clearing the meeting minutes on the table. The red-haired Grand Duchess sat behind the desk, looking at the sunshine outside the window with a bored expression. Tifa held a stack of brown paper file bags and stuffed them on the wall behind her. in the bookshelf.

"Good afternoon, great aunt."

Agelina's voice made Miss Carina turn her head:

"Good afternoon, Agelina, haven't we finished talking about your trip to the Green Lake area?"

She said, and then saw the cat in the little princess's arms:

"oh?"

Frowning slightly, because of the skill of this transformation technique, even she couldn't see through what it was at the first time. This is why Shade dared to break into Yodel Palace directly in broad daylight.

"oh!"

If you see this kind of cat on the roadside, you can at most sigh at the beautiful color of its fur and then stop taking it seriously. But since Agelina brought her in, there must be something wrong. She looked carefully and saw some clues, and then judged some traces of transfiguration.

"Oh~"

Only then did I remember that this was clearly the shape of the cat Shade had transformed after he drank the "Cat in the Bottle" last time.

Then the duchess stood up from the chair, and the maids also looked at the cat being held by the princess. Seeing that the situation was not good and the door was closed, Shade immediately jumped out of Agelina's arms and returned to his human form:

"Carina, don't even think about it!"

"Really, Agelina can hug her, but I can't?"

The witch expressed her dissatisfaction in a small way, and then was hugged warmly by Shade.

The smile on her face grew brighter and the boredom she felt from meeting with men to discuss issues disappeared.

"You are very good at transfiguration. When did you learn it?"

"Last week at Fort Midhill."

Shade said:

"In addition, I have some cipher documents I got from Green Lake. You can see if they are useful."

"Sit down and talk. Tifa~ let someone bring tea and snacks. It's time for afternoon tea."

"Auntie, I'll leave first."

The little princess said wisely, and playfully waved goodbye to Shade.

"Agelina wants to go to Green Lake with you?"

Looking at the little princess's leaving figure, Shade asked curiously. The witch nodded:

"Yes, she made a decision after considering it for a long time. It's also good that girls of this age will go out more and mature quickly. You see, Yin Luna and Agelina are the same age, only older than her Half a year, but they look completely different."

Shade quite agrees with this statement:

"Did Agelina tell her father about her upcoming awakening?"

Shade asked again.

"Not yet. Lesia said that it's not too late to wait until she fully awakens. In this way, there is no need to worry about causing other troubles. Don't look at me like this, there may indeed be trouble. The royal family, especially, has many heirs. With the royal family, anything can happen."

She said with a smile, unfolding the three secret documents that Shade took out.

Shade had already relied on three books to decrypt the MI6 code, which was not complicated for him. The content of the secret text shows that MI6 tried to bribe Bad Eye Barry and use these gang members to find several people during the negotiations in the Green Lake area.

"This list of personnel is the gray glove agents lurking in the Green Lake area that our spies in Kasenlik learned about. Sometimes it is easier for gangsters to find people than it is for professional agents to find people."

Miss Carina said, putting the document aside:

"But why did that bad-eyed Barry leave such important documents everywhere? If it was taken away and deciphered by someone else instead of you, the Sixth Bureau would be in an embarrassing situation."

"He actually did it quite covertly, but he couldn't stop Meghan and me... Moreover, his mind wasn't on that."

Speaking of this, Shade thought of the scene where the two fell into the lake last night. The pierced heart felt a dull sting. Of course, this was just a phantom pain. His injuries had long been healed in the lake due to the blessing of the [God of the Drowned in the Deep Sea].

"Meghan? Did you call her by name? I'm really looking forward to seeing her in Green Lake next week."

The smile on the red-haired witch's face remained unchanged, and she looked at the cipher text in Gray Gloves again. Shade already knew how to decipher the Gray Gloves cipher text from Margaret, so he had already deciphered it.

The content is not very important. It probably means that Gray Gloves gave Bad-Eye Barry a large sum of money and hoped that he could use his men to regularly collect information about the Green Lake City Border Guard and report it to Gray Gloves' informants.

"But the cultist is dead, so this information is of little value."

Miss Carina said again, finally looking at the cipher text from an unknown source. There was a complicated pattern on it, and because he didn't know how to decipher it, Shade couldn't decipher it either.

The witch glanced twice, and her expression gradually became serious. So she said to Tifa:

"Go and ask Director Anlos of MI6 if he is in the Yodel Palace now. Whether he is there or not, let him come to see me now."

"Yes, miss."

Tifa hurried out, and the duchess explained to Shade:

"Last Thursday night, do you remember the night when your team made a big fuss? The Sixth Bureau found a Delari noble who met with the Kasonrik people, but they did not catch him."

"Yes, of course I remember. I met the director last Saturday night, and he revealed that the nobleman may be a prince from the royal family."

Shade has not forgotten the prince who broke into the Yodel Palace with a gun last year.

Miss Carina nodded:

"Although the Sixth Branch has not been able to find out who it is, it has at least found out that this matter has nothing to do with the Gray Gloves of the United Kingdom of Kasenlik. Based on the current investigation, they have initially identified the enemy this time. Da Ke Anlos’s judgment at the beginning was very accurate, and multiple forces united to disrupt the negotiations between the two countries, and even promote an all-out war between the two human kingdoms in the Old Continent.”

She motioned for Shade to get up and walked with her to the map on the wall of the study. This map covers the entire Old World, as well as the east coast of the New World, with landmarks, topography, and various other markings quite accurate:

"Look, Shade. It took my ancestors and Princess Margaret's ancestors hundreds of years to unify the southern realm and the northern realm respectively in the sixth era. Since then From then on, the Old Continent had the most basic order, but what followed was the all-out Civil War in the Old Continent."

Shade looked at the map, and he could imagine what kind of history Miss Carina described in just a few sentences.

"Now that the war between the North and the South has ceased, more than 70% of the territory of the Old World belongs to the two countries. In addition to the unviable large deserts, primeval rainforests and extreme northern glaciers, the remaining land has nearly a hundred small countries. . Some of them are affiliated with the two countries. If I can make Saladir County independent, a principality will be established in the future. The other part maintains relative independence, such as the Principality of Ragson where the headquarters of the Prophet Association is located."

Shade's eyes followed the witch's finger and moved around the map. The map uses short black lines to mark the national boundaries of each country. Compared with Delarion and Kasenrik, those small countries are indeed quite inconspicuous.

"The order of the entire Old Continent now revolves around the two countries of Kasenrik and Delarion, and the vigorous steam industrial revolution is also driven by our two countries. But does everyone recognize this order? No, Xia Germany, the careerists have long been waiting for an opportunity, waiting for the two kingdoms of the north and the south to go to war again to reshape the world order."

Her fingers pointed the way for Shade:

“There is a New World to the west of the Old World, and those who have seized the opportunity and wealth are trying to get more. What could be more attractive than establishing a country in a New World, far away from the old order?”

Even outsiders can imagine the wealth and power of the New World, and only the disputes and wars in the Old World can give them opportunities.

"In the southern part of the Rommel Mountains of the Old World, in the county of Kassenrik-Drinnauer, the former Kingdom of Delinauer was annexed by Kassenrik fifty years ago, but the Zionists are still ready to take back their homeland. And the opportunity for power. In the jungles, deserts, guerrillas are still lurking. Compared with them, the 'Francois Zionists' you have encountered are not worth mentioning at all. The Kingdom of Delinol at its peak, Known as the third largest kingdom of mankind.”

The witch's hand pointed to the bottom of the huge mountain range that stretched across the eastern part of the old continent, which was marked as "Drin'all County". This is also the second largest county-level administrative division in the eastern part of the United Kingdom of Kasenlik. Before the disappearance of the Delin'all Kingdom, this was only three-quarters of their land area.