Standing in the warm hall, Ronald lifted his left foot to scratch his right ankle.
He was sowhat bored—
No matter how Ronald had guessed earlier, he never expected that people at the investigation bureau could be so laid back!
In the midst of a manpower shortage, his first job as a temp...
was to be the receptionist at the front desk...
Without any ambiguous aning, it was the front desk work at the investigation bureau’s building.
The girl who had received Ronald on the first floor, seeing him as a kindly figure, gave him a half-hour education on the front desk must-knows that sa night, before she put on her coat and left to carry out her mission.
Incidentally, that girl’s na was Nicole Vida.
She was an investigator who had joined the Blenheim Investigation Bureau for one year and four months.
Although he did not know which school she belonged to before joining the investigation bureau, it was said that her current standards were definitely not ordinary, considered a core force of the Blenheim Investigation Bureau.
And this wasn’t Nicole boasting about herself.
It was Ms. Mapple from the bureau’s HR departnt, the sa lady who had previously dealt with Ronald, who ntioned this casually when introducing the job.
So he worked at the position for a day.
It was only then that Ronald understood why the incident at the railway station had no follow-up.
In fact, on the day of the incident at the station, a few seconds before Bradshaw’s Railway Guide went haywire, Blenheim City district was suddenly enveloped by an unknown and sacred magical power.
Ronald and Patricia did not notice because they were directly dragged into a temporal spiral by the rampage of Bradshaw’s Railway Guide.
The power was fleeting but absolutely strong.
All the people involved in the city’s mysterious side—every last one of them—even including so superhuman items with extraordinary elents,
they all felt the presence of that pure power.
Thus, as the power burst forth, major mysterious incidents were imdiately triggered at several locations in Blenheim.
Inevitably, the railway station’s incident was also included.
Many of Ronald’s previous speculations turned out to be a waste of effort.
It was only a sha that his brand-new coat, which had rely a torn cuff, had beco an undeserved victim, due to Ronald being overly cautious and disposing of it ahead of ti.
Of course, aside from this official explanation.
Ronald had so idea of what was happening in Blenheim.
Soone must have brought an original text into the city—
And they were planning sothing big!
It was one thing for ordinary superhuman items on the mysterious side to be activated, but Bradshaw’s Railway Guide, which had been dormant in the railway station’s archives for a long ti, could not possibly have been caused to go haywire by ordinary magic!
According to the common sense Ronald had acquired,
only a power of the sa level could achieve this.
This winter, Blenheim seed unlikely to be peaceful.
"Sigh—"
Standing at the front desk, Ronald couldn’t hold back a yawn.
Under the influence of magic items, the investigation bureau’s building was as warm as a bed heated by a cat, with a fairly good sleep-inducing effect.
—Being warm was one thing.
—But the absurdity was that there was an astonishingly small amount of work to be done.
With most of the bureau’s employees on intense field assignnts, the front desk work in the morning didn’t even add up to fifteen minutes.
This was even more relaxed than the job of a clock synchronizer at the railway station.
In this otherworld...
Was he destined to be a salary thief?
Idly scattering his thoughts, Ronald could actually understand the investigation bureau’s helplessness.
Such an inconsequential job like the front desk, typically, soone would make do.
But in a situation where the whole city was in turmoil and it was beyond the normal capacity of the investigation bureau,
the usual idle staff at the front desk had to step up to the plate.
Ordinary civilian units could find temporary workers to fill in when needed.
But the mysterious side, due to stringent requirents for information control, inevitably couldn’t just hire a few ordinary people to stand in.
At this ti, a mysterious side personnel like Ronald who was ’easy to control’
naturally beca the pri target for the Blenheim Investigation Bureau’s forced recruitnt.
As long as the pay was right, those from the mysterious side generally wouldn’t have too many complaints.
Finding a job was a very simple matter for them.
Dum dum dum—
Suddenly, Ronald heard the hurried sound of hard shoe soles tapping on the wooden planks.
Looking towards the staircase, a pair of long legs in boots descended from the second floor, moving as if rushing to be reborn—
—it was Ms. Mapple.
The head of the HR departnt saw Ronald and, without even approaching the reception, shouted from a distance:
"Hey, Ronald,"
"Your stuff has been approved, co over here!"
Without waiting for Ronald’s response, Mapple turned and headed towards the back of the first floor.
"..."
"Wait for !"
Standing at the reception, Ronald hesitated for a mont, then called out loudly and chased after her.
———
Following Ms. Mapple, Ronald went around to the back of the first floor, where the two of them squeezed into a storage room.
Then, in a corner of the storage room,
Mapple fiddled with sothing in the corner of the wall and suddenly the bricks that had been empty before rearranged themselves, revealing an oblique entrance to the underground chamber.
With a ’click’, Mapple yanked open the entrance to the cellar and clattered down the stairs.
Two breaths later, a voice ca from below:
"Ronald, hurry up and follow, will you?"
"..."
Ronald was sowhat speechless, but he still followed her down.
It was only when he got downstairs that he discovered the cellar was a world unto itself.
There were no oil lamps or electric lights for illumination, but rather a green glowing stone embedded in the center of the ceiling. The stone emitted a dim green light, adding an overflowing and eerie terror to the entire basent.
Even around the basent, thick tal plates encased the entire space. The room, aside from a central table, was filled with trunks locked with iron chains and sealed shelves.
A horror movie fild in such a place wouldn’t need a set to begin!
At this mont, in Ronald’s line of sight, Miss Mapple stood in front of a shelf, having just unlocked a drawer.
He saw clearly.
Mapple took out a photo album, and then, with practiced movents, she pulled out a photo the size of a book page.
Snap—
Closing the album, Ms. Mapple walked to the table, pulling a small wooden box out of her pocket and tossing it to Ronald:
"Co here, I’ll give you your faction’s initiation mark."
"Okay."
Catching the wooden box thrown by her, Ronald opened it with one hand.
Inside was a tal pendant engraved with complicated patterns, but in the center of these patterns was a line of English from Earth that one could recognize at a glance.
——[Volu Eleven, Page Two Hundred and Sixty, Item Six]
Ronald asked curiously:
"Is this the Blenheim Investigation Bureau’s faction mark?"
"That’s right."
Ms. Mapple nodded in acknowledgnt, then carefully laid out the photo she was holding, smooth and flat, on the table.
"Co here, I will impart to you the faction knowledge for new mbers of the Investigation Bureau."
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