I impaled the Banishing sword into the bomb and disabled its magic.
A rune in my pocket started to warm up. I activated it. Lux was on the line. She was telling me quite an unbelievable story. But given that the enemy had inner conflict to worry about. It kinda made sense.
"I see," I said. "Technically speaking he is not wrong. Killing you would be a logical option, but given the performance you manage to pull off, I think he wanted to offer an olive branch."
Lux said something on the phone.
"I understand how you feel about negotiating with a terrorist but, here is a thing, sometimes result beat method." I said. "Better than not negotiating with terrorist. It better to told them that negotiating with us is a bad idea. Moreover a contact inside the terrorist cell or vigilante organization which dealt with what is normally going on underground is invaluable."
"And here is a three question you would better ask?"
...
"What is your organization's aim?"
"Freedom of course," Marley said gesturing toward the sky. "We the liberator are group of like minded rebel cell throughout Phantasia who aimed to eliminate the corruption in the ruling class and the government. I am just a go-between in that structure. Well, given that I like that I like your first question, I am going to add in the fact that we are only cooperate due to necessity."
Marley nudged Bruno with affectionate kick.
"This lug and some of his leader for example was a narrow-mind idiot but since we need them we can't exactly eliminate them. I was sent by my boss as damage control to minimize our loss. No one other than these guys expect this train raid to succeed but we got to entertain them. Something your own boss could sympathize with."
"He is not my boss," Lux blushed slightly leaving Marley wide-eye at the sight. "Who is supplying you with the weapon?"
"Ha, ha, ha." Marley laughter was humorless as he gave the prone Bruno a suspecting glared. "Your side was not the only one who wanted an answer for that one. All I know is that those weapon was created by Isle of Knowledge but this operation's sponsor was a mystery. Even Bruno himself didn't know and they already tried to hide as much information from me as possible."
"Very well the last question, Do you detect any unusual disturbance in the village of Obsidian Dragon or, in other words, the frontier village."
Marley actually was caught by surprise his barely visible eyes widen ever so slightly.
"That is a surprise question," he said. "Why do you even bother asking?"
Lux tossed him the plate.
Then Marley heard a voice that gave him an incredibly bad feeling.
"Well this Taco Thursday's Medicine company. One of our major investor tip us off about potential resource that could be purchase in the frontier village. However, the official news source like the Phantasia daily wouldn't cover something so trivial and there are rumors about potential 'obstacle' that might interfere with our operation. That why we want to purchase the expertise for men of your caliber for unconventional information."
Marley threw a disbelief looked at Lux who replied with a shrug.
"Okay, you want an information I might heard about underground movement or the frontier village."
"I will neither confirm nor deny that."
"Who are you any?"
"All Troll, the number 1 troll and symbol of Hilarity.
Marley sighed in defeat. It was clear any information he received from this embodiment of frustration would be a blatant lies.
"I gave up, " he said. "Talking to you like a sane human is impossible
"It is not human it is All Troll and please answer the question?"
"Very well, Mr. Troll, " Marley said half-accepting the punishment the world is dealing on him.
...
The situation was resolved pretty quickly after that Marley left with Bruno and his unconscious gangs via a teleportation device.
I asked Scathach about it but she said that such a thing was a one time used consumable that only teleport to a specific places. What a shame we couldn't used it ourselves? Scathach also raised a point about getting out of this situation with minimum interference from local authority.
Her solution when the cops come knocking at the door? All-mighty acting and sleeping pill. Lux and the goddess got the drug shove down thier throat via I feign sever injury and posioning with a real stomach poison.
With massive lost on our side we managed to evade the authority and continued our one month journey toward Obsidian Dragon village. Seriously I am starting to think this took too long.
But despite the dragged on journey it was time we should focus on what was important...
Reflection.
"Now we will go over the entire situation."
"Note ready," Cy said juggling the pen. I had to admit that she was not really good at pen's juggling but she was trying really hard.
"Firstly, let talked about hiccups." I said. "My mission was to disable the bomb and defeated the guard. It succeed but, seriously, I need to reformat my strategy. Most of my weapon would cripple me the first minute I started using them. I also needed a way to read someone mind or their history, detected magic usage and a method to cut through a hardening defense."
Lux tried to think but shook her head.
"Guys I came up short. What did I do wrong in my battle?" Lux said with a familiar confuse smile. "Self-reflection was never my thing."
"Well, you did blow up the carriage." I suggested.
"How would I know he have explosion power?"
"Cy, noted down a skill detection technique"I said. Not knowing your enemy abilities were the highest cost one could pay in battle.
"Skill-detection-technique," Cy noted. "What about the punch technique she invented during the fist-fight with Bruno's guys?"
"Note that down too," I suddenly got a playful urge to tease Lux a little. "Although, I found it a logical, I never think Lux was the type of savage who would go around dragging innocent bystander into a punch up."
I gave Cy a sly grin. Cy's poker face really did improved by leap and bound because she managed to stifled her laughter leaving only a twitch in her eyes. She aptly joined into the teasing.
"Yes, maybe we should invented a combat leotard. It would really help distracted her opponent." Cy said noting down the design. "We should also added the chest support and fish net as well."
"What?" Lux blushed so hard I believed she could boil water. "A l-leotard. Are you kidding me? I would never where something like that it would be way too embarrassing."
But we were not the only one picking on Lux.
"Preferably, she should dyed her hair pink and wear a fake bunny ears," Scathach poured herself a tea stoically. "You wouldn't believed how many guys let their guard down after a wink from a bunny girl. It almost frustrating."
"Not you too!" The elves girl looked around the room for any allies but she couldn't found one. "I am seriously going to cry here, calling me some kind of a brute is too much!"
"Yes, but let recount the information Marley relay to us." I announced. "Cy do you had the map of this continent."
Soon we get the map and got down to business.
"From what Marley told us, the Liberator caught a news of the movement of good from the Emma Enterprise. These good included several high-grade securities and industrial tools. Several report also indicated a shipment of a black gem stone. I didn't know exactly what this black Gem Stone is but given the Emma was a good distributor and thus had to announce their business prospect to investor. I had Cy do a little bit of digging."
Lux raised her hand up and I let her asked the question.
"It was a black gem stone right? I still didn't know how Marley failed to identify it."
"Your guess is at good as mine. I suspect that Marley only recieved the general report. The report that would likely gone into the type and number of weapons and troops they had to deal with rather than the shipped ore. Good thing it is that was enough. Our alchemist was good enough to do the detective work. Your turn Cy."
Cytortia pulled up and image of Obsidian like rock with red vein running all over it.
"I used my identity as an S-Rank Alchemist and tried to find some clues from an influx of ore promotion in the Emma Enterprise's official site. There are load of black ores or gems that might fit the description. By correlating this with the report date given by Marley. I identify three possible ore. First, is the Oil Stone which was found in Volcano area. We can eliminate that one because it was from the Primordial Sea. Secondly, is Demonic Coal which was found mostly Demonic Continent. Given that their are likelihood that a vien of this ore might be found in Millian, it was still on our suspect list. But the likeliest one is the third."
She pointed to the picture shy put up on the board.
"This mineral was named Dragon Obsidian. It was normally found in the Curse Ruin Smu'ag which was right next to Millain. It was a rare mineral which aggregate near a corpse of a Dark-type Dragon. My teacher theorize that the Dragon's mana leaked from it corpse and crystallized into an ore. Given how close Millain is to Smu'ag and the sudden increase on Dragonic Obsidian's deal, we could guess that Emma Enterprise founded something that regularly produce this ore."
"Maybe they found a vein of it," Lux suggested. I was also thinking of something along the same line.
That thought was probrably why our goddess was an alchemist and I wasn't.
"Lux," Cy said utterly serious. "There are no vien of this thing founded on Phantasia. I worked with this ore once and it contained several mineral and constituent bio-organic phases that only founded on dragons. You can't dig this thing up. You had to get it from a corpse of a dead dragon."
"Hey isn't the village we are going also call the village of Obsidian Dragon?" I pointed that out.
Cy nodded.
"That right. I guess Emma arrived at the same conclusion I had. Somewhere in the Frontier Village there must be a massive corpses of Dragon buried underground."