Several young men were sitting flat on the ground, one of them was clearly beaten up, his face swollen. A middle-aged man was sitting on a chair at the center of the room, he was wearing a leather jacket made of some unknown creature's hide as well as various small tokens on his body. A long scar ran across his face, but it didn't make him appear ferocious.
The middle-aged man sat there smiling, juggling a pebble with one hand while staring down at the young men.
This was the scene Noah saw as he entered the hideout of the pickpockets. He took a short glance at the disguised middle-aged man and spoke: "If I'm not wrong, this would be our first meeting, Mr. Chris Modo. How unexpected to see you in Reystromia"
"You know of me?" the middle-aged man found that a bit unexpected, as he carefully observed the young man in front of him, he was naturally able to see Noah's true age, which shocked him even more.
"You can call me Noah" he pulled a chair over and sat across the middle-aged man, speaking with a somber attitude: "I should probably spend some time telling my subordinates about your old stories. Sakri's writing was quite decent, I particularly enjoyed the snow mountain escort story"
"I still remember it fondly" the middle-aged man grinned as he spoke, his expression shifted slightly.
Chris Modo, the continent-wide famous adventurer, the miraculous immortal man. The tales of his legendary adventures were compiled and written into a book by his friend Sakri, for most young men of the world, he was their life-long idol.
Killing the wyvern that threatened a village; destroying an organization that used human corpses to research evil rituals; helping settle the internal strife of Lika Kingdom; and many many more, these tales over the years have forged the legendary reputation of Chris Modo.
The tokens he carried on himself were the memento of his adventures, like the fang of the terrifying wyvern; like that medallion given to him by the Chairman of the Mystical Research Society; like the ring representing his eternal friendship with the Lika Kingdom that allowed him to conscript a squadron of the Lika Kingdom's army when necessary.
The snow mountain escort that Noah mentioned was also one of Chris' legendary tales. At the time, he escorted the eldest son of a Count back to his country to inherit his peerage, going through a series of dangerous events on the way. Despite Chris taking a wound on his face during that time, he still managed to escort that eldest son of a Count to his destination safely. The scar on his face right now was the 'token' he kept from that adventure.
"Now then, for what occasion did Mr. Chris come to Reya?" Noah asked with interest, he was truly interested to know in what way that sinner's wife, Isabella, was special.
"I accepted a request to find a certain woman, according to the clues I have, she came here over 10 years ago and has never left ever since" Chris amiably told him.
"Then excuse my rudeness, but would you care to describe that woman a bit more clearly?" Noah appeared even more interested.
"How unfortunate, Mr. Noah, I can only reveal the most basic info. That woman's name is Isabella, she should be 29 years old this year, a believer of the Church of Divine Grace" while speaking, Chris observed the expressions on Noah's group's faces, then grinned.
"You know where she is, don't you?" Chris spoke with a slightly more serious tone: "Tell me where she is, I can pay you"
Noah's expression was perfectly maintained, but his other peers were unable to conceal their emotions in front of an experienced veteran.
"Isabella came into Reya over 10 years ago. At the time, the great Negary had yet to descend upon us, the village only had so many people. You can easily ask any of the older villagers to know about her"
"So why did you purposefully call us out here?" Noah asked doubtfully. As a veteran adventurer, he didn't believe for a single second that Lars would be able to pick his pocket.
So it was obvious. Chris purposefully revealed that he had money to attract the pickpocket's attention, then followed him back to this hideout, he clearly needed the pickpockets' help for something other than simply looking for a person.
"I really can't underestimate you" Chris threw the pebble in his hand away and spoke with a solemn tone: "Of course, I was able to find out where Isabella was, and I know that she has a daughter called Nala"
"But it isn't easy to bring her anywhere. People are monitoring me constantly, so randomly going to meet her would only expose my goal" Chris squinted his eyes, clearly displaying the scar on his face: "So I want you to help me arrange a secret meeting with her, she's needed somewhere else"
"Can you trust us so easily?" Noah shook his head.
"Call it the basic sense of trust between people" Chris pulled a small pouch full of money out from his chest, placed it down and walked out: "This is a deposit. Please hurry and arrange a good time for me, careful not to tell the entire town about it"
Looking at Chris' back as he left, Noah said nothing. Instead, he was considering Chris' words, there were both truth and lies within what he said, so it was best to not believe everything, but he couldn't brush it all off as lies either.
As for his goal, that part was pure bullshit. Why would a legendary adventurer need the help of some local thugs to secretly meet with a woman? The thing he called 'trust' was also nothing but baseless lies.
"Arrange it, treat it like normal business" Noah ordered.
At the same time, Wang Yuan was silently hovering in front of Isabella, naturally, she couldn't see Wang Yuan.
Considering the situation between the two countries, he could faintly understand the reason why that 'legendary adventurer' came to find Isabella.
Isabella came from the Interkam Kingdom's Tagula family, as a branch of the royal family, they also carried the 'Dragon's bloodline'. During the kingdom's internal strife several years ago, the current Interkam King, Seth the First, had most of the relatives who could threaten him killed, among which included the royal branch Tagula family.
As the eldest daughter of the Tagula family, Isabella ran away to what was at the time, still a small Cauchy village to take refuge and met the love of her life, Jacob.
Currently, due to the internal strife from several years ago as well as other reasons, the Interkam Kingdom was becoming weaker day by day. As the war with the Royas Kingdom slowly became inevitable, there were fewer and fewer people who supported Seth the First, but because of how actively Seth the First killed his competitors back then, there weren't too many people left qualified to take the throne.
If one really stretched it, as the eldest daughter of the Tagula family, Isabella certainly did have the qualifications to become the Interkam Kingdom's Empress.
But there were still a lot of puzzling factors here, Isabella certainly had the qualifications, but she wasn't the only one. No matter how cruel Seth was, he couldn't have completely wiped out the royal family bloodline, that would only push himself into a corner.
"It isn't strange for someone to look for Isabella at this point in time, but it certainly is strange that Chris was the one who came" because of how far down the line of succession Isabella was, the fact that Chris came here was abnormal.
"There must be information that I don't know about" Wang Yuan glanced at the little girl who just returned and began to formulate his plans, thinking of how to use this to his advantage.