Mattheus raised his hands hastily. "Hold on. Let me try to explain. To be honest, I was hoping we could put our brains together since what I know are facts is not much more than what you know."
"Take your time."
He breathed in deeply before exhaling, taking a moment to formulate a coherent explanation rather than the mess that spilled out from his lips the previous night.
"Right. First of all, I guess I should remind you that what I get from the previous owner is spotty. Most of the broken bits of memories come from a visual stimulus. A name sometimes brings up information that I suddenly seem to know but it's rare. People I never interact with but the original Mattheus Crown knew about, I get miscellaneous information from.
"Which brings us to your question of how he was a traitor. All the innocuous information I thought was just gossip or random trivia about other nobles? He has been supplying that group with all kinds of information. The Crowns never realized how bad it is to discuss certain things within his hearing and all three of the others hold rather important positions that give them access to a lot of information that can be dangerous in the wrong hands."
Mattheus paused and flexed his hands, forcing his fingers to uncurl from the fists they formed. He still felt pretty angry toward the Original for using his family that way. The Crowns seemed like good people.
"Calm down. He can no longer do that."
"Right. Yeah. Sorry. Unfortunately, he's done a lot of damage already. And I still don't know why. Not Mattheus Crown's reasons—I have an idea he was like this because he thought he deserved better even though committing treason is a bit extreme. I just have no idea what the group is aiming for. There's just an impression of secrets within secrets."
"Hm." Brunilda started pacing in random patterns on the table. "Secretive groups like that usually only have a few reasons to exist. Do you know how big it is?"
"No, but I know it's transcontinental. He was just part of the New Albion group." He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "The only good thing about the Original was that he had been careful and secretive as a traitor. There's no actual way for anyone to pin me as a traitor… other than from the contacts themselves."
"Did you see any of them at the ball?" the cat asked.
"I didn't get the chance to see all the guests before the chaos happened but that had partially been a reason I went to the ball in the first place. I would recognize the other traitors to the country the Original has seen by sight. Probably. It might have given me more clues with the memories of their interactions with the Original or maybe some tidbit about the other."
"What were you going to do if you saw another member of that group?" Brunilda had a slightly chiding tone to her question. "Pretend you were still a traitor? Try to subdue them?"
Mattheus froze a bit in his seat. "Uh… I hadn't gotten that far, honestly. I probably would have done nothing? Probably played along for a bit at the ball?"
"Right," was Brunilda's unimpressed reply.
Alright, so Mattheus had to agree Brunilda was right to judge him. It was an admittedly haphazard and stupid plan.
"You still have the System right? And it did some upgrades? The healing is a skill?"
"Yeah." Mattheus nodded slightly.
"What changed? Did you get a Title?"
"Yeah." He pulled up his profile summary. "The Title is 'Prodigal Son.' It comes with two skills. One is Healing Magic Mastery which is self-explanatory. The other is called Miracle Invoker and allows me to bring the dead back to life once a day."
"Like a necromancer?" Brunilda voiced doubtfully.
"More like a priest-class rez skill, I think."
"I was afraid of that. So you are 100% healer?" Brunilda stared at him before shaking her head. A sigh was heard.
"Hey, the System gave some rewards for quest completion! I can use the magic the Original could!"
"But can you actually use it?"
Mattheus immediately slumped. After a beat, he buried his face in his hands and groaned a little. "No," he said the word filled with pity and disappointment. "I can't make sense of the magic system in this world to even begin to attempt to try. The Original specialized with fire or something. I literally do not want to set fire to the building by accident."
He was hoping the System would give another quest to unlock the magic abilities from completing [Who was Mattheus Crown?]. Adding it as a skill that would be easily triggered.
But honestly, Mattheus also knew that was expecting too much from a shit System. No matter how much the System seemed to have improved since coming to this world.
"So, you have your basic abilities, your healer skills, and the System as your tools on hand?" Brunilda clarified thoughtfully.
The young man knew exactly what his friend was asking. Brunilda was asking whether he had combat capability. If he had anything that would help in a physical altercation.
Unfortunately, he would have to disappoint her. All he had was the knowledge of how to throw a punch without breaking his hand with current noodle-like arms. (He was working on it, alright? He'd only been Mattheus for two weeks!)
"I still have Dedicated Student as an Occupation along with Transmigrator and Aristocrat. The former basically gives the hodgepodge memories of the Original along with the capability of doing anything he was able to before. Aristocrat just gives me a speech and charm buff."
"Well, at least I know why you seem to be a lot more silver-tongued which is useful in your situation. But you have no ability to defend yourself. Even a shield would have been good," she muttered the last part half to herself. "It's not a smart idea to continue interacting with this super-exclusive secret club that the original Mattheus Crown was part of. Cutting yourself from them would not be clean though. There is a chance with these types of things they would want to silence you."
Mattheus looked at Brunilda grim-faced. "I'm aware."
"You would have been under the radar for at least until your contacts wonder at you being scarce and missing possible rendezvous times. I say 'would have' because what you did at the ball brought a lot of attention to you. Ideally, they wouldn't immediately mark you as someone that abandoned their group by healing the General—Mattheus Crown didn't actually know he was a target, right? But there is a chance they might have already crossed you out as an ally and marked you as an enemy. If not, the time you might have been undisturbed has been drastically shortened."
Mattheus sighed. Brunilda gave voice to some of his worries over this mysterious group the Original had been a member of. Was it a good thing that the Original didn't know that much or bad? Either way, it was safest to prepare for the worst-case scenario over best under these circumstances.
"Ignoring this group, who we're not completely sure might be responsible as you couldn't be the only one to figure out William Grant's shellfish allergy and favorite food, the ones who tried to kill him might hold a grudge against you. I'm going to stick close to you since you have no defense again a super-powered hitman. Or even a gun."
"Well, I don't mind. I wanted you to stay for other reasons but the end result is still good. The issue is that you're still technically the Duchess's cat. All joke's aside about catnapping you, I really do not want to get on the bad side of a member of the royal family."
What they needed was a plan.
Brunilda swatted the air with a paw. There was a sigh of exasperation from her before she pointed out, "She only found me recently, remember? And with you having 'amnesia' it's perfectly feasible that I was attached to Mattheus before. Like you used to feed me as a stray or something. The original Mattheus Crown should have enough time to himself considering his hobby of participating in secret boys' clubs implied he had plenty of time by himself. None of your servants are in on it, right? Since you said there was no way you could get accused of treason outside of the other conspirators, whom you haven't encountered yet."
Mattheus blinked owlishly. "Well, yeah. Vincent, my valet, seems fairly unfamiliar with me despite having been assigned to me for a year. It makes me wonder if the Original picked the man because Vincent knew to give space and not inquire too much about anything."
He scratched his jaw in thought. The idea had merit since it was true that the Duchess simply picked "Tsavorite" off the streets and his amnesia gave him a bit of leeway. But was the Original even an animal lover?
So he went ahead and voiced said doubts to Brunilda.
The cat made a small chirrup. Then Brunilda replied in a deadpan, "It doesn't matter whether the original Mattheus Crown was an animal lover or not. You're Mattheus Crown now and that's all that matters in the present."
Ah.
Brunilda suddenly stood up and hopped closer, tapping his leg with a paw. "I recommend you take out a weapon from my stash to arm yourself with, just in case, though. Most of them would be too modern but I think there is a truncheon or blackjack you can get away with until you get a cane."
"A cane?"
"You're an aristocrat, and consider the culture in this country. Just order a custom cane and we can treat it with some reinforcing coating after. You have a private lab so you might as well use it."
Mattheus's lips twitched. He was aware of the study slash laboratory Brunilda was talking about but wondered how the cat knew since he hadn't visited the room in over a week. Becoming a cat increased Brunilda's stealth levels and truly put a new spin on the term "cat-burglar."