"Today is your last class before summer break so now I want to discuss your test answers" Prof Joseph announced and caused the student to let out various sounds of dissatisfaction
"Now, now, your tests were easier than the ones I gave to college students. Also, student Ares Zanuki."
Suddenly, the professor pointed at me. Others also followed his finger and turned towards me.
"An unconventional outlook and logical judgment, I could see true 'wisdom' from your answers. Frankly, I can't believe you're only 15. You're good enough to be writing thesis papers for graduation."
If the professor's praises ended there, I would have simply still managed to remain calm. After all, it was the first time I was being praised for doing well on an exam.
"Since today is the last class before your summer break, I will give a quick lecture using Ares Zanuki's answer sheet and call it a day."
But for some reason, he put up my answer sheet on the screen.
I was caught completely off guard. Prince Theo tried to suppress his laugh while the other students looked stupefied by the unreadable handwriting on the screen.
"Don't need to dwell on the handwriting too much since I've deciphered it for you so read the texts beside the handwriting," Prof Joseph said before a paragraph of texts showed up.
'Is this how dying out of embarrassment feels like?' I wonder.
"Now, take a look at this answer. The way he answered it and also the diagrams of the monster's part to further explain his points. And also look at the way he arranged each method of dealings with monsters based on their types. The way he put them into categories..."
The class continued. I put my hands over my face, feeling it heat up and ready to explode. The two-hour class finally ended after Prof Joseph finished babbling about every answer that I wrote.
At first, the other students would occasionally glance at me from time to time before they became engrossed in taking notes and ignore me all together.
Later that night, I went back to Soga Mountain with Eris to settle our business project. During the summer break, the fourth year would start their interning period and Eris chose to create a business project and work with Zanuki businesses for her internship.
As an all-rounder academy, HGA didn't put strict specific rules for their student's internships. They could choose a regular job like Eris or a more befitted job like Karin.
Karin went to work with the Royal Corps for her internship as a warrior. So I won't be able to see her until winter break.
Eris was the Zanuki official heir so it wasn't surprising that she chose to manage her family business during her internship period instead of joining the associations where only Guardians or people with special abilities could work there.
Kara would also go to Soga Mountain after she finished her other magic research to continue with our magic cards research.
Adrian already told me that he had to help his father, Uncle Zoroas in their dungeon management business.
The five prominent noble families are responsible to maintain dungeons within a few territories in the empire with the help of the government and a few noble families. This is to make sure to decrease the influence of the black market.
However, the black market business still going rampant but even though there are a lot of bad things in the black market, they also saved the citizens multiple times by discovering and controlling dungeons that none of the nobles or the government have found.
A lot of nobles also did illegal business transactions with the black market so the government never had a plan to obliterate them as long as their scale was within what the government can turn a blind eye on.
There was also a website used by the black market to sell and buy things illegally online, especially information and the website was called the Scarlet Site.
There are three levels of users for the website which are Bronze, Silver and Gold.
Bronze is the basic user where everyone will start with Bronze while Gold is the VVIP and you can't increase your level using money. Instead, you have to use a credibility rating to increase your level.
For example, if you're a buyer and always use the site to buy expensive items or issue a high amount of bounty on someone, the system will raise your level based on your previous transaction history. The more money spend, the higher the level.
It's the same with the seller or provider. The more tasks or items you sold or complete, the higher you're level will become.
A mercenary that has completed high difficulty tasks and got good ratings from the employer many times will get a raise in level based on the completion rate and difficulty of the tasks completed.
Thus, to make my information agency look more trustworthy, I have to work hard on increasing my account at least to level Silver.
I've already posted a post on the site's public forum and just have to wait for anyone asking for information.
========================
{Truth Agency (Information Broker)√}
Description: We are a group of honest information brokers. We will provide you with any information that you can think of and we will only provide true information. If we can't determine if the information is true or not, we will return your money or just give the information for free. We will give our response as fast as we can.
Deposit for information request: 500U
Rules:
√We will not give you any reason for rejecting your request
√Only true information will be given
√We won't provide you with any evidence to support the information given
√We will provide every possible information except a few that we can't find
=========================
That midnight, I got my first information request through scarlet site. Excited, I quickly opened the notification and read it.
[User*****: Information on why the second prince is said to be close with the youngest grandson of the Zanuki matriarch]
Finished reading the request, I have the urge to quickly answered it but I have to stop myself since this is involving me. Before, I already decided to deny any request about me or my family but seeing this request, I have to re think about my decision.
It seems like it came from a noble family that is wary or actively involve in the empire politics. After thinking for a while, I decided to accept the request where the 50 copper coins automatically being paid into my account.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
{From :Truth Agency}
{To: User****}
Payment : 50,000U
Status: Unpaid
-[Information can be viewed after payment]-
_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"_"
Request: Information on why the second prince is said to be close with the youngest grandson of the Zanuki matriarch
Answer: It is a request from the crown prince in order to put the second prince on check. The Zanuki will protect the second prince as long as the second prince doesn't aim for the throne and show his support for the crown prince. The youngest grandson of the Zanuki act as the sign of their cooperation. The details of the deal among the two parties involved is not known. The emperor also acknowledge the deal. No other nobles family seem to be involved.
**Warning: It is advisable if you don't publicize this information unless you want to be the enemy of the Zanuki and Royal family.**
{Thank you for using our service as we only handle the true}
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Since it was only a piece of incomplete information regarding a deal between the royal family and one of the prominent noble family, I have to put a high price on it.
I set on the system to send the answer in 10 days time, acting like I have to take some time to find the information. Despite that, 10 days were already considered quite fast.
After that, seeing no more request after denying a few request about the second prince or about me, I shut off my computer and went to sleep.
A few days later, I got a few more information requests on Scarlet site and looking at the request, I urged Ron to quickly find all the people I wanted to hire since even using my knowledge from the novel, I'm not omniscience.
**********************************
(POV: Darius Augustus)
"Sir Darius, there's a letter for you," my co-worker said to me after the end of the working hour.
I went to my mailbox and saw an envelope that had nothing other than a stamp on it. At first, I thought it was another prank letter from noble kids that were dissatisfied with me during their classes. However, upon opening the envelope, the first thing I saw was an insignia that almost everyone in the empire knew who it belongs to.
"What the fuck"
Startled, I quickly went into my room and opened the envelope completely. The bright orange and red colour insignia of a red Phoenix breathing out orange flame, surrounded by thorny red roses. Only one family name came to my mind.
'Zanuki'
With a trembling hand, I read the letter carefully before taking a look at the contract agreement behind it. There's also a card included in the envelope with a weird note like a password.
==========================
-Recruitment Letter-
Recipient: Darius Augustus
Full-time occupation: Lab Assistant
Job offer: Part-time Hacker/Information Broker
Employer: Truth Agency
Payment: Decided by the employee
Benefits of employment:
√Unlimited medical expenses for any sick or hospitalized family members
√Full school fee payment for any family members that still studying
√Can request protection from Zanuki personnel when feeling the employee's life is threatened
√Can always negotiate on payment anytime
√Flexible working hours
Please read the contract provided for further consideration.
Regards,
Truth Agency Boss
======================
After reading the letter I quickly checked whether the said agency actually existed or not but I found nothing. I felt like I can't throw away the letter after seeing the insignia.
I read the contract again for the second time before I decided to read the contract. Seeing that they try to recruit me, I was confident that they knew about my hacking ability and that's what make me contemplate since even my brother didn't know about it.
======================
{Truth Agency Employment Contract}
Period of employment:
-Until one of the parties decided to terminate the contract
Salary:
-Decided by the employee
Payment method:
-Will be transferred into the bank card given to the employee
How to accept:
-Login into this website using the code given to the employee.(picture)
Job specification:
- Gathering information based on requests that will be posted on the website dashboard
Login Code:**********
Website : [Truth Agency.co. link]
Rules:
¶ Contract can be terminated anytime by both parties without any termination fee
¶Employee can accept any information request that they are confident in completing
¶Only information that you're sure is true can be submitted through the website.
¶Any part of the information that you're not sure is true has to be cut off and just sent the part that is true even if the information becomes incomplete.
¶You will be paid for each piece of information you provide based on your own price.
¶Can personally send a request for medical and school expenses to the moderator on the website.
¶An information request that has been accepted by one employee can't be chosen by other employees.
¶Only the employee completing the task and the Boss of Truth Agency can view the information.
¶You can't sell the information of the request you've accepted to someone else *(punishment will be given if you do this)
¶No limit of requests is needed. You can accept if you want and do nothing if you're too busy.
¶You cannot expose to anyone about this agency *(punishment will be given if you do this)
¶Can asked for additional backup during your information gathering process
¶Don't hacked the website lest every employee will be punished regardless of who did it
In regards, we wished you the best of luck and have a good day.
=====================
This is the simplest and easy-going contract I've ever seen. After contemplating for a while, I decided to log into the website after dinner.
There, I saw the moderator is online and there are also a few other people online but I can't see their profile pictures since we were already assigned a fixed profile picture of animals where my profile picture is a crab and the moderator is a grey wolf. There's the Truth Union Agency logo of a golden lock chain trapping a bush of red and white roses.
[Employee(fox. pic): Can I ask a question here]
Suddenly someone sends a public message on the website forum. The moderator quickly replied, "Sure"
[Employee(fox. pic): Is this really affiliated with the Zanuki or is it just someone using the Zanuki name]
[Moderator : (video)]
The moderator just simply gave a video of a red hair girl looking through the Truth Union website and there's no way they will try using superimposed or any tricks when they knew a hacker or maybe more hackers were here among the employees.
[Me(crab.pic): The video is authentic. That is Zerisa Zanuki, the official successor of the Zanuki family]
I decided to reply after I found nothing was wrong with the video. Later more questions popped out.
[Employee(shark. pic): So she is the BOSS?]
[Moderator: No but other Zanuki. That's all I can tell you]
[Employee(fox.pic): How did you find us?]
[Moderator: When there's a will, there are always multiple ways to achieve it]
[Employee(eagle.pic): Hahaha I like this moderator]
[Employee(fox.pic): Can I see what kind of request you've already completed?]
[Moderator: (picture)(picture)(picture)]
I click on the pictures to see the contents and was shocked since the information requests they've completed were far more complicated than I'd imagined. Some of the information titles have been censored as it also part of the information.
^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^
Tasks completed:
1. Crown prince deal
2. Dungeon in Area****
3. Is ***** a Djinn
4. Weaknesses of a Sandshrew
°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^
[Employee(shark.pic): Damn you guys also dug on the royal family. It must be true that the Zanuki fear nothing]
[Employee (fox.pic): We can always request personnel from you guys right?]
[Moderator: Yes and no payment needed]
[Employee(eagle.pic): How generous. So how many of us you've recruited?]
[Moderator: Only the BOSS knew about that information]
[Me(crab.pic): Can we directly contact the BOSS]
[Moderator: Yes (boss.truthagency.chatlink)]
[Moderator: Information requests have been posted on the dashboard and each request can only be selected by one of you. Submit your information result into the submission box along with the price. Payment will be given within 24 hours]
[Moderator: You can ask for help from other employees here and set the payment split on the payment setting]
[Moderator: It is advisable for you to not reveal your identity to each other. Only the BOSS know your identity and it won't leakout]
The other employees kept on asking other questions to the moderator and I could read the replies later. Thus I decided to have a personal chat with BOSS. His profile picture is a black and white mask.
[Me: Hi Boss thank you for recruiting me]
[BOSS: Sure]
[Me: Also thank you for paying for my brother's school fee]
I randomly asked since I've remembered Fred told me about a Zanuki paying for his school fee along with his residency fee. If my guess is correct, the boss and that particular Zanuki might be the same person.
[BOSS:?????]
[BOSS: You can request for school fee sponsorship for your brother if you want to]
[Me: A Zanuki is paying for my brother's school fee before. It's not you, Boss?]
[BOSS: No but I think I know who did that.]
[BOSS: (school_fee.sponsor.form)]
[BOSS: You can fill this form if you want]
[Me: Sure....thanks Boss]
[BOSS: Sure]
Is he another Zanuki? It sounded more logical since how could a mere 15-year-old boy could think of creating an information agency like this. Even if I'm the matriarch, I won't allow it to be handled by a boy who is not graduated yet.
Zerisa is different since she's well known to be a genius in management and training as the future matriarch.
After pondering for a while, I decided to not dwell on the matters too much and went to sleep after I'd finished reading the replies on the forum. I planned on taking a look at the website dashboard tomorrow.