"Oh, no it's alright. I was just lost in thought and I feel like it's better if we just do the thing we came here for." Keith said, rejecting the baronet.
The Baronet was a slender man just like Keith, but for some reason he looked healthier. Baronet was a title given to the people who contribute to the Empire financially or through other means and was temporary as it only lasted for two generations.
Unlike Baronets, the other noble titles were technically permanent and could be passed down to their respective kids indefinitely. The titles that fell into this category were Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquess and lastly Duke.
Their importance and power went up from the left to right, with the duke being only below the royal princes and princesses.
"If you insist." the man said as he pursed his lips, clearly unhappy with Keith's response but Keith didn't care.
Brandon took a step forward and gave him a slight bow before standing up straight, "Well, my subordinate is right. It'll be good for all of us to just get to our job and if I may ask, did you offend or antagonise someone in the recent times?"
The Baronet watched Brandon take out the circular object with a paper and nodded, "Hm, I was actually just minding my own business but while I was trying to buy something that caught my eye in the black market, someone tried to bid against me for it.
But they obviously didn't expect me to be a Baronet with immense wealth, so I easily won the item hohohohoho!"
Seeing the guy pleased with himself when his life was on the line, Keith really was lost for words. Luckily for him, he didn't have to do the talking as Brandon took care of most of it.
After talking to the wannabe noble for a while, Brandon turned around and focused on Keith, "Keith, follow me. Others, stay close to Sir Clangson."
Keith nodded and followed behind Brandon and the Butler who guided them out of the living room, to the study room of Clangson. He then pointed at a brush stand that looked like a mini human skull that had a hole on the top.
Brandon silently walked towards it and glanced at Keith who gave him a slight nod and grabbed it. The instant he did, he felt like his arm had turned into stone. One second he felt intense pain and the other, he was unable to even feel his arm.
He let go and immediately sat down on the floor to calm down his racing heart, which took a few minutes. Once he calmed down, he grabbed random things in the room and didn't feel anything serious other than slight twitching of his finger once or twice.
"Sir Clangson likes to collect unique items." the butler commented when he saw Keith examining various items in the room.
"Well... understandable I guess." he said as he was actually impressed by the collections. Most of them were precious stones with some that looked like stones that had ancient text written on them which could easily just turn out to be random scratches or could have been forged.
Once he was done examining the whole room, he turned to Brandon, "It's just that skull. Everything else in this room is fine."
"Okay." Brandon replied as he grabbed the paint brushes from the skull and placed them on the table before taking the skull with him, "Let's go meet up with the others."
Nodding in response, Keith followed the head detective but as they were on their way, Brandon began to speak, "Usually, the entire team doesn't go out for a single mission so I want you to keep this in mind. It's either 2 or 3 for one client but you got lucky as we got a baronet.
He promised to pay more, so the church ordered the deployment of everyone. Usually, it takes us more than just a day to keep someone protected as we don't really know when they'll get attacked. Try to learn as much as possible from this one."
"Understood, Sir Brandon."
"Mhm. I got a letter from an old friend of mine which said that a certain someone from our church was gifted a revolved by him." Brandon said as he placed his arm on Keith's shoulder, "Learn how to use that thing as soon as possible. I'll put you in a night shift with Amelia so use your free time until noon to practice and then try to sleep. We don't need you sleeping in the middle of your shift."
Keith nodded, but then he realised something, "But Sir Brandon, both me and her do not exactly have combat oriented capabilities."
"Oh, you don't know her do you? Well... just do as I say and some day, you'll find out. Actually, since you'll be sharing a shift with her, it'll be soon."
After saying that, he didn't elaborate, but Keith understood what his words meant. If two people with combat focused awakened abilities put someone with non-combative ability on Keith's team, then it only meant two things.
One was that she was extremely strong even without a combat oriented ability. Or Brandon was just messing with him by putting him in the same team as the devil.
Nonetheless, he didn't throw away the possibility of Amelia being strong. But there was one thing that contradicted this and that was her weekly salary. Even though he had doubts, he didn't say it out loud and instead kept his thoughts to himself as he could just confirm his theory by observing when the time comes.
The two of them met up with the Edward and the two ladies in the kitchen. The three of them were sitting at a long dining table along with Clangson and his family, which consisted of his wife, two concubines and then a total of five kids, all of whom were of different ages.
As for how Keith figured out the wife and concubines? It was from their accessories. Married women wore an engagement ring on their ring finger along with a necklace that has at least one emerald embedded onto it.
When it came to concubines, they only wore necklaces but these were different as they had Garnet embedded into them instead of emerald.