Chapter 73
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 73
Chapter Title: Thief! (2)
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Thud thud thud!
"Eek! You scared me! Who's there?"
Dominic, who had been deep in a light sleep, jolted awake at the sound of someone pounding on his door as if trying to break it down first thing in the morning.
He rubbed his bleary eyes and poked his head out the window to see who the uninvited guest was.
"Huh? What's going on with everyone this early in the morning?"
In front of the main gate, Perot and Karim stood panting, their faces flushed beet red.
"Big trouble, Mayor! You need to come out right now!"
"What's wrong? What happened?"
"W-Well..."
Perot bit her lip.
"We had a break-in."
"A thief? Where?"
"Miss Perot discovered that the security barrier on the temporary mayor's office in the administrative building had been dismantled when she arrived for work."
"I'm sorry..."
At Karim's words, Perot swallowed hard to hold back the tears threatening to spill as she continued.
"The security barrier was something we bought from the capital's magic tower. If someone broke through it, they must have used a barrier dismantling stone embedded with high-level magic. Those aren't something you can just get your hands on easily..."
"Ah, is that all? No one got hurt, right?"
"Mayor! This isn't the time to be so casual. If any important documents in the mayor's office were stolen, we need to find a solution and make countermeasures as quickly as possible..."
"Karim."
"Yes, Mayor."
"We knew this was coming eventually. You knew something like this would happen someday."
Even hearing about the break-in, Dominic remained utterly calm.
He even stretched out a yawn, casually muttering something like, "But coming to work this early?"
"Did you perhaps write any ciphers on the documents stored in the mayor's office?"
It was a question Karim tossed out just in case.
"Huh? How did you know?"
And Dominic nodded as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
'He really used a cipher? Ciphers aren't something you just whip up easily...'
But Karim was skeptical.
It wasn't that he doubted Dominic's abilities, but ciphers were a more specialized field.
The kind of cipher an ordinary person might come up with was usually just setting a special pattern or rule and substituting letters accordingly.
'Like drawing A as a star shape, B as a solid black circle.'
A substitution cipher based on rules was impossible for a layperson to crack without the key, but experts with experience could decipher it in a matter of days.
'Language has repeating vocabulary and grammar rules, so patterns emerge with repetition. Once you spot those, substitution ciphers fall apart pretty quickly.'
Even these substitution ciphers had a weakness: the fewer examples, the harder they were to crack. It was tough to pinpoint the rules.
But that very point made Karim even more anxious.
'There are a ton of documents in the mayor's office. Even if he used a cipher, with that many examples, it'd be even easier to compare and find the patterns.'
Deciding he needed to check it himself, Karim mustered his courage and spoke to Dominic.
"Could I see that cipher you wrote on the documents?"
"That? I have copies at home. Here, take a look. Oh, come on in first. You haven't had breakfast yet, right?"
But Dominic just nodded as if it were no big deal.
Dominic let Karim and Perot into the house, handed Karim a few sheets of paper, and headed to the kitchen.
Even after becoming mayor, he still lived in his modest original home, keeping the space simple and sparse.
Some administrative officials had argued that they should build the mayor's residence before the city hall, but Dominic shot it down, saying not to waste effort on nonsense.
[What's wrong with my house? If I need something big and fancy, I can just go to the resort suite. It's all mine anyway.]
With rumors of Evergreen's resort suites sweeping the imperial south and spreading even further, no one could argue against mentioning them, and talk of a residence vanished.
Of course, that didn't mean Dominic actually lived at the resort all the time.
'Going there just makes me not want to work.'
Dominic believed playtime and worktime should be strictly separated.
He had zero desire to read documents in a resort suite, so when work piled up like now, he just napped at home and headed back out.
"Fair warning, my house doesn't have much, so I can't whip up a fancy spread, Miss Perot."
"Ah, yes! Mayor!"
He mostly ate at the kitchen, so the house only had basics.
'Still, this is pretty decent for breakfast.'
Dominic gathered ingredients, glanced at Karim who couldn't tear his eyes from the paper, and started preparing breakfast.
"Could you cast a fire spell, Perot?"
"Ah, yes. Fire!"
"Wind too."
"Wind!"
He had magic tools, but they had usage limits, so no point burning through them when a mage was right there.
"It's simple, but prepping everything will take a bit... Looks like Karim's distracted over there anyway."
"Hm, can I help with anything?"
"Oh, would you?"
He subtly hinted at Perot, who was just sitting at the table, and she caught on instantly, rolling up her sleeves.
"Aww, how could I make our precious mage help with cooking?"
"I'm really fine, Mayor!"
"No, no. I can handle it myself."
"But still..."
Perot thought inwardly, 'That's weird, I thought he wanted help with something...' but at Dominic's firm refusal, she sat back down.
"Sigh, I've been so busy lately I haven't weeded the yard. That'd take half a day. I hear Wind Cut spell is pretty useful for that..."
"...I know that one."
"Really? You do, Miss Perot?"
"I'll get it done quick!"
"Thanks. You saved me. ...Oh, the walls and roof have dust piled up too... When am I gonna clean that?"
"A light Water Bomb should do it. I'll handle that too, Mayor!"
"Am I bothering you with all this? Nah, it should be nothing for our mage, right? Haha!"
"Yes, yes. Of course. I'll hurry!"
"Oh, and the back yard wall's a bit collapsed. Any chance magic can fix that?"
"...I'll give it a shot."
"Thanks! Two fried eggs for you!"
Dominic had offloaded all the postponed housework onto Perot for two eggs.
It would take quite a bit of mana at her level, but
'Good chance for training too.'
He felt not a shred of guilt.
She wasn't blaming him even though it was an incident on his watch, and she'd interrupted his sleep, yet here he was cooking breakfast himself.
'This is textbook model boss material.'
He sliced a generous pat of butter into the well-oiled pan.
Sizzle-.
The butter melted in seconds, filling the air with a nutty aroma.
He laid in three thick slabs of homemade bacon, and the salty fat mingled with the butter, boosting the flavor.
'Bacon and fried eggs for breakfast.'
Eggs were especially delicious in this life.
Whether from hens foraging bugs in the yard for top nutrition, or different genes from Earth's, the yolks were so rich they were more orange than yellow.
And when cracked, they held their shape firm instead of spreading!
'Worth the effort of soft-boiling with a sprinkle of salt.'
Fried eggs in a pan mixed with butter and bacon fat were a killer morning indulgence that made you want to overeat.
'Gotta toast some bread too.'
He pulled out another pan, melted more butter, toasted the bread, and spread it with date jam from the desert.
It was so sweet he figured Perot would go nuts for it.
"Huff, huff! Am I late?"
"No, perfect timing. Done already?"
"That savory smell made me rush. Urk!"
He thought it was too quick and easy, but seeing her pale, hands shaking, dry-heaving, she must have squeezed every drop of mana.
'Definitely not like the mages in those fantasy novels I read.'
Watching Perot handle what would take four grown men half a day in just ten minutes, Dominic mused that 'mid-level mages are basically high-end appliances.'
If the mages heard that, he'd probably be roasted alive.
"Karim. Set that aside for now and eat breakfast first."
"......"
"Karim?"
No point pushing Perot more, so he called Karim to help set the table, but Karim was still glued to the paper.
He was in shock.
'Did the mayor really... use this...?'
His hands trembled.
'What's with him shaking now?'
Following Perot, Karim's hands shook holding the paper.
Dominic figured the administrative staff needed some tonics.
"What the hell do you mean? You call that an excuse? You bastards! If you took my money, you better earn it!"
A few days after Dominic started daily tonics to "boost" his officials' stamina.
A large merchant group's leader was losing it, screaming in the guild's secret room.
"...Sorry. Give us more time."
"And you can crack it with more time?"
"......"
"You worthless scum!"
Whoosh-.
Papers flew at the black-clad man.
"You bragged you could crack the cipher in three hours, and now? Can't do it? First I've heard? You wanna say that to me? Do you know how much money I poured into you based on your word?!"
"Give us time. A week—no, five days..."
"A week's already gone! What now? Do you even have real cipher experts?!"
"Sorry, Leader. But this cipher's pattern doesn't match Imperial script or any continental language...!"
Crack!
At that, the desk ornament flew into the intel broker's forehead.
"You idiot! Then you should've said from the start some ciphers can't be cracked! What about my money?!"
The many specialties sold from Evergreen.
He thought even a hint on the pottery technique would be worth the cost...
'But I wasted it on useless scraps of paper...!'
Despair clouded the merchant's vision.
His eyes caught the scribbles on the paper—lines and circles densely packed like mazes.
"What to make tomorrow? Bossam?"
Dominic sat in the mayor's office, doodling on paper while pondering the officials' next meal.
"Ingredients needed... Ah, list 'em. Won't forget."
Letters appeared neatly on the paper, one by one.
- Pork shoulder, bay leaves, soybean paste, salt, lettuce, radish, green onion roots, onions...
All in Hangul.
Letters and words nonexistent in this world.
'If only I can read it, that's a cipher. What's the big deal?'
But break-ins starting meant spies were infiltrating seriously, so caution was needed.
'Tch. They all come crawling when there's food.'
All mine anyway.
These rude bastards drooling over unharvested crops.
Dominic's brow furrowed.
[Thief! (2)] End