It didn’t take long to reach the personal quarters of the village chief.

  Seeing the door left ajar, Tacha let out a sigh of relief. It was quite lucky that she wouldn’t need to waste any time in finding a way to open it.

  As for why it was left open? Who cares! She was in a rush.

  The granny checked the place beyond the door, making sure that no one was really there. After a quick look she half closed the door, so she could hear if anyone was coming.

  The chief’s home was quite small for someone of his standing. It had only three rooms: a kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom. She had no idea if it was something luxurious in the village, but just by comparing Molly’s home with this one… Yeah, there were no comparisons.

  Tacha made a quick sweep of the kitchen, but she couldn’t find anything useful except for a very sharp kitchen knife.

  She thought about keeping it for a moment, but then she decided to leave it. The durability was quite poor and it could break anytime during a fight. Funnily enough the radishes proved to be way more durable than what she had seen up until now.

  Seeing that she couldn’t find anything in the kitchen, she moved on to the bedroom.

  The bed occupied most of the space. On the left from where she was was a wooden wardrobe, meanwhile on the right, a little away from the window, was a desk full of documents. Right underneath it were a couple of drawers per side.

  Starting from the most obvious place, the granny started from the drawers. And just in her second try she found a suspicious locked box.

  She looked around for the key, ultimately finding it in the same drawer. Inside were a stack of letters, all signed under the same name. The content was short and to the point, with no relevant names mentioned.

  No dates, no sender, no receiver.

  It seemed like whoever wrote them took great care in mantain secrecy.

  It wasn’t evident at first glance, but those messages hid a lot of information inside them. Of course, if she could’ve had the ones that were sent to this mysterious man that signed himself as O.P., it would’ve been even better.

  First of all it seemed like this Mr. OP was the point of contact between the trio and the mysterious organization. And with the second and third messages she was now sure that they were backed by an organization.

  The first one hinted to a ‘duty’ of the previous generations. Most probably all of the prievious village chiefs were part of this organization.

  The second message mentions both a city and a person of higher standing of Mr. OP. From this she could gleam that said organization was structured enough to have a pecking order and a foot in more than one city or village.

  As for the third, Tacha knew that the term vagrant referred to the players.

  And the fourth one. She could make a guess at what it was implying. It was most probably talking about the time when the trio trapped Layla underground and destroyed the ruins.

  It was the whole reason why she went there.

  As if the system heard her, a loud ping caught her attention.

  The granny readied herself to search through the place. No reason to pass up an opportunity to gain some items. Morality? What’s that?

  Eventually, her eyes stopped at the most conspicuous place in front of her.

  Among the pile of documents on the desk, at the very top, there was an unopened letter with the same seal as the others. It seemed like the village chief had no time yet to read its contents, probably all thanks to the ruckus that Old Hans was making downstairs.

  Tacha really wanted to know what was written in there, but doing so meant that the village chief would realize that someone went through his correspondence.

  However it was also true that there was a possibility that the sharp librarian might have noticed that something was off with her earlier.

  If so, based on how meticulous he was in writing the reports and the research notes on the ruins, then he would definetly check in his hidden study. She did her best to cover any trace of her passage, but she wasn’t fully confident.

  Shrugging her shoulders, she opened up the missive. Might as well get the latest news for this secretive trinity.

  Thinking about the timing of the missive, as if it had arrived just moments ago and left on the desk in a hurry before it could be read, and the strict mention of the secrecy of the ruins in the previous letters, then the ‘targets’ to eliminate could be very few.

  If the last one that was received before this was the one that mentioned the Gate, then there were only four people that had something to do with the ruins or Layla. That would be: Kirio, Old Hans, Fr?st and her.

  Maybe Molly too if they felt that she knew too much of their secrets.

  Her trail of thought stopped for a moment. Now that she had mentioned Molly, didn’t it seem like she knew about the secretive trio? She was the one that had directed her to them afterall.