"The Phantom Thief... Black Emperor?"
After a half-second of silence, Klein suddenly raised his chin. "That's right. It's me!"
"Oh." Cyril nodded and turned to leave.
"You're not surprised at all?" Klein's eyes widened, and his Clown-level control over his expression nearly slipped.
Cyril thought for a moment, then said in an exaggerated, affected tone:
"Wow... Whoa!!"
Klein: (._.II)
"Maybe just act normal..."
After a brief pause, he gave a simple account of what he had discovered at Capim's villa and what he had done.
At the end, he added, "There's something strange about this whole affair."
"First, Capim was just an ordinary rich man and human trafficker. He had some money, but not enough to hire so many Beyonders to protect him. There was even a Sequence 6 among them, along with several Sequence 7s."
"Second, all the Beyonders protecting him were from the Arbiter Pathway. As far as I know, in Loen, that Pathway is mainly controlled by the Royal Family."
"Also, after I caused that commotion, the first person to arrive wasn't from the Church. It was a military Beyonder who was most likely a Demigod."
"I inferred that from the subsequent progress in digesting my Magician Potion."
"Oh, right. I also found the person Mr. Hanged Man told us to keep an eye out for at Capim's villa. He'd changed his appearance and disguised himself, but I still recognized him."
Cyril nodded thoughtfully, then murmured, "Clearly, the Loen Royal Family was involved in this. But it probably wasn't just for profit. Money isn't all that important to the truly powerful nobles anymore."
After a pause, he glanced at the final paragraph in the newspaper and asked, his tone lifting slightly, "So, how many gold pounds did you get from the safe in Capim's villa?"
At that,