The "Vice Admiral Deep Sea" pirate crew's base in Nas.
A lean but muscular man wearing a tricorne hat knocked several times. When no one answered, he took two steps back and glanced at the buzz-cut man behind him.
The latter rolled his shoulders, stepped forward, and kicked the door open.
With a crash, several icicles hanging beneath the eaves fell and shattered across the ground.
"Boss, that old geezer's probably drunk again."
"I don't know why the captain insists on making him the person in charge here. He's always holding things up, and the information he reports is nothing but barroom boasts and gossip."
The man in the tricorne didn't reply. His pale blue eyes swept over the open space in front of the door, then turned toward the interior.
The buzz-cut man looked back. Seeing that his leader still hadn't moved, he asked curiously, "Boss, is something wrong?"
The man in the tricorne considered for a moment, then said, "Let's go back."
"Huh?"
He offered no explanation. After speaking, he turned and quickly headed back the way they had come.
After the two had left, Randolph Carter's portrait, hanging on the wall of the restaurant where no one outside could see it, suddenly turned toward the doorway. The corners of his mouth lifted into a meaningful smile.
At a private dock far from the city, Cyril's figure flashed past the windows of a row of houses.
A few minutes later, he walked out of a nearby bar.
"Divination suddenly stopped working once I got here. Did they go somewhere special, or use a Mystical Item that can interfere with divination?"
After murmuring to himself for a while, he took out a sheet of paper and retrieved the Crystal Ball sealed inside it, with an eye in its depths.