Wherever a group of Assault Team women went, they would search from beginning to end.
Abandoned alleyways, woods that looked suitable for camping, even roadside trash cans that seemed large enough to fit a person inside—almost all of them had to be searched.
Time was being wasted bit by bit.
Though the professional soldiers from the Assault Team showed some impatience, there were no real problems. If anything, everything remained orderly.
But—
This left a certain loli, who had stubbornly insisted on tagging along, in a miserable state.
Murata Himeko turned back and looked at the girl whose clothes were visibly soaked across the back. Her lovely, slender brows could not help but furrow.
Then, she could not help looking toward Ragna.
"Captain... are you sure that Gypsy is on this street?"
"This place... looks pretty safe. Could you have gotten something wrong?"
The woman named Murata Himeko surveyed the shops along the street with an almost strange expression, deliberately pointing at the most rundown and abandoned alleyway—there was nobody inside.
The Gypsies.
In literature, they were a highly mysterious, spiritual people who adapted easily wherever they went.
Mérimée's proud and beautiful Carmen, the kind-hearted Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Zemfira and her people from Pushkin's long poem The Gypsies—all of them seemed to carry a certain divine quality.
But in reality, their lives were always associated with begging, theft, human trafficking, and smuggling. Naturally, they could not escape being driven away and despised.
After repeated inquiries yielded nothing, and with the entire street being so clean that it clearly did not welcome Gypsies, the answer seemed obvious.
Ragna did not answer immediately. She merely looked around as though she cared deeply about the matter.
She was not surprised that Murata Himeko had doubts.
Though this girl was