Sir, You Look Very Suspicious

A monocle turning up in a place like this seemed wrong no matter how he looked at it, didn't it?

Suspicion +1

Suspicion +1

Lorne picked Lucky up and slowly leaned closer to examine the monocle.

This!

This monocle looked...

Like it was worth quite a lot.

Although he knew nothing about appraisal, the body's original owner had been a wealthy young man who often handled antiques, naturally developing an unusual sensitivity-or perhaps intuition.

Lorne had inherited that as well. As a "Monster," his intuition was already very keen, so he could tell at a glance that the object before him was no ordinary trinket.

At the very least, it was an antique!

This stone chamber was at least several centuries old. Could the monocle be a burial offering? No, that wasn't right. There wasn't a coffin here...

Lorne turned his gaze toward the stone chest he had opened earlier.

Could it have been inside that chest? Since I forced it open so violently, perhaps I didn't notice it flying off with the lid?

"Lucky, how are you feeling?" Lorne lifted the cat in his hand to eye level.

"Meow~" Lucky gave a soft cry. She seemed unchanged.

Uh...

Lucky had been pawing at it for quite a while, so it should be fine, right? If it was an antique, this trip wouldn't be a total loss... Lorne bent down to pick up the monocle.

Wait!

Lorne's knees froze halfway into a crouch-this thing was far too clean, so clean that it looked utterly out of place amid surroundings steeped in centuries of dust.

"Could it be a trap, like the one earlier?" Lorne recalled the nested chests.

"But nothing happened when Lucky touched it... Maybe it's harmless to animals, but not necessarily to people..."

He decided that when in doubt, he should divine first, and took out the Pendulum once again. Even after receiving a result confirming it was safe, he still felt uneasy, so he put the cat down.

"Lucky, I've raised you for so long. It's time you made yourself useful."

"Go fetch that monocle for me. Remember to be gentle with your teeth."

Lorne issued his orders to the cat he had actually only kept for a few days.

Back on the ground, Lucky shook herself and gave Lorne an exasperated look. Then she swaggered over to the monocle, lowered her head, and picked it up as though it were a mouse before strolling leisurely back to his side.

Although fate had offered no warning, the sight of the monocle still gave Lorne a strange shiver.

Lorne took the monocle from Lucky's mouth and gently wiped it with his fingers, examining the little object closely in the faint light of his torch.

"It isn't glass. It seems to be ground crystal."

"Looks like it really is an antique."

In this world, glass had only come into widespread use after Roselle launched his industrial revolution. Before then, humanity had not mastered the technology to make glass lenses, so almost all lenses had been ground from crystal.

But once glassmaking matured, glass completely outclassed natural crystal in both performance and cost, and crystal lenses gradually fell out of fashion.

Lorne was actually quite curious about this sort of eyewear. With only a frame and lens, and no arms, it had to be held in place by the muscles around the eye.

That required the wearer to have sufficiently deep eye sockets; otherwise, it would touch the eye directly and be impossible to wear.

Before transmigrating, he certainly couldn't have worn one. Now, he probably could.

"What's this?"

Just as Lorne finished searching the chamber and was about to leave empty-handed otherwise, he spotted something by the stone door.

It was a rectangular piece of paper.

"A playing card?"

Only after approaching did Lorne discover that it was the three of diamonds.

It's quite finely made! It doesn't look like something printed in a factory... He picked it up and inspected both sides.

Hand-painted. That makes it a work of art, too.

Could it have come from this room?

The monocle was understandable, but surely this playing card couldn't also be hundreds or even a thousand years old.

A thought suddenly occurred to Lorne.

Wait! Could I have arrived too late? Had someone else already taken everything truly valuable?

And this monocle was something they left behind.

Seriously? How could I be this unlucky!

It took him several more hours to return from Tingen's outskirts to the city. The meager haul left Lorne rather dispirited.

"Oh well, at least it wasn't a wasted trip," Lorne consoled himself as he toyed with the monocle.

"Stay alert. The Aurora Order's members may do something wildly unpredictable."

"Captain, there's something wrong with the spirits nearby," Leonard said to Dunn Smith beside him, gripping his revolver.

"Yes. One of them is injured. They should still be nearby." Dunn nodded and continued:

"Kenley, stay here and keep watch."

"Royale and I will enter the nearby alley from opposite ends."

"Leonard, take the other street and stop them from taking a detour to escape."

After assessing the situation, Dunn assigned their positions.

"If you encounter them, just keep them occupied for a while." Before leaving, Dunn remembered something and cautioned Leonard.

"We'll come as soon as we hear anything."

Leonard pressed his lips together, then chuckled. "Don't worry, Captain. I'm pretty strong, you know."

Seeing his teammate's confidence, Dunn nodded without saying anything more.

"I've come this far without even noticing. Which street is this, anyway?" Lorne looked around, struggling to get his bearings.

The streetlights of this era were mostly gas lamps, their brightness nowhere near that of the streetlights in his original world. There weren't many of them, either, and at night they offered only enough light to barely make out the road.

It had already been dark when Lorne started walking back from Tingen's outskirts. By the time he reached the city proper, it was well past the hour when he could hail a horse-drawn cab.

With no other choice, Lorne had to walk back to the Azure Hotel.

"A world without electric lights is such a hassle! Could I invent an electric light and apply for a patent? This world does have electricity, after all."

"Come to think of it, a generator could work, too. And the body's original owner worshipped the God of Steam and Machinery, so inventing something would be perfectly

reasonable." As he walked, Lorne pondered how to earn money using knowledge from his original world.

The treasure hunt had yielded far less than he had expected: only a monocle that looked like an antique, a playing card, and a somewhat old wooden box. It was nothing like the heaps of gold, silver, and jewels Lorne had originally imagined.

Rent, food, and the Potion formulas and ingredients needed for future advancement all cost money. Advancement was especially expensive; a Sequence 8 Potion formula alone cost around 500 pounds.

Based on purchasing power, 500 pounds was equivalent to nearly 400,000 in his original world. And that was only the formula. Including the ingredients would probably multiply the cost several times over.

Besides, he had a cat to feed.

"I'm so short of money."

"Meow!"

Lucky, lying in Lorne's shoulder bag, suddenly gave an alarmed cry.

"Lucky, what's wrong..."

"This..."

Halfway through speaking, Lorne felt his spiritual intuition stir.

Something was wrong nearby!

"The feeling isn't that strong this time. It probably isn't a warning from fate."

"Was it just my 'Monster' ability being triggered?" Lorne stopped and carefully surveyed his surroundings.

"Walking the streets this late at night? Sir, you look very suspicious!" Leonard stepped out of the shadows at the street corner.

But then he saw the man before him take something out of his pocket and put it on his face.