As expected... she could guess I had already advanced to Sequence 8... Viève's words did not surprise Charlotte very much.
After all, she had not deliberately concealed anything when writing her report about the battle behind the Sushit Grand Theater. Otherwise, a Sequence 9 voluntarily pursuing an enemy whose abilities and Sequence were unknown, then finishing him off cleanly, would have sounded like a fairy tale.
Concealing that would instead have risked exposing to the Purification-ers the suspicious fact that she had already known Gervais was a "Psychiatrist" and possessed sufficient strength to fight such an enemy, which would in turn have dragged in matters such as Arrodes and the gatherings above the gray fog.
By comparison, privately taking a potion to advance to "Sheriff" was hardly a major problem.
"That's right. About ten days ago, I bought the ingredients needed for 'Sheriff' from a Beyonder I met in Trier," Charlotte said carefully, striving "not to lie." "Since I had already finished digesting the Sequence 9 potion and was worried something unexpected might happen if I kept delaying, I prepared the potion myself and advanced."
"I originally intended to tell you once my condition had stabilized. I didn't expect to encounter that hidden 'Spectator' at the Grand Theater first."
Judging by her previous experience with the "lie test," even if Viève pulled that large, hot Holy Bible out from beneath her habit again and made Charlotte place her hand on it and repeat herself, she was confident her concealment would not be discovered.
She had indeed met Mr. Tower during her stay in Trier, and she had bought the potion ingredients from that Beyonder. She had merely omitted the existence of the Fool.
Fortunately, Charlotte already counted as half an official member, and her previous actions had left a fairly