Welcome to the Café of the Dark Guild’s Successor - Chapter 154

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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A café run by the Dark Guild’s heir.
154
Within the guild, talk of family was an unspoken taboo.
Sophia and Raiely and I had a rough sense of each other’s circumstances, but being asked so directly was a first.
Surprised, I sharpened my gaze and replied.
“You said they ran a café before the accident, didn’t you?”
“Did you notice anything strange?”
“Sophia.”
Calling her name softly, Sophia hesitated and stepped back.
“I was just confirming. First, it’s better if you see it yourself. Come on.”
Sophia tugged at my hand. But at the mention of my father, unease crept over me and my feet wouldn’t move.
“If Queen has materials… is it about the debt?”
“No? There was nothing like that.”
As I hesitated, Raiely came up from behind and gave my back a gentle push.
“Go look. These are things you need to see.”
“…All right.”
The three of us left the room and climbed the stairs. The top floor had a high security level, so guild members were stationed there to guard it.
I felt their gaze on me, but I ignored it and passed by.
Walking down the corridor, every room I saw was filled with documents. Among the open doors, Sophia stopped in front of a single closed door.
“This is it.”
It was locked, so she opened it with a key.
A box sitting on a low table caught my eye first. Sophia walked toward it, as if it had been set aside deliberately.
She opened the lid and pulled out two photographs, waving them at me.
“Come here and look.”
I walked over slowly and took them, then gasped as my eyes went wide at what I saw.
“At first I thought it was just someone who looked alike… but this is you, right, Rosia? The hair color is the same.”
A photograph of me as a newborn.
Me in my father’s arms, scowling and crying, and him holding me, looking helpless.
“That’s really cute. Rosia crying her little heart out. What a treasure.”
Embarrassed, I stepped back so they couldn’t see me and looked at the photo alone again.
“…He looks so young.”
I was seeing my father for the first time like this. I stared at myself in his arms, and then a tear dropped onto the photograph.
“Rosia, are you crying?!”
“No. Something got in my eye.”
I tilted my head back and quickly dried the tears, then traced my father’s face in the photo with my fingertip.
“It’s you, Dad. Why does Queen have this? And keeping it like it’s precious….”
I was horrified wondering if I’d incurred a debt from the moment I was born, but my confusion was quickly resolved.
“Look at this. Queen looks close to him.”
In the other photograph, my father and Queen had their arms around each other’s shoulders, beaming. They looked even younger than in the first photo.
“Queen looks incredibly young too. Our age, practically.”
“Yeah. Your father… we think he must have been a member of Raven.”
I started to protest that it was impossible, but the words died in my throat.
The intimacy I felt in the photograph with Queen—it didn’t look like the relationship between debtor and creditor.
Besides, the background of the photograph was in front of the headquarters building. There’s no way she would have brought an outsider there.
“Actually, when you first told us about the debt, I thought something was off. Raven doesn’t bring people in based on debt. Isn’t that right, Raiely?”
“That’s right. It’s not the kind of place you can join that way. Everyone has their own story, but the competition to join is that intense.”
“Every guild member except you came voluntarily, as far as we know.”
“Besides, it’s structured in a way that would be difficult to sustain otherwise.”
…….
Though a dark guild, Raven has a high reputation for being selective about commissions, and word has spread of fair treatment for its members, making it popular.
Street children wanting to join are endless. There’d be no need to forcibly bind someone with a debt.
Suspicions I’d buried away, worried they might grow into doubts after sending Seniel off, came flooding back.
“Dad’s handwriting… If Queen was a colleague, she could have easily forged it. And all that money he supposedly owed was sitting in savings.”
Maybe there was never any debt to begin with. The image of Queen holding my hand on the day she died came to mind, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Can I have a moment alone?”
“Of course. Let’s go, Master.”
As the door closed, I leaned against the bookshelf and sank to the floor.
I rested my chin on my knees, the photographs laid across my lap.
“Was Dad really a guild member?”
Looking back, Mom and Dad would take turns stepping out periodically.
They said they were going to the mountains to gather materials or visiting the village, but sometimes they’d stay out overnight, and I remember waiting with Seniel.
Once, my father came back after leaving the shop closed for several days, and his body bore wounds he hadn’t had before.
“He said a bear attacked him.”
I’d believed him when he said it took so long to treat the injury, but thinking about it now… that was a blade wound.
“…That was suspicious.”
My father, who was mischievous and mischievous from a young age—even when Seniel bullied him, he always took it.
When rowdy customers occasionally came to the shop and caused trouble, he would apologize profusely. A father who was so unfailingly kind.
“Is hiding things a family trait?”
After my mother, now my father too had a whole other side I could never have imagined.
Realizing how little I’d actually known about my parents, I let out a short, bitter laugh.
“Mom and Dad… they must have known about each other, right?”
Thinking such things, I deliberately called up happy memories from childhood that I’d pushed away.
After lingering in those memories for a while, I put the photographs away and stood up.
Opening the door quietly, Sophia, who had been leaning against the doorframe, stumbled forward.
“Ha.”
I gave Sophia’s forehead a light tap and turned to Raiely.
“If you find anything else about my father later, let me know. I’m taking the photographs. I want to show Seniel.”
“Those are guild secrets, though.”
“I’ll help with work while I’m here instead.”
“Don’t go back on your word.”
We made that exchange—hardly a negotiation—and were about to shake on it when I heard someone calling Raiely from downstairs.
“I should go. Oh, while you’re here, be careful with how you address people. Change your clothes too. If you stand out too much, people will talk.”
“Yes, Master.”
Calling her that for the first time, Raiely beamed and headed downstairs.
“Sophia, can you check the roster of Raven’s past guild members?”
“It’s possible, but we all use code names. Without knowing your father’s code name, there’s no point looking at the roster.”
“I just want to look anyway.”
“For that, first… I need to organize those materials. They’re all mixed up. I don’t know where anything is.”
After the attack, she’d gathered the materials as best she could, but they’d gotten scrambled and lost in the process.
“All right. Let’s start organizing then.”
“Yes!”
Hopeful that I might find something related to my father, I went with Sophia into the room piled high with documents.
***
The Mage Tower had been troubled in recent days by abnormal miasma being detected across the continent.
The range was difficult to pinpoint, and worse, the barrier managed by the Mage Tower had sprung leaks, putting them in an emergency state.
“This is bad. The affected area has expanded again.”
Carat, a mage who used magical power to detect miasma above a certain threshold, cried out with a pale face.
The elders gathered at the round table in the Greenhouse for the meeting groaned and pressed their foreheads.
“It’s clear now that this can’t be overlooked.”
“With a scale and miasma this severe, there’s a possibility the Demon Realm is involved.”
“The Demon Realm? What are we supposed to do about that? And at a time like this when Master isn’t even here…….”
“Wyatt, is there no way to contact Master? You said you’ve seen him a few times about the Magic Stone matter.”
“That was Master coming to the Mage Tower. I don’t know where he is.”
“Then what do we do now….”
Unable to bear watching the elders merely exchange glances, Wyatt spoke up.
“I think we should share what the Mage Tower has detected with the Imperial Palace and the Temple. This isn’t something we can resolve on our own.”
“I agree.”
“The Imperial Palace helping is questionable, but… we have no choice.”
Having secured agreement from the other elders, Wyatt drafted a statement to send to the Imperial Palace in his capacity as Tower Master and asked:
“Jelen, what about the dispatch team you sent yesterday?”
“We’ve repaired all the barriers that were breached. But today the same number of different areas were breached again. With the sky like that, I don’t know what good the dispatch team is.”
The sun, hidden behind clouds.
Though it looked like ordinary clouds at first glance, all the elders could feel strong miasma emanating from the sky above them.
“This is when we need Master. He just leaves a little child behind and disappears.”
Just then, a mage from the Barrier Management Division came rushing into the Greenhouse.
“This is terrible!”
“What is it?”
“The barrier of the Imperial Palace has been breached. Alert signals have been raised in the Capital and the Imperial Palace.”
“What?! Carat! Check immediately!”
Carat, who had been continuously sensing miasma in the corner, displayed a map in the air with trembling hands.
“It’s true. The miasma levels in the Imperial Palace just spiked.”
The elders went pale and rose from their chairs.
“This can’t be. Contact the Palace mage at once.”
“No. I’ll go myself.”
“Jelen, don’t act rashly. It might be just a barrier breach. If they need help, the Palace will request it.”
“This is the first time the barrier protecting even the Imperial Palace has been breached. What if the Palace itself comes under attack?”
The elders, facing a situation without precedent, found their opinions divided on how to respond.
As all floundered in confusion and uncertainty:
The Greenhouse doors opened, and as if it were a dream, Meyson appeared before the elders.
“Master!!”
With his long silver hair flowing, still radiating brilliance, the elders cried out with joy and emotion at the sight of him.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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