Morning arrived in Igwynt, at the apartment building on Southern Sunflower Street.
Gregor, just getting out of bed, dressed himself and yawned as he pushed open his door. Entering the living room, he noticed the large room was devoid of his sister’s presence. Without giving it much thought, he proceeded to wash up and retrieve the breakfast Mrs. Harker downstairs had prepared from the door.
After placing the breakfast on the table, Gregor ate a little casually and prepared to leave. Before heading out, he knocked on Dorothy’s door and called out loudly.
"Get up, Dorothy, or you’ll be late."
After shouting, Gregor waited briefly, but no response came from behind the door. Seeing this, he turned the doorknob and opened Dorothy’s room.
The door was unlocked, and Gregor pushed it open with ease. What greeted him was an empty room. The bed was made, the desk was neat and clean, and books were arranged tidily on the small bookshelf. The clothes and backpack that usually hung on the rack were nowhere to be seen.
“Huh… already gone? Figures… her share of bread was short by two pieces earlier. This kid has been getting up early a lot lately. What’s she been up to?”
Closing Dorothy’s empty room, Gregor returned to drink a glass of milk before heading downstairs. He didn’t give the situation much thought—recent mornings had been like this. His sister seemed to have turned over a new leaf, waking up earlier than him and leaving in more of a rush.
“Maybe I’ll ask her tonight if there’s something special happening at school.”
With that thought in mind, Gregor left the apartment building and headed into the city at a brisk pace.After nearly an hour of walking, Gregor finally arrived at his workplace, situated at the base of a tall building at an intersection. The ten-story building was named Cypress Fir Tower, owned by the Igwynt City government. It was once the site of the municipal building, but after the city government relocated, it was rented out to a few small companies as office space.
In fact, not all government agencies in Igwynt had moved out. In the building’s basement, the Pritt Special Division—the Pritt Kingdom’s Serenity Bureau, Igwynt Branch—still operated.
“Phew… another day at work… hope there’s no overtime,” Gregor sighed before striding into the building, an action observed by a figure from a high vantage point.
“Ten minutes later than usual, Gregor…”
On the rooftop of the building opposite Cypress Fir Tower, Dorothy sat behind a wall, observing Gregor as he entered the building through the corpse of a crow perched on a streetlight below. She murmured softly.
At this moment, Dorothy was seated cross-legged on the deserted rooftop. Scattered around her were sheets of paper filled with various pencil-drawn diagrams. A closer look would reveal these to be maps of nearby streets and floor plans of various buildings. Many locations on these diagrams were circled and annotated.
Picking up the papers around her, Dorothy began examining them one by one. Each sheet was marked with specific locations, such as the first and second floors of Cypress Fir Tower, the basement of the Wicken Building, Cypress Fir Street, Blue Sage Street, and so on.
These were detailed indoor and outdoor maps of the surrounding neighborhood, created by Dorothy over the past few days through a meticulous search using small animal corpse marionettes.
The purpose of these maps was to help Dorothy pinpoint the exact location of the Igwynt Serenity Bureau and all its entrances.
Yes, in order to catch the mole within the Bureau, Dorothy needed to identify all the personnel in the Bureau. The best way to achieve this was to infiltrate it using investigative corpse marionettes. However, this carried significant risks.
Dorothy surmised that an agency like the Security Bureau would undoubtedly have counter-surveillance measures against mystical detection. Sending corpse marionettes inside would likely result in their detection by the Bureau’s anti-surveillance systems, which could be extremely dangerous.
Her reasoning wasn’t unfounded. During her occasional observations of Gregor, Dorothy had glimpsed material requisition reports from the Bureau, which clearly stated that they regularly purchased Lantern spiritual materials from the Radiance Church for internal anti-surveillance purposes. Dorothy speculated that the Bureau might use these materials to power monitoring devices capable of detecting Beyonder intrusions.
While Dorothy possessed the Concealment Ring, the ‘Shadow’ spirituality it contained was limited. Given that the task of finding the mole required prolonged surveillance, she doubted it would suffice. Moreover, employing the ring through corpse marionettes posed additional challenges.
For these reasons, Dorothy chose not to infiltrate the Bureau directly but instead adopted a more cautious and time-consuming approach.
Holding the sheets of maps, Dorothy carefully examined the circled points. These marked locations were primarily doors or staircases, identified as potential "entry points."
"Spread across a single district, three buildings, nine entrances… Hmph, it seems the Igwynt Serenity Bureau has taken some measures to maintain secrecy," Dorothy muttered as she analyzed the maps.
Through her exhaustive search over the past few days, she had uncovered the structure of the Igwynt Serenity Bureau.
The Bureau’s headquarters was located underground, beneath Cypress Fir Tower. Its entrances, disguised as ordinary doors, were scattered across three adjacent buildings, including Cypress Fir Tower itself. All these entrances were situated on the first floors, leading to staircases going downward. Bureau employees disguised themselves as ordinary office workers, entering and exiting through these hidden points daily.
Identifying these entrances wasn’t difficult. Dorothy simply had to use her corpse marionettes to inspect every door and room in the surrounding area. Any that didn’t align with standard building layouts or seemed suspicious could be flagged.
For instance, if a corridor had a row of doors leading to regular rooms but one door opened to a staircase or hallway, it stood out as unusual. Dorothy could station her marionettes on the ceiling to observe people opening doors and note what lay behind them. She also tracked janitors to see which rooms they avoided cleaning. Additionally, her marionettes explored the building’s ventilation systems to identify fake rooms that lacked proper airflow. These and other methods proved invaluable.
Incidentally, with the enhancement of her corpse marionettes due to the ‘Revelation’ spirituality in her ring, Dorothy could now control arachnid creatures like spiders, further improving her surveillance capabilities, though she had yet to manage insects.
After expending significant time and effort and employing numerous techniques, Dorothy had identified nine hidden entrances to the Serenity Bureau. Her next step involved stationing her maximum number of corpse marionettes at these entrances to monitor comings and goings. This would allow her to ascertain the Bureau’s personnel.
And among them lay the mole Dorothy sought.