Chapter 174 Aleister's True Accomplice
The Moriarty Museum is less than a kilometer away from the Red Queen's District Supervisory Office.
This is so that the Supervisory Bureau can arrive immediately if the museum encounters robbery or theft. Such a short distance also makes it convenient for Aiwass to pick up Shadow Demon.
Aiwass sat steadily in the chair in the office, drinking tea and reading the newspaper, quietly waiting for good news.
It wasn't until Lily quietly emerged from the shadows behind him that he asked softly, "Did you find it?"
“I found it this time.”
Lily also whispered, "It's indeed here."
She was a little surprised - Aiwass actually knew the secret of this underground secret room!
Aiwass knew why Lily was surprised and couldn't help laughing.
Of course he knows.
Not only did Aiwass know the exact location of the Supervisory Bureau's underground secret rooms... but he knew four of them at once.
Shadow of Avalon was the first version of the main questline he personally completed after skipping the early main questline. Back then, returning to Avalon, he would run around the map - some places that were previously off-limits in Avalon were now bases for various secret organizations, resistance groups, or simply became dungeons.
The main tasks at that time were to run around in one restricted area after another and deliver messages to different organizations.
Of course, Aiwass knew the location of the agency. Since the Supervisory Bureau hadn't been abandoned yet, it would be impossible to enter the agency openly—but going the other way through the ventilation duct would be no problem.
Lily can transform into shadows, and Shadow Fiend can also transform into liquid and flow freely. Before, Shadow Fiend could not leave Aiwass's side, but now with Lily as a "mother-and-child router", Shadow Fiend's signal can be carried to distant places.
So they followed the ventilation duct location given by Aiwass and flowed back into the tightly closed prison door.
Aiwass didn't know where the two people were imprisoned, but he knew without a doubt that it must be one of the four underground secret rooms.
There are only four in total anyway, and they can be listed by exhaustive enumeration.
This was their only option when nothing happened in the underground chamber. The more important the prisoner, the more they had to follow the rules while incarcerated. They had to follow the rules completely, so that if something went wrong, they would have someone to blame. That way, they could only blame the enemy for being too strong, not their negligence.
Glass Island is a prominent peninsula, surrounded by the sea on nearly three sides. Excluding the municipalities surrounding the metropolitan area, the core area consists of only four districts: from the inland northwest to the southeast, these are the largest metropolitan area, the Red Queen District, the White Queen District, and the second largest, the Lloyd District.
There were four underground chambers for holding important criminals: two in the Red Queen District, one in the White Queen District, and one in the Metropolitan District. Considering the security level of the Lloyd's District, no such facility was set up in the Lloyd's District.
The bishop's home was in the Red Queen District, so Aiwass and Lily planned to start looking nearby.
The first one was not found. There was no Lloyd or Boca in it. Instead, there were some people Lily did not know, so she left quietly again.
They were lucky and found the second one.
In order to prevent the ability to leave a trace, Aihua specifically asked the Shadow Demon to completely wrap Lily up.
Shadow Demon understood it immediately and even specially created a different body shape. It was a better figure than Lily's, with more defined abdominal and arm muscles - it was said that this was the image of Miss Assassin.
"Did you leave the ring behind?" Aiwass asked after breathing a sigh of relief.
"Well, I left my ring behind."
Lily nodded.
Keeping the noble red ring on one's body is always a disaster, but throwing it away casually is more likely to expose the problem. And now is the perfect time -
Chairman Lloyd was devoured by the shadow demon, leaving no trace of his existence. If he hadn't left anything behind, people might have thought he had escaped from prison.
But having the Noble Red Society's ring blatantly displayed on the bed... that would be a provocation, capable of drawing the Inspectorate's attention completely to the Noble Red.
"Yes, Master."
Lily said nervously, "He left a last word before he died. I let the shadow demon eat them."
Upon hearing this, Aiwass was slightly stunned.
He pressed on, “What’s the content?”
"He seemed to mistake the Shadow's voice for mine," Lily said. "I couldn't see clearly, but the Shadow said... he wrote 'Aleister', 'Woman', 'Noble Red'.
"Although the content is wrong...but I think, if Aleister is really a woman born from the Noble Red, she would be very nervous when she saw this and would erase the evidence...Am I doing the right thing, Master?"
Hearing this, Aiwass breathed a sigh of relief.
He laughed and said, “You didn’t do it right – but that’s why you did it right.
"High-ranking law mages of the Path of Authority can recount the deceased's final actions. Although you erased the bloody words, they can recover them from his retrospective image.
"But it's obvious that given Aleister's identity, he shouldn't have this kind of knowledge. So it's only natural that he would erase it."
This can be considered a case of turning a clumsy idea into a clever one.
"Looks like I can prepare to return," Aiwass praised, "Thanks to you, Lily. You completely distinguished Aleister from me."
And this can also explain why Aiwass is safe and sound - he already has a legendary love history and rumors, and now it is just another rumor.
Of course, this was an explanation aimed at the general public. People preferred entertaining news to the real thing. So Iverson specifically prepared something that would appeal to their tastes, something they were more willing to listen to… At best, it would only damage his reputation.
But on the other hand, this is not the first time his reputation has been damaged.
When facing official questioning, Aiwass also prepared another set of excuses - secret information involving the extraordinary that the official would not disclose.
But Lily was still a little worried: "This time, with President Lloyd being murdered...will the Inspectorate step up their investigation? Should we hide for a while longer?"
“—No need.”
Aiwass shook his head. "Instead, it makes the most sense for me to return now. Because only now will the Shadow Fiend be away from guarding me, and I'll have a chance of escaping.
"If it's a few days later, it would be unnatural."
—Not to mention, the Inspectorate doesn’t really care whether the President of Lloyd’s is alive or not.
Aiwass thought to himself.
He knew that Tommy Lloyd must have a lot of leverage over people.
But the giant certainly didn't know that if that thing had any use at all, it wouldn't be completely useless.
If there were only a few or a dozen knights with problems in Avalon, then his information would indeed be valuable... but the opposite is true. There are only a dozen or so knights who are completely fine.
Then his intelligence is actually just a handle for political struggle.
Isn’t it easy to find something to hold against you?
Isn't that what the Inspectorate does?
In fact, Lloyd had never received any orthodox knight education. Although he inherited the name of Lloyd, he knew nothing about the rules and secrets of the upper class of Avalon - because Aiwass knew that this generation of Lloyd was actually a "cheater."
He had no qualifications to be Lloyd, but he killed the real heir, Roweta, and forcibly took away the title of Lloyd.
The proof is...Tommy has no talent whatsoever.
His death has nothing to do with the main storyline. It's even outside the player's view. Instead, it's the Gray-Green Lady who kills him who enters the dungeon.
As a Lloyd, he left no adopted sons.
Because he has no fondness for humans, he wants to adopt a half-Titan like himself as his son. But at the same time, he's worried that the Titan might kill him like he killed his father. In his opinion, Titans are indeed capable of such a thing.
In other words, Lloyd's legacy ended with him.
Tommy's sister, Miss Lovita, whom he had killed, also returns in Shadow of Avalon and becomes the main story's boss. She died with resentment and was branded a mortal sin by the Fallen Angels, her remaining memories and soul transforming into a nightmare.
The holy sword was once sealed by the half-incubus Merlin, and to unseal it, another incubus must be found. But incubus are quite rare... Roweta is the only one Aiwass remembers.
After defeating her, she stated that Bishop Mathers had come to see her not long ago.
Aiwass will eventually have to reforge the holy sword. Hidden within the holy sword is a high-level phantom demon of light attribute.
At that point, finding Rovetta became a necessary part of the ritual. Killing Tommy was also one of the three conditions she offered in the future to aid the protagonist's team. Aiwass knew Tommy was already dead because he couldn't find him in this quest chain. He had already been killed by Gray-Green.
The Inspectorate would lock Lloyd up, which, in Aiwass's view... was just a fishing expedition.
As Aiwass had said to Sherlock before, sometimes threats were more powerful than captures - as long as they couldn't reach Lloyd, Lloyd's presence would continue to put pressure on them.
The value of Labor as bait was far greater than the goods in his belly. Noble Red would undoubtedly want to kill him, and some impatience-ridden knights would also want to silence him. That was why the Inspectorate had imprisoned him in a secure chamber.
The only miscalculation of the Supervisory Bureau was that they did not expect that someone would be more familiar with this secret room than them.
But on the other hand, because of this... it doesn't really matter whether Lloyd is alive or dead. Because no one can be sure that he is dead... so as long as the news that he was killed by Aleister doesn't leak out, Tommy is still alive.
Therefore, the Supervisory Bureau would never conduct a large-scale search for Aleister. Instead, the information that Aleister killed Tommy must be kept completely secret, and most supervisors would not know that Tommy was dead - he was clearly still "producing intelligence", so how could he be dead?
They could only target the Noble Red. Using the ring as evidence, they could prove that the Noble Red Society attacked the Inspectorate and attempted to rescue Tommy Lloyd. Of course, they failed—and it was precisely because of their failure that they were able to obtain the ring as proof of identity, wasn't it?
From this perspective, the real accomplice that Aiwass chose for Aleister was neither Shadow Demon nor Lily.
Not even Boca and Noble Red…
It's the Inspectorate itself.
——Or rather, the Great Guardian of Avalon.
Have a meal and come back to write the second chapter!
(End of this chapter)
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