**Chapter 260: 36. Snow Cloud Assault Team (Two in One)**
Feeling the vague silhouette eavesdropping next door, Fisher suddenly raised his head. However, just as he withdrew from the focused state of inscribing magic, the vision of his soul abruptly vanished, leaving only a wooden wall in front of him, devoid of emotion.
“What’s wrong? You’re so jumpy, are you planning to take off while inscribing magic?”
Fisher didn’t respond to Emhart’s slightly aggrieved voice due to being ignored by him; he simply raised his index finger to his lips, urging him to keep quiet. Emhart was so angry he almost blew up, preparing to argue with Fisher from a distance.
But Fisher truly didn’t have time to deal with him right now, and even if he ignored him, Emhart would still shamelessly come over to talk.
Someone was definitely eavesdropping on the conversation from next door; the only question was who it was, and whether they were interested in him or the crew of the Iceberg Queen.
Not continuing the conversation, he planned to investigate the identity of the intruder. He took a magic ring he had just inscribed and put it on his hand. As his magical circuit activated the magic rune inscribed on it, he gently pressed the ring against the wall before him.
Three-ring modern magic, **Alert Transmission**.
The effect of this magic can display the outline of distant silhouettes and manipulate the position of the echo near the magic rune rather than at the observation point. The person being observed from afar wouldn’t notice the spell in effect. The robot Haldor behind Valentina had locked onto him using this, an essential tool for remote spellcasting.
Originally, Fisher intended to use it later when he actually engaged with Nali’s overseas covert agency, to act as his “eyes.” But since someone was already eyeing him at the moment, using one to determine the other party’s bottom line would be fine too.
“Buzz…”
As the light on the ring grew brighter, an almost invisible milky white halo suddenly spread out from Fisher’s ring, silently rushing toward the next room. Everyone present saw the halo gradually disappear into the wall, sketching out the layout of the room next door.
It was as if a two-dimensional world outlined in chalk suddenly appeared in his eye, and Aoxi was taken aback seeing such a scene for the first time, her mouth slightly agape.
Of course, her astonishment was more so due to the situation in the next room.
The adjacent room was of the same standard as the one Captain Alagina booked. It wasn’t small but also not large. However, beside the bed in that room stood several glimmering mechanical beings, filled with intricate mechanical parts, resembling a piece of artwork.
It stood by the window, silently rotating, with a round mechanical eye-like part constantly scanning the street outside, almost like a fully automated smart object.
In the center of everyone’s gaze, just as Fisher sensed in his soul vision, a figure approximately reaching Fisher’s chest leaned against the wall, listening to the voices from here.
She was dressed in a café maid outfit, with a pair of fluffy cat ears on her head pressing against the wall, twitching occasionally. He wondered if they might be better at hearing than human ears, as her body slightly bent in listening posture, revealing a fluffy cat tail swaying behind her.
It was indeed the Cloud Cat breed maid from Cloudtop Café, and surprisingly, it wasn’t the one he had encountered before!
Fisher examined the face of the Cloud Cat breed maid listening in, realizing this one had much shorter hair than the one he met earlier, and her cheeks were chubbier too. Maintaining her listening posture, she looked like a soft dumpling stuck on a plate.
Aside from her, a male Cloud Cat breed dressed as a barista sat on the bed next to the steam machines, with his legs crossed. His ears were significantly longer than those of the other female Cloud Cat maids, and his tail was round and plump, barely resembling a cat tail.
It seemed he had inadvertently poked the Cloud Cat’s nest this time, as everyone in the Cloudtop Café were Cloud Cats.
Seeing the situation in the next room, Fisher made no rash moves. Aoxi silently stood up from the bed, and Emhart perched on Fisher’s shoulder, closing his mouth, fearing that if they spoke any further, they would end up in a fierce fire fight.
Fisher, surprisingly, removed his gaze from the subhuman in the next room and turned his attention to the machine that was constantly rotating its head.
He was more curious about what that thing was.
Yes, Fisher had never seen anything like that, nor did he think that Nali Royal Academy or Shivali Sun Academy had the current technological level to create such advanced machinery.
He had attended a few mechanical research classes at the Royal Academy, where the professors defined steam machines as “mechanical tools powered by steam.” They had been widely used in transportation, weaponry, and prosthetics, but Fisher believed that even after so many years, it was absolutely impossible for anything capable of automatically rotating and observing the external environment to exist.
Seeing that steam machine assembled beside Valentina was already a bit absurd. At that moment, Fisher thought that machine was a relic. Did the guys next door also use a relic?
Behind him, Aoxi stretched her wings and lightly swept across her cloak. The daggers suspended inside the cloak seemed to come alive and flew towards her wings, accurately landing in the gaps between her feathers one by one.
From an external view, the relic made it seem as if she draped a cool green feather coat over her wings, but unfortunately, even if all the daggers hung inside the cloak were worn, they could only cover the very front part of her wings.
After preparing the feather coat, Aoxi looked at Fisher, who was still deep in thought at the table, seemingly waiting for his opinion.
But he shook his head at Aoxi and put another ring on the middle finger of his right hand. He then pressed his hand against the wall again, meaning, “I’ll handle it.”
As the ring in his hand glowed, transparent threads seemed to extend from the wall as if they had thoughts, creating the links directly on the wall of the other party’s room.
As the transparent threads connected to the ring penetrated the room next door, the voices of the conversation there were captured by Fisher.
“Tsk, when did a magician appear on the Iceberg Queen? Inscribing magic takes this long; my back is about to go sore…”
“Focus on the task, Alinur. It’s important that Alagina left those two here, especially since that man is her lover. We must wait for her to return… Now isn’t a time to be running around. When Elin went out to buy bread, you should have kept an eye on her.”
“I know I was wrong! Hehe, by the way, brother, you can’t imagine what just happened. Alagina’s first mate is secretly involved with that man. I feel Alagina should wear a green hat; it suits her.”
“Alinur, focus. Don’t concern yourself with matters outside the task; this gossip has nothing to do with us. Oh, but the Sardinians are supposed to be very loyal; how could such a thing happen?”
“I just found it especially interesting!”
Defamation! They’re slandering me!
Hearing the unabashed slander from the conversation next door, Fisher’s expression transformed instantly into one of a dead fish eye, momentarily unsure how to respond to the blatant accusations from them.
He hadn’t done anything to Aoxi.
Feeling disgruntled by the slander, Fisher waved his finger, causing the magical circuit’s sensing to extend along the spinner threads, probing the magical composition in the other party’s room…
Soon, Fisher discovered that they had no magic on them at all—none for communication, none for attack—just a dagger underneath the skirt of that Cloud Cat maid named Alinur, and a firearm next to her presumably brother had only that.
The strange machine placed at the bedside seemed to solely function for scouting the outside enemies, and even Fisher extending magic into their room found nothing…
Since this was the case, Fisher decided to be unreserved. He also had a few minor things he wanted to learn from the other party.
Determining that the opponent had no strong means of resistance, Fisher skillfully manipulated the transparent spinner with his fingers, first ensnaring that bizarre machine.
The male Cloud Cat sitting on the bed was still smoking, yet within his peripheral view while lighting up, he suddenly realized that the mechanical device they were given for missions had stopped moving. It didn’t seem like an internal malfunction but more like… caught up?
He squinted, his vision piercing through the smoke wafting from the window onto the machine’s surface. After pausing for a few seconds, he suddenly noticed the almost transparent threads had somehow tightly wrapped around the machine.
“Not good, Alinur…”
His face changed dramatically, quickly realizing something. He was about to get up and grab the firearm next to him but found his left leg and right hand uncontrollably moving in opposite directions, turning to see that branches of transparent threads had wrapped around him as well.
“Brother, what is… going on…”
He looked in horror towards his sister, only to see her ensnared against the wall by those transparent threads, unable to move at all.
Neck, chest, abdomen, limbs.
That damned transparent threads were all over Alinur’s body. The next moment, all the threads in the room came alive, as if a puppeteer were pulling a marionette, yanking Alinur towards the ceiling.
“Ugh! Brother Blair, they… they found us…”
“Zzzzzz!”
Blair’s expression shrank. Just as the transparent threads were about to replicate the puppeteering operation on him, his entire body twisted mid-air like an agile cat, escaping the grip of the threads at a bizarre angle.
One hand grasped the dagger tied to his pants leg and hurled it towards the threads binding Alinur, attempting to free one of her hands so she could pull out her weapon beneath her skirt for self-defense.
“Bang!”
“Ah!”
But just as the dagger slipped from his fingers, the door to the room was suddenly burst open, and with a gust of wind, Blair was hurled straight into a torrent of force, uncontrollably crashing against the wall.
In the center of the room, Aoxi, with her cyan wings folding among the many lightening threads, gazed down at Blair with a slight stirring of her expression.
“Zzzzzz!”
As Fisher behind her gradually applied more force with his fingers, the machine standing by the window was slowly being pulled apart by his threads, producing crackling arcs of electricity that startled Aoxi back a step or two.
“Warning… warning… zzzzz…”
This… steam machine can talk?!
Watching the machine flashing with arcs, Aoxi did not dare act recklessly. It wasn’t until Fisher, frowning while walking into the room with Emhart perched on his shoulder, that she moved a little closer to his side.
Countless transparent threads began to disperse, gradually retracting back into the ring on Fisher’s hand, waiting for his next call to action.
The spinner magic was low-cost, durable, and convenient to use; it was a genius design.
That was how Fisher evaluated his own magic.
“Brother!”
“Uh… my head…”
Fisher ignored the two Cloud Cats he had successfully ambushed. He felt that their combat abilities were weak, and he speculated their ranks hadn’t even reached the extraordinary level, so he shifted his gaze towards the machine at the window that was still emitting arcs and starting to speak about malfunctioning…
What on earth was that thing?
“Emhart, have you seen this thing before?”
“No… never. My god, who made this? It’s amazing. Look, it’s even flashing with light… Wait, could it be a Holy Spawn! They still exist… No, it can’t be. This thing looks too ugly, it doesn’t align with the aesthetic of a Holy Spawn; they couldn’t possibly have created it.”
Fisher approached the device emitting arcs while holding his unextended Fluid Sword. He noticed the strange apparatus seemed to have a deep red glow pulsating within its shell. Through the gap pulled by the spinner, he suddenly saw a strange part shining red at the center of the device.
That part appeared to be the heart of the whole device, with numerous hose-like lines extending from it connecting to various parts of the apparatus. However, due to Fisher’s previous attack, several noticeable gaps had appeared on the core part, from which deep blue arcs were continuously erupting.
As time slowly passed, the glow of the core also dimmed, and the entire apparatus seemed to regress into a pile of useless gears and iron plates…
Fisher understood clearly that relying solely on these gears couldn’t have produced such a device. The genuinely functional core part wasn’t just any ordinary thing, nor could it be a relic or magic… this technology, far beyond its time, he had only ever seen in Feilon and Erwind.
He was certain that this was a masterpiece of the completion manual.
“Uh, damn, my head…”
At that moment, the male Cloud Cat named Blair, who had been knocked over by the wind stirred up by Aoxi, sat up from the messy bed, clutching his head. Aoxi glanced at him and walked to the door to shut it, preventing more people from noticing the situation inside.
As Blair sat upright from the mess with his hands on his head, the first thing he saw was the cold-eyed man examining the machines closely. The man suddenly spoke in the Northern Region language, albeit with a strange accent,
“I have two questions: where did this thing come from? And why are you monitoring us?”
It was only when the man turned to look at him that Blair suddenly noticed a book with the same cold expression as the man standing on his right shoulder, having only one eye and one mouth…
Hmm, at this moment, that book also looked at him seriously.
However, the pressure from the man was indeed terrifying, making Blair’s ears twitch nervously. He glanced at Aoxi, who was staring at his sister still stuck on the ceiling, confirming that this man was indeed Alagina’s lover, and the magical attack they had experienced was executed by him.
It seemed that Alagina’s lover was no simple character.
“Eavesdropping? We are here to protect your safety! The Iceberg Queen shouldn’t be here at this time; it’s completely chaotic. When your captain came here, we should have contacted her to inform her of the island’s status, but who knew she would leave so quickly? We can’t move freely; we can only wait for her to return!”
Blair rubbed his shoulder, seeing Fisher’s expression unchanged, knowing he completely doubted his statement. Thus, he could only look toward the already damaged machine that was ensnared by the spinner, feeling a bit reluctant as he said,
“As for this thing… it’s a work support device purchased by our **Snow Cloud Assault Team**, something ordinary people don’t get to see, and I don’t know how it works.”
“Purchased… from where?”
“How would I know? I’m just a guy on a government salary… By the way, how long are you planning to keep my sister suspended?”
No one replied to Blair’s question. Instead, Aoxi turned her head upon hearing the term “Snow Cloud Assault Team,” seemingly recognizing their organization.
“Hah, so it’s this group. Have they really fallen to the point of recruiting subhumans to do their work?”
Emhart, who had maintained a cold expression a second ago, immediately turned into a jokester upon hearing Blair’s mention, winking at Fisher and whispering in a duck-like voice.
“Do you know them?”
“Ah, you’re from Nali, so it’s understandable you’re not aware. Some locals in the Northern Region also don’t recognize them… Miya, a small country located in the northern part of the Northern Region, close to the Sema Snow Mountain. Being a small country means small matters, so their intelligence agency is certainly not well-known.”
“However, as the closest nation to the Turan Family, they certainly have received funding from the Turan Family. The Snow Cloud Assault Team has long had weaponry and equipment comparable to the Sardinian intelligence agency… But still, what they have now is just too absurd…”
No kidding, nothing created by the completion manual isn’t absurd.
However, Fisher had only heard the name Miya, lacking knowledge about other relevant information. They were far from the Sardinian Kingdom, let alone Nali.
But since Miya had an inexplicable relationship with the Turan Family, could it be that this device was also acquired from them?
With no answers, Fisher rubbed his forehead, feeling a bit of a headache. The problem he faced now was if there was another holder of the completion manual in the Northern Region, then he must consider whether he should continue heading there.
Faced with two owners of the completion manual was no laughing matter; it could likely lead to his demise, and Fisher couldn’t take that risk.
But if he didn’t go to the Northern Region, wouldn’t all the snow mountain-related information and those imprints he had collected become utterly useless?
Fisher sighed, temporarily pushing the dilemma deep down and turned his gaze to the male Cloud Cat dressed as a barista beside him.
This guy had short white hair that had been cropped. Unlike the female Cloud Cats, he had noticeably longer tufts of fur growing on the sides of his cheeks, and hair on his hands as well, suggesting that male Cloud Cats had more abundant fur than females.
“You guys came for that thing taken by the Nali Exploration Company, didn’t you?”
Blair was about to say something when he suddenly turned pale upon hearing Fisher’s words.
“You… you know? No, listen to me, it’s not that simple. It’s not just the Nali Exploration Company; there are more behind them…”
“More specifically, Nali’s official people—I’d guess the Nali Overseas Covert Agency?”
Blair opened his mouth, not knowing how to respond to “how did you know?” Instead, he blankly added, “Also, the Sardinian Knight Order.”
“Sardinian Kingdom?”
Fisher’s expression shifted slightly. He hadn’t expected this to involve the Sardinian Kingdom. He pondered for several seconds before suddenly realizing something, turning to Blair and asking,
“Wait, what exactly was taken by the Nali Exploration Company?”
“The **Pristine Ice**, and it was a very large piece, excavated from a Cangniao Tribe tomb. Before we could reach in time to stop the tomb robbery, they had already taken the Pristine Ice away from Miya.”
Upon hearing his words, Fisher abruptly understood what Nali was up to.
In simple terms, Nali financed the excavation of a precious piece of Pristine Ice in Miya, intending to sell it to the Sardinian Kingdom in the Northern Region.
Of course, the purpose was not just for money.
Because while Pristine Ice could be deemed precious, it had no other use to the Nali people except for returning it to a museum. However, for those believing in the Frost Phoenix, the Pristine Ice, proving the existence of the Phoenix, would undoubtedly serve as a holy relic of immense religious significance…
This thing originally belonged to Miya and was now being sold off by Nali to the Sardinians. Fisher wouldn’t buy that it was unintentional.
“Listen, you have no idea how serious this is. The Pristine Ice is extremely important to us, or to the Northern Region. If this falls into the hands of the Sardinian Kingdom, the consequences would be unimaginable. It would lead to a religious revolution! Do you know how many people in the Northern Region worship the Phoenix? If this Pristine Ice appears, it would be as horrifying as if your Mother descended upon the Western Continent.”
Fisher understood what Blair implied. Even if he believed that the Mother might exist, in the current Western Continent, not even Cardu had a thing genuinely used by the Mother…
If something the Mother personally crafted suddenly materialized in the Western Continent, Nali and Shivali might be fine, but the kingdoms east of Cardu would truly ignite a bloody storm once again.
Regarding the religious matters, Fisher couldn’t provide an evaluation, but he definitely couldn’t deny the enormous hidden power it contained—this principle was universal in the Northern Region.
“We originally intended to reclaim the Pristine Ice from the Nali people here, but unexpectedly, they planned to call them over directly to retrieve it instead of transporting it to the Sardinian Kingdom… But don’t forget, the Iceberg Queen is currently wanted by the Sardinian Kingdom; the ones coming for the pickup are the Phoenix Knights of the Coalition. With their strength and style, they absolutely won’t let Alagina, the criminal, escape.”
The Phoenix Knights were the best-equipped, most powerful knights under the Sardinian Kingdom, said to possess extraordinary abilities, and with equipment made without consideration of cost. If they came to take the Pristine Ice, the situation could undoubtedly become especially troublesome.
“So, do you want to work with us?”
Originally, the plan of the Miya Snow Cloud Assault Team was to reclaim that piece of Pristine Ice themselves, but who knew a formidable force like the Phoenix Knights stumbled into their plan. Therefore, they had to adapt and prepare to collaborate with Alagina, who was equally opposed to the Sardinians.
As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
“It’s a win-win. I… Wait, my tail! Ah, damn! It hurts!”
Blair was about to say something when Fisher suddenly saw a thin plume of smoke rising from behind him, accompanied by a burning smell.
Immediately after, his expression changed suddenly as he jumped up from the ground, frantically patting his backside.
Fisher suddenly recalled that this cat had been smoking before Aoxi stormed into the room; she had knocked over him and his cigarette with her wing. He had been so engrossed in conversation that he hadn’t noticed when the cigarette had fallen and burned his backside.
“Rip~”
In front of him, Blair was jumping around in place, covering his burning tail, while his sister Alinur, who had been watching Aoxi, was having a tough time too.
She had been suspended by Fisher’s spinner, and whether due to her weight or the material of her maid outfit, she ended up causing the spinner to snap from the strain!
“Ugh! Wait, my clothes, no…”
This sudden situation made the atmosphere in the room awkward, and Fisher looked speechlessly at these two “agents” from Miya: one was hopping around with a burning tail while the other was gazing at her slowly shredding clothes, red-faced and on the verge of tears…
How did it feel that cooperating with them seemed utterly unreliable?
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(End of Chapter)
