Side Character Who Became the Pseudo-Protagonist

Chapter 20: One Coincidence Too Many

"Evidence?"

"Circumstantial..."

Claire narrowed her eyes to what I said. "Then that’s a serious accusation to make."

"I know, which is why I’ll prove it to you."

At this point, I couldn’t exactly say "Oh, I know the future and this one exact thing is going to happen".

Because frankly, I didn’t know much about it either. The game had shown the result, and not the process itself.

Still, I had to try and convince them somehow.

"The Mimir Database. I can use it to prove the correlation, then you can decide whether to trust what I’m saying or not."

"Well," I added, "I was planning to approach you with the same request anyway. You just happened to save me the trouble by recruiting me into the Strategic Division first."

The Triad stayed silent for a while, after all, usage of the Mimir Database in the wrong hands, even student-level access would prove extremely dangerous.

But with my credibility of a Midgard and what I’ve shown thus far, it was enough of a reason for them to nod.

Claire sighed, running a finger through her hair.

"Supervised access only."

"Fair enough."

Grant nudged his chin to the far door.

"Follow me."

***

We walked inside a dark tunnel for what seemed like five minutes, seemingly going nowhere.

’Maybe it was supposed to be a trap or deterrent in case someone found the database by accident?’

Though, after a while, the four of us emerged in a room filled to the brim with wires, cables, and screens running everywhere.

A single bridge was connected from our entrance to the middle of the room, where a lone pillar stood, embedded with a holographic screen.

Crossing the bridge, we arrived at the screen before Claire raised her hand, her Bracelet-type Spell Driver lighting up in accordance with the access.

[Assistant Administrator Claire Vanaris — Access Level Confirmed.]

Instantly, thousands of numbers and text appeared. Articles, reports, and even some classified incidents had been laid bare before me.

"Alright," Claire nodded. "What do you want to search for."

I pulled up my school terminal and accessed the picture of the poster I had taken before Colette had left and went through every single detail.

"First, the when and where. The event happening in two days, which coincides with the meeting that Astaron was supposed to have with Ygg."

"Also, it’s location being at the Urban Civic Center of Yhotun is too suspicious, as it’s an area that Asgard can’t easily interfere with."

Claire simply nodded, pulling up the database and searching for those exact same criteria, and sure enough, a classified report came up.

It was about the Ygg—Astaron Summit, however, what stood out was the location of the meeting, which was never announced to the public.

Happening in the territory of Helgarm, the summit would happen in the complete opposite side of the country.

Which conveniently made it so that Asgard was the only force that was close and capable enough to put a stop to them.

Riley gave it the benefit of the doubt, voicing her opinions. "It could just be a coincidence, Yhotun is close to Asgard and on the side where most of the students from Astaron live."

She folded her arms on her chest. "Maybe it was made in mind for accessibility and to allow the students to get there easier?"

"That’s exactly why it’s suspicious. Why would they need to ensure that when there are other civilians coming as well?"

"Hmm..."

"Regardless, let’s move on. The organizers."

I pointed to my student terminal, on the second line. "Has anybody heard of Civic Bridge Coalition?"

Grant shook his head, frowning. Claire did the same, but decided to search the group on the database.

And once again, my money had been spot-on.

Civic Bridge Coalition was a group that was just created a few weeks ago, with complete yet shallow paperwork.

Worst of all, they had been sponsored by a company called Edenline Public Solutions, which upon further digging from Claire, spelled out the obvious.

"No employee registry or physical office," she muttered. "The given address is a shared admistrative mailbox in Yhotun."

"In other words—"

"A ghost company," Grant finished her sentence.

But when the name came up, something had caught my eye. I remembered briefly reading about the article that had been made after the Testing Center Incident.

The main reason that was listed for the Dungeon Outbreak was due to a faulty Logos Disruptor, causing the portal to lock on and spill out monsters.

"Hold on," I tapped Claire on the shoulder. "Could you search if Edenline had any subsidiary or daughter companies?"

A list of what looked to be at least a dozen or so company names appeared, and upon researching, all of them had been ghost companies—

Except one.

Asteronix Gateworks, a company with exactly one employee, and that same employee was now currently sitting in jail.

Why? Because he was the scapegoat for the Testing Center Incident.

The given story went as follows, the Center’s usual maintenance company pulled out last second, causing the Center to urgently hire a new company.

Its sole registered employee was said to have performed the final maintenance check. Leading to the story of one careless technician causing such a tragedy...

Or at least that was what happened on paper.

"Inclined to believe me now? I was there, at the Testing Center Incident."

The Triad exchanged glances with a grim expression on their face. They knew the evidence was hard to ignore, but still, those facts were circumstantial and weren’t definitive yet.

However, I managed to at least convince them that the danger was real.

Grant nodded finally. "What are you planning? We can’t exactly raid the place just with this evidence alone."

"Yeah," Claire added on. "We still have no idea if it’s actually connected to White Noise or not..."

"This is where I need your help," I glanced toward Claire’s Direction. "I need you to go talk to that one employee, find out what he’s hiding using your Neural Interference Type Spell."

And I wasn’t asking her this from her for no reason.

Like all the other Houses of the Nines, the Vanaris lineage also possess an amazing Innate Spell called [Electro-Telepathy].

It was spell that allows a Vanaris to tap into the brain’s electrical signals sent between synapses, letting Claire somewhat read thoughts, detect lies, among other things.

In the game, an interrogation scene was shown using this exact same Spell. So needless to say, someone like Claire, who is the heir of Vanaris, can do it.

"What about the two of us?" Riley said, pointing at herself and Grant. "Should we sit here and kick our feet?"

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I need both of you near the venue."

Grant’s eyes narrowed. "For what?"

"If something really does happen, you two need to get the civilians away from the area and keep anyone suspicious from slipping out."

Grant nodded slowly, but something seemed to catch his attention.

"And what are you going to do?"

A small smile appeared on my face, though honestly, I wasn’t sure whether it was excitement or nerves.

"Me?"

Definitely the latter.

"I’m going straight into the tiger’s den."