Home/Baby Villain and Papa/ch40

Chapter 40: Who Are They!

After returning the children to their families, Garren and the special investigative team requested a private audience with the Emperor a few hours later. They spoke with him for a long time in the tightly controlled audience chamber. After several outbursts of the Emperor's roar, another investigation targeting the kidnappers began that afternoon.

Full authority was given to the special investigative team, and Garren declared he would not disband them until the investigation was complete. For more precise inquiries, personnel from the Imperial Intelligence Bureau and the Police Agency's Intelligence Division were seconded to join the investigation.

Their first task was to identify the kidnappers. Their second was to investigate the route by which Garren's orders—specifically, his directive to surveil certain kidnappers around the Bakers' house—had been omitted.

But the deeper they dug, the more tangled the results became. Both tasks led nowhere. It was clear the grave robbers' organization was substantial—but no one knew who they were, and no one had seen them. There were no witnesses who had seen the "Elders" fleeing the hideout the previous night. Or rather, there were some, but no one knew which direction they'd actually escaped.

Through this ordeal, Garren realized that rescuing the children had been nothing short of divine intervention. The grave robbers were that meticulous and cunning.

To identify them, Garren considered apprehending those who had been surveilling—or pretending to surveil—the Bakers' house and lab. They had remained in the area, feigning ignorance, even until dawn on the day of the rescue operation. Garren had left them alone until now to avoid provoking the kidnappers and endangering the children. But now that the children were safe, there was no reason to pretend not to see their schemes. Garren ordered his subordinates to arrest them all, expecting a good yield of information.

But it was in vain. By the time Garren gave the order, they had already withdrawn. According to the investigation, they had vanished without a trace the moment the rescue operation succeeded—neither near the Bakers' house and lab, nor anywhere in Roman territory.

So Garren shifted his focus—from people to objects.

According to Peron, the weapons used by the grave robbers were made of a metal commonly used by frontier monsters and nomads—similar yet distinct from steel, iron, and the alloys commonly used in the Empire. Garren began tracing the metal's origin. The investigation revealed it came from the distant desert kingdom of Roca, where it was called "Menka." Garren thus suspected the grave robbers were based in or near Roca. He even considered that the group itself might be agents sent by Roca—but that theory quickly collapsed.

"Your Grace, as you know, metals that can be used to make weapons are strategic materials in both our nations. Strategic materials are not managed by one person or one family—every step of distribution and mining is meticulously recorded. Occasionally, agricultural tools or discarded mercenary weapons fall into nomadic hands and are repurposed as weapons, but those are small quantities. It is absolutely impossible for a group of over two hundred to be armed with Menka."

The Kingdom of Roca flatly denied Garren's suspicion that they had supplied weapons to the kidnappers. According to undercover agents, this situation had actually put Roca on high alert as well. They had even launched a full investigation into the metal's distribution and mining.

Hearing this, Garren dismissed any connection between the grave robbers and Roca.

With the metal trail going cold, Garren turned his attention to the "ruins." But this time, too, yielded little. According to the investigation, the Bakers had been the foremost authorities on the subject, and after their deaths, there was no one actively researching those ruins. There were a few researchers, but none had devoted decades of deep study to the level of authority. As one professor Garren consulted put it:

"To begin with, all the materials related to those 'ruins' are written in a lost language. There were people who could interpret Laphan until the Manka Massacre 97 years ago—but after that, they all but disappeared. I'd say it's hopeless."

Without the ability to interpret the language, and with most of the materials destroyed in the massacre, research on the ruins was virtually impossible. The ruins' existence had long been treated in academic circles as an old tale—a legend.

No matter which direction he investigated, no results emerged. As time passed, Garren grew more haggard. Even the Emperor, who had been raging about who dared kidnap his nephew, told Garren to take his time.

It was amid those days that Garren finally found a clue.

"Son, your daughter will forget what you look like. Do you even remember you have a daughter?"

The old couple said both families would gather to celebrate Janice and Raymond's safe return.

"A party? What party!"

With the kidnappers still a threat to Janice, every moment was urgent in the search for clues to ensure her safety. Garren reacted coldly to the idea of a party.

"I can't go."

Garren flatly refused. The old lady tried to persuade him, but he was adamant—there was no room for negotiation.

But that afternoon—

<Please come.>

A love letter from his daughter, delivered to the Ducal residence, changed Garren's mind.

"Goodness! Who is this? Isn't this my son who said he couldn't come?"

Though her voice expressed surprise, the old lady's eyes said she'd known he'd come.

"Oh? You actually came?"

"...You asked me to?"

"Well, yes—but I didn't think you'd actually show up."

Janice greeted him with a bewildered tone. Her words were a bit curt, as usual—but that was nothing new. More than anything, Garren remembered the joy and delight that had welled up in her eyes when she'd spotted him on the rescue day.

"But honestly, I did miss you a little."

"..."

"A little a lot? We haven't seen each other since that day. You said you were busy."

"...Didn't you say you didn't want to see me?"

"I never said that, though?"

Actually, Janice following Garren around like a tail and chattering away was a little endearing.

Back   Next