The Laughing Swordsman

Apollo stood up and looked around himself, soaking in the enormity of the crater he was in.

"How could this have happened?"

Layla tilted her head to the side.

"I don't know!"

Apollo sighed.

"Whatever..."

He pointed his bokken towards the crater.

"I suppose there won't be anybody playing with us. Somebody already did that, so there's nobody left to play with."

Layla pouted.

"Awwww!"

Apollo shrugged his shoulders.

"The only problem, is I have no idea how to complete this investigation mission."

He looked around himself.

"...After all, there is hardly anything to investigate."

Suddenly, Apollo furrowed his brows. The iron coin in his pocket had heated up. He didn't notice initially, since he was preoccupied with staring at some red ash in his hand.

Apollo pulled out the coin, which was glowing with the usual patterns.

"Huh?"

Layla peered over, staring curiously.

"What is it this time?"

Apollo narrowed his eyes.

"I don't know."

With that, he stepped into the shadow world. There was one of the association's symbols nearby. For a moment, Apollo wondered if the fireball had destroyed the request room as well and if there were any possible ramifications to stepping inside it that were the case.

However, Apollo didn't care that much about playing it safe.

He touched the symbol, and was transported to the request room. Luckily, everything was intact, which made Apollo wonder where exactly this place was.

But he lost interest the next second.

Apollo simply didn't find any use in thinking about things any deeper. Instead, he pulled out his still glowing iron coin and walked over to the grey desk.

Like always, Layla appeared and followed from behind.

As Apollo got closer, the original request parchment revealed itself. Next to it, was a blank piece of paper, a feather, and a bottle of ink. Once he got next to the grey desk, white mist began to form a question.

'Who is Maya?'

Seeing this, Apollo raised an eyebrow. Why did they want to know about Maya?

Despite his confusion, he picked up the feather and dipped it into ink with familiarity. Layla peered over Apollo's shoulder and watched him write swiftly.

Although the writing was rough around the edges, it was quite neat, showing he had practiced it quite a bit.

Apollo sifted through his memories and wrote down anything meaningful he could think of.

Her appearance. A little girl with long light brown hair and blue eyes.

Her origin. A girl that belonged to a village, but the people in that village were all dead.

Her personality. Seemingly naive, but determined to some capacity.

Her abilities. Somehow learned fire spells from a gemstone of a three-horned demon.

Apollo held the feather above the paper, wondering if there was anything else he needed to add, but couldn't think of anything.

In the back of his mind, Apollo wondered if he should keep part of her identity a secret. After all, Jaguar had told him that secrecy was rather important in this line of work.

Then, he remembered Maya wasn't even in this line of work.

With that, he set the feather into the bottle of ink and let out a small sigh. Following that, plumes of grey mist covered the table, covering all the items that were there before.

After a few moments, it cleared to reveal the request paper torn in half, a small black crystal, and a slip of paper.

The mist converged into six separate lines of condensed mist. Since he used to only have two lines of white mist, that mission gave him four chances to use the coin.

On top of that, it didn't consume one in the process, essentially giving an extra one for free.

Apollo then looked down at the things on the table.

The slip of paper had a few words on them.

'Investigation score: Fragmented Core Information

Bonus awards: Five Contribution Points'

Layla's furry ears twitched with curiosity.

"What did you do?"

Apollo blinked a few times.

"I'm not sure."

He was a little startled that the investigation mission was completed so easily. Wasn't he supposed to be investigating Evermore city?

How did it become Maya?

Although Apollo felt the information he put was rather lackluster, for whatever reason, the association saw it as relatively valuable. At least enough to exceed the mission requirements.

Apollo had no idea what five contribution points meant, if that it was a lot or a little. However, it signified the mission was completed fairly well.

...Maybe investigation missions were naturally easy?

Somehow or another, the mission ranked silver was the easiest one so far.

Apollo picked up the black crystal and turned it over a few times. It was in the shape of a rhombus and was engraved with a simple symbol of fire on one side and a phoenix on the other. The actual engravings themselves were almost unnoticeable visually, but could be clearly felt from the texture.

Layla's tail swayed enthusiastically.

"Wow, there's a little fire!"

Apollo turned to Layla with confusion.

"You can see something inside?"

Layla nodded.

"Yeah! Just look at it!"

Apollo turned back to look at the crystal. After focusing, he was able to just barely see something. The black crystal was translucent, but just barely.

From within, a very tiny flame flickered, on par with the size of a candle. The black crystal itself was a little larger than the average apple, making it seem needlessly large to contain such a small flame.

Apollo hummed.

"I guess this is the flickering flame of a phoenix or something?"

Layla curiously stared at the black crystal.

"Is it a friend?"

A bitter smile formed on Apollo's face.

"I... don't think so. Though I have no idea what else it could be."

Layla raised her hands in the air.

"So it could be a friend!"

Apollo shook his head.

He was going to flip his coin to see what other requests there were, but-

"What's that?"

Layla pointed to the wall, where some mist was converging into something.

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