When the plot-skips players into the game world-Chapter 1304 - 27 Arsene’s Dark History

"...Alright then."

Arsene reluctantly said, "Any type of secret will do?"

"Not enough, add more."

Aiwass simply said, "At that time, Yue Lu will decide—you’re not telling me, you’re telling it. The kid loves this kind of stuff."

...Secrets, shame, guilt.

Meaning, black history?

Arsene hesitated for a moment, thinking hard for quite a while before he could barely remember a few secrets of which even he couldn’t recall the details.

"...When I was very young... when I used to be a sailor on a ship," Arsene slowly began, "I accidentally discovered the mate smuggling goods onto the ship. It was Elven Dew, used to make Love Elixirs. He hid them among some rum, and I realized as I was carrying them that they were lighter than usual rum, and the sound they made when swaying was different, as was the center of gravity... so out of curiosity, I checked them out.

"But I didn’t report it to the captain, and instead secretly took some of it. After docking, I sold them for money. That was my... first theft. It might also have been my first murder.

"Because later... when the mate was supposed to return to the ship, he disappeared. We waited for a day, but he never came back... At that time, I thought, maybe because the goods were short, he got killed by the gang he was trading with. This filled me with regret, so after that, I never kept any of the stolen money... the money from selling the Elven Dew on the black market was also anonymously donated to the orphanage later on.

"...Even then, I didn’t even have a place to stay."

"—Not enough."

Yue Lu suddenly said, "Add another one, or tell more details."

Aiwass thought for a moment, and instead of asking Arsene to tell another, he pursued, "How did you take it back then? How much did you take?"

"It was rum in barrels, each a gallon. Onboard, we’d dilute these with water to quench our thirst. Otherwise, the fresh water was really unpalatable... so these barrels actually served as part of our water supply."

Arsene sighed and continued, "We had just passed through the Holy Nation’s customs and were preparing to load the cargo onto the ship. Originally, this work should’ve been for the dockhands, but the mate, knowing that I had done unloading work before, feared they’d clumsily crack the barrels, and asked me to help.

"I don’t know how he passed the customs... but when I was transporting the barrels, I suddenly realized that the weights of some of the barrels were off. When I quietly opened one of them, I sensed something was amiss.

"Though the color and taste were the same as the other cheap rum, I soon realized that the barrels had a false bottom—each was filled with only two-thirds of the liquid. Below each barrel, there was another layer. When I removed this ’barrel within a barrel,’ I saw a beautiful, silvery liquid beneath."

"—I didn’t know it was Elven Dew at that time; I just instantly guessed it must be something valuable, certainly smuggled... So I filled them into my water flask, enough to fill two flasks."

"By groping around, I determined that the problematic barrels had an inconspicuous triangular notch about three centimeters from the ground. It wasn’t visible, only detectable by touch.

"I didn’t dare stay in the hold too long and quickly went back to carrying the barrels. In between, I found excuses to return to my cabin twice, pouring the liquid from my flask into an empty water bucket in my room. There turned out to be four problematic barrels, and I took away four flasks of the liquid. When poured into the water bucket, it reached roughly a quarter of its height."

"So I mimicked the mate and made a similar false bottom on a barrel. I didn’t dare take it ashore directly but left it in my room. Under the cover of night, I swam from the shore back to the ship to retrieve it."

"... Wait a minute?"

Upon hearing this, Aiwass suddenly realized something wasn’t right.

He couldn’t hold back, "A total of four barrels, each containing enough Elven Dew to fill two flasks, and you took four flasks back—Damn, you mean you took half of it?"

People usually pinch a little when they steal, but this kid, on his first caper, dared to take half.

Truly a natural-born Phantom Thief. Indeed, small actions reveal great character...

"I feared getting caught, so I took it evenly. I thought if something was missing from one barrel, he would immediately suspect me, as I was the only one who touched them. But if they all had the same problem, he might believe the issue lay with the source itself... I know it was a naive thought, but I was quite young back then."

Arsene sighed, "Remembering back, I recalled they weighed it when boarding. I clearly remembered the weight of each barrel and knew how much water to add to restore the weight, so midway, I secretly took freshwater to refill the missing parts. When mixed with water, it still glowed silver, and to the naked eye, there was no problem... Therefore, at the time, I was quite relieved, thinking I’d done a perfect job."

"I reckoned if the mate came confronting me, I could also say something like, ’Their weight was the same when they boarded and disembarked’ to get away with it... Plus, my craftsmanship was excellent; I restored every detail to its original state. The ’barrel within a barrel’ and the external barrel still had a notch, and I found them, aligned and returned them to their initial positions—perfectly aligned."

"...Leaving aside the fact that this reasoning is equivalent to a confession."

Listening to this, Aiwass really couldn’t hold it in anymore, "So you even turned highly pure Elven Dew into low-purity Elven Dew polluted by impure water... It’s basically ruined! How could you take half and ruin the other half?"

That unfortunate mate indeed should have perished.

Low-purity Elven Dew is barely worth anything, let alone when contaminated by the freshwater that sailors let mold and moss grow on at sea. It’s virtually lost most of its power; its purifying efficiency is inferior to Holy Water blessed by an ordinary Priest. If this stuff became a Love Elixir, drinking it might turn it into a Berserk Elixir.

"I couldn’t help it," Arsene shrugged, "I didn’t understand Alchemy back then either."

"...How much did you sell this stuff for?"

Aiwass asked, "This is a quarter-gallon of high-purity Elven Dew. In Star Antimony, it could be worth an entire estate."

"Well... I might have been scammed, or maybe I didn’t store it properly. But I eventually sold it for four hundred Iris Gold Coins."

Arsene recalled, "I remember this figure very well. I was too scared to take them back to the ship, so I hid them somewhere away. I spent a total of three coins—one coin to buy a new dagger, and I later lost that dagger."

The Iris Gold Coins are slightly smaller than the Star Antimony Coins. Four hundred Iris Gold Coins are approximately equal to three hundred and twenty Star Antimony Coins, which is roughly the equivalent of about five hundred White Crown Coins.

"...Yeah, you did take a loss."

Aiwass nodded, "This half-barrel’s raw material alone should be worth eight thousand Gold Coins—its unit of measure is ’drops’; it could make over four hundred bottles of Love Elixir. I won’t even bother counting the final product. After you mixed in the contaminated water, this barrel might still be worth fifty Gold Coins... That mate didn’t die unjustly."

Rounding it to eight thousand Gold Coins in fraud... given his position, it couldn’t be his own smuggling. It was likely commissioned by some organization.

Losing a cargo worth eight thousand Gold Coins—if he made it back alive, Aiwass would be astonished at the local gang’s politeness in the Iris Flower area.

However, since he didn’t rat Arsene out, it seems the mate genuinely didn’t realize Arsene tampered with it. After all, Arsene was just a mundane sailor from a cargo-handler background, and he had perfectly restored the barrels’ "anti-theft measures." The mate probably believed it was the source that messed around.

With this thought, Aiwass glanced at Arsene.

What a natural troublemaker...

If the black market merchant who bought the Elven Dew from him wasn’t part of this gang, there probably were more deaths involved than just the mate. Eight thousand Gold Coins isn’t a small number, even for the nobles, not to mention underground gangs. If traced back to the source, the two sides might start fighting.

Arsene, realizing something too, looked pale.

"Hehehehe..."

Yue Lu suddenly let out a mad laughter, reminiscent of a jester or a lunatic: "Enough, enough..."

After savoring the pain and remorse within Arsene’s heart, Yue Lu inhaled deeply like a gourmand.

Then, it leaped high into the air.

Transforming into a beam of Moonlight, in an instant, tearing through the sky—

Just like the speed of light, almost as if at the speed of thought— freewebnøvel_com

In merely a fleeting moment, they pierced the sky.

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This content is taken from fr(e)ewebn(o)vel.𝓬𝓸𝓶