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It was now evening.

Preparations had been finished.

 

Today, I would act. I did not want that Right Foot lady to move ahead of me.

 

“Time to visit the base then.”

I used the underground waterway to travel.

 

Everything should be over by the time she arrived.

 

I snuck into the base from underground and headed to the second floor of the mansion.

 

“This place should do it.”

 

I said as I put the bag I had been carrying on the floor. This was the largest room on the second floor.

I turned the bag over and a huge pile of black tree bark poured out.

 

“It was so hard gathering all of this.”

 

I picked up a piece of the black pine bark and inspected it.

Black pine trees had pitch-black bark that created thick, black smoke in large quantities.

 

Burning fresh wood usually resulted in white smoke. But the black pine bark was so dark that it affected the color of the smoke.

 

“With this much burning, they’ll think there is a fire.”

 

And so I set fire to the mountain of bark.

The black pine bark smoldered and black smoke began to rise.

 

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“He-hey! Fire!”

“Which house?”

 

I started to hear shouting outside.

Black smoke would now be rising in the evening sky.

 

The floor of the room was all stone tiles, so it would not burn and spread to the other rooms.

The walls and windows were also not made of burnable materials.

 

And so without worry about starting a real fire, I melted into the shadows.

 

“It’s a fire. Smoke is coming from the inside of the building. Put it out before it spreads to the other houses!”

“We can’t! The gate is locked.”

 

“Break it!”

“How?”

 

I climbed onto the roof of the tallest nearby house and watched the people move frantically below.

While it was an abandoned base, someone was still bound to come and see what had happened.

 

Even if they didn’t get too close to the mansion itself.

But it would be more than enough.

 

My eyes widened like saucers as I looked through the crowds of spectators.

 

“…There.”

 

How long had it taken?

It was just when the smoke was starting to die down, I discovered someone whose movements seemed different from the rest.

 

They had acted like the others at first.

The person had blended in with the crowd that had come to see what had happened.

 

But then they stopped, as if not wanting to get close, and then suddenly turned and walked in the opposite direction.

And there was no hesitation at all.

 

The person did not even look back as they moved away.

I smiled.

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