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“Ugh... Y’know, I thought you’d be a faster reader than this.”

‘Oh, I’m sorry. How many non-native languages can YOU read? Because I’m only fluent in about three hundred or so.’

Hector blinked. “Three hundred?!”

‘Well. A good number of them are dead, but still.’

“Hmm... You’re thousands of years old, though. So that’s only like one new language every hundred years. Not all that impressive, really.”

‘Oh, shut up.’

After quietly agonizing through a few problems with trigonometric functions, he was relieved to hear Garovel begin musing again.

‘Hmm...’

“What’s the matter?”

‘It’s just, this article...’

“Are you gonna start spinning wild theories, now?”

‘No.’ A beat passed. ‘Maybe.’

“Ha.”

‘It says the Queen informed her own guards of the attack an hour after it occurred.’

“Huh... Is that odd?”

‘Well. Kind of. You’d think the Queen’s Guard would be a bit more on the ball, wouldn’t you? Even if they’d been unable to stop the assailant, shouldn’t they have at least known there was one? If not right away, then surely within an hour?’

“Well... uh... maybe there wasn’t an assailant. Maybe someone just poisoned her drink or something, and no one saw who.”

‘Hmm. It says here that the Queen was “in a state of confusion” and has yet to remember any details of the attack. What the hell does that mean?’

“Yeah, I dunno about that one...”

‘Apparently, she’s scheduled a public press conference a few days from now, and they’re expecting more details then.’

“Weird... It’s already been three whole days, right?”

‘This sounds like... a reaper may have been involved.’

Hector reared back. “W-what? What makes you think that...?”