Midnight, Crucible Town Church.

This small church was built directly opposite the Alchemy Academy, and like the whole town, the walls and bricks were stained lead gray by the dust in the air, but the sculpture of the Holy Cross at the top of the church was still immaculate and pure white.

The church of the Holy Cross and the Wizarding College are far away and are a "wonder" in the empire.

However, this does not mean that the priests of Crucible can be polite to the attitude of foreign wizards......

"This is the realm of the Holy Cross, and no one is allowed to set foot in it while the doors are closed. A priest with a resolute expression held a candle in his hand and stood in front of the black-haired wizard: "If you want to pray, please pray tomorrow morning, believer!"

"I'm very sorry, but I have an agreement with His Highness Brandon de Salion, and it will only take a quarter of an hour. ”

"Pray tomorrow morning, believers!" the priest repeated with a straight face.

"I'm a wizard advisor to Your Highness, and you just need to convey the matter clearly. Loren, who was "experienced" in Gumu Town, did not give up at all, and took a step forward with half threat:

"Or, we can also quarrel here and wake up His Highness directly?"

A drop of cold sweat dripped from the priest's forehead, and he gritted his teeth and stiffened not to retreat:

"Here it is...... The realm of the Holy Cross!"

"What if I have to go in?"

The black-haired wizard stepped forward again, and the tense priest subconsciously retreated, and the door behind him was suddenly opened!

"Loren, and this... Your Excellency, a priest?" Brandon, dressed in a loose robe and a little sleepy-eyed, looked at the two of them in surprise:

"What are you doing?"

"No offense, Your Highness Brandon, but your wizard advisor is ...... after the church is closed at midnight."

"Pray!" The black-haired wizard immediately snatched off the somewhat agitated priest and explained with a smile, "It's just that I can't sleep, so I'm going to take this opportunity to pray to the Holy Cross, that's all." ”

"Alas...... I didn't even know that you were so pious? With a long tail note, His Royal Highness the Prince, who grinned at the corners of his mouth, glanced at him, and then yawned and waved his hand:

"Forget it, come in whatever it is, I've been waiting for you for a long time. ”

"Yes, Your Highness. With a slight bow, Loren smiled and nodded to the priest who was still stunned, and then followed Brandon through the door and down the corridor into the church.

"But, but His Highness Brandon!, this, this is really ......," the excited priest shouted, and the two who had already gone away invariably chose to pretend to be deaf and leave the "devout believer" outside.

The church was empty at midnight, and only the moonlight through the window barely illuminated the corridor, so that the two of them would not be discredited from returning to the room.

"Well, what do you have to say about getting rid of that overly 'warm-hearted' priest?" Brandon, yawning and questioning, walked in front with sleepy eyes, hunched back and hands hanging at his sides, and his fiery red hair hanging down:

"I don't come to the door at night to see how ugly my sleeping position is—let me guess what you found that you didn't want to find?"

"Much stronger than those, His Highness Brandon de Salion. ”

Loren, who was walking behind, shrugged his shoulders and slowly put his hands behind his back:

"There are some very interesting things about the archives of the last four years in Crucible......"

..............................

"Fake!"

Suddenly raising his hands, he threw the file in front of Isaac backwards, and fell precisely into the barrel behind the chair, if it could still be stuffed.

"What do you mean?" Loren, who was hugging his shoulder, glanced behind his chair, large and small account books and archives were thrown all over the ground like waste paper.

"Uh... Don't understand?"

A certain genius showed a puzzled expression, pouted and frowned: "Did I use any particularly advanced grammar?" Okay, then let me put it another way - the data recorded in these archives have obvious loopholes in the actual basis and conventional theory, and cannot be justified by normal descriptions, trying to use results and big data to confuse the process, usually scholars call this kind of behavior 'fraud', an act that clearly violates the laws of the empire. ”

“......”

“...... Meaning, this Rausch sub-file is just a pile of waste paper. ”

"But you didn't finish reading it, you basically just glanced at it. Even though he knew that this guy was very human, Loren couldn't believe it: "A record of four whole years - I think you didn't study much math, right?!"

"Yes, I haven't studied much, but we don't need to do any advanced calculations today, just addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. ”

With a sniffle, Isaac spread his hands as he should: "What's more, do these so-called archives really use any advanced mathematical knowledge?"

“...... Well, I'll put it another way. The black-haired wizard, who was holding back his desire to complain, gritted his teeth and said, "What did you find in these files—I mean the waste paper?"

"This ledger and files, almost all of them are running accounts, how much is entered, how much is overhead, and at most the results are added, there is really no problem at a glance. Isaac raised an eyebrow:

"I don't know much about account books, but the results alone should be one-sided, right?"

"But?" Loren, hugging his shoulders, leaned back in his chair, waiting for the other man's performance.

"But even so, there's still a lot to be done. Isaac shrugged his shoulders indifferently and pretended to be bland: "In a place like a big workshop like theirs, there will be so-called 'predetermined indicators' and 'outcome indicators' - it's not that you have to forge as many swords as you buy iron ingots, only fools do that!"

"But what if the 'predetermined metrics' are set very high and the 'outcome metrics' are low, and the balance between the two can be maintained through inventory to make it look like everything is working?"

"It's like borrowing money from ten people at the same time, and then repaying each other's loans, and using the method of tearing down the east wall and making up the west wall to maintain the status quo?"

"It's better than that, maybe you can make the money go down!" pointed to the pile of files behind him: "The advantage of the flow account is that as long as the results are guaranteed, even if there is a discrepancy between the account books and the actual data, ordinary people can't see it." ”

"And how did you see that?" the dark-haired wizard asked as he continued to "tease" Isaac with a curious expression.

"It's actually quite simple, if you're constantly exposed to things like the occult that can't be explained by common sense, then the things that aren't quite right will look particularly eye-catching. ”

Shrugging his shoulders, Isaac slowly raised his head, "So even in my hand, I know that something is wrong with these files - like I never asked, and I know that you and Ain have been hiding something from me, although I don't know what it is." ”

For a moment, the "curiosity" on Loren's face completely froze.

"I was going to take the opportunity of you asking me for help to tell me what it is, but I don't seem to be very interested - although it does make me feel awkward that there is a little secret between the two of you, but...... Doesn't that mean you owe me a favor?"

"Uh......" The dark-haired wizard's cheeks twitched slightly, "What do you want?"

"I haven't thought about it yet, but I did read a lot of information about Broken Boundary Mountain before I came. So if you have the opportunity to visit Nidhogg, the capital of the Dragon Kingdom... I mean, if it exists......"

"That's it!"

Without thinking about it, Loren directly agreed: "As long as there is a chance to leave the Broken Mountain and go to the north, no matter what it is, I guarantee that we will pass through there once - and only the two of us!"

"It's just us... Ain doesn't bring it?"

"No, it's a secret between the two of us, let's hide it... Al Ain!"

"I knew that the two of us were the best couple!"

Isaac smiled like a child: "It's a carnival of spells and occultism, and there is no way for the mentally retarded alchemists!"

I just want to make sure I'm not making a bad decision...... The black-haired wizard muttered in his heart, still with a stiff and formulaic smile on his face.

..................

"So, Lord Dean of the Crucible Academy, he has done something to the file and made false accounts?"

The smile on Brandon's face was incomparably wonderful, he didn't look like he hadn't woken up a moment ago, but now it was as bright as the noon sun: "I can't wait to see what the Imperial Brother explains—can you find evidence?"

"Data can be faked, words can be deceitful, but fabricated things don't come out of thin air or disappear suddenly. ”

With a slight bow, Loren's gaze turned to the Forge Town at midnight outside the window: "I counted when I entered the town, there are ten large warehouses in the Forge Town, so ......"

"There's definitely one, evidence of him making false accounts!"