In the end, I didn’t find my cat girl. Yesterday I spent multiple hours of my time trying, but I came back empty-handed. I need to think of a better plan.

“I will have to go soon. I still need to water the flowers.”

Emily and I were playing together, she always visits me when she has some spare time.

“I will go with you, my lessons will start a bit later today. Teacher said that he has to take care of some paperwork first, so I have some free time.”

 

We went outside and chatted about random things along the way. Emily told me more about all the work she has been doing and things that she has yet to learn, while I told her about my numerous positive traits.

As we approached the flower spot, Emily suddenly stopped. “OH no!” She shouted out from surprise and ran off towards the pile of snow from yesterday. “Poor flowers.” The same flowers that were hidden under the snow before were now exposed and dried up.

“What happened?”

“They will whiter if they aren’t covered under the snow. All the snow is dug up. How did this happen?”

“I see. So that’s how it is…”

“I couldn’t take care of them.” Emily tuned towards me with tears in her eyes.

“Don’t cry, it’s not your fault. It must have been some hateful raccoon or something. Don’t blame yourself for it.”

“But I was supposed to be taking care of them.”

“You see me taking any blame for what happened?”

“But you haven’t done anything.”

“Neither did you. So, there’s no reason to cry. If anyone tries to blame you for it, I will ask them to knock it off.”

“Thank you…” Emily said quietly as she wiped her tears.

Suddenly, William’s voice interrupted our heartfelt moment. “Crystal, there’s a woman claiming that you ordered something from her.”

“Me? Wait, what? What is this about?” I followed him towards the front of the mansion, and it was there that I saw her. That’s her, the shady looking woman from yesterday!

She turned towards me and said in a happy tone of voice. “I am here with your delivery.”

Did she take that joke seriously? “Delivery? But we barely talked, I didn’t even give you my address, how did you know where to go anyway?”

“Who else in this city has a purple hair?”

“Huh…” Her answer left me speechless. But I have to admit she just might have a point. I just assumed that it’s not a problem because there’s such a wide color spectrum for people’s hair and there is a decent number of people with weird colored hair. However, now that I think about it, my hair probably stands out anyway, doesn’t it? I should probably do something about that.

“So, Crystal, did you order anything from her?” William asked, clearly annoyed.

“I didn’t really mean to.”

“You shouldn’t place fake orders on things!” The woman shouted out, only to pout afterward.

“Fine, fine, what did you even bring anyway?” I replied in reluctance.

“I got it right here. See?” Her expression turned into a smile as she took out the alleged order out of her wagon.

No wonder she has to do her business in dark alleyways. Like, what the hell is that? A cat-bear? A giant white furred plushy with pointy ears.

William looked at me with a questioning gaze.

Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t judge me, I have nothing to do with this. I swear.

“I have all of them with me, let me unload them.” She then proceeded to stack all ten of the giant plushy cat-bears next to each other. All of us could only stare at such a sight, speechless.

William took out a small coin pouch from his pocket and put his hand inside. But before he took out any runes out of it, he looked towards me and said. “I will deduct it from your pocket money next month.”

What?! Nooooo… This is injustice! I am not at fault, I have nothing to do with this! I swear!

---

 

“I think that they look cute.” Emily hugged one of the cat-bears.

We are back In my room, with all of the plushy cat-bears stacked in the corner. They are so big, they take up so much space.

I mean they kinda remind me of that cat girl, they’re the same height, color and have the same looking tail and ears. That’s where the similarities end, but still, they had to be custom-made. How do you make so many of them in a single day? That woman is shadier and shadier the more I think about her.

I pat one of the cat-bears on the head. “So soft.” What are they even made from, exactly?

“I want to keep one.” Emily proclaimed while still hugging one of the cat-bears. Ccxx

“Nope, these are mine.” I suffered too much mental damage to obtain them, I am not going to give them away now. Especially because they cost me my hard-earned money.

She hung her head at my response.

“But you can play with them whenever you want.”

“I heard that you got new plushies. Can I see them?” Adeline arrived in her wheelchair with one of the maids.

“Sure…”

She picked up one of the plushies and looked at it from multiple angles. “They are pretty cute, but why do they all look the exactly the same? Not that I don’t like it, but… what is the point? You can’t hug all ten at the same time.” After asking, she looked at me with a questioning gaze.

You too!? What am I supposed to say here?

“They are fine as they are. I like them.” Emily proudly proclaimed while still hugging the same plushy.

Go Emily go! Defend my honor.

Adeline smiled before changing topic. “Professor Ranford is finished with his work, he asked me to call you.”

Why didn’t he send one of the servants instead? As he always does.

“Now that William returned, my workload lessened considerably, things have been going pretty well this week and I have much more spare time. That means that we can finally spend more time together. So, I thought that I can help with your education, there are some things I am more knowledgeable about.”

---

 

Me, Adeline, and the professor are together in one of the offices. It was decided that they both of them will teach me today together. It’s an unusual arrangement and the ratio of students and teachers is a bit skewed. But I am not complaining.

“We talked about the Knight’s Order last time, but there are two other Orders, the Mage Order and the Secret Order.”

“Secret Order? If they are secret, then why do you know about them?”

“Well, other than that they exist, I don’t really know all that much, I never actually interacted with them.” With his right hand, he motioned towards Adeline. “I presume that Adeline will have much more experience with them.”

Adeline smiled proudly. “Of course. You see, each of the Orders sends personnel to each territory in the entire country. Each of the three provides with something else. The Knight’s Order gives us knights, they protect the city, borders, and they handle monsters in the dungeons. The Mage Order sends mages to create and maintain magical arrays or to make magic items. And Secret Order provides us with security personnel, they can serve as guards for important people. But overall, they have the biggest variety of skills, they can basically do what the other two Orders can semi-decently while being able to do espionage on top of it. They can also establish secure communication networks with is quite important.”

I see, so they are like a Secret Service. Protecting VIPs and doing shady stuff on the side.

“Knights specialize in fighting monsters or larger scale conflicts, they, on the other hand, are better at dealing with criminals and internal security overall. But I have to admit that we do not have a luxury of using them on such tasks. We are quite understaffed and, as of result, there have been some problems.”

“I have a question, there’s one thing I don’t understand. If all of those Orders send people to the territories all over the country… like where are they getting all of them from?”

“Each territory sends their talented young people to each of the Orders, where they are trained and then distributed across the country.”

“But why would anyone actually do that? Why not to keep those talents to yourselves? Or send not talented ones.”

“Well, there are two reasons, firstly it’s taxes. Depending on how many people you send and how well they perform, you will each year receive a tax break, and the amount can be quite significant. I heard of a few instances where some nobles sent so many people that their taxes got reduced to the point where they got paid instead.”

What? What kind of tax hack is that? No wonder that people put up with it.

“The second reason is that people who contribute more will also receive more personnel back. It’s not one to one, there are many factors to it, but generally the bigger contributors will get more. That is the main reason why orphanages get so much funding, it is a big source of potential candidates. After they receive some basic training, you can pick out the real talents.”

“So does everyone jut rely on all of the Orders for their essential personnel?”

“Training people is a costly and lengthy process, especially in fields like this. So having someone who can do it for you is a big help. There are many small territories that wouldn’t be able to train enough personnel with recourses they have. And it’s not just about quantity, either. For example, a few of the more powerful nobles have their own self-trained private armies, but if you would ever compare them to knights you would realize the difference. You would need multiple of those private soldiers to match a single knight.”

“I see, what about mages?”

“With mages it’s even more difficult. Training up a high-ranking mage is practically impossible without the resources and the expertise of the Order. Even if you tried, not many mages would even want to cooperate on such an endeavor. No one other than the Mage Order actually bothers to train mages. It’s just not worth making your mages from the Order spend their valuable time training new ones that will be weaker by two orders of magnitude at best. Low-ranking mages just aren’t all that useful.”

“I see, so that’s how it works. And what about the Mage Order? I don’t really know anything about them.”

Adeline looked toward the professor Ranford who, as on cue, took over. “Well, I guess it’s my turn now...”

---

 

The lesson continued for many hours, professor and Adeline kept taking turns in teaching me, and they just didn’t stop talking. Well, it was a bit tiring, but I learned a lot today. I feel like I am getting a better grasp on this world.

Currently, I am lying in my bed while pondering all of the new information I acquired.

Knight’s Order, Mage Order, Secret Order, secret agents, mages, knights, knights, knights… That’s right! If anyone knows where my cat girl is, it will be them. They were the last ones with her before we got separated. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?