One Last System

"Young lady, I\'m sorry for troubling you, but we actually happen to look for a certain person," the higher-rank officer of the auction hall stepped forward while placing her hand on the shoulder of the receptionist that Mia initially dealt with. "That\'s why, if I could ask this silly question, are you going by the name Mia by any chance?"

\'What should I do?\' Mia thought, unable to figure out how she was supposed to react.

Should she lie? But if this was Arthur\'s attempt to contact her, she would never be able to find out what kind of important message he sent via this strange method.

But if this wasn\'t Arthur... who else could it be?

\'Jenne should be out of the picture now that I\'m in the Tuxi sect,\' Mia thought, running through the list of all the people that she could consider enemies. \'Maybe someone from the Sponsored group?\' she asked herself, only to lower her burrows.

Normally, she would shake her head. But doing so right now would give too much information to the clerk of the auction hall.

"Yes, I\'m Mia," the girl finally answered, unable to find any reason for anyone from the sponsored area to attempt to approach her in such a roundabout manner.

\'They are used to getting exactly what they want, so if they wanted to bully me or to pay me back for my words, they would surely just do it face to face,\' Mia thought, rolling her eyes over how far the level of her opponents has fallen.

\'The Skyladder sect is nothing when compared to the Tuxi sect, yet people would come up with all kinds of schemes back there to get control over me,\' she thought, recalling those dangerous but ultimately... fun times.

For Mia, every memory that included Arthur was a happy memory.

"Then, we need to ask one more, one last question," the clerk of the hall said, her face already brimming with a satisfied smile. "Could you tell us, by any chance, the name of the man that you proclaimed your love for?"

\'Huh?\'

Once again, Mia was stumped by the question.

\'What is this, some kind of prank, maybe?\'

For the second time, she lost faith in this situation, being as straightforward as the clerk clearly wanted to make it.

\'Or wait... Did I actually confess my love to Arthur?\' Mia asked herself, suddenly realizing the possibility that Arthur... was actually the only one telling about his feelings!

\'No, I\'m overthinking this,\' Mia thought. \'If it\'s a message from Arthur, then he wouldn\'t bother with such petty tricks,\' Mia thought as she raised her eyes at the clerk and smiled.

"It\'s Arthur," she answered.

The smile on the clerk\'s face only enlarged as she reached underneath her robe and pulled out a small but thick envelope.

"The picture of your face, your name, and your call are confirmed," the middle-aged woman announced in a formal tone. "Here is the message for you," she said, passing the envelope over.

"A message?" Mia muttered as she took the letter and broke its seal. The wax seal bore an insignia pretty similar to the one she could see plastered all over the building, although it had some detailing differences.

But there was no letter inside. Rather than that, there was just a small piece of paper, as big as Mia\'s pinky, and a small vial with just a single droplet of blood inside.

"What are those?" Mia muttered under her nose only to move her eyes on the attendant. If anyone, this woman was the one most likely to understand the meaning of the message.

"This entire letter..." the woman hesitated for a moment, averting her eyes. She then swallowed a mouthful of saliva before moving her eyes back on Mia\'s face. "We received a request from one of our prized and upcoming customers to pass this letter to you," she explained the nature of the situation. "As for its content..." she added, only to hesitate again and turn silent.

"It\'s okay," Mia reassured the attendant. "Even if you are wrong, I won\'t take it against you," she claimed. "Do you have any guesses? Because I don\'t even have a shred of idea what this might be," she added, taking a helpless look on her face as she shook her shoulders.

The officer of the auction hall released a deep sigh before taking one more step forward and leaning over Mia\'s ear.

"Most likely, it\'s password and an access to a storage ring," she whispered, only to move back and pretend as if nothing happened at all.

"What storage ring?" It was Mia\'s turn to whisper. She was more confused than she was before, despite clearly learning something.

"I believe you should expect the arrival of the storage ring soon," the clerk assumed. "In order to unlock it, you will need to mix a droplet of your blood with the blood of its original owner. Once you have it prepared, smear it on the ring\'s crystal and utter the password," she instructed kindly.

"Can you slow down for a moment?" Mia requested, raising her hands in order to protect herself from the avalanche of information that she couldn\'t process on the go. "What storage ring?" she asked. "Aren\'t those insanely expensive?"

The clerk only smiled.

"As I said, it\'s only a guess. I personally have nothing to do whether it\'s true or not," she claimed. Mia was inclined to believe that the woman was wrong for a moment.

But the small, cheeky smile on her lips made it hard to consider such a situation to be possible.

"So I should expect a storage ring to somehow appear in my hands soon," Mia echoed the clerk\'s words from before. She then raised her eyes and looked the woman directly on the face. "Right?"

"You see, while our transportation formation is powerful, it doesn\'t allow for sending any kind of storage equipment," the woman started to explain. "As it operates on the same principle as the storage devices, there is a massive risk of the rings interfering with the formation\'s inner workings," she said before sending a meaningful look at Mia\'s face.

"And that\'s most likely the reason why Arthur didn\'t send everything via one route," Mia muttered to herself, connecting the dots of the situation she was in.

\'But wait, how else is he going to send me the ring itself?\' she asked, stumped by the sudden inconsistency of her understanding of what Arthur did.

"Most likely, he used the sect\'s transportation services," the woman chuckled, clearly recognizing Mia as one of the Tuxi\'s disciples despite a complete lack of any features hinting at it.

"I see..." Mia muttered, happily gobbling up the random hint that the female threw her way.

Then, Mia\'s face brightened as she looked at the attendant again.

"Would it be possible to check where this letter came from?" she asked, a cheeky smile forming up on her lips.

"Aren\'t you a smart one?" the clerk giggled lightly. "Trying to judge how long it would take for the ring to come here, aren\'t you?" she guessed up Mia\'s intentions correctly.

"I\'m sorry to burst your bubble, but finding out where the letter came from?" she muttered before shaking her head. "No.. It\'s impossible."