How to Get Girls, Get Rich, and Rule the World (Even If You're Ugly)
Chapter 69: How to Uncover a Massive Corruption Scheme by Accident (3)

Chapter 69: How to Uncover a Massive Corruption Scheme by Accident (3)

Antoril’s pre-dawn hours felt like they’d been written by a drunken playwright. The magical streetlights still flickered lazily on crooked posts, some tangled with dry vines or scrawled with protest slogans in charcoal.

The wind carried a confusing mix of burnt bread, medicinal herbs, and institutional corruption. And there I was — climbing down the side of the boarding house with more weight on my back than those old walls were probably meant to handle, my cloak catching on every damned hook along the way and my pickaxe slapping against my leg with every badly-judged jump.

"Of course," I thought. "Because doors are for people who don’t live inside a never-ending stage play of impulsive teen drama."

I landed in the alley with a dull thud. Mud splashed up to my knees. Great. Now I didn’t just look like a criminal — I smelled like one too. I tried to get my bearings, looking around, but this part of Antoril — the backside of the boarding house and the junction with abandoned trade houses — felt like a badly sewn patch in the city’s fabric. Not a soul in sight. No Thalia. No trail. Just rooftop cats and the distant echo of a night bell.

But she had gone through here. That much I was sure of. Maybe she ran across the rooftops, maybe took the narrow path that dropped toward the old market — wherever she went, she was alone. Again.

And the most annoying part of it all? That somewhere in some shady corner of my heart, I cared. Not in a poetic way. In a practical way. If she died, it would be a logistical problem. And emotional. And maybe moral. But mostly logistical.

"All right, Dante," I muttered, taking a deep breath. "Time to switch to pursuit mode."

I climbed the slippery stones along the alley and followed the first path that made sense: the one that hurt the most to walk.

That’s always where human stupidity left its footprints. I cut through the hatmaker’s lanes, passed an herb depot that looked long abandoned, and crossed the narrow walkways toward the university district, where the sky shone brighter thanks to runic floodlights.

Technically, I should’ve been grateful to be alive and still had my pickaxe. But honestly, all I wanted right then was for someone to explain how a girl with the investigative sense of a blind dog managed to cause this much chaos in less than twenty-four hours.

The city was too quiet. The kind of silence that wasn’t about a lack of sound, but a lack of witnesses.

I passed a half-melted fae sculpture in the central courtyard — some heroic or just dramatically deceased mage memorial. The plaques were covered in moss, and one of them read, "From knowledge comes control," which sounded more like a warning in disguise than any academic motto.

A stone bench just ahead held a sleeping couple, both in first-year cloaks, clinging to each other like the outside world wasn’t falling apart.

I jumped down a side staircase and turned into the back corridor — the Corridor of Silence. Legend said anyone who spoke too loudly there would attract the spirits of the dead. Silly superstition, sure, but no one ever dared test it. And right now, I had to admit, the silence helped. Forced me to hear my own footsteps, my breathing, and the subtle hum of the city working underneath the surface.

Then a rat the size of a cat crossed my path with a chunk of bread in its mouth. Not a good omen, but also not the worst I’d seen that week.

I sighed and kept going. The weight of responsibility is a curious thing — sometimes it crushes you, sometimes it pushes you forward.

And I was already pushing.

Still no sign of Marlow’s daughter.

Until I saw it.

A scarf.

[INVESTIGATION TRACKER – ACTIVE CASE]

[Target: Locate Thalia]

→ Status: Missing (Voluntary escape suspected)

→ Last Clue: [Blue Cloth – Lightly stained, recent use]

→ Trail Path: Low-light sectors / Urban decay zones

→ Risk Factor: High – Subject emotionally unstable, potential proximity to corrupt agents

[Sub-Objective Unlocked: Trace Route to Ritual Site]

→ Estimated Destination: Western sector / Old bridge perimeter

→ Inferred Behavior: Self-redemption via reckless inquiry

[Search Method]

→ Direction chosen: Where it hurts to walk

→ Reason: "Stupidity always leaves footprints in the hardest places"

→ Current Area: Artisan District / Shadow route confirmed

Caught on a wooden hook, its threads frayed from haste, the light-blue fabric with side embroidery. Thalia had used that to wipe her face after throwing up earlier. I remembered. I held her hair back while she did it.

A good detective learns to associate disgust and affection in the same gesture.

I grabbed the scarf, stuffed it into my pocket with a mix of indignation and focus, and moved in the direction opposite the wind. If she ran, she ran where no one could smell her. The Bell Hospital was the other way, same with the central market. What did that leave?

The low bridge.

Minimal patrol. Poor lighting. Direct access to the western sector.

And that’s when my instincts flared — not from logic, but from fear.

If she had gone off chasing information on her own, trying to redeem herself with some clever and impulsive move, she might’ve gone exactly where she thought she could find answers. And the worst place to do that right now... was exactly where the people behind the scheme would be covering their tracks.

"Brilliant, girl. You’re digging your own grave just to avoid admitting you were wrong."

I started walking faster. The sweat came back even with the cold. And deep in my mind, that damned system voice started buzzing again.

[Secondary Objective Unlocked: Contain Thalia’s Recklessness]

→ Reward: Survival

→ Failure Consequence: Regret (permanent)

"Yeah, I get it. Shut up, system."

And then I turned the next corner.

Still no idea if I was going the right way — but I was sure of one thing: better lost than standing still.

It was right then, turning a corner near the artisan square, that my eyes found an abomination.

Not a monster.

Worse.

A wanted poster.

My face. Or what some coin-starved illustrator claimed was my face. Slapped right in the middle of a community board, between a notice for "Beginner Runic Flute Lessons" and a "Missing Cat" flyer that had way more artistic dignity than mine.

I approached slowly, like one watches a carriage crash in slow motion.

"What the hell is this..."

[WANTED POSTER DETECTED – PLAYER PROFILE COMPROMISED]

[Crime Description]

→ Obstruction of Investigation

→ Possible Assault

→ Hostile Attitude (Unquantifiable sarcasm level)

[Public Alert Level: Low]

→ Citizen Attention: Negligible

→ Illustration Accuracy: Offensive

→ Emotional Damage: +3 irritation / -1 ego regeneration

[Action Taken]

→ Poster removed (trophy stored in inventory)

→ New Tag: [Fugitive Light – Reputation: +10 street awareness / -15 legal trust]

[Personal Reaction]

→ System Note: Ego damage mitigated by self-delusion passive skill

The drawing — and I’m using the word "drawing" with saint-like generosity — had my eyes misaligned, my chin absurdly oversized, and a beard that looked more like a stained doormat than anything that’s ever grown on my face. Even my scar was off-center, like the artist decided to move it last minute just to ruin the symmetry.

"Wanted for obstruction of investigation, possible assault, and hostile attitude."

Of course. Hostile attitude. So now sarcasm’s a crime.

I ripped the poster down with a ceremonious kind of annoyance.

"I’m way better looking than this. Way."

I folded the poster and pocketed it. As a souvenir. Or evidence. Who knows — maybe one day someone will want to understand why my ego had to go to therapy.

I kept walking, steps faster now. Night was creeping in, and with it that tightening sense that time was running out, like the city was trying to shove me out before I uncovered something I wasn’t supposed to. Thalia was still missing, and as much as she had the special talent of vanishing like a narcissistic ghost, something told me this wasn’t just drama. Not this time.

Then something hit me. A subtle memory, almost a whisper drifting through the fog of exhaustion and accumulated sarcasm.

The woman in the alley. The guard.

The place where everything started to really stink.

That alley where Thalia asked too many questions. Where we found that woman who clearly knew more than she let on. A place where the city itself seemed to tremble from within, like a clogged vein about to burst.

Maybe Thalia had gone back there.

Or maybe that’s where the trail started again.

My steps sharpened. The weight of the pickaxe on my back felt lighter now. The streetlights were starting to flicker on with lazy magical glow, but I was already moving.

And this time, I wasn’t stopping until I found something.

Even if it was just another offensive poster of my face drawn by a talentless lunatic.

The walk to the end of the alley was slow, cautious.

Each step was measured with the precision of someone who knew that, in this corner of the city, curiosity had killed more than just cats.

The shadows gathered between the stacked barrels, in the cracks of the sweat-slicked stone walls, as if they were breathing in silence — and I breathed with them, because the truth is, this place had never felt like just an alley.

It was a border.

At the far end, the metal door was still there. The same one where everything started to reek. The same one where Thalia — with more boldness than judgment — tried to squeeze out truths from a woman who smiled with her teeth but spoke in venom.

But now... now the woman wasn’t there.

The chair where she used to lean — a wooden frame with rusted metal fittings and a cushion crushed by too many nights — was empty.

No lantern lit. No cigarette glowing between fingers. No sharp-tongued quip to remind me that this was her turf.

The alley was silent.The kind of silence that smells like opportunity.The perfect chance.