Chapter 165: Vesna Who Has Nothing to Live For (Patreon)

"By the way, where did the news about my death come from? Was it Lord Rooster, or someone else within the Fatui?"

"Just some gutter tabloid — something called Bring Out the Kvass!, I think. The Fatui never made any announcement about your death."

The moment he heard that name, Piers instantly recalled the man he and Vodyanitsa had run into outside the Capital Council. A flicker of killing intent crossed his eyes.

"Never mind. Go ahead and send the documents in. As long as the Fatui hasn't officially confirmed anything, we're fine."

Piers waved a hand and turned to go. Strips of sealing paper already crossed his office door, which meant there probably wasn't much work waiting for him. The Ice Empress must have assumed this trip of his would eat up a lot of time, so she'd simply sealed the door outright.

With no work to speak of, he suddenly had time on his hands.

As for the work itself — since the Tsaritsa was the one who'd sent Piers out on this mission, she would surely find someone to cover for him.

As long as someone took over, he didn't need to worry too much. So long as they weren't an idiot, a few extra hands could always manage.

He had more important things to deal with now — first and foremost, keeping himself alive.

Judging by how widely that paper's earlier stories about him, Columbina, and Sandrone had spread, this rag was probably genuinely popular.

Piers had no idea when the story had gone out, but debunking it now mattered most. Otherwise, simply showing up in front of anyone who knew him could give them a fright, and he'd have to waste his breath explaining himself afterward.

If someone ran into him at night, he might not even get the chance to explain.

With that thought, Piers skipped the train entirely and teleported straight into the Adventurers' Guild on a street in Snezhnograd.

Space rippled faintly around him, and a cold wind hit his face. The snow piled at the street corner had been trampled into a dirty gray-black. Katheryne stood behind the reception desk.

"Toward the stars and the abyss. Welcome to the Adventurers' Guild, Lord Piers."

The moment he drew near, Katheryne's underlying code triggered instantly.

"Katheryne, look up the exact location of that paper, Bring Out the Kvass!, for me.

"Of course. One moment, please."

After acknowledging him, Katheryne lowered her head to search. A dozen or so seconds later, she looked back up.

"My apologies, Lord Piers. The Guild's database has no record of a paper called Bring Out the Kvass! They don't appear to have any fixed place of business, and the papers they publish don't carry any sales license either."

"What?!"

Piers was stunned. He'd assumed this was just some shady little rag hiding deep in the shadows, quietly churning out outrageous stories. He hadn't expected that they didn't even have an office at all — they operated entirely on the move.

"Fine... got it..."

Having gotten nowhere, Piers turned to leave, but Katheryne suddenly called out behind him.

"Lord Piers, the capital is under the Winter Pact's tight control. Even a paper with no fixed location — they should still be able to track it down."

That reminded Piers of something. The Guild might be useful elsewhere, but this was the capital — adventurers gathering intelligence here faced heavy restrictions. The Winter Pact, though, wouldn't.

He turned back around.

"Then... do you have Lady Vesna's schedule for today?"

"I do. Her Majesty entrusted Winter Pact Commander Lady Vesna with handling all the affairs you used to manage. To save time, she's simply been working directly out of the document sorting room."

Piers was somewhat at a loss for words after hearing that, though he could understand it.

After all, Vesna might look like an airhead most of the time, but when it came to paperwork, she was no slower than he was — on days when he was busy from morning to night, she still had time to spare to run around.

Still, for some reason, Piers couldn't shake the feeling that handing his work over to Vesna was a mistake waiting to happen.

"Got it..."

The Guild's document storage and sorting room was quite a distance from Katheryne's reception desk.

Piers had no idea what the builders had been thinking when they laid the place out.

Then again, as long as it was within Snezhnaya's borders, distance hardly meant anything to him.

He arrived at the Guild's document sorting room in no time.

He'd been here once before and never since — partly because he'd been too busy, and partly because there'd been no need.

Tucked at the end of a corridor, the room was out of the way. Aside from the odd person gathering or delivering intelligence, hardly anyone passed by. A thin layer of dust had settled on the door, and only the handle had been polished bright from use.

Through the glass window, Piers could see Vesna lying flat on the floor, dark circles under her eyes and an expression of utter despair on her face.

Her limbs were splayed out, her hair spread everywhere across the floor, and the stacks of documents beside her leaned at crooked angles — a few of them even pinned under her legs. Piers walked up to the door and gave a token knock.

After a long while, there was finally a sound from inside — Vesna, apparently, dragging herself up off the floor.

"New paperwork goes on that table over there. Once you drop it off, close the door on your way out..."

Vesna only unlocked the door — she didn't even bother pulling it open. After saying her piece, she went right back to lying down. Piers heard her back hit the floor with a dull thud.

"Lady Vesna, why do you look so worn out?"

Piers pushed the door open and stepped in. He crouched near Vesna's head, smiling, and looked down at her upside-down face. Her bangs stuck flat to the floor, dark circles ringed her eyes, and her lips had chapped and started to peel.

Vesna's eyes, which had been shut, snapped open the instant she heard his voice. The two of them stared at each other, one right-side-up and one upside-down. Her unfocused gaze sharpened in an instant, and her pupils shrank abruptly.

The next second, before she'd even managed to sit up, Vesna threw her arms around Piers's neck, terrified he might get away.

"Piers!!! You're finally back! Where have you been these past few days? I've been tortured half to death, waaah."

Piers only just managed to catch himself with both hands on the floor in time — otherwise, this position would have ended in disaster.

A moment slower, and he probably would have headbutted her teeth. With worse luck, Vesna might've ended up a pretty airhead missing a few teeth.

He pressed his wrists against the icy floor, bracing both their weight.

"Okay, okay, let go already. You're heavy."

Vesna didn't get annoyed at his teasing. Obediently, she let go of his neck and sat herself up.

She crossed her legs and brushed the dust off her clothes. Though she'd released his neck, she immediately reached out and grabbed his hand instead.

"Come here, come here! This pile, this pile, and this pile too — they're all yours!"

Excitedly, she dragged him over and pushed him down into the chair at the desk.

Several stacks of documents sat on the desk in front of him, their edges curled. Some had been half-annotated already, the handwriting scrawled so badly it was almost unreadable. It looked like roughly two days' worth of his usual workload.

Even though Piers was used to being worked like a pack animal, staring at this much of a backlog still gave him pause.

Then he remembered what Katheryne had said — that Her Majesty had sent Vesna specifically to cover his work temporarily, and that order hadn't been rescinded. Which meant this pile was technically still Vesna's job.

He turned his head to look at Vesna, who was still gripping his hand beside him.

"Lady Vesna, I heard all about it. Her Majesty ordered you to cover my duties temporarily, and that order hasn't expired yet — so this is your job. And even if it had expired, this is still yesterday's and the day before's unfinished work, isn't it?"

"Uh... well..."

Caught out, Vesna looked embarrassed. Her eyes drifted to the side, settling into an expression that could've been a meme, and she started stammering. The hand gripping his tightened unconsciously, then quickly loosened again.

"Besides, I thought you were supposed to be good at this kind of paperwork?"

"Uh... not every kind of paperwork. What I do is write reports and summaries. Yours needs actual decisions — that's a completely different thing. Being a fast reader doesn't cut it; this stuff is exhausting to think through, okay? And I already have my own work to do. Finishing mine and yours on top of it—"

Piers was left speechless. Looking at Vesna's righteously indignant face, he realized she was simply a fast reader and nothing more.

"Lady Vesna, your own work is your own responsibility."

"No, wait, come on — help me out just this once, okay? Do this one thing and I'll agree to anything you ask."

Unable to come up with a good excuse, Vesna resorted to shameless pleading, clinging to his hand without letting go.

She rested her chin on his shoulder, tilting her face up to look at him. Piers had actually come here to ask Vesna for a favor in the first place, and now that she'd offered, he could simply agree along the way.

"Since you put it that way, I suppose I could agree — but I do have two conditions."

"Two's fine. As long as you help me clear out this mess, you can ask for whatever you want."

Hold on — why does that come out sounding so wrong?

"First, I need you to help me find a paper... er, I mean the source that puts out a newspaper called Bring Out the Kvass! Second, I need you to stay right beside me while I work through this. If I let you run off, I'll have a hard time finding you again later."

"Sure, sure!! I promise I'll stay quietly by your side!!"

Vesna barely thought about it — though it was just as likely she'd agreed without even catching what he'd said.

After all, what she wanted most right now was to get rid of that pile on the desk. Whatever conditions Piers set couldn't possibly be worse than that mountain of paperwork.

"So, Lady Vesna, could you let go of my hand first..."

The deal was struck, but Vesna kept clinging to his arm regardless. As if she hadn't heard him at all, her gaze had already fixed on the pile of documents, and she started muttering calculations under her breath.

"No, no. What if you run off?"

"That's something only you'd do. How am I supposed to pick up documents while you're holding my hand?"

"I'm right here, aren't I? I'll hand you the documents — you just use your right hand for the pen."

"Fine, hold on if you want."

Piers stopped arguing with her. Many of these documents concerned matters vital to Snezhnaya's people, and Vesna had already let them sit untouched for two full days. If he didn't handle them now, something serious was likely to go wrong — especially with the Project Stuzha at such a critical stage.

So even if Vesna offered no help at all, he'd have handled these documents himself regardless.

Still, getting to make a couple of demands along the way wasn't a bad deal.

The Ice Empress had probably assigned Vesna here simply because she usually breezed through paperwork so fast — never expecting that when it came to careful, thoughtful work, Vesna was somewhat...

True, this pile amounted to Piers's usual two-day workload, but back before Katarina had joined, it had practically been his one-day quota. So finishing it all in a single day wasn't entirely impossible.

Except now it was impossible, because it was already afternoon.

And so it went: Vesna clung to Piers's left hand while using her free one to pass him documents.

At first she handed them over conscientiously, pinching the corner of each page and glancing at its contents before passing it along. But bit by bit, she slowed down, her hand lingering in midair longer and longer, until eventually she dozed off out of sheer boredom.

One hand still held his, while the other lay stretched out flat on the desk, her head tilted to rest against that outstretched arm. Her mouth hung slightly open, her breathing even — the kind of sleeper who'd start drooling if left too long.

Unbelievable — I'm the one doing the writing, and you're the one who falls asleep first just handing me things.

Piers grumbled to himself, glanced at her once, and let it go.

Seeing that Vesna clearly wasn't going to be handing him anything anymore, Piers tried to pull his hand free.

But after a couple of tries, he found that even asleep, she held on tight as ever.

With no other choice, Piers had to fetch documents with one hand, set them down, then pick up his pen to read. He held the papers steady with his left hand and wrote with his right — slower than usual, but there was nothing else to be done.

By nightfall, the room's motion-sensor lights had switched on. It was right then that someone knocked at the door.

"It's unlocked. Come in."

Piers answered without much thought — that was how he always responded to a knock during work. This time, though, he'd forgotten Vesna was right beside him.

Whoever was outside clearly hesitated at the sound of his voice, their hand freezing in midair.

But a few seconds later, they pushed the door open anyway. It was a Vila in Winter Pact uniform, carrying an insulated food box. The badge on her shoulder gleamed from polishing, and her cuffs were buttoned neatly shut.

The moment she took in the scene inside, she was visibly startled.

Her gaze landed first on the pile of documents on the desk, then shifted to Vesna, and finally settled on Piers's face.

The next second, all the color drained from her face. She nearly dropped the food box, stumbling back half a step until her heel caught on the threshold.

"A g-ghost!!"

Seriously, lady, you're supposed to be Winter Pact. Are their selection standards just for show? Her nerve is way too fragile — and does the Winter Pact actually believe gutter tabloids now?