Elaine sighed, embarrassed. "Well, it was a few years ago, when I found a debit card in Charlie's pocket. We just left your mom's house, and I really needed the money for a beauty salon session, so I tried to check how much money was on the card. I somehow guessed the PIN, but now in hindsight, it was terrible..." Jacob groaned in disbelief. "You're really something else. You managed to guess Charlie's PIN, and you're saying that's terrible?" Elaine winced as if feeling the pain in her old leg, and gritted her teeth as she snapped, "You'd never guess how many billions were in that card!""B-Billions?!" Jacob was completely stunned, but soon snorted. "Are you still drugged, woman? Do you know you're talking about billions? That's enough to buy a fleet of private jets—Charlie won't make so much money even if he were the feng shui master for a king!"Realizing Jacob didn't believe her, Elaine promptly snapped back, "It was the worst decision of my entire life! Why would I lie about

Listening to her parents' incessant ramblings, Claire found both epiphany and a pang of misery.Now, she understood that there were simply matters beyond explanation even to her loved ones—just thinking about it also filled her with apprehension.That certainly was the case with the present, secreting her parents out of Oskia indefinitely without prior warning. If Claire told them the truth, they would at first be shocked, but also unable to hold back their urges to contact Charlie, considering that he was, in fact, a trillionaire. Her mother—with how obsessed with money she was—wouldn't even care what happened to Charlie, and brag to everyone that she was Charlie's mother-in-law.But while the truth made things infinitely complicated, lying made it so much simpler. And with it, she wouldn't have to worry about her parents becoming a potential problem, resolving the worst threat to their exodus with incredible simplicity.It reminded her of how Charlie constantly lied to her, and

After a ten-hour flight, Charlie was back in Aurous Hill.By then, the Harkers, along with the ninjas of the Ito clan, had all started investigating all the clues left from Claire's departure.Even with seasoned veterans, it was difficult to accelerate the unraveling of such a complex mystery.Moreover, as Rosalie had said, each clue only led them further down the rabbit hole—the more they kept pursuing a single clue, the more chaotic and confusing everything became.Charlie knew this was no easy task, but the reports he was receiving were simply unsettling.So, as soon as he got off his flight, he immediately called Vera to ask where she was, since it was just 7pm on a Friday evening.Vera told him, "I'm at the Scarlet Pinnacle Manor. How can I help you?""I'd like to consult you on certain private matters, if it's alright?" Charlie asked."Of course," Vera replied, her voice clear as bells. "Just come over—I'll have your tea waiting."Charlie breathed a sigh of relief, told

Even as Vera stared at the nine coins and the formation they formed, her confusion only grew—she never divined an outcome this ambiguous before. Four of the nine coins were aligned with the life knot, four with the death knot, and one stayed at the center, where it could be aligned with both. Naturally, the knots weren't dependent on each coin—but whether the coins, when dropped, could form a single solid alignment that could be interpreted as the death knot or the death knot. But in this case, Vera could see alignments to the center coin that would both form life knots or death knots. It was as if, during a war between two nations, a child of mixed nationalities was born unto the world. With both nations having equal strength, the baby was the single force that could shift the balance of the war, whether he chose his father's faction or his mother's. Vera had performed divination for hundreds of years, and this was the first time her divinations showed her such a strange o

Vera and Charlie hadn't known each other for that long, but as far as she knew, the mysterious faction helping him in secret first surfaced at the Quiant Monastery.At the time, she and Charlie were traveling to Mount Tason, when they unexpectedly encountered the fake abbess waiting for them there at the Quiant Monastery, at the fringes of Mount Tason.The fake abbess not only knew their intended trip to Mount Tason, but also that Mount Tason would be fraught with danger for Charlie.Hence, on her checkers board, Vera placed a red piece under the first black piece.The black piece above represented the Quiant Monastery, and the red piece below represented the fake abbess.Then, the two flew directly from Mount Tason to Eastcliff.So, she took out another black piece and placed it behind the first black piece.Initially, in her mind, the second black piece represented Eastcliff, when she remembered the time she and Charlie first arrived in Eastcliff. Stephen had delivered Charl