Mr. Death in the Steam World

"Grey Coal Tavern" is located at the end of the street, sandwiched between a blacksmith shop and an abandoned ore warehouse.

The words on the sign were blackened by coal smoke, and only a few letters could be barely made out. Two horses with dull coats were tied at the door, their heads down, munching on the few remaining hay in the trough.

Moen pushed open the door, and a wave of noise from the tavern rushed out.

The space was larger than it appeared from the outside, with more than a dozen rough wooden square tables, almost all of which were occupied.

Most of them were miners and mercenaries, dressed in cloth, with short knives or old flintlock pistols at their waists.

The air was thick with the smell of sweat, coal dust, and cheap alcohol, and Phils instinctively covered her nose.

Moen glanced around and found an empty table against the wall to sit down. A maid came over lazily, and he ordered two cups of ale for two copper coins.

"Drink if you want, it's okay if you don't," Moen said in a low voice. "The cups are just props to make people think we're here to drink."

Phils nodded, looked up from her glass, and began to pay attention to the conversation around her.

The tavern was too noisy, making it difficult to hear any particular conversation.

But Moen's senses were enhanced, making them far more acute than those of an ordinary person.

He leaned back in his chair, holding a wine glass, and closed his eyes, seemingly to rest, but in reality, his ears were filtering out useful information from the cacophony of sounds.

"...Young Master Sidwin is really generous. Last time he escorted the ore convoy, he gave me three gold pounds for one trip, which is more than I would have earned working for that trading company in the south of the city for half a year."

The speaker was a burly man with a full beard, one foot on a bench, spitting as he boasted to his companion.

"That's true," his companion chimed in. "But there have been a lot of strange things happening at his mine lately. A couple of days ago, another miner had his leg broken by falling ore, and young Master Sidwin didn't even glance at him before having him carried away."

"Take him away? Where to take him?"

"Who knows? Anyway, it wasn't to the medical station. I saw them carrying it deeper into the mine tunnels with my own eyes."

Moen opened his eyes and exchanged a glance with Phils.

He stood up, holding his wine glass and pretending to be slightly tipsy, then swayed over to the table of the burly man with the thick beard and patted him on the shoulder.

"Dude, I just heard you talking about young master Sidwin," Moen mumbled, a harmless smile on his face.

"I'm from the south and I'm looking for some work here. Is Master Sidwin hiring?"

The bearded man sized him up, probably thinking that this fair-skinned young man didn't look like someone who could handle mining, and scoffed.

"We do hire, but not people like you. Young Master Sidwin only hires... oh, people with fire attributes. Do you have any?"

"Fire attribute? What's that?"

"Hey, I don't know either! If you don't know, don't ask. Anyway, you don't have it." The bearded man waved his hand, as if shooing away a fly.

"Go away, don't keep me from drinking."

Moen gave an awkward laugh and stepped back with his wine glass in hand.

I had barely sat down when another conversation drifted into my ears.

This time, the speakers were a group of regular mercenaries dressed in leather armor, with standard longswords and short guns at their waists, making them look a level above the miners.

"...Don't spread the story about using living people as targets. Last time, that kid got drunk and talked nonsense outside, and he was dead the next day."

"Really gone?" The young mercenary next to him turned pale.

"There are people at the mine who handle the cleanup perfectly well," Scarface said, taking a swig from his glass and lowering his voice even further.

"A woman, wearing a black robe, her face completely covered, speaking with a southern accent. I saw her once; it happened to be my turn to be on night duty that night."

"She dragged two corpses out of the mine tunnel as if she were dragging two bags of coal cinders, without even blinking."

"Those two miners, the ones who were whipped by young Master Sidwin for working too slowly during the day, died at night."

"Did Sidwin kill him?"

"Nonsense, what else? But all the people outside know is that the two miners got drunk and fell into the mine pit to their deaths because the woman threw their bodies into the abandoned mine."

The young mercenary swallowed hard and didn't ask any more questions.

A southern accent, a black robe concealing her face, ruthless methods, and a cover-up to silence witnesses. Moen silently memorized the woman's characteristics.

So far, he has seen two candidates in Phils's dreams—an unsettlingly confident Northern man and a timid woman.

The woman the scarred man described did not match the image of the woman in his dream at all.

They are probably not the same person.

As he was thinking, a muffled muttering came from the corner of the tavern.

An old mercenary with gray hair and reeking of alcohol was slumped on the table. He probably mistook Moen for a regular customer of the tavern, and he wouldn't let go of Moen's sleeve.

"You mean Sidwin... Ha, let me tell you, that kid wasn't always like this." The old mercenary hiccuped, speaking haltingly.

"I used to work for his father. Old Sidwin was actually quite good to his servants; he never skimped on pay. Young Sidwin was a bit arrogant, but he wasn't this crazy..."

"But since last fall, he's had a few more people around him, one of whom is that woman..."

"What's wrong with that woman?" Moen asked, sitting down next to him.

"Before she came, so many people had died in the mine." The old mercenary traced circles on the rim of his glass with his finger, his voice trailing off.

"After she arrived, people started disappearing every few days. They were all people nobody cared about—vagrants, debtors, people who had committed crimes and fled. They just disappeared and nobody investigated, but..."

As the old mercenary spoke, his head slumped onto the table, and soon he began to snore.

Moen slowly stood up and returned to Phils's side.

"What did you hear?" Phils asked in a low voice.

Moen didn't say anything, but gestured for her to leave first with her eyes. The two got up and walked towards the door.

"There are at least two key figures around Sidwin," he said in a low voice.

"One is the bespectacled man we met at the club, and the other is the woman who has never appeared in a formal setting."

"The mercenary said that before she arrived, so many people had never died in the mine, which means that Sidwin's loss of control is directly related to her."

"Could she be the woman from my dream?" Phils frowned. "But she seemed so timid in my dream..."

"I don't know." Moen shook his head.

"But if the man with glasses is a member of the Truth Society, then this woman is most likely one of them as well."

"Sidwin might think he's recruited a group of capable helpers, but in reality, he himself might be the one being used."

Just as the two were about to walk out of the alley, Moen suddenly stopped again.