The carriage jolted — even with such a luxurious setup, it was hard to avoid.
Lin Yue rested his head on his hand, looking at Mabel, who sat opposite him.
She wore glasses and was seriously marking something down.
“Are you going to work in the carriage, too?”
Before today, he had thought Mabel was some pampered young lady of a merchant guild who acted as a hands-off manager, and that doing business was just a personal hobby of hers.
“Sigh…”
Mabel closed the ledger in her hand and gently rubbed her temples.
“If not, will you handle it for me?”
An aristocrat like Lin Yue clearly looked like someone who had never encountered the treachery of the marketplace.
She suddenly seemed to remember something, so she plopped down next to Lin Yue and nudged him with her elbow.
“Oh, right! How could I forget about you… take this!”
She shoved a stack of documents toward him and started working again at the table on Lin Yue’s side.
Lin Yue raised an eyebrow.
He had never done business before, and he was still waiting for her to tell him the specifics about Charles.
“You… you aren’t going to use this busywork to brush me off, are you?”
‘This vixen, there’s nothing she wouldn’t do.’
“Think whatever you want. I have to deal with this before we reach the Imperial City. No matter how much you nag me, I won’t have time to pay you any attention…”
Helpless, Lin Yue picked up a file.
“I’m afraid I’ll cause problems…”
“It’s fine… most of these are worthless, but I still have to look through them. It would be even better if you could help me process them.”
Mabel’s tone suddenly became calm as she focused more of her attention on her work.
“What the hell… is this?”
Lin Yue took a look and found that the proposed business deals were utterly ridiculous.
It would be more accurate to say they were trying to rob the Chris Chamber of Commerce — a case of “robbing the rich to give to the poor.”
He turned to look at Mabel, who was biting the end of her pen and reading carefully.
He couldn’t help but speak up.
“Do you usually pan for gold in these piles of shit?”
She didn’t speak, which he took as silent confirmation.
Lin Yue was somewhat speechless.
“Why don’t you find a secretary? As the young lady of the merchant guild, you shouldn’t be short of money, right?”
“Haven’t I already found one?”
“Who did you find?”
Mabel pointed a finger at Lin Yue, her head still lowered.
“Me? Me?”
“Other than my father, I can’t fully trust anyone in the guild… including the employees I hire with money…”
“What about the old man?”
“He’s too stupid. Besides, he’s an insider of the guild, so he can’t be entrusted with this.”
From Mabel’s initial hidden identity to her current way of handling things, Lin Yue could see it.
She simply did not trust others.
She only trusted her own judgment.
Hearing Mabel speak so bluntly, Lin Yue had nothing left to say.
“In the signature area, should I sign your name?”
After finishing a rough scan, Lin Yue gave his judgment.
Mabel glanced up for a moment and then said, “Just write your own name. From now on, your instructions within the guild are my instructions. You can draw on resources as you wish.”
‘Didn’t you just say you didn’t trust people? Why are you giving me such massive authority now?’
With great power came great responsibility.
By handing such immense benefits to Lin Yue, she was actually engaging in a corresponding exchange.
Lin Yue’s mind was in a mess; it seemed that gaining the support of this merchant guild’s young lady would require a lot of effort.
After working for a while, Mabel was finally almost finished.
The rest could be solved after returning to the guild.
She stretched, took off her glasses, and leaned against Lin Yue as if she had lost all her strength.
“Lin Yue, what did you want to ask? I…”
She was about to say something when she suddenly saw the serious, thoughtful expression on Lin Yue’s face.
His brow was slightly furrowed, and his gaze was deep and restrained, carrying a trace of imperceptible melancholy.
‘This Lin Yue is unfairly good-looking…’
‘No wonder he can attract so many innocent young girls to fall for him…’
She wondered if Lin Yue had become more charming than when they first met.
Out of habit, she used him as a glasses rack, sliding her glasses onto the bridge of his nose.
“Thank you for your hard work! What reward would you like~?” she said playfully.
She hugged Lin Yue’s arm and slowly looked up, poking his cheek with a foxy smile on her face.
Lin Yue felt something strange and turned his head.
Mabel was caught off guard, and her surprised eyes met Lin Yue’s face directly.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen Lin Yue wearing glasses before — she had done the same thing a few days ago — but the moonlight had been dim, and he had taken them off before she could see clearly.
Honestly… just based on his appearance right now, even her heart was racing.
Mabel secretly vowed that she must never let women like Avelina see him like this, or it would surely cause a massive commotion…
“What are you doing? Shoving your glasses on me… if you have something to say, just say it.”
Lin Yue was about to take them off, but Mabel hurriedly stopped him.
“You… just wear the glasses! It’s quite good, don’t take them off…”
“But my eyesight is perfectly fine… lady…”
“Ahem, just be my glasses rack for a while. I’ll tell you when you can take them off…”
What a joke.
If she felt irritable, she could just look at this handsome face to feel better.
Why take them off?
Seeing that she was inexplicably excited, he simply didn’t take them off.
He continued, “Then could you please get off me first, Miss Mabel?”
Only then did Mabel realize that because she was too excited, her knee was pressed against the inside of Lin Yue’s thigh.
Her soft chest was almost hitting his face.
The two were pressed together in an incredibly suggestive manner.
The emotion known as shyness erupted in her heart for the first time.
The feeling of her heart racing from that night surfaced once again.
‘No… I can’t tease this guy anymore…’
Mabel climbed up while forcing herself to remain calm, intending to say something serious to cover up her internal agitation.
“Weren’t you asking about Charles?”
Lin Yue nodded, crossing his arms and listening intently.
“A few months ago, the Imperial family organized a ball for all the domestic powers. They personally summoned my father to warn him that if my two brothers did anything more disgraceful, he would have to face the consequences…”
This “sheep” was too fat; even the Imperial family coveted it.
Her father had long since retired to the background due to ill health.
The guild would inevitably decline in the future and was being eyed by those with ulterior motives.
Every time there was a similar gathering in the past, her two brothers had caused trouble, bringing shame to the Chris Chamber of Commerce.
They let all the factions know that the heirs of the guild were a madman and a fool — both were useless.
It wasn’t until two years ago, when Mabel reached adulthood, that she chose to gradually take over the guild’s affairs and rose to the position of chief manager.
“Originally, the guild wanted to hide my existence as much as possible to keep me from attracting the Imperial family’s vigilance so soon, but…”
There was almost no time left.
Over the years, she had used every means possible to finally resolve most of her elder brothers’ messes, failed business deals, blunders, and foreign debts.
This was also the reason why she was always staying up late.
However, relying on herself alone was still not enough to reverse the decline… so when Nightingale offered her an olive branch, she chose to join them.
As for the true face of Nightingale, it wasn’t particularly mysterious — at least not to those in the know.
It was simply an organization formed by the young and talented elites of the top powers so they could do things in the shadows that were inconvenient to do in the open.
When the “treasures” of all the top factions gathered together, they could naturally piece together many secrets that would otherwise go unnoticed.
An organization with information as its ecological cornerstone was born, though the founder seemed to have other objectives.
Mabel didn’t care; she only wanted what she wanted.
To gain access to more of the intelligence she desired, she became a Nightingale recruiter, working hard for her KPIs.
The more information she provided and the more talent she recruited, the better she could obtain intelligence beneficial to the merchant guild.
The information from the leader of Nightingale was incredibly precious and carried a hint of prophecy.
But with Mabel’s combat strength, it was still difficult for her to truly obtain any top-secret intelligence.
Thus, she needed a partner — a symbiotic person to whom she could entrust her life.
This person needed to be powerful, have potential, be calm, smart, and have a strong enough background… and it was at this moment that Lin Yue had appeared.
Lin Yue listened, holding his chin as he thought.
“I see. So that’s the true face of Nightingale…”
Mabel propped up her face and said somewhat nonchalantly, “At least, that’s all I know. If you’re willing to go deeper into Nightingale, I won’t stop you.”
“So those Nightingale missions you mentioned before were all to use me as your laborer?”
“See it, but don’t say it… aren’t I compensating you now?”
Lin Yue shook his head.
As expected, he really shouldn’t have trusted this vixen so easily.
“Then please continue working for me in the future, Mr. Private Secretary Lin Yue~”
Mabel smiled and continued to poke Lin Yue’s cheek.
However, finally having a channel to find information that couldn’t be obtained outside the game wasn’t a bad deal.
But he was still a bit confused.
Since Mabel had so many identities, why wasn’t she made into an important NPC by the game?
Instead, she had been brushed over as cannon fodder.
It seemed there were still many things in this world that couldn’t be explained by logic.
It couldn’t be that the code was written and then became discarded content…
In the early stages of the game, almost everything Allen could obtain in the mall was provided by the Chris Chamber of Commerce.
However, the Chris Chamber of Commerce perished very quickly.
It seemed Mabel hadn’t been able to protect this place after all.
Looking at this foxy girl who was somewhat sleep-deprived — with a faint reddish tint near her beautiful eyes that looked like dark circles — he couldn’t help but feel that the merchant guild was truly incompetent for placing such a heavy burden on a young girl who had only recently reached adulthood.
“We’re here…”
Lin Yue looked up and found that the scene before him was the same magnificent Imperial City from the game — the headquarters of the Chris Chamber of Commerce.