A few hours later, there is a knock on the door.

"Come in."

He does, looking dazed.

Everything looks fine and completely normal. His captives are just like he left them.

He blinks and smiles. "So how's the book going?"

Felix mechanically reports the progress on the various technology with military purposes.

"Oh, excellent, excellent. You will tell me when you're done, won't you?" he asks rhetorically.

"Yes."

"Perfect. And how's our little girlfriend doing?"

"Swell."

"Not getting up to any trouble, are you?" he asks, sounding as if he were privy to some secret joke.

"Nope."

Felix starts writing again.

Nothing in the room looks disturbed or out of place.

Sounds good. He asks a few routine questions and then out he goes.

"Oh, she was right about you! No wonder they wanted to keep me in reserve in case this happened."

"—I beg your pardon?"

"Don't play dumb! I saw you talking to them and they have been stupided or something. Kaede knew something was off and told me to check on her. And I am going tell everybody about it."

Jintes will observe the intruder cast a spell with the hand behind her back.

What's the spell gonna do—

It's a shield. It covers her and her posture relaxes a little once it's up. "You are going to pay," she says very confidently.

"Young lady I'm afraid I haven't the faintest clue what you're on about. What exactly are you going to tell everybody and what am I going to pay for?"

"Uh," Temperance says like Jintes went off-script and should've been evilly monologuing or something, "you are keeping the two of them in the room and they are not, like, responding normally? You noticed it!" she says like she can't think of a better way to put her words together.

"Did I, now. And why would I do that?"

"To steal the power from them! And-and why didn't you even notice something was weird when you talked to them?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, they're perfectly normal and focused on their work."

"Don't think I am stupid! I saw them they didn't react to me."