Undercover in Snezhnaya, My Teyvat Spy Life [18]

Back at the Goth Grand Hotel, Artem was completely unaware of the conversation between Varka and Seamus.

At the moment, he was far too busy plotting how to pull off a kidnapping.

Comparing his options—

Snatching Diluc seemed much more feasible than going after Kaeya.

The reason was simple.

Their positions were different.

Kaeya was Quartermaster—responsible for the Knights’ logistics, basically the head of support and administration.

Unless something special came up, he was usually holed up in Mondstadt itself.

That made it tricky to find a good opportunity.

Diluc, on the other hand, was the Cavalry Captain.

And unlike the game, where Mondstadt had no horses, the real Mondstadt cavalry was very much mounted.

Horseback units gave the Knights a huge speed advantage.

And his squad was composed entirely of elite, battle-tested knights—one of the strongest forces in the entire order.

Their main job was to provide rapid support for patrol squads and respond to emergencies or disturbances in the city.

And speaking of disturbances—

Artem couldn’t help but scowl.

Recently, Diluc seemed to be on some kind of crusade, picking fights with Fatui agents at every turn.

The guy knew better than to mess with Artem himself—he always avoided him on the street, turning around the moment their eyes met.

But Artem’s subordinates—those loudmouthed, arrogant Fatui soldiers—had taken a serious beating.

Why?
Because those idiots couldn’t take a hint.

All it took was a few words from Diluc to rile them up, and the next thing you knew, they’d started a brawl—only to be pinned down and pummeled by a pack of savage Knights.

And every time, it was the Fatui who threw the first punch, leaving Artem with no grounds for payback.

In the end, the matter would be quietly dropped.

It was the sort of thing that looked like an opportunity but never paid off—a frustration that made Artem grit his teeth.

So, since this morning, he’d put Leonid and the others under lockdown.

Apart from essential errands, none of them were allowed to leave the hotel.

Old grudges and new annoyances combined—

This time, Artem had set his sights squarely on Diluc.

If Diluc was such a schemer, then so be it. Artem was going to teach him a lesson.

Target decided.

Now he just needed to figure out how to lure Diluc someplace isolated.

It wasn’t like that time at Dawn Winery, where he’d just sent a note—
“Crepus, you wouldn’t want Diluc finding out about your Delusion, would you?”—and Crepus had panicked, dragging Diluc over to silence him.

“Monsters.”

The solution came to him almost immediately.

Part of the Cavalry’s job was to support patrol squads in monster suppression.

All he had to do was trigger a monster surge somewhere.

If the patrol squads struggled to keep up, the cavalry would be dispatched beyond the city walls.

Then Artem would have all the chances he needed to nab Diluc.

It was worth noting—

He and Diluc were the same age.

Yet their paths couldn’t have been more different.

Diluc was Mondstadt’s rising star.

He’d received his [Vision] at ten, become the youngest captain in Knights history at fourteen, and now, at nearly eighteen, was already being considered for the title of “Dawn Knight.”

Artem, meanwhile, had walked the shadows since childhood.

Not only could he never appear in public—he couldn’t even use his real name.

Tch, I wonder if Varka ever regrets his choices.

He glanced in the direction of the Knights’ headquarters, his eyes full of bitter amusement.

...

The plan was set.
The next step was how to put it in motion.

There were lots of ways to attract monsters.

Ley Line Monoliths, capturing an Abyss Mage

But those methods were a pain.

Artem had something better:

Clockwork Birds!

A Fatui invention—autonomous mechanical devices that could fly on their own.

Their main purpose: to attract monsters in large numbers.

Back during the sanctions against Mondstadt, the Fatui had used them to trigger monster surges just outside the city, keeping the Knights of Favonius constantly on edge.

It was only thanks to Artem’s intel that Mondstadt finally scoured the outskirts, destroying all the Fatui’s clockwork birds.

Once the tactic stopped working, the Fatui abandoned it.

But there were still a few old clockwork birds stored in the Goth Grand Hotel’s basement.

Now was the perfect chance to put them to use.

Artem never did things by halves.

After retrieving a clockwork bird from the basement, he left without delay.

When it came to monsters in Mondstadt, everyone knew the place to go:

Dadaupa Gorge.

During those years of open and secret struggle between Snezhnaya and Mondstadt, the Fatui had placed loads of clockwork birds here, drawing in every monster from miles around.

Eventually, the Knights had wiped out the birds, but the hilichurls they’d gathered didn’t disperse—instead, they settled in as permanent tribes.

The Knights had tried multiple times to clear them out, but never succeeded.

Eventually, they just let the hilichurls be, as long as they stayed away from Mondstadt City.

But that let the local hilichurl population explode.

As long as they didn’t threaten the city, though, the Knights had stopped bothering to intervene.

Looking at the sprawling hilichurl settlement ahead, Artem fiddled with the clockwork bird in his hand.

Once it was set up, he released it into the trees.

He kept moving deeper into Dadaupa Gorge, planting another clockwork bird near each large hilichurl camp he found.

For now, the birds were only positioned—not yet activated.

According to his plan, he’d link the birds together in a line, the monster-attracting signals growing stronger as they drew closer to Windrise.

That was the Fatui’s old playbook for monster surges.

Just as he finished setting the third bird, clapping his hands in satisfaction and preparing to head toward Mondstadt—

A light, amused laugh sounded behind him.

“Oh? This little gadget is pretty interesting.”

Startled, Artem spun around, his Debt Collector’s knife instantly in hand, Pyro energy blazing around him.

Unlike when Rosaria had caught him off guard at the cathedral, this time he’d been on full alert the entire time.

For someone to sneak up on him without a sound—

All kinds of possibilities flashed through his mind.

A Mondstadt woman with that level of skill
 Frederica? Lisa? Or someone else?

“Relax, little one, there’s no need to be scared. I’m just an adventurer.”

The voice belonged to a woman in a fiery-red adventurer’s outfit, with long white hair and pointed ears. She carried a classic adventurer’s backpack and, at the moment, was toying with the two clockwork birds he’d just placed.

At her side stood a little girl, no more than three or four, also dressed in red, her eyes fixed with fascination on the gadgets in her mother’s hands.

Artem froze.

He’d never met this mother and daughter before—

But he recognized them at a glance.

Klee!

And her mother.

The infamous bomb fanatic, master adventurer, demolition expert, founding member of the Hexenzirkel, guardian of old Mondstadt, and traveler from another world—

Alice!

---

T/N: gg ff 15

This is a fan translation of 提瓊ç‰čäč‹æˆ‘ćœšè‡łć†Źćšè‡„ćș• by æ›‰éąšæź˜æœˆèœè· All rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!