Let the Celestial Chariot Ox step back to the midnight of May 20.

After Evelyn Belldet captured the group from the Funeral Agency, she did not hand them over to the Red Hats, nor did she "preemptively eliminate threats" as Ashe and Harvey had feared. Instead, she struck a strange deal with Annan. Evelyn would shelter them and even provide comfortable accommodations on the condition that they were strictly confined to Belldet Estate and forbidden from leaving without permission.

Additionally, the deal would terminate, and the Funeral Agency squad would regain their freedom once the six of them collectively earned six thousand Bel Points.

With six people in total, each individual effectively needed to earn a thousand points. Evelyn would provide them with various jobs around the estate. Working a standard eight-hour day yielded about sixty Bel Points, while putting in overtime could bring that total up to a hundred.

In other words, if they did nothing but eat, sleep, and work, the entire group could escape within ten days at most.

On the surface, the fairness of the arrangement was beyond question. With Annan, the head of the agency, personally overseeing the negotiations and locking down every detail, Evelyn had no way to exploit loopholes or trick them.

However, the problem was that the deal itself felt deeply suspicious.

At first, Ashe assumed Evelyn intended to threaten them, or perhaps test their limits with some form of punishment disguised as labor. Yet all the assigned tasks were perfectly mundane, like cleaning corridors, gardening, drying laundry... There was even a position available for a psychological care specialist. Aside from the overwhelming scale of Belldet Estate making the workload enormous, nothing seemed intentionally malicious.

The only obvious trap was that all food within the estate had to be purchased using Bel Points, which would significantly slow their...