Steampunk Era: Mad Abield

For Malin, City Hall was a familiar place due to two reasons. Firstly, as a distinguished taxpayer in the past two years, Malin made significant tax contributions to the city. Secondly, it was because of his identity, as Faye’s lover. Over these years, who in Carterburg didn’t know that Faye of the Mowish family had a specially approved boyfriend, acknowledged by the legendary battle mage madame herself.

So when Malin, accompanied by his sister, walked into City Hall, he was immediately welcomed by the receptionist. Upon hearing that Malin was there to investigate Carterburg’s old residency archives, the receptionist was somewhat puzzled but still handed over the keys to the archive to Malin.

"Thank you," Malin said with a smile as he took the keys, then led his sister up to the second floor—the archives of City Hall were located on the second floor, with a separate staircase.

Upon entering the archives, Malin didn’t immediately start looking for birth records because he didn’t know the exact year that Sofia was born. The old photo was so unclear it didn’t even show the facial features clearly, let alone the time it was taken, the ages of the people in it, and the name Sofia—unlike Malin, a rather unique name in this world, especially since, at least within Carterburg’s bounds, Malin hadn’t come across anyone else sharing his name.

The reason why Malin was named Malin was that he was found in the year of the Horse, hence the surname Ma.

Back to the matter at hand, the first thing Malin looked for were the archives of the Goddess of Harvest Church apprentices—these apprentice files were updated very promptly, and Malin even found his name in the latest files from this year.

Going back thirty-five years, when Gaiate was fifteen, there were two sets of archives for that year. Malin and Maya each searched one, and in the end, Malin came back empty-handed, while Maya came across their father’s name.

"No Sofia?" Malin was taken aback, as this differed from what he had expected, but it didn’t matter much. He quickly arranged a new task, "Maya, continue checking the apprentice files, go back from the year we just checked to four years prior, when they were ten. I’ll look for birth records."

After assigning the tasks, Malin walked over to another rack to start looking for birth records. He had his reasons to set the initial search fifty years back, believing the girl must be younger than Gaiate since she appeared smaller than Gaiate in the photo.

However, after searching for seven years in vain, even though Malin found seven Sofias, none of them resembled the one in the photo.