Chapter 31.
It was the tenth day since I became a thief called Lupin. After raiding Count Druval"s entire fortune, I went on a temporary break and started to snoop about the Department of Treasury every day. Unfortunately, the test papers were nowhere to be found.
Despite the setback, with a positive mindset, I set forth to the treasury office again today. I started picking the safes in the office while singing the opening of a comic book where the main character with facial recognition disorder left a strong impression.
♪What shall I do tonight~
Who shall I give happiness to~
A bad heart, endless greed, gone far away~♪
In this world, by interfering with the magic cast on the vaults and spinning the magic circles around, the vaults would make a "crack" sound and open. I would have had to pierce the back of the safes had these been the safes in my past life. However, it was so convenient to pick them without leaving a trace now that the locking mechanisms were made out of magic.
"Open sesame!"
Crack!
I opened the safe and looked through the doc.u.ments inside. One doc.u.ment was enlisting the supplies being sent to Demon"s Territory, another the price of demon byproducts, a third enumerated the price of monster byproducts… the cost of a dinner party last month.
After spending ten days scouring through the safes, I could now see the flow of money across the entire empire. Based on how the budget of other departments had been decreasing little by little and the supply to Demon"s Territory increasing, it was easy to tell that the demons were becoming more active.
Rather than reading the morning paper delivered to the boarding house every morning, reading these doc.u.ments gave me a better idea of what was going around in the world. Although there was a flaw that the information was not organized compared to the newspapers, I decided to visit the treasury office once in a while to find out news about the world. It definitely wasn"t because I had a grudge against the newspaper for badly portraying Lupin.
By the way, I couldn"t find the civil service exam question paper even after combing all the vaults in the treasury office. I wondered if the exam questions hadn"t been prepared yet, but it was very unlikely considering that the exam was less than a month away. Although I was studying for the exam whenever I had time, it still couldn"t beat looking at the questions in advance to manipulate my ranking.
I really wanted to see the questions before the exam.
Come to think of it, according to the map I bought from the information agency, the treasury office was divided into an office located at the outer palace and one located at the inner palace. According to the information I obtained from rummaging through the outer palace office, the work done by both offices was similar but slightly different...
The outer palace office was mainly in charge of external affairs such as market research and investigating money flow, while the inner palace office was mainly in charge of internal affairs such as budget execution. If the exam papers for the civil servant exam were not in the outer palace office, they had to be at the inner palace office.
A strict screening was mandatory to enter the inner palace since it was a place where the emperor lived. However, it didn"t matter to me since I was going to sneak in.
I put the doc.u.ments back in the safe and closed the safe door.
-o-
"Mistress? Imperial Mistress? Where are you?"
Somewhere outside the inner palace, the Third Imperial Princess Arelia von Bahamunt di Oreliang Elia held her breath as she waited for her private maid to pa.s.s by.
"Mistress?"
Arelia breathed a sigh of relief as she heard her name gradually fading away until it could not be heard.
The private maid was really nice, but she was way too strict. Being strict wasn"t really a huge deal, but whenever there were some events, the maid would make her try some clothes on... "Try the necklace... is the necklace okay…." Arelia felt like a costume doll she used to play with when she was young.
It wasn"t that Arelia didn"t understand her private maid"s fuss over the matter. The status of a maid depended heavily on the person she served. For example, the emperor"s private maid possessed authority that even high-ranking n.o.bles could not afford to offend. Just as a butler serving a duke and a butler serving a baron were different, the order of hierarchy among servants and maids serving the imperial family was determined according to the people they served.
There was a birthday banquet planned for Arelia on the day she would become an adult. Her future position would be affected by whether the emperor attended the banquet or not, so it was understandable that her servants were on the edge.
But to be honest, Arelia did not really care what happened. No matter how good her future position, or how much she was doted upon by the emperor, she could not escape political marriage since she was born an imperial princess.
Being favored by the emperor simply meant that she would marry someone with a higher and more important position. She did not have intentions regarding her own marriage. As such, she was not particularly devastated or discouraged. This was something that had been decided from the moment she was born, and she had been aware of it from a very young age.
What was she supposed to do by being discouraged now? Being devastated or discouraged was just stupidity.
Still, there was a longing for freedom in the corner of her mind. And yet, she wouldn"t be able to leave the palace if she were presented with the opportunity at that moment. Like girls her age, she too dreamed that a knight from a love story would come to her and give her his hand.
Arelia suddenly felt frustrated. She wanted to go out to breathe fresh air after mulling over reality. She opened the door to the nearest terrace. It would have been possible to view the entire capital from her location during the day, but it was currently nighttime and the entire capital was sleeping in the darkness under the starlight.
A shadow suddenly descended from the sky as Arelia took a deep breath of fresh air. She was surprised but couldn"t scream because it happened while she was still inhaling air.
The shadow was a man with a black hood and a half black and half white mask. He seemed young based on the bottom of his nose sticking out, but she couldn"t tell what he looked like under the mask.
The half-white masked man put his index finger on his lips to gesture to Arelia to be quiet.
Arelia was surprised by the sudden appearance of a man and became curious about his ident.i.ty.
"Who are you?"
The masked man mumbled a little bit as if he was hesitating whether or not to answer, but eventually answered.
"I"m Lupin. I"m just a man enjoying a walk in the night. What about Miss?"
Arelia was surprised and enlivened when the man introduced himself and called her miss. No one had ever called her miss before.
She was about to tell her name then hesitated. It wasn"t because she was worried that the man would kidnap her upon discovering her ident.i.ty. It was because she was afraid that the man would become polite to her like everyone else.
Although it was kind of a dumb thought, she decided to hide her name after a brief hesitation.
"Ah... Ria. My name is Aria."
"I see. Miss Aria, nice to meet you."
She thought of revealing her real name after hearing him call her by the name she introduced. It was because no one would say her name so casually. But she couldn"t.
Although it wasn"t her actual name, she still felt strangely amazed that someone was not referring to her as the third imperial princess. This feeling was the reason why she wasn"t calling the guards.
Lupin jumped lightly onto the terrace railing and said, "I"m sorry, but I would like to ask you to keep it a secret that you saw me here today."
Arelia unconsciously nodded. Seeing her so, Lupin let out a small laugh.
"It"s chilly at night even during summer. Be careful not to catch a cold," Lupin took a step back as he said his last word. Then, he dove towards gravity and instantly disappeared.
Seeing him suddenly jump off the terrace, a startled Arelia leaned over the railing to look down. Fortunately, there was no terrible scene waiting beneath the terrace. Only the usual green gra.s.s was being illuminated.
Arelia sighed in relief and sank down on the spot. She took a deep breath and soothed her pounding heart. It was possible that this was just a brief dream, or a fairy came to show her an illusion. She rubbed her flushed cheeks and looked up at the moon in the night sky. It really was a round moon.
-o-
Wow, I was so close to s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it up.
As I was moving to the inner palace from the outer palace, I climbed up the castle walls while avoiding people. Then I suddenly felt the presence of guards in both directions and jumped down to a terrace in the inner palace. I was landing on the terrace when some girl suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It was already too late to turn my body around, so I just landed.
Fortunately, the girl called Aria didn"t scream and instead asked me who I was. At the sudden question, my eighth-grade self emerged and blurted, "I"m Lupin. I"m just a man enjoying a walk in the night. What about Miss?"
Ugh, that was embarra.s.sing.
It was really fortunate that I was wearing a mask. Or should I blame the mask for making my eighth-grade self come out?
I was really embarra.s.sed and asked that the meeting be kept a secret before jumping off the terrace. It didn"t even matter that I asked because there was cognition disrupting magic cast on the mask. Unless it was someone who was trained in magic power, they wouldn"t be able to remember my existence.
At the same time, I grabbed the terrace floor and clung under it. It would have been an impossible feat for my past self, but any body technique was possible now that I had the body of a battle race.
The girl called Aria seemed to have been surprised that I jumped off the terrace and came to look down. Then, she collapsed on the floor as if she had lost strength in her legs. It must have been scary since some stranger appeared out of nowhere. It may even be praiseworthy that she managed to endure until I went away.
I would have to go raid the inner palace treasury office quickly now before the girl raised the alarms.
I used magic to land silently on the terrace below and then followed the map to the treasury office located in the inner palace. Although most of the map was blank, I began to wonder what kind of organization the information agency was to even have maps of the inner palace.
Well, it was none of my business.
I decided to take this opportunity to fill out the blanks on the map while I was here. As such, I began to move while drawing on the map. Since it took 10 days to go through the entire treasury office in the outer palace, the inner palace office should take a similar amount of time.