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Mid Afternoon - Late Spring : Kingdom of Kaelallan

"ID please, sir!" A guard at the Noble Gate of the academy gave me a suspicious look as I walked up.

-I guess it was too much to expect a random knight to recognize me…- Pulling out my Id, I went to hand it to him but he immediately pulled himself back.

"Ah!" His demeanor changed completely. "I apologize for not recognizing you, Sir Whyte. I hope you will forgive my rudeness."

"Y..you’re fine." I was a bit surprised at how he recognized me without even looking at the information on my ID, but decided not to question it and walked on in. -I guess people who’ve only heard rumors of me can still recognize me fairly easily…- *Click*

Walking inside, I started winding my way through the maze of hallways to get to the library and quickly noticed that things were a bit too quiet.

The students were few and far between, and they spoke with fairly hushed voices if they were talking at all. -Isn’t it a bit too quiet? Even if this is between classes, I feel like I'm in a totally different academy…-

I tried not to question it at first, but once I got to the library and reached for the door, I overheard a conversation from within the lunchroom across the hall.

"Can you believe the noble kids got a whole week off because of the disaster a few days ago?"

"No! Like, why do they get a whole week off? They don't even have to make up any of their missed work!" The young boy sounded quite upset.

"Yeah, I really don’t like it… When I was sick last year I had to make up everything, and making it all up was worse than the sickness itself…"

"Right?! It’s so annoying!"

-That.. makes more sense…- I continued eavesdropping for another moment after that before the students eventually moved to a more private topic of conversation when I finally pulled my attention away and went into the library.

*Click* -I guess it was too much to expect this place to change so quickly… -

Quietly closing the door behind me, the chatter from the lunchroom was steadily muffled until it became almost inaudible. -How peaceful…-

*tap-tap-tap* My calming thoughts were quickly interrupted by the librarian nervously tapping his desk, seemingly too deep in thought to notice my presence.

-He looks stressed…- Silently walking up to the desk, I abruptly spoke out to him. "How's it going, Mister Librarian."

"Hm? The old man immediately raised an eyebrow. "Have we met?"

I paused to think about something before showing a sly smile. "You know, I was sure that someone like you would recognize me..."

*VWOOOM-creaaak* His chair creaked as it struggled to hold itself together under the pressure of my aura.

His face turned ghastly pale in an instant as he lowered his head in a flash, whether voluntarily or not. "I..I’m sorry I failed to r..recognize your majesty, sir Whyte."

Nonchalantly throwing up a silencing barrier, I leaned up against the desk.

"Hm…" Glancing at the papers he was anxiously staring at, I tried to see if there was anything suspicious, but it seemed like a normal book log. -So what is he so anxious about? I’m not just imagining things, right?

- But when I used my aura to casually glance at the countless papers in his desk, that question was answered. "Ah… So, you are a spy…"

He tensed up instantly but kept a straight face. "I’m.. not sure what you mean."

His acting was actually fairly solid, but… "So the letter telling you specifically to relocate to Bluefield (the city just north of the capital) until the capital is destroyed, isn’t for you?"

His face paled and his eyes widened immediately. He couldn’t continue the act.

-I'm honestly impressed… He hid really well.. right under Helen’s nose too…- Although I saw an opportunity, I decided not to jump on it yet. "So, do you want to come clean, or will you continue to deny it?"

"I…" He awkwardly glanced around to make sure the students reading books not far away couldn’t hear through my silencing magic before continuing. "I am indeed a spy." His body stiffened as he spoke and braced himself.

-To think he’d say it with his neck out…- Just by looking at his body language, I could tell he was expecting me to kill him. -But that’d be too much of a waste…- "How about I give you another chance?"

His tightly closed eyes opened immediately. "W..what…" He looked up at me with a desperate look on his face. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, instead of killing you or turning you over to Kaelallan for torture, I’ll give you a little escape route." My smile had turned slightly greedy.

And the librarian seemed to notice, but he still continued. "If it means I can survive, I will grasp at almost any string you give me…"

-Perfect!- "Then how about you become my personal information broker for this continent? You could even make a huge amount of money by selling information to people or even just publishing newspapers about international affairs."

Color slowly started returning to his face as I talked, but he was still quite anxious. "P..please detail what you want me to do…"

"Well, to put it simply, I’d like for you to cut ties with the tower and expand your network around the continent so you have access to any kind of information I may eventually need.

" -Talk about a golden egg…- "I’ll even talk to the royal family to get you some funding at the cost of you giving them information priority over other people or nations. Outside of that, you can do as you wish as long as it doesn’t negatively affect me. "

He just stared at me in awe for a moment before mumbling. "W..what’s the catch?"

"Well, you will work under me, so you will have to comply with anything I ask, no matter what it is."

The librarian seemed to pick up on what I meant immediately. "So basically a slave with some freedom, huh…" There was a moment of silence as he wore a look of indecision, but the silence ended faster than expected. "Okay… I will do it."

I was a bit taken aback by how fast he decided, but didn’t complain. "Perfect! In that case, I will leave you to do your thing. What is your name?"

His slightly uncomfortable look quickly turned to one of confusion. "My name is Frode Birger, but.. What do you mean you’ll leave me to do my thing?"

"Hm? I’ve already told you what I want, so I'm leaving you to make it all work." I didn’t understand what he was trying to get at.

"N..no, what I meant was.. you aren’t putting oath magic on me?"

"I simply don’t understand the magic deeply enough yet, and don’t want to risk you accidentally killing yourself." After another short moment of silence, I dispelled the silencing magic and turned away. "If you want to run, you can try, but I promise you it won't end well…"

My voice resonated through the library as I walked over to the stairs, drawing the attention of everyone in the room, but no one made a peep.

I got odd looks from everyone as they saw the slough of conflicted emotions on the librarian's face, but none of them spoke up.

The library quickly fell back into silence, without even the sound of pages turning to interrupt it.

But my mind was too preoccupied to care about the attention. -To think I’d come to explore the library and have such a golden egg fall into my lap.- I wore a smile of satisfaction as I walked up the stairs.

As I made my way up through the floors though, I casually thought back to my original purpose of coming here and had my expression darken slightly. -I guess it won’t be a waste of time if I find nothing now…-

My original purpose of going there was to go to the top floor and sift through the books to try and find information regarding gods, religion, or the Ancient Fenrir, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how slim the chances really were.

The Ancient Fenrir were beings that even Mother didn’t know much about, so it was quite unlikely, if not impossible that I would find any information on them in a random, mostly human nation of all places. -Maybe a demihuman nation would be better, but even then…-

Just like the other various gods, as far as Mother told me, they all vanished during or shortly after the Great War, requiring any decent information regarding them to be almost 10,000 years old.

-It’ll be like looking for a fragile, rusted needle in a haystack.. but it's worth a shot… Hopefully, I can at least find some information on lingering religions…- But when I finally made it to the top of the stairs, I was pulled from my thoughts by someone else's familiar presence.

-What the…- Quickly looking up, I saw a short elven woman with a large white robe covering her body and face. -What is she doing here?-