I’m starting to wonder if potions can cause a hangover.

  They shouldn’t, from what I heard, but I’m still feeling bad since I went overboard at the frontier. I can move well enough by now, at least, and my grip strength is back to normal, but the feeling that I banged my head into many walls after running a few marathons is still here.

  Very annoying, very hard to move, and very hard to keep a clear head.

  Even after some days of rest, in which a certain old archmage kept annoying me to help with his book on silver magic, I was still not one hundred percent. Worse, I didn't hear the dream voice at all during this time.

  Should I try actually knocking myself out? If at least the world would give the chance for it...

  “Here am I, Your Highness. What can I be of use?” I marched into the throne room after the guards opened the door for me, and made a proper curtsy. I’m getting good at this, you know? Who would expect some of my least useful classes to be this convenient, eh? Guess I should thank my parents if I ever had the chance to see one of them...

  The throne room had a full ensemble today, by the way. The king, queen, the huge knight, the office lady, the old mage, and a set of the more important nobles of the kingdom. Seems like we’ll be having a talk with all the pretenses up today since quite a few of these aren’t ‘in the known’ about me. Hard to be sure, but should be the case.

  All should go well as long as I keep the proper acting, but not being sure feels bad.

  “To start, I would like to acknowledge your exploits in Frercross...” The king started to go on about the mess at the frontier while I forced myself to not utter the ‘where?’ and ‘who?’ whenever he mentioned a name. I never really stopped to think about that place’s name or who the hell was the leader there, so it was more about 'nod and stay quiet' for me. That is. until he came up with a different subject. “On the more pressing matter, we received new information from the eastern frontier. Something some believe would work best with a hero there. Are you already in condition to move again?”

  “Yes, Your Highness. Another day would be ideal, but I can move on whenever the conditions are in place.”

  I could notice a twitch on the queen and on the knight captain, with some negative reaction from the bureaucrat lady too. They were something like the ‘head-on’ faction in my head, so if they didn't like this idea, it was likely something troublesome. Some of the nobles were clearly in favor of whatever was coming, though, so it seemed this time they were the minority. Either that or the ones who actually knew, and arguably cared, about me, noticed I was pretending to be fine...

  Not a good sign, but nothing I could do. Keeping the facade was more important.

  “Then I’ll have you move to Wyrnrock with Princess Eleonora and any other backup you believe necessary. Getting there, find the local lady and her information team so they can explain the situation further.”

  It was a very short order, so I was feeling a little weird. A mission this vague didn't feel like something planned. The most likely situation was that I took things a little too far and either got too many people angry or made them believe in my skills too much.

  Such an annoying equilibrium…

  Either way, they were talking about ‘backup’ and ‘everything I need’, so it seems that I’ll end up on something big again. I'll need some heavy backup, but taking Lhori again wouldn’t be good, and either was having the two sisters in the same place, for safety reasons, so the archmage’s son was the best bet now. Randoul was around, so he should be at the castle too.

  Better talk with Cal and see what he thinks. But first, to see if I have some information to pick here...

  “Can I ask what is the ‘information’ you got that prompted calling me like this?”

  “Movements on the frontier. In particular, a certain temple on the border. They’re setting a religious ritual there without permission and with an army ready to march after its over.” He answered in a grave voice but without giving too many details. “I don’t have all the information, so you’ll need to hear about it with the lady at the frontier, but that’s the gist of the situation.”

  The standard procedure then… Still feels like not enough to go on, and a little too convenient too, convenient like a trap if you will, but that’s that. I can deal with a trap if I know it’s coming.

  “I shall see it done then.” I nodded at the order and then made another curtsy before giving my farewells and starting to leave. “Now, if I will…”

  Prim and proper, but still someone who stole a nobility title by having a bunch of nobles arrested. That part of the history was going far and wide by now, which was exhilarating even, so I had to keep the bit going.

  Having such a cool character to play was so much better than whatever else. It even worries me if I’m having way too much fun with it. Would hate to waste it while Mr. Hero isn’t around to play his part in my plan…

  You need a hero to be a villain, right?

  Leaving the throne room was very uneventful after that, only some nods to the knights and servants, and a last glance at my back to see the scheming. A weird meeting, but nothing big enough to be worrisome. Housekeeping wasn't my part of the job, so the only thing I could do now was link up with the poker-faced maid and her roguish princess. Two people who were waiting for me when I left, just around the corner.

  “Can’t believe they’re sending you again already!” Elen complained as she got off the wall she was leaning at and then stared at me. “But be honest a little, can you go? In safety, I mean.”

  I wasn’t sure how exactly she knew what was happening inside the throne room, but again, she was the nominal leader of the spec-ops. Spying like this shouldn’t be that much trouble for her. It always makes me want to meet this one person who trained her.

  “I won’t die, and I can move well enough. I’m not one hundred percent, but I don’t plan on fighting unless we really need to, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “That’s not an answer, dumbass. It’s a ‘maybe’ at most, and I’m not letting you go on if that’s all you can give me.”

  “Don’t try to avoid answering this time, milady.” Eve also added, oddly seriously too considering we didn’t bond that much. “She’s very serious right now, and so am I.”

  They want to push it, eh? And here I thought we had this solved last time already. Nothing to do other than be a little more serious again, I guess. Kinda a pain since I’m leaving character too much lately, and add that to giving up my hairstyle and I was close to turning weird again. The best I could hope was that nothing big would break my cracking character now...

  “I’m fine, okay? I’ll be more careful, so don’t worry about it.” I tried to explain in an unusual tone, getting the attention of the two girls as I moved on. “Fighting head-on is never my plan anyway. That’s a hero’s thing, not mine…”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  I'd prefer to not repeat myself, but they have to remember that I'm not a hero. The hero is sleeping right now...

  “If you’re sure, then I’m with you. What do we need this time? Dad’s not giving you much information, but he can get anything else this time.” Elen asked as she seemed to know as little as me at the end of the day. “Most of what I have is either here or on ‘your’ lands, though, so I can’t bring much. Other than stealing some artifacts, I mean...”

  “No need. I can make do with what I have. I’m going a little blind here until we reach 'whatever city' and get a briefing proper anyways, so… ‘Get ready for a trap and pray’ should be the plan.”

  “Troublesome.”

  “Should we prepare for worst-case scenarios then, milady?” Eve gave her opinion as she heard the sudo-plan. “Something in case we have to fight an army or if the whole city turns against us.”

  “For these, it would be better to draw some backup. Maybe even some of Sis’ forces, since we can move those without much.”

  “Not sure about the forces, but I do need to talk with your sister. I’ll need her artifact since we’ll be invading somewhere.” I said while turning to the path leading to my room. “And for the luggage… A copy of what I got last time, a good amount of gold for emergencies, and a new set of clothes. Something party-like. And some poison too, the powerful sort. Should be useful.”

  “That is easy enough. Won’t be more than an hour to get it all, milady.”

  “Your weird luggage is always fun to see… I’ll go collect some information in the meantime then.” Elen said after hearing the list and smiling. “Should we leave after dinner then? Eating here one more time wouldn’t be too bad.”

  “It works for me.” I nodded and then turned around to get everything als fast as possible. “I’ll go talk with the other princess now.”

  “She’s probably deep into the library right now. Her lectures should’ve just finished.” Elen shouted out while I was already walking down the corridors. “Tell her I said ‘hi’ while you’re at it.”

  “Will do.” I waved back while walking away with my head already on the path. A path that got me zooming by guards and maids, most of which didn’t notice me moving around at all. Always interesting to see, especially now that some of them knew me well enough to actually greet me.

  Either way, I made my way to the library and then went deeper into it than usual, so much so, I couldn’t even see the librarian anymore. It even took a while to actually reach where Valiria was studying, which likely meant I could talk without worrying. She was a little too focused on her book and her maid was too unfocused looking over the princess’ shoulders to notice me approaching, though.

  “’Sup.” I quietly called out after a while, which still spooked Valiria into jumping up and bumping her head on Dori’s chin.

  “Wha!”

  “Ouch!”

  “It’s a little mean to be this surprised when I waited quite a lot to ask…” I pretended to be unaware of what I purposely did, only smiling on the inside by the apologetic expression of the first princess. “But that’s irrelevant. Can I ask what you’re studying with such focus?”

  “What am I…” She took a moment to understand my sudden question, but then went back to the proper princess I expected. “I mean, nothing much, just some basic memorizing. Shadow spells are finicky, so it takes a long while for me to learn new ones. Either way, what can I help you with, Lady Illia?”

  “Not sure if you heard about it already, but I’ll be going on a new mission today, so I wanted to request that little waystone of yours. Just until I’m done there, of course.” I answered while peeking at the books opened across the table. “Elen told me to ask for support too, but I don’t really see the need for that. She also told me to give you a ‘hi’, though I don’t get why not do it personally…”

  “My sister is very adamant on keeping a good distance when the kingdom is in peril…”

  “She worries too much about Lady Valiria, you know?” Dori added from her corner after nursing her ching for long enough. “If you have both me and Eve around, you have no one who could hurt one of them. We’re, like, super strong.”

  “And this sort of thinking is why they both admonish you all the time, Dorothea.”

  “Well, she does have a point.” I shrugged, getting more absorbed in the magic books since it was a long while since I looked at one. “If you both are in the same room with just two guards, even I could probably break the whole kingdom's succession line.”

  “That… What?” Valiria turned to me in confusion, which drew me away from the magical circles after I finally noticed that I said too much.

  “Oh! That’s… Well, that’s just what you can do if you fit a lot of important people in a single room without the proper protections. Like, what if we had all important people meet in the chapel instead of the throne room? Someone could blow them all up with the right trick… Or something like that.”

  It was a good explanation, but both the maid and the princess started to stare at me in a weird way after my explanation. Maybe because they thought I had thought about ways to destroy the whole royal family, or maybe because it was just a weird thing to say. Either way, it was better if I changed subjects very fast.

  “Anyway, you have some funny spells there.” I turned to the book that had some multi-layered shadow spells that were, honestly, more complex than needed. “It’s funny that you people all use them as is instead of simplifying what you can, though. Is it tradition or is there some rule behind it?”

  “Some… Rule?” Valiria stared at me in confusion again, turning her eyes to the book after a little while and then back. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Huh? What I mean? Well, can’t you see that these runes are kinda redundant?” I pointed to some of the drawings in the book and then to the text beneath them. “Even in the translation, they make the sentence clear, but you don’t need to be this clear, right? I mean, you can probably cut ‘surround me and spread to all directions’ to just ‘surround and spread’, and it wouldn’t change much.”

  They both stared at me for a few seconds as if I was talking in a different language and then looked closer at the book, still confused. It was starting to make me worry I was going insane, but it didn’t make sense. I was only reading the book like I always did.

  “I think the heroine broke down, Your Highness.”

  “I don’t believe that’s the case… But I cannot comprehend what you’re saying, Lady Illia. I heard my sister mentioning how you ‘created’ a spell, but isn’t that part of your skills? How are we supposed to change a spell circle without said skill?”

  “Skill? But I just changed the runes. It’s not a skill, it’s more like writing or something. I just get the meaning of the rune and…” I stopped mid-explanation, finally noticing the reason why that wasn’t something normal to do. “The translation skill, eh?”

  It never hit me since I still needed to think of the meaning and memorize instead of just using it like normal language, but it all made sense if that was true. It wasn’t that no one thought of changing and memorizing runes like this, but that they couldn’t readily read them to begin with. The ‘meaning of the runes’ I could see wasn’t something everyone could just learn then, and so, it wasn’t as if they could just swap them around.

  To believe I overlooked this all this time just because I considered this whole thing to be common knowledge…

  “What do you mean by that?” Valiria eventually asked over my mumblings, drawing me away from my own thoughts, even if keeping a smile that wasn’t there before.

  “I think she broke, Your Highness…”

  “Maybe we should call Eleonora here to…”

  “No need for this.” I interrupted the, technically, older princess, and then turned serious for a moment. “I just figured out something very useful. Something that would be good if I could teach you, but that I’m not sure I’ll ever have the time.”

  “I see…” Valiria also got serious, but also seemed to understand the problem here since I hardly ever had a chance to be around her. “Then get Dorothea and the artifact with you. She’ll be a good support and you can explain everything to her, so she’ll relay for me later. Should be easier than finding a time for the both of us to study in the current situation.”

  “I don’t get it, but leave it to me!”

  Dori didn’t seem very sure about what was happening, but I just needed her to relay to Valiria all the theory and runes I already had a good grasp at. Was less than ideal, but I had to explain everything and have people be aware of this possibility as soon as possible. Be it due to a cheat or just a bug in the system, being capable of doing this kind of thing would be a great advantage for everyone on my side.

  Makes me wonder what expression Cal will make when I tell him about this… But that’s for another time.

  “I’ll take your offer and try to explain everything to Dori then. Won’t be perfect, but I’ll have to work this through with time…” I nodded with determination, taking the miniature waystone from Val’s hand and then moving on with my plan. “Sorry we don’t have the time to talk more today. I’ll make sure to get everyone together when I have more information on this.”