Making sense of why no one changed spells was a huge breakthrough, but in the current situation, it was something I had to ignore. In fact, after the little talk in the library and some rushed research, I didn’t even have the time to think about it again. Or at least, I shouldn’t.

  The reality was that all between there and now went like a blur as I moved in automatic mode while thinking about magic. I was still there enough to get the briefing and prepare a plan, but that was beyond the point.

  As the king, and then the marquess I met a while ago, said, there was a huge festival close to the frontier. A massive grouping of people inside a huge chasm and right in front of what seemed to be a temple carved on the mountain walls. And, for a religious rite, this whole thing looked more like an end-of-year party than anything else.

  Dozens of tents, thousands of voices, and who knows how much alcohol running around. There were even people playing at the small river that crossed the canyon and some fireworks being fired, and that was just the military personnel. Even from the checkpoint we were in, it was easy to see the many wagons acting like shops and the many people that surely weren’t soldiers.

  In all honesty, it was a very dangerous move. This place could easily be turned into a killing ground, but that was only if we had a group big enough to actually match this huge force and then leave without getting stuck in the mountainous terrain. If Prourene had an army that could move around without losing another border, this would be a dumb move, but as is, things would go badly.

  Anyway…

  “I told you to speed this thing up!” I exclaimed in what I could only guess the guard was hearing as the Federation’s language, light-kicking the confused Dori acting as my coach. “Father will throw me off a cliff if we don’t deal with this white wine I bought.”

  We both were acting as Federation merchants who came to profit from the festival. Some local clothes and my cheat speech skill added to modifying Elen’s light bending spell to camouflage some of our ‘cargo’ made infiltration a lot easier. Relied on using a little too much magic, but I would have the time to rest a little before the main event.

  “No reason to jump off, girly. We’ve a whole night, and if yer packing as good as it looks, these will fly off. One saint is here even, so this night will go far.” The captain of the guards at this entrance smiled at my antics while taking a last look at the goods. He wore a set of simple metal armor, a cape with a haloed wing, and a friendly, and somewhat red, face, just like someone forced to guard the frontier of a party would. “Booze ain’t a thing ya can have too much.”

  “That I sure hope so.”

  “Hahahah! Well, we done ‘ere… Nothing to report, girly.”

  He then smiled at me while the freckled girl acting as my coach continued to pretend to not be confused. Not that I could fault her since she didn’t understand the language at all.

  I, on the other hand, was wearing a bunch of unusually colored clothes common to merchants in this area. My hair was sadly dried in vinegar for a while to kill the color until it was almost back to the natural bright brown. It was still stylized and my make-up was high-class, but one wouldn’t recognize me like this right away.

  It was painful to my psyche, though.

  My beautiful hair, taken to this point by necessity… And that without saying how the drills are gone. My natural hair isn't fit for them without treatment, something I must fix later at all costs.

  “I’m sure this guy hopes you’re right.” I smiled back, even though mine ended more like a scheming merchant as I reached for one of the bottles. “And here, take this one as a token of gratitude. Hope the skies will bless you, sir.”

  “I say the same, girly. And real thanks fer the treat.”

  No problems at all here. Everything since we left the frontier, using my newly found skills to mess with the waystones and teleport close by and then drive until the party, worked perfectly well. If it wasn’t for how naturally unlucky I am, I would be feeling confident about all this. Or maybe this was just too out there for anyone to even guess my plans. I mean, without the natural translation skill I had, both the teleport and the infiltration would be impossible.

  There was still a good chance this whole thing was a trap, though, even if one the other side didn’t know when it would spring.

  “Understanding only one side of the conversation is so weird…” The maid commented in an almost inaudible tone as to not give up his nationality. “Are you sure they’re not on us already?”

  “We clear, don’t worry. At least for now.” I dismissed him while moving around a little to unlock the fake floor of the cart and tap it a few times. “All left to do is find the spot…”

  I gave the signal and heard the muted noise of two things hitting the ground beneath us, so I set my mind on the next step and focused ahead.

  This part of the plan didn’t have anything special about it, though. It was only selling wine that was both more well-liked and more expensive here than in Prourene until the time was right. Very profitable, but that was a side-advantage of the whole deal.

  Money is a non-factor to me at this point...

  Either way, it worked as expected almost right away. Cheap and popular drinks in the middle of a party drew a lot of attention towards my carriage, and by extension, grouped a good deal of the soldiers. There were now way too many drunkards in a huge blob right next to the most important place around... A perfect recipe for chaos, and a sign to move on.

  “It's time...” I whispered to the girl by side after seeing a glimpse of light pass by and watched him nod before getting up. “Looks like I reached my goal here, everyone, so we’ll be closing shop now…”

  Closing shop after drawing this much attention was sure to cause problems, which was the planned result. The rowdier they got, the bigger of a cover up it would be. It wasn’t as if my stock wasn’t running dry anyway, so their booing and complaints couldn’t do much. Their anger could be used, though.

  “Don’t be like that, everyone! I mean, I don’t really want to take what’s left back home, so I was thinking of giving it all to you… Will you still get angry like this?” My words instantly turned the complaints into cheers. “Be civil about it, please, and don’t forget to praise the skies.”

  So, as Dori opened the walls of the cart, all hell broke loose.

  They were having fun and drowning the area in noise, especially after someone noticed that I also had a lot of fireworks stocked. It was all chaos after that, and in that, no one could pay attention to me. They didn’t even think about the fact the cart’s owner was leaving the area for some reason, or noticed me do so for that matter.

  Sneaking away after this wasn’t even an effort. Only a matter of moving through the crowd towards the small light signal that called my attention a few moments ago. A light sign that led me to a small crevice in the canyon, and by proxy, to where Elen and Eve were waiting.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  A somewhat hidden spot that was hard to enter, probably extra so for Elen, and in the end, it wasn’t more than another cave in a massive stone wall. Or at least, that was what anyone else would think of it. Anyone who knew better and understood how temples worked in fantasy, though, would know it wasn’t that simple.

  And as someone who understood that, all I had to do was send my two infiltrators to find this secret entrance.

  “Took you long enough.” Elen said right after I lurked inside. “And the other maid?”

  “She’ll be here soon, but it’s probably best to have her cover the exit for now.” I answered while hurrying to change into the second uniform we had snuck. The most pompous priest one we got, but that still had my pouch and belt under it. “If things go loud, would be good to have someone to draw attention from the other side.”

  “True enough.” Elen gave shoulders without giving much more thought about it. “We should get inside without much problem from here. Though this path seems a little decrepit…”

  “It’s a very unused path from what we could see, milady. It does go farther than expected too.”

  “Getting deeper into the temple shouldn’t be a problem, I think… But let’s move on. Are you two ready?”

  Both my companions nodded in agreement as I got set and fixed my hair in a style that fit priestesses from this side. As it was, I could pass as an important person here without a hitch.

  Trekking through the small cave wasn’t much of a problem either. An easy path that soon turned from normal rock to a more worked tiling, which made sure this place wasn’t natural, as expected. And only a few minutes later, we reached a door, or at least, what likely was one.

  We kept quiet after getting there, of course, and Elen moved close to the unusual wall in silence. She moved around a little and knocked on it for a moment until she found the mechanism. Then, as we got ready for any emergency, she started to pull the wall forward, opening a path inside. And just like that, we were inside a storage area, or something like that.

  It was almost empty, though. Very sad since this whole thing could be solved by finding this place’s supply of wine, water, or anything close to it. I had a few bottles of poison for that reason alone. But that was just a secondary option anyway.

  “Time to start…” I mumbled while scouting around trying to remember the old map we saw and started to pour mana into my tweaked illusion ring to help with the tricking. “Let’s move on as planned. You two still remember the map?”

  The princess and the maid nodded as I took the small canteen from my belt and moved to the door. As I did so, my feet started to bumble around as I got into the role while sipping my favorite horrible drink. And it soon seemed as if we were a drunken priestess and her attendants, which should be very common.

  Widely known but usually ignored fact about high-ranking priests: they are pretty much nobles with a higher perceived moral standard. That goes double on countries run by churches, and triple if this country is a federation of a bunch of smaller theocratic city-states.

  Two things this place is.

  All in all, these guys are a little less hedonist than my world's priests, but they didn't pretend to not be it. Very honorable of them. And since they gave me the chance to act the drunkard for once, I bumbled around the temple’s halls until we finally found some guards.

  Guards who got easily startled as I bumped into them.

  “You… Guard… Why the guard’s in the… in the hall. In the saloon? No, hall. The guards ain’t… ain’t to be ‘ere. They… We… Huh? Why we’re not in the hall?”

  “Oh, by the skies… I mean, this is not the hall, sister.” One of the guards spoke after giving a momentaneous glance to his companion. “This place is the inner temple. The hall and the other dignitaries are on the other side…”

  “No, it ain’t. I’m sure. You won’t trick… Confuse? Convince? You won’t send me to the wrong place!”

  The two guards shared a stare and a glance at my two companions while I heard them sigh. I could also imagine the two on my back shaking their heads at the situation, worsening the expression of the guards even more. It was making me feel bad for them considering these guys were the ones forced to stay quiet when everyone was partying.

  Such a horrible job to have during a festival. Not that they looked too bummed by it… In fact, isn’t it weird that we found two guards actually guarding the area in this situation?

  “Our high-sister went a li’l overboard, my good sirs, so she’s… Hmmm… Unfocused, y’see?” Elen spoke in what I had to believe was the right language, which I still heard as the same thing but with an accent, which seemed to get a little reaction from the guard. He even wasted a little moment to exchange a stare with his partner as she went on, which drew my attention even more.

  Now that I think about it, what language the mercenary was using that day? I never thought about it, but I couldn’t be sure anymore since I now knew that both Elen and Eve were fluent in all four of them. They were polyglots, like me, and good enough to travel all countries, so it shouldn’t be easy to notice anything… Unless someone was looking for someone like this.

  I guess that’s another useless skill to the set…

  “Yer help would be appreciated on this…” Elen continued, even if I felt that she was also noticing something was wrong. “Keeping her under control is getting hard.”

  “But of course, ma’am. Let us help ya…” One of the guards started to move towards us while the other took a small step back. I even took a little while to react to him considering that my focus was on redrawing a plan right now.

  What a pain.

  “Ay! I’m fine. Yes. Fine! And this is… This is what?" I broke into a mumbling chaos before they could continue the conversation or approach more. "Oh! This is the right place! I’m sure.”

  “Calm down, sister. What if we took you to the right place?” One of the guards focused on me and then turned to the side as naturally as possible while calling us to follow. “It’s right this way, like your companions there will agree. The Saints and the Hero are waiting there too, so…”

  And there was the last straw.

  Though I wanted my trick to work and somewhat wanted to see what this trap was, this guy gave his setup away.

  As I said before, this was the worst job around. No guard in the universe would be so ‘on guard’, pun intended, in this situation. But the real giveaway was on the ‘saints’ bit. I mean, there should be only one saint here other than their 'hero', and even the people at the entrance said so.

  Again, it could be me misreading the situation, but I wouldn’t like to risk it.

  So, to my secondary plan…

  “Ey, big boy… Can you… Guh!” In a sudden move, I bent forward and held onto the shoulder of the closest guard, even touching a little of his neck under the armor, who panicked a little at the possibility of being soiled by a drunkard. A panic that lasted a single moment, since on the next, it was already too late..

  By the time he noticed something was wrong, the small glow of the spell hidden under my bent body was only due to it activating. And before he could react, a very concentrated lightning spell took the first guard down, a variation of the most basic lightning spell tailored as a taser. He was down the next moment while his friend got his skull punched to oblivion almost right away too.

  Glad my party is good at it.

  “What the hell was that?!” Elen exclaimed while looking at the guard taken down by the rushing maid after my ‘signal’. Her voice wasn’t even that loud there, but I could see she was surprised with the sudden plan B.

  “Proper explanation: I don’t know. Better explanation: they were up to something.” I said while looking around to be sure no blood was on me. “It felt weird, so I didn’t want to risk it. That’s all there is to it, I guess…”

  “So it’s as you suspected… Should we take the safe option then? You already spread that wine around, so we should be fine.”

  “Reasonable, but I feel we have a chance here… Since they think they have us, this should be the best chance to get things rolling.” That was my answer after thinking for a moment, and I even added a little extra as assurance. “I don’t think they’ll give a second one if they find out we escaped, though… We won’t get these guys out otherwise.”

  “Should we hide the bodies, milady?”

  “A little. Only enough to buy us some minutes to our missions.” I held my chin and turned to the path we came from. “Can I have you deal with the secondaries, Eve? We’ll find the best way to reach the saint and see how it goes from there.”

  “Understood, milady. I’ll be sure to reach you.”

  “You know what to do in an emergency.” I touched the little trinket I made for the both of us, ignoring that the most it could do was send a single beep. “Let’s go.”

  With my last words, the other two also nodded and then me and Elen started to rush away through the corridors while Eve rushed to the door.