The Spy Discovered
Staying inside the imperial palace would have only put me at risk of being obsessively hounded by bearded old men instead of pretty young ladies, so I used the excuse that I wanted to explore the city a bit and slipped out.
“Mister, what’s the best-selling potion around here?”
“Best seller? Has to be the healing potion. Knights, mercenaries, adventurers—they all buy it.”
While browsing the potion shop, I asked the owner what he sold and what moved the fastest…
“Mister, among the things you forge here, what sells best? Swords, right?”
“Pretty much. It’s the most commonly used weapon, and they wear out, so you have to replace them. Why do you ask?”
I dropped by the smithy and asked about popular items too…
I wandered all over the city—herb markets, ore merchants, jewelers—asking everyone I met whatever came to mind.
But even after listening to their explanations, nothing made me think, This is it!
With my current skills and my encyclopedic knowledge of Romance Tale, I could probably make a decent living no matter what I did. Still, I wanted to do something that actually pulled at my heart.
I’d spent my whole life in a dark mountain shack with a psychotic, dementia-ridden old man, enduring abuse disguised as training. Now that I was finally free, wasn’t I allowed to live doing whatever I wanted?
I wanted a job that wasn’t too hard, let me earn money comfortably, gave me the freedom to rest whenever I felt like it, and occasionally let me enjoy some real refresh time at a nice resort.
While I was walking down the street lost in those thoughts, my gaze landed on a girl who had wrapped herself in shabby cloth serving as both hood and cloak.
She looked so unremarkable that her disheveled appearance would normally make her easy to overlook, but one thing about her was completely different from everyone else…
Magic?
A rather sophisticated spell was coiled around her body.
Since I could see the spell’s structure clearly, I copied it and tested it on myself.
The moment I sensed the magical energy wrapping around me, I combined it with my game knowledge and identified exactly what it was.
Cognitive Impairment Magic, huh? The only people who walk around a major city like this under cognitive impairment magic are intelligence agents.
Someone strolling through the heart of the imperial capital in broad daylight while using cognitive impairment magic. In the game, people like that were almost always spies or operatives sent from other countries.
Whether their goal was sabotage, assassination, or anything else, it definitely wasn’t for a good reason. If I left her alone, she was bound to cause trouble.
I didn’t know where she’d come from, but it seemed they’d sent a young girl to lower suspicion. Unfortunately for her, she’d run into me—an emotionless psycho who could stab an old man in the back without a second’s hesitation.
I began tailing the girl. Completely unaware she’d been detected, she periodically glanced around as she slowly moved away from the city center.
She kept pulling what looked like a map from her pocket to check her route. Using the camouflage techniques I’d perfected while surviving on Mount Ksir, I followed without ever being noticed. Eventually she stopped in a run-down alley where there were almost no people.
She looked around carefully to see if anyone was nearby, but even though I was this close, she couldn’t perceive me at all.
That was thanks to not only replicating the cognitive impairment magic cast on her, but also layering it with the camouflage art I had developed myself on Mount Ksir.
How do you like my self-developed survival camouflage? Even the damn monsters of Mount Ksir usually couldn’t detect me. It’s on a completely different level from the cognitive impairment magic that mages came up with while sipping coffee in comfortable labs. Let’s see what she does next.
It was my special technique—completely suppressing sound and presence, making my mana feel almost identical to the natural mana around me, and causing my body to blend perfectly into the environment.
I’d only ever tested it on the old man besides monsters, and he’d seen through it instantly, so I thought it was useless. But when I tried it while leaving the palace, it worked perfectly on other people.
I watched the girl from point-blank range, ready to ambush her the moment she tried anything suspicious. Then she suddenly pulled a small magic tool from her pocket and held it in her hand.
That magic tool that looked like a small transmitter… I recognized it immediately.
Coordinate Transmission Device?! No!
It was a device that sent the user’s exact coordinates to a pre-set teleport gate, opening a portal. The moment coordinates were fed into the gate from the waiting side, a passage connecting the two locations would form—an innovative technology for crossing space.
In the game, the fast-travel teleport points had been created by applying this very technology. The larger the device, the more people it could send at once.
Since it was about the size of a cell phone that could fit in one hand, it probably could only transport a small number of elite agents, but even a few trained operatives appearing here would be catastrophic.
I have to stop her!
Before she could press the button, I charged at the speed of light and slammed a shoulder tackle into her back.
“Aaaagh!”
The moment I dropped my camouflage and ambushed her from behind, the girl—who never saw it coming—was knocked to the ground with a scream.
I immediately pinned her down with my knee so she couldn’t move, snatched the device from her hand, and crushed it with raw strength. That took care of the teleport tactic.
At the same time, two people who had been hiding a short distance away suddenly revealed themselves and charged at me.
“What the hell… Who are you?!”
“Where did this bastard come from?! Get off her right now!”
So she’d already smuggled agents in with her. Thorough preparation.
Knowing that any sloppy movement would get me killed, I kept my knee pressed firmly on the girl’s back and launched my counterattack.
The Lightning Shield that Heinkel had shown me back at the palace.
Lightning Shield
I installed the core point, connected the circuits, then coated them with my mana to stabilize the link. The whole process took less than a second. A Lightning Shield instantly unfolded around me, forming a barrier.
Dangerously crackling blue sparks rotated around the shield. The charging agents stopped in shock.
“What the—what is this guy?! A mage?!”
“There wasn’t any sign of mana usage… Doesn’t matter! We have to attack before he tries anything else!”
The agents shook off their momentary panic, drew their swords, and charged again. Strong aura immediately bloomed along their blades. They were clearly skilled; they must have calculated that they could break a shield of this level instantly.
But I wasn’t about to sit still.
If a plain Lightning Shield couldn’t stop their attacks…
What if I built aura on top of it?
Everyone treated it as common sense that aura could only be manifested through weapons, and the game worked the same way. But if I could see and recreate both the blueprint of aura and the blueprint of magic with my eyes?
Couldn’t I use magic itself as the medium and layer aura on top of it?
The rotating lightning spheres of the Lightning Shield served as the largest core point of the spell. If I treated those spheres as the “blade” and overlaid them with the aura form Amari had shown me…
It was my first time trying it, so I had no idea if it would work. Still, I couldn’t just rely on a basic Lightning Shield with enemy agents trying to commit sabotage right in the middle of the capital.
I layered aura over the spinning lightning spheres. At that exact moment, the agents’ aura-clad swords swung with full power to shatter my barrier.
“Die!!!”
Crackle!
The Lightning Shield spheres reacted with sparks. The next instant, a ferocious current wrapped in aura shot toward the attackers.
Aura-Infused Lightning Shield
Blue lightning and white aura fused into a flash of light that was breathtakingly beautiful yet unmistakably dangerous. The agents’ faces turned deathly pale as they realized something had gone horribly wrong.
“W-what is this?!”
“Aura…?! On magic?! How—?!”
The aura I had overlaid on the lightning sphere collided with theirs, creating a violent tremor. The lightning contained within my aura flew straight at them without any resistance.
“Dodge!”
“Shit, too late! Defend—!”
The agents’ aura was strong but far less refined and weaker than Amari’s. Realizing they couldn’t avoid it, they desperately pulled up mana to protect their bodies. The current struck them immediately after.
“Agyagya-gya-gyaaak!”
“Kuuuuurgh!”
It worked!
An experiment I’d never even had time to verify had succeeded on its first real combat use. My replicated aura was already superior on its own; adding magic inside it meant the agents never stood a chance in a contest of power.
They must have been extremely well-trained, because they didn’t die from the lightning. But they no longer had the strength to hold up their numb bodies. Both of them, badly charred, staggered before collapsing sideways with heavy thuds.
Hmm. All that suffering on the mountain really paid off.
Now that the situation was cleaned up, I might as well go through their pockets and collect some rewards to help with my future life, right?
Even while trembling from the electric shock, they struggled to call out to the fallen girl.
“P-Princess… R-run…”
Thud.
The agents lost consciousness.
But the last words they spoke before fainting pierced my ears like a dagger.
What did they just say?
“Kr… ugh…”
The girl—who should have been an agent—struggled beneath my knee on the dirty ground.
I quickly flipped her over and looked at her face.
Beneath the shabby, cheap-looking hood was a face that couldn’t hide its noble bearing no matter how hard it tried.
The golden hair braided over one shoulder was impossibly glossy and soft. Her violet eyes glared at me, burning with pure rage.
“Damn it… I never received any report about someone like you… Fine. Kill me if you’re going to kill me! I’ve already taken every measure! If I die here, do you really think the master you serve will be safe?!”
“......”
It was a face I knew without a doubt.
Character Identified
Romance Tale Major Villainess
Serena
Youngest Princess of the Paulia Empire
Late-born daughter of the Emperor
Another major villainess from Romance Tale. In some ways, getting entangled with her the wrong way could ruin the game even more thoroughly than the personality-ruined Amari.
The Emperor of the Paulia Empire’s late-born youngest daughter—Princess Serena.
“............”
Cold sweat ran down my back as I met Serena’s venomous glare.
…Old man.
You told me not to do anything weird and cause an accident after coming to the palace, right?
I clearly kept my promise.
I didn’t cause an accident inside the palace.
But now I’m completely fucked.