Why Is "The Tyrant Crown Prince's Secret and Hot Obsession" Written in the Ancient Grimoire? (3)
The basement of the secret printing house on the outskirts of the imperial capital was thick with the smell of cheap ink and damp paper.
“Go on, inspect them carefully. These are the truly vile goods that only spread through whispered rumors among the noble young ladies of high society. They’re so blatantly explicit that they’ve been rotting away as dead stock by the tens of thousands in the back alleys.”
Clotilde stood with her arms crossed, jerking her chin toward the mountain of hardcover books piled on the warehouse floor.
I picked up the topmost volume. It was crudely printed on cheap pulp paper, and the cover bore a highly provocative illustration of a muscular man with his shirt half open, pinning a slender woman against a wall.
The title lettering was a masterpiece in itself. The Tyrant Crown Prince's Secret and Hot Obsession.
“The title alone stirs the soul,” I said with a small cough, flipping the book open at random. My eyes fell on the first paragraph, and I read it aloud without thinking.
“Ahh, Your Highness! N-not there! It feels like my body is melting away…!”
As the crown prince’s rough breaths persistently dug into her earlobe, she panted like a beast…
“Ack! Stop reading, you lunatic!”
Clotilde shrieked and slapped my hand, sending the book flying. Her face faintly flushed, she cleared her throat repeatedly and fanned herself vigorously.
“You’re the one who told me to gather the most explicit, stimulating trash I could find! So I swept up every hardcore piece of garbage like When the Beast of the Northern Archduke Awakens and The Saintess Who Ran Away with the Orc Chieftain!”
“Magnificent work, Lady Clotilde. At this quality, our innocent Saintess might very well suffer a nosebleed while reading.”
I retrieved the fallen copy of The Tyrant Crown Prince’s Secret and Hot Obsession from the floor and dusted it off. Then I turned a bright smile toward the elderly bookbinders who were trembling in the back of the workshop.
“Well then, gentlemen. Shall we begin our masterpiece?”
Behind me rose a majestic stack of ten thousand genuine ancient grimoires we had legally confiscated from the Magic Tower. They were bound in red dragon leather that carried the weight of continental history, adorned with jewels crafted from nymph tears, and stitched along the spines with pure gold.
“U-um, Sir Secretary… Y-you truly wish us to tear the leather covers from these noble grimoires… and paste them onto the outside of those vulgar, ah, spring-picture collections?”
The master bookbinder, who had spent his life making and restoring books, asked with tears glistening in his eyes.
“Precisely. And with the utmost precision. Please perform the cover swap so perfectly that the volumes radiate the full dignity of hundred-year-old grimoires at first glance.”
“Oh dear… O Sun God, forgive this old man…”
The bookbinders set to work, wracked with the guilt of men desecrating their own parents’ graves. Yet their craftsmanship was the finest in the empire.
Riiip—Thud.
The majestic dragon-leather cover was torn from a 9-Circle grimoire of the Akashic Archive. Into that ornate and solemn binding slid the cheap pulp pages of The Saintess Who Ran Away with the Orc Chieftain, glued with flawless precision.
The crowning glory was the Magic Tower’s national treasure number one—the Akashic Ancient Grimoire. Inside its most extravagant and thickest cover, Clotilde’s specially chosen ultimate masterpiece, The Tyrant Crown Prince's Secret and Hot Obsession, was bound without a single millimeter of error.
“The Tower Master will be most satisfied. The contents strike right at the Saintess’s tastes while the exterior preserves the dignity of the Magic Tower. What perfect harmony.”
I ran my hand over the newly born “grimoires in name only” and sighed in admiration.
The real ancient magical knowledge, stripped of its containers, had been packed into plain leather sacks and loaded neatly into the underground compartment of Clotilde’s smuggling merchant wagons.
One week later, we returned the ten thousand cover-swapped romance fantasy novels to the Magic Tower with perfect pomp and circumstance.
“Ooh! Secretary Ilario, you’ve done a marvelous job! These once stiff and brittle books are now so soft and smooth!”
The elderly elders of the Magic Tower hugged the erotic novels—which looked identical on the outside—and shed tears of deep emotion.
“The Saintess will be overjoyed. To ensure these noble tomes are never damaged again, let us enshrine them in the deepest part of the vault beneath an even stronger twelve-layer golden sealing barrier than before.”
“Of course! On the honor of our Magic Tower, we shall permanently seal these books so that no one but Archmage Elias and the Saintess may open them!”
The elders layered the continent’s highest-grade sealing magic over the pile of 19+ novels and reverently tucked them away in the forbidden book section on the lowest floor of the Magic Tower, where no one could reach them.
Thus the perfect crime was complete.
Until Elias and the Saintess undid that seal together in bed, the fools of the Magic Tower would never dream that the books they guarded with their lives were actually The Tyrant Crown Prince’s Secret and Hot Obsession.
“…Even thinking about it again, it’s completely absurd.”
[Present]
At the Varcia Empire Resort, Clotilde burst into laughter as she recalled the delightful cover-swapping operation of the past. Her voice mingled with the refreshing sound of waves on the private beach and drifted away.
“When the Magic Tower elders cast their 12-Circle sealing formation and bowed, crying ‘O great knowledge of Akashic!’ I nearly drew blood pinching my thighs to keep from laughing. They had no idea the pages contained tales of a rutting orc chieftain.”
“Thanks to that, our assets have grown explosively. Truly a world that faithfully obeys the law of equivalent exchange.”
I clicked open the briefcase resting on the table beside my sunbed and slid a single, thick, luxuriously smooth document across to her.
“What’s this?”
“This quarter’s financial report. Have a look.”
Clotilde opened the bank statement with curious eyes. Instantly, her cool, elegant gaze widened to the size of coins.
“One, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand… You’ve lost your mind. Ilario, exactly how much is this?! How many zeros are there?!”
“Do you remember the real grimoires we smuggled out of the ‘Akashic Archive’? Selling them individually on the black market would have been the act of an amateur. Sell knowledge once and it’s gone forever. But monopolize it and teach it, and you create a lifelong pension.”
I took a leisurely sip of the remaining champagne and smiled.
“The Shinhung Varcia Magic Academy we founded anonymously the moment we crossed into the Varcia Empire. We filled its entire curriculum with the ancient grimoires of the Lumiere Empire. The results were spectacular.”
“Ah…!”
Clotilde finally understood and could not close her mouth.
“The 9-Circle secrets that Lumiere’s genius mages had monopolized for centuries are now being used as textbooks in another nation’s academy. Naturally, royalty and noble heirs from across the continent are flocking here with fire in their eyes. Even the Lumiere nobles currently being trampled by monster hordes are hammering on our academy doors with enormous donations, desperate to evacuate their children.”
While the lunatics from the original story clung to the Saintess’s skirts, lost in their childish romance and squandering the national budget, I had legally absorbed the kingdom’s most valuable knowledge and capital. I built a colossal educational infrastructure in the neighboring country and generated astronomical passive income.
It was the very pinnacle of capitalism—money breeding money, assets copying themselves into infinity.
“Ilario. You really are… a demonic bastard. You’re a hundred times more terrifying than the crown prince or the Tower Master.”
Clotilde stared at the balance on the statement, her voice a mixture of genuine horror and admiration.
“I am honored by your praise, Lady Clotilde. I simply performed the most efficient financial planning within the bounds of common sense. When dealing with madmen who have nothing to lose, the best strategy is to suck out the valuable core and watch the fireworks from a safe distance.”
I nodded toward the magic communication orb placed in the center of the table.
“Now that your heart is pleasantly full from the bank balance, shall we enjoy the grand reading recital of the great archmage?”
On the screen of the communication orb broadcasting live via drone, Tower Master Elias floated high above the capital. He had finally undone all twelve layers of the seal and now held the majestic leather-bound book open with both hands.
Vast purple mana of the 9-Circle swirled around his entire body. A terrifying magic circle capable of summoning a colossal meteor began to carve itself across the night sky.
Elias’s eyes flashed. With a voice amplified by resounding magic, he opened his mouth wide to chant the “spell” written on the first page of the ancient tome.
The entire nation held its breath. Saintess Piora shed tears of overwhelming emotion. Even the monsters trembled in terror.
And the first words to flow from Elias’s lips at that historic moment were—
“…Ahh, Tyrant Crown Prince, Your Highness!! N-not there!! It feels like my body is melting away…!!”
The opening passage of a dizzyingly hot, third-rate 19+ romance fantasy tore through the night sky above the capital like a thunderclap.