After arriving at the treasury office in the inner palace, I picked the door open with a wire and went in. I used the wire because it was cast with magic that would inflate its volume to match the key, not because I was particularly good at picking locks.

The tricky part about this magic was that increasing the volume too much could break the lock, while not increasing the volume enough would prevent the lock from being removed. The wire was only able to become a key by an exact increase in volume. The name of the wire was Alohomora.

When I stepped into the treasury office, I immediately began to open the safes. Like the outer palace office, the safes contained a variety of documents. Among them, the most notable document was the civil service training evaluation record.

I wanted to take and read this document containing hundreds of new civil servants’ training evaluations, but it could cause quite a stir if it went missing. The civil service exam could even get canceled should something go wrong. So, I only perused the evaluation records of those who seemed to have good grades and put the document back in the safe.

I decided to make a mental note of the location of this safe. The information I had bought from the information agency said that Uncle’s location was the capital, so I had to avoid working in the inner palace at all costs to avoid encountering him.

My ultimate goal was to work in the capital as an outer official. Doing so required receiving a grade ranging from the middle-upper level to the upper-middle level. The top grades were assigned to internal positions while those below the middle-upper level were assigned to remote positions. The remote positions were troublesome due to the long distance they had to traverse every few years to relocate. Even so, they were still better than working for internal positions under Uncle’s watch.

I turned my eyes to another safe. I decided to search slowly since I was going to come back and forth for the next few days.

-o-

At the east side of the capital, a woman wearing a hood came into the Vince Mosque Bar located in a maze of countless small alleys. There were several people who noticed her arrival but none revealed themselves and simply drifted around amongst the crowd. There weren’t many people in the bar due to its remote location, but it had its unique back alley loudness.

The woman hidden deeply under the hood carefully passed through the men and sat at a table labeled B3.

“What would you like to order?”

When the clerk handed over the menu, the woman glanced over the menu and said, “I want some good liquor.”

“Good liquor… For good liquor in our store, we have the Galloping of the Sun, the Dew of the Moon, and a Thousand Days of Dreams.”

All the liquors named by the clerk were made by famous brewers. They were not those one could buy in little backstreet bars. It was obvious that they were selling fake drinks with the same name or only a few drops of the original liquor. These were common practices in small pubs such as this.

Still, she gave her answer without a hint of surprise as if she had known the names of these liquors would be mentioned. This was however impossible unless she was a frequent customer of this back-alley pub.

“All three of them are good drinks, but I would like to have a taste of ‘Mother’s Grace’.”

The clerk’s eyebrows flinched at her words. Mother’s Grace was also a high-quality wine but was relatively common compared to the drinks recommended by the clerk.

The pub clerk definitely knew this fact, but he answered as if he was oblivious to it. “You have a fine taste. Mother’s Grace is an expensive drink, so may I first check if you can afford it?”

The woman took out four silver coins at the clerk’s request. Three out of the four silver coins were real while the last one was a medal similar to the size of the silver coins.

The clerk bowed his head and apologized. “Please excuse my rudeness. This is enough to pay for the liquor. The scent of the candles here may be too disturbing to enjoy liquor of this quality. May I lead you to another room?”

She nodded and followed him to the door of the basement hidden beyond the tables.

On the way down to the basement, the clerk asked, “What brings Granwell’s branch manager all the way over here?”

The woman answered while removing her hood, “Your rank isn’t high enough for me to reveal my intentions.”

“Even if I’m the chief executive of the imperial branch?”

She nodded. “Yes, I’m sure the chief executive will find out later, but there is still a chain of command that must be followed.”

The clerk who claimed to be the chief executive of the imperial branch showed a rare expression of surprise. Her words implied that the information was only for one person who was above him, Big Mama.

When he reached the end of the basement stairs, he knocked on the door.

Knock!

Knock, knock, knock!

Knock, knock!

Upon the knock with a unique rhythm, the door was pushed slightly to the right and opened sideways even though it had a handle attached. A lavishly decorated large room revealed itself.

“Milpia? Long time no see!”

A middle-aged woman with black hair opened her arms as she called out the woman’s name.

“Big Mama, long time no see.” Milpia smiled and embraced the arms of the middle-aged woman.

The middle-aged woman, known as the mother, was the highest executive of the Big Mama information agency.

“Milpia, I told you to call me Mother.”

As Big Mama stroked Milpia’s head with a warm smile, the latter blushed and answered with a tiny voice, “Yes, Mother.”

Although Milpia and Big Mama had completely different hair colors and appearance, Big Mama had become Milpia’s mother, who was an orphan. In fact, the reason she was called Big Mama was that she was a mother to everybody in the information agency.

Big Mama sat on the sofa and offered Milpia a seat on the opposite end. The chief executive of the imperial branch bowed to Big Mama and left. The guards in the room took leave as well.

Big Mama relaxed in her seat and asked Milpia, “Yes, why did you come all the way here from Granwell?”

Milpia nervously took a deep gulp at Big Mama’s question.

Granwell was just an ordinary town that couldn’t compare to a city. But for the Big Mama Information Agency, this place was an important hub where all information from the northeastern part of the empire gathered. She would be reprimanded harshly if the branch manager of the town left her position for no reason.

Although Milpia judged that this was important information, there was no guarantee that Big Mama would agree. Despite that, the reason she came here herself to pass on the information was that she had adjudged it to be a serious situation.

“A middle-aged man came to Granwell at 11:14:53 a.m. on May 24th of this year to buy information. This is a list of the information he purchased.”

Milpia took the encrypted documents out of her bag and handed them over to Big Mama. The latter accepted the documents and briefly scanned through them.

“Are you saying he bought all of this?” Big Mama was quite surprised when she read the encrypted messages.

The list was a shortened version of the information that was sold, but this amount of information was equivalent to what a single branch would sell in half a year. This was assuming the branch was well-known. A hub like Granwell was one of the top-secret bases. It was quite rare to enter such a secret location and buy information.

Big Mama decrypted the encryption in a little more detail. She once again became surprised. This was because the quality of the information that was sold was quite high.

“This should be worth around 90 million pelks….”

Milpia once again became surprised at Big Mama’s calculation abilities.

“Yes, it was 85 million pelks to be exact. Also—”

Milpia put four platinum coins on the table.

Clank!

“He paid for it with platinum coins.”

One platinum coin was 25 million pelks, and four platinum coins were 100 million pelks in total. Big Mama finally realized why Granwell’s branch manager came all the way to the capital to meet her in person.

“The change is pretty similar to the fund in the Granwell branch.”

There were about 14 million pelks in Granwell branch. Paying with platinum coins instead of gold indicated that they were trying to take a glimpse into Big Mama’s Information Agency. With the exception of some counts, the platinum coin was a currency used exclusively by marquises or dukes. In other words, it was not an exaggeration to say that platinum coins existed solely for the high nobles.

Visiting Big Mama’s Intelligence Agency with such money and asking for changes similar to their reserve could be considered a provocation.

“You made a sketch of the man, right?”

Milpia took out a portrait of a middle-aged man with a scar on his face from her bag and handed it over to Big Mama.

As Big Mama carefully examined the sketch, Milpia said, “We lost the man even though he was carrying the change, information, and items we gave him to compensate for the remaining change we couldn’t pay up.”

“How much did they weigh in total?”

“Over 500 kilograms.”

Big Mama’s face stiffened and stared intensively at the portrait.

She had no idea. To carry around 500kg casually, he had to have the physique of the battle race. Big Mama knew every person who had trained their bodies to match a battle race member. However, it was the first time she had seen this face.

“What are the chances that this person is a member of the battle race?”

Big Mama asked this question because it was possible for her to not recognize people who lived in the forbidden lands.

“It’s a possibility, but most likely not.”

“Why not?”

“First of all, this man had no physical features that matched the battle race.”

The Crows had distinguishable black hair and black eyes, the Dragons had blond hair and blue eyes, and the Butterflies had white hair and red eyes. The characteristics of the Crows were a little rare, but not completely absent. In the case of the Dragons, a third of people had such a combination of eyes and hair color. Unless they had appearances like the Butterfly Tribe who were easily distinguishable in the crowd, physical characteristics did not help in identifying a member of the battle race. In addition, it was possible to dye hair with magic.

Despite all this, the reason Milpia still mentioned those physical characteristics was because of the pride of the battle race. Not to mention the Crows that were known as the strongest tribe, even the Dragons and the Butterflies had pride that would stop them from disguising themselves on purpose. They were strong people who had no reasons to hide.

Big Mama shook her head. This meant that the man was a person recruited from outside the empire.

“This means that this is an external force, or a force large enough to recruit foreign talent.