Chapter 28: Emergency Measures (1)

This is seriously bad.

No joke, this was seriously messed up.

Looking at the familiar face of the girl who had just appeared, Sion muttered inwardly.

“B-Be-Beryl…?”

Exia mumbled with a blank look on her face.

‘Damn it! Why would you say that so openly?!’ Sion screamed internally.

Things were already looking suspicious because of their reactions!

‘Please, I hope she didn’t hear that…’

Sion desperately hoped, watching Beryl’s reaction with a silent prayer.

She was practically willing to manifest divine power at this point.

However, Sion’s hopes were in vain.

Beryl’s eyes widened as she lunged toward Exia.

“!? Do you know who I am?”

Beryl asked.

Damn it.

Sion cursed as she saw Beryl take the bait.

That stupid Exia never ceased to make things harder.

Why did she have to recklessly blurt out the name right away?

Sion gritted her teeth, glaring at Exia.

But her misfortune didn’t end there.

“Huh? Beryl?”

To make matters worse, Isabella, who was sitting next to them, reacted to the name.

To reiterate, she was smart.

She could remember the faces of everyone who worked in the palace, even down to the lowest maid who had just joined.

Isabella examined Beryl’s face carefully before speaking.

“Right. I thought I’d seen that face somewhere before.

You’re the new recruit who joined the palace a month ago, aren’t you?

What are you doing here? Did you get fired or something?”

“Well, actually…”

Beryl fiddled with her fingers and spoke cautiously.

“To be honest, I don’t even know who I am.

For some reason, all my memories of my past seem to have been erased.

I thought I could find some clues if I came to Anatolia, so here I am…”

“Hmm…?”

Isabella narrowed her eyes.

Then she seemed to think about something for a moment before calling her attendant, who was waiting nearby.

“Rosalia, come over here for a moment.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Take this money, go to any magic tower nearby, and send a long-distance communication to the palace.

Check if a maid named Beryl is still there.”

Hearing this, Sion swallowed hard.

This was bad.

The people in the palace still didn’t know Beryl was missing.

From their perspective, Beryl should be at the academy, attending to the Hero.

On the other hand, Isabella had already been told that, at the Hero’s special request, her childhood friend Iris (Exia) was made her attendant.

An inconsistency in information.

A contradiction that would inevitably come to light once the two pieces of information were cross-checked.

This was truly a critical situation.

‘What should I do…!?’

Sion thought frantically, cold sweat dripping down her back.

Modifying their memories to make the story fit was possible.

But this was a public café, not the privacy of an airship cabin.

She couldn’t alter Isabella’s memory in front of everyone.

Moreover, with things as they were, future investigations could still reveal the truth.

She needed to eliminate that possibility as well.

‘…In the end, there’s only one way.’

Sion bit her lip.

She cleared her throat, looking pale, and cautiously raised her hand.

“Uh, excuse me, Your Highness…?”

“Huh? What’s wrong, sis?”

“I’m sorry, but could I go to the restroom for a moment?

Eating something cold has made my stomach a bit…”

A look mixed with embarrassment and awkwardness.

It wasn’t just an act.

Admitting you needed the bathroom wasn’t easy, whether you were male or female.

But this wasn’t the time to worry about appearances.

Isabella, looking slightly flustered, nodded.

“Ah, sure… Just be quick.”

“Thank you for understanding.”

Sion quickly stood up and rushed toward the restroom at the back of the café.

Was it that urgent? Isabella tilted her head, puzzled, as she watched Sion dash away.

Bam!!!

Meanwhile, inside the women’s restroom, Sion hurriedly closed the stall door and locked it. Swiftly forming a hand sign, she shouted,

“Greater Teleport!”

With that one phrase, the scenery around Sion shifted dramatically.

She went from a cramped toilet stall where only one person could barely fit to a wide-open, lavishly decorated garden.

“Luckily, no one’s around,”

Sion muttered as she scanned her surroundings right after landing.

The spell she had used was a long-distance teleportation magic. As long as she knew the destination, she could reach anywhere with a mere gesture—an incredibly versatile spell.

Sion had used this very spell to instantly jump from Anatolia to the royal palace in Salem.

“Although I haven’t been detected yet… just to be safe, Invisibility.”

In a flash, Sion’s entire body turned so transparent that no one could spot her.

Invisibility—a must-use spell whenever a magician sneaks into a place.

Combined with the Nondetection spell she kept active at all times, no ordinary detection magic could find Sion.

‘Hero Sion’ should not be here, so these were necessary precautions.

Having completed these preliminary steps, Sion moved on to the next.

“Scrying.”

A detection spell to find the current location of the person she wanted.

Sion quickly used this spell to scan the entire palace, searching for a particular person.

The one person who held the key to the current situation.

‘Carmine Bradley, the Chief Steward of the Salem Royal Court!’

Chief Steward—the position in charge of overseeing palace servants, various ceremonies, and handling internal and external guests.

He was the most suitable character for the story Sion had concocted about ‘asking the person in charge to assign Iris as a servant.’

Carmine was likely the one who had assigned Beryl to accompany Sion.

If Sion could manipulate his memory, aligning the story would be easy. Failing to control his perception could mean disaster at any moment.

Fortunately, the results of the detection spell came quickly.

‘The second room from the inside, on the fifth floor… Alright, Dimension Door!’

Sion used another teleportation spell to jump directly into Carmine’s office.

It was a modest room with few decorations, reflecting the practical nature of its owner. Only the bare essentials were present.

At the center of the room, a bespectacled civil servant was reading documents and signing them, as usual.

-Whoosh.

The small gust created by the dimensional portal slightly brushed past Carmine’s hair.

Sensing the strange disturbance, he turned his head.

“Hm? What’s tha—”

“Deep Slumber.”

But Sion was a step ahead.

She cast a sleep spell that would instantly put the target to sleep, especially effective when the target was exhausted.

A spell like this would hit harder than any other magic on the Chief Steward, who was constantly overworked.

And, as expected, he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, falling unconscious in just one second.

“Good. Now, this is the crucial part… Modify Memory.”

Sion placed her hand on Carmine’s head and began to chant the spell.

As mentioned earlier, a person’s memory is delicate. For an ordinary wizard, the limit would be modifying only about five minutes of memory at most.

For Sion, who possesses an extraordinary amount of magical power and control, it’s a bit different. Even so, the maximum would be around a day or two.

In the case of Beryl last time, that one or two days wasn’t nearly enough, so she had no choice but to completely shatter her entire identity…

But this time, it’s different. There’s no need to go that far.

‘Only two memories need to be implanted, Beryl’s sudden resignation and Iris’s subsequent appointment.’

The story Sion had prepared went like this:

One day, Beryl suddenly decides she wants to quit her job and submits her resignation.

No matter how much she’s asked, she doesn’t provide a reason.

She simply pleads to be allowed to leave the palace without needing any severance pay or anything.

Naturally, Carmine, the head of the palace, tries to persuade her to change her mind, but her determination is unshakable.

He has no choice but to accept her resignation and let Beryl go.

The problem is that she had already been assigned as the assistant to Hero Sion.

While he was considering who else to appoint, the Hero visits him and cautiously asks if she could bring her childhood friend to the academy instead.

Normally, he would have rejected it based on principles, but since Beryl had just resigned and there was no suitable person available, Carmine ultimately accepts the request after much deliberation.

On Beryl’s side, the resignation process is quietly handled by Carmine himself, and everything concludes without much fuss…

That was the fake memory she planned to create.

“Good, perfect.”

Sion nodded with a crooked smile.

The reason for Beryl’s resignation was deliberately left vague. That way, if anyone ever probed into it, they would find nothing but dead ends.

Creating a false trail to lead away from the truth. A method known as a “Red Herring.”

“Now, all that’s left is to implant this memory and adjust the context a little.”

Once that was done, the rest would be handled by the head of the palace himself.

He would never suspect that his memories had been tampered with.

This was the ultimate perfect crime, a method far beyond simple evidence fabrication.

If the lie was ever at risk of being exposed, she could manipulate the memories of all key figures to avoid detection.

A deadly move that only Sion in the entire world could use.

“Hehe, good… just stay quietly asleep…”

Sion laughed wickedly while stroking Carmine’s hair.

Just a little more. Just a little more, and the memory alteration would be complete—

Knock, knock, knock.

“!?!”

But at that moment, a sudden knock wiped the smile off her face.

“Um, Chief? Are you in there?

Princess Isabella has a call for you…”

Damn it, already?!

Sion looked back and forth between the door and Carmine with a panicked expression.

This can’t happen. It’s still too soon.

Memory alteration magic takes some time to complete its transformation. Unlike other spells, it can’t be finished instantly.

If the subject were to wake up midway and resist? Things would spiral out of control from that point.

In other words, this guy absolutely must not wake up now.

“Chief?”

Sion swallowed nervously.

At this rate, she would have to quickly cast a voice-altering spell and somehow trick them—

“Um, pardon me for intruding…”

“!?”

However, the other party didn’t give Sion any chance to respond.

The thick door opened, and a maid entered. It was Mari, a girl whose face Sion also remembered.

She looked at the fallen Carmine on the floor, her eyes widening in shock.

“!? Chief, are you all ri—”

“Deep Slumber!!”

Once again, magic shot out from Sion’s hand.

Struck by the spell, Mari stumbled and wavered before collapsing to the floor just like Carmine.

Sion had inadvertently taken down two people at once.

“… What now?”

Sion muttered, sweating nervously as she looked at the two unconscious people on the floor.

It was one obstacle after another. Truly.