Chapter 49 : Discovery

[Ran Abalan's coming-of-age ceremony was shabby beyond imagination. Cellos, who had returned from laughing at him to his heart's content, felt his steps lighten with a sense of relief, as if his long-standing indigestion had subsided.

Was it because of the alcohol he had downed in his excitement? He turned his steps not toward his own room, but toward the garden, a place he rarely went. The cold winter wind struck his cheek. It was then. The smile that had filled his face vanished in an instant.

Wheaten hair that came down to her waist, it was a figure impossible not to recognize. She was not alone. No, it seemed she was alone now. Because that, which was hanging limply in her hand, did not seem like a living person anymore.]

It was a part of the original work.

The night of my coming-of-age ceremony, that day is the day Mentil's hidden ability is revealed, and the day contact between the 2nd Prince, Dito Abalan, and her begins.

The trees outside the window had not yet shed their colorful clothes.

It's still autumn.

Which meant, there were at least over 3 months left.

I had gone to the trouble of matching the start time of the event, but this time I was faced with a more serious problem.

The Red Book is a thin, old book of about 50 pages, which can be seen as a kind of history book, or a travelogue.

This must fall into Ratel's hands at the appropriate time because it serves as a guide for the protagonist and his comrades' journey.

And that is right here, right now.

***

The Empress has tea time around morning, so her room is empty for about 1 hour at this time.

The guards are blocking the front of the door so not even an ant can enter, but the window is a different story.

“Tweet.”

Even if I were to be caught, the probability of being killed for a small sparrow entering was low.

Aside from it taking a bit of effort to fly up with small wings, it has been very smooth so far.

I let out a sigh and carefully landed on the floor in human form.

Fortunately, the carpet was thick, so it didn't make a small sound.

It was a more modest room than I thought.

Compared to the 1st Prince's room, which was plastered with gold, her room was arranged with furniture of an overall low-brightness color.

The already dark room didn't get much light thanks to the window covered by large, heavy curtains.

Though they were similar in that every single item was unmistakably expensive.

The glossy, unusually patterned carpet on the floor, the mirror made of white marble hanging on the wall, and the telescope by the window.

A telescope in this world where religion overwhelms science.

It was an item I couldn't even dream of buying in the real world because it was so expensive, so I couldn't even guess how much it would cost here.

If I sold it…….

No, that's not it.

I overcame the temptation and took a step.

The Red Book is here.

It is in this place.

A large bookshelf that occupied the entire wall of the large room.

[Kal Machen's Story Told by the Stars], [Basics of Celestial Observation], [Great Emperor Sierra's Moon], [Three Moons], etc.

It was full of books all about the stars and the moon.

Considering how few scientific studies there are on celestial bodies in this world, given its religion, it was an enormous amount of books.

Of course, it's not that one of these is simply the Red Book.

I pulled out the one book among the many that looked the oldest.

He said he had hidden the Red Book for quite a long time, so it would be a somewhat old book rather than a new one that was just made.

[Song of the Moon]

It was a hardcover bound in blue leather.

There is no need to read it.

I approached the window and pulled back the curtain just a little.

Then I held the book up to the window where the morning sunlight streamed in and flipped the pages.

Whir.

With the old smell of ink brushing my nose, the old papers flipped over one by one.

One of those pages, there was one page where the amount of light passing through was different from the others.

I stopped flipping the book and held that one page up to the sunlight.

It, which had looked no different from a normal page, revealed hidden letters as it glowed with a transparent light, having sufficiently absorbed the sunlight.

The corners of my mouth went up slightly in relief.

It seems no one has found it yet.

I put the book back where it was and closed the curtain I had opened a little.

Darkness returned to the room.

The books, filling almost one entire wall, looked to be in the hundreds.

Among these hundreds of books, about 50 of them have one page hidden like this that light passes through.

In the original work, the hint is presented with the romantic phrase, ‘find it as the light guides’.

It was a relief that it was still in its place, but I couldn't be completely at ease.

If Mentil and Dito find this before the protagonist, it will be a major accident this time.

Because the protagonist misses the guide to set off on his journey, and Dito and Mentil get to take a shortcut.

But I can't steal it right now, either.

If they find out this is gone now, there's no way the Empress and Emperor will stay still, and there's no way Dito wouldn't notice that.

In the worst-case scenario, Dito might change his plans so far and move in a completely different direction.

Then the original work really gets ruined.

But I can't just pray that Mentil and Dito don't find it.

Anxiety was anxiety, but there was also no guarantee that Tollin wouldn't be included among the next Crisa family members Mentil would bring in.

An original work where Tollin has disappeared would also never turn in the protagonist's favor.

According to the original work, Mentil and Dito join hands after my coming-of-age ceremony, and the two try to find the Red Book using Mentil's ability.

But the protagonist arrives earlier than that and succeeds in running away with the Red Book.

That is the stable order of the original work.

It can't be earlier, and it can't be too late.

But in this damned original work, one of the events that will happen again has been moved up by 3 more months.

The only consolation is that I moved up the start of the original work by a lot, so the protagonist might arrive in the capital a little earlier.

Where on earth is this damned protagonist?

If he doesn't arrive on time, I will eventually have no choice but to choose the last resort.

And that is an option with nothing good in it for me.

Please come quickly.

If he has arrived in Abalan, he should arrive soon.

Clank.

It was at that moment that the sound of a door opening was heard.

***

To send me the Empress the moment I was begging for the protagonist to be sent, as expected, god is not on my side.

Thanks to thinking I wanted to change into the smallest animal I knew, I was able to narrowly avoid the Empress's eyes.

It didn't look very good, as I ended up changing into the smallest animal I had encountered, though.

Seeing the shape of my hands, it seemed I had changed into the small ground mouse I had once seen in the forest.

With that size, there was no difficulty in hiding behind the large curtains.

Clack.

With the light sound of dress shoes, the Empress fully revealed herself.

Since being possessed, I had only seen her from a distance.

The impression I got each time was that she looked fierce and cold.

This is the first time seeing her from such a_close distance.

Her neck, with her lustrous black hair, mixed with a few strands of graying white hair, pulled up tightly, was stretched straight as if to prove just how upright her posture was.

She, who looked like the model of a beautiful middle-aged woman, did not have a face that had forgotten time to the extent that one couldn't guess her age, like the Emperor, but her gaze at least seemed clearer than his, which had been dazed.

Frighteningly so, in a way.

She did not look elsewhere and headed straight for the bookshelf where the books were slotted.

“……”

It said in the book that there was no other device on the bookshelf, so there was no way she would notice that I had touched the book, but I was nervous.

Fortunately, the Empress looked around the bookshelf a few times and turned her head.

I let out a sigh of relief.

“……Smell of a beast.”

But at her next words, I had to feel the hair on my head stand on end.

***

Did she just say the smell of a beast?

Is she saying she smelled me, right now?

No, there's no way.

Even Rasia and Cellos, whose five senses were more developed than an average person's, never said I smelled like a beast when I changed into a crow or a squirrel.

The Empress is definitely an ordinary human, not a member of the Imperial Family.

Then was there a setting in the original work that the Empress has a dog's nose?

No, no matter how much I went over the original work, there was no such setting.

But if she didn't have a dog's nose, there was no way to explain her approaching the curtain where I was hiding, in such an accurate direction.

“Hm.”

The Empress, as if concentrating her senses on her nose, frowned and gradually narrowed the distance to the window where I was hiding.

I looked behind me.

Damn it, the window was open a little, but this was the 3rd floor.

On the 3rd floor of the luxurious, high-ceilinged Empress's Palace, it was a tremendous height.

And of all things, the form I changed into was a rat.

Is the probability that the Empress will find me and let me go quietly high, or is the probability that she will call people high?

It wasn't a difficult calculation.

The option of quietly revealing my rat-self in front of the Empress disappeared immediately.

If I go out the window and immediately change into a bird and fly away, can I avoid being caught?

Or should I jump out first, and change into another animal right before I fall?

While all sorts of thoughts flashed through my head, the Empress was now so close I could accurately gauge her height.

Right, let's jump first.

My body is small, so I'll live somehow.

Knock knock.

The moment I made up my mind and put strength into my legs, a sound of salvation rang out.

“Your Majesty, the Empress, it is Jen.”

What saved me from the crisis of almost jumping from a 3rd-floor window was the Empress's personal lady-in-waiting.

The Empress took her eyes off the curtain and stepped back.

“Enter.”

A small woman with purplish-black hair entered.

Jen Sia.

The Empress's personal lady-in-waiting.

She was a character who also appeared in the original work.

“What is it?”

At the Empress's stiff question, Jen, who had her head bowed, bowed even deeper.

She handed a thin bundle of papers to her.

“A matter has urgently arisen where 50 children and a few priests from Komiel Village must come to the capital's temple. As it is quite a large number of people, it costs a lot, and the documents requesting it have arrived for Cellos.”

The Empress frowned and scanned the papers.

“A fire broke out in the temple, so there is no room left to conduct the ritual?”

The lady-in-waiting answered her muttering.

“We had someone check, and it was true that a fire broke out in that region.”

The woman, who flipped the bundle of papers back and forth, nodded and handed the papers back to the lady-in-waiting.

A sneer hung on her beautiful face.

“They're demanding money using all sorts of excuses. Just give it to them.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Ah, wait.”

The Empress stopped Jen, who was about to leave after receiving the documents back.

Slap!

With a sharp friction sound, Jen's head snapped to the side.

The woman, whose cheek had reddened, immediately brought her turned head back down without letting out a single groan.

The Empress dusted off her hands and looked down at Jen.

“Replace all the maids in charge of cleaning the room. It seems they are not cleaning properly. There is a foul smell.”

Jen bowed her head as if in apology.

“I am sorry. I will scold them harshly and have them all replaced.”

Not long after Jen left, the Empress also left the room.

Only then could I let out a big breath.

I had barely escaped the suffocating situation, but my joy was greater than my relief.

Yes, it's a world where he is the protagonist, after all; it won't go on so hopelessly.

Komiel and the temple.

The protagonist's appearance was approaching.