Chapter 546: The One Blocking the Road

“This is what came back from the Central Intelligence Office, President.”

After placing yet another thick stack of intelligence files on Celicia’s desk, Veil, who had been busy the whole day, once again collapsed like a deflated balloon, dropping her slightly chubby cheeks onto the tabletop.

She really couldn’t go on. Running back and forth when her stamina was bad to begin with had flattened her face from exhaustion.

“There aren’t any omissions, are there?”

Celicia had also been busy all day, yet not a trace of fatigue could be seen on her. She simply picked up the documents and continued flipping through them quickly.

It was just that several empty coffee cups were already lined up beside her hand.

“There shouldn’t be. The only people who handled these documents were that person and me. Before you, President, absolutely no third person touched them,” Veil answered.

“Mhm. You did very well.”

Celicia offered a rare word of praise and kept her attention on what lay before her.

In the room lit bright by magic stones, there wasn’t even any flashy decoration to catch the eye. The silver-white girl sat up straight and still, and the only sound was the rapid rustling of pages being flipped.

Veil tilted her head, secretly studying the girl whose pretty face still looked as white as jade under the light.

The President had always taken her work seriously, but for something to make her this serious was indeed very rare.

And it was all because of that damned Muen Campbell. He couldn’t handle things on his own and actually made the President take the initiative and work this hard!

Veil ground her teeth in secret, drawing little curses around that hateful playboy in her heart.

“The Royal Mage Corps... even they’re showing signs of being mobilized?” Celicia suddenly murmured under her breath.

“The Corps?”

At the sound of those two words, Veil perked up. “What about the Royal Mage Corps?”

“I forgot your background,” Celicia said. “It’s nothing much—just that several small squads show signs of being partially reassigned.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to them, right?”

Veil waved her little pink fists, worried. “I’m going to become the woman of the Royal Mage Corps’ twenty-third generation Commander. Before I succeed, nothing can happen to the Corps!”

“What could possibly happen to a position as important as the Royal Mage Corps’?

Celicia picked up a file and knocked Veil on the head with it when she started fooling around. “Besides, the Corps’ upper ranks aren’t idiots. And my own first magic teacher is sharper than anyone—she knows that at a time like this, it is absolutely impossible for the Corps itself to show any bias. This redeployment is clearly just some movement made privately by the people under them.”

“The Corps itself can’t be biased, but the members under the Corps... not necessarily.”

“I see...”

Veil scratched her head.

“So does this have any impact on tonight’s situation?”

“Why are you asking that? It has nothing to do with you.”

“It has nothing to do with me, but I can see you care a lot about how things stand, President... mmph!”

Feeling that icy gaze suddenly settle on her, Veil hurriedly surrendered and shut her mouth.

“Sorry, I was just talking nonsense.”

“Stand over there.”

“Yes...”

Veil drooped her head and obediently stood by the wall, secretly muttering under her breath.

After another stretch of quiet, Celicia suddenly closed the file in her hands and stood up.

“Let’s go.”

“Eh? Go where?” Veil blinked in surprise. When she turned her head to look out the window, she saw that night had already fully shrouded the city. It really wasn’t a suitable time to go out.

“Of course to do an on-site investigation. There are some things you can’t gauge accurately by analysis alone—you have to see them with your own eyes.”

“On-site investigation...”

Veil’s eyes widened in shock.

“So that means you’ve already grabbed that robin’s tail, President?”

“The robin?”

Celicia looked back at her, puzzled. “Why would I want to grab his tail?”

“Eh? But President, aren’t you running yourself ragged investigating him? And that Inner Council thing.” Veil blinked. After helping Celicia for this long, she had also gained a certain understanding of the Inner Council.

“I am indeed investigating the Inner Council, but why should I bother with that robin? He may look like he’s hopping up and down, but in reality he’s just the mouthpiece jointly pushed forward by the Inner Council. Even if I caught him, so what? Does cutting out a single tongue kill the person?”

“So what you mean is...”

“White Tiger... the one I mentioned before. He’s the key to the entire Inner Council.”

Celicia’s face was expressionless. “I don’t have time to waste effort on a dead bird that’s only good for disgusting people.”

“But... that White Tiger or whatever he is seems to be hiding really deep. Can you really drag him out?”

“It’s difficult, but not as difficult as you think. White Tiger is hidden very deep, yes, but precisely because he’s hidden too deep, every move he makes leaves clearer traces. And the things Muen had been investigating before really did have a big effect. The robin played a coordinating role, but the source of those things definitely isn’t him.”

“The source is that White Tiger?”

“Possibly. Don’t overcomplicate the problem. Just the fact that he can take the lead in organizing something like the Inner Council... already narrows down the range of what his identity could be.”

Celicia pulled out a sheet of paper from the stack of files. On it were several names she had written not long ago.

Now, those names had changed again—some had been crossed out, some had been added.

And a few names were marked in conspicuous red.

No matter how well that so-called White Tiger hid, he had to be among those names.

“You’re amazing, President. You’ve already pinned it down this far?”

Veil looked at her with boundless admiration. As expected of the President—without anyone noticing, she had already dug this deep.

Far more useful than some musclebound brute.

“We haven’t reached the stage of true confirmation yet. That’s why I have to go see for myself.”

Celicia said, “In fact, I just happened to run into this timing. An underground noble alliance organization like the Inner Council could never avoid drawing the palace’s attention. So the Central Intelligence Office had already started investigating them long ago—they just kept encountering some kind of obstruction and could only map out some inconsequential branches while never managing to reach the innermost part.”

“Even the Central Intelligence Office...”

“The concept is different. The reason the Central Intelligence Office faces obstruction is because they themselves are partially embedded within the Empire’s noble system, so naturally they’ll be constrained by that. It’s like how it’s hard for a person to treat their own illness. But I’m different...”

“President doesn’t have that kind of concern?” Veil blinked and added.

“Not at the moment. Right now, every faction’s attention is on my two elder brothers. Who would care what I—the princess with no real power—choose to do at a time like this? It’s not like I’m going to go around killing people. I’m just paying a few visits and offering a few greetings while the winds and rains are this shaky.”

The corner of Celicia’s mouth curled into a cold, mocking smile. She picked up a parasol from beside her, and her chilly gaze fell on the ominous darkness of the Lower District.

“Tonight, this place will be very lively.”

Lively was a given. The Empire’s two great powers would be using this district as a chessboard tonight, testing their strength against each other.

Schemes, plots, betrayal, blood, and death could break out in any corner at any time, all revolving around the struggle between the two princes. Both sides had poured tremendous strength into this night.

It was even entirely possible that tonight would decide the Empire’s future ownership for decades to come.

But even so, none of this really had anything to do with her. Tonight, the Lower District was not her battlefield.

It was his.

“Hurry up and get ready.”

Celicia stepped out the door.

“While it’s not too late yet, we’re going to take a stroll in the Upper District.”

......

......

Time rewound slightly, elsewhere.

The carriage’s speed had leveled out as it rolled along the wide street.

This was the first time this carriage had so directly driven onto the main road. After one wave of assassinations after another, the two people inside couldn’t help but clutch their hearts in tension at this blatant exposure. Only after the carriage passed an entire street without incident did they finally relax a little.

“Is this also thanks to the people you set up in advance?”

Albert leaned out the window and saw the clearly explosion-formed pit in the center of the road.

He had heard the huge blast just now as well, but on a night when even magic cannons had made an appearance, one or two particularly loud explosions no longer seemed like something that would shake anyone’s resolve.

“Who knows?”

Muen, focused on handling the reins, let out a casual laugh.

“Maybe it was just some internal squabble.”

“Cracking jokes at a time like this is a bit lacking in camaraderie, don’t you think?”

Albert chuckled along, teasing him.

“I’m not joking. You could say both sides are continually revealing their cards, but I’m still self-aware about how big my own hand is.”

Muen shook his head, then suddenly flickered out of his seat to pick something up from the ground.

Holding it up to examine under the faint light, he saw that it was a milky-white fragment. Judging from the hollow, holed structure, it should have belonged to some kind of instrument.

“To be honest, when I first got the intel, I didn’t hold out much hope. I was originally going to bypass this place entirely, even if it meant wasting more time... But often, the performance of someone you weren’t really expecting much from ends up being the most surprising.”

“Is that so? That’s a good thing then.”

“It is a good thing.”

Muen closed his fingers around the fragment of the bone flute, thinking that once this matter was over, he should buy that guy a better one.

“Speaking of good things, there’s another piece of good news.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Once we pass through here, we’re less than ten minutes away from being completely safe.”

“Really?”

Albert’s eyes lit up noticeably, and he looked genuinely happy.

Even though he hadn’t actually taken any substantial damage along the way, being subjected to all sorts of attacks and assassination attempts had been an immense ordeal for him—physically and mentally—given how frail his body already was.

Honestly, he wouldn’t be able to hold out through many more rounds.

“If there are no problems with the route, we only need to cross two more blocks to reach the street where the banquet is being held. Once we get there, no matter how unscrupulous the other side is, they won’t be able to make ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) a move on Your Highness in front of so many nobles.”

“However...”

Muen lifted his top hat slightly and raised his head, his eyes helplessly turning toward the road ahead as he muttered under his breath,

“Precisely because of that... there’s no way it’s going to be that easy, is there?”

At some point, a hazy fog had spread over the wide street.

And within that mist, in the center of the road directly in front of Muen, a small figure slowly stepped out of the thick fog.

One step. Another step. Her footsteps were stumbling.

“That’s... a child?”

Albert frowned, surprised by that small figure emerging from the fog.

“Your Highness.”

At his side, Lavini seemed to sense something and grabbed Albert’s arm tightly.

“Be careful.”

“Oooh—”

A wailing like the moan of a cold wind echoed between the streets. The sorrow in that sound made one instinctively feel endless pity.

“Is she... crying?” Albert’s frown deepened.

“She is. She’s crying.”

Muen let out a soft sigh.

“But a little girl wandering alone in the fog, crying in the dead of night like this... however you look at it, that’s not any kind of cute existence.”