Chapter 653: Bait

“Based on a detailed screening across all of Belrand: from the moment the Kingdom’s delegation entered the city to the moment Prince Milne suddenly died, a total of seven days passed.”

“During those seven days, thirteen officials displayed abnormal behavior. Five of them have already been confirmed by the Central Intelligence Organization to be Kingdom spies and have been arrested and dealt with. The remaining eight are still under observation.”

“In addition, during those same seven days in Belrand, a total of thirty-five officials died. Five died of natural causes, six had causes of death that could not be determined, and the remaining twenty-four died due to various ‘accidents.’ Among those, only three have been confirmed to have been assassinated by outside individuals. The rest are still under investigation.”

The imperial palace.

After returning from Saint Maria Academy, Celicia had almost temporarily pushed aside all other state affairs, focusing on the abnormal incident involving the Kingdom’s delegation. At this moment, she was also listening intently to Veil’s report.

“Thirteen officials moving strangely... thirty-five officials dead. This number...”

Celicia’s palm suddenly clenched the carved armrest, her knuckles whitening from the force.

“So many officials died, and no one reported it to me?”

“...Your Majesty, for all of Belrand, this number is actually normal.”

Veil answered carefully.

“After all...”

“After all, Belrand’s base number is what it is, right?”

Celicia rubbed between her brows with a slight headache.

As the most populous grand city on the continent, Belrand had several million residents. If you added up the officials of every level—large and small—it was a staggering number.

In the face of that number, the abnormality and death of a mere thirty or forty officials... simply wasn’t enough to get shoved all the way up here. Especially in Belrand, which had just gone through that recent upheaval, many people had become less unfamiliar with death in a short span of time.

In fact, even in peaceful times, there were always officials in Belrand who died every day—killed in Lower District gang shootouts, in assassination and revenge by enemies, or in traps set by political rivals.

This number really wasn’t much. In the eyes of those ministers, it wasn’t nearly enough to have the always-busy empress handle personally. So before Celicia asked, no one would proactively deliver that string of figures to her.

But beyond those things—beyond so-called common sense—

For this complex imperial administrative system, Celicia had to admit that no matter how hard she tried to patch it, adjust it, optimize it... once those bloated, greedy nobles had been turned into fertilizer or purged, in the short term it truly had dealt a heavy blow to the Empire’s governance.

These days there had been far too many promotions, replacements, and reassignments of duties. The Empire’s parasites had been cleared out... but someone still had to fill their seats and do their work. So during this period of growing pains, chaos was naturally unavoidable.

And it was precisely that kind of chaos that gave the enemy an opening.

“Still, now that the range is circled, it won’t be hard to find them.”

Celicia didn’t dwell on those things for long. She quickly adjusted, closed her eyes, and thought.

“Narrow it down. Only look at the twenty-four hours before Prince Milne’s sudden death.”

“Yes!”

“Exclude those already confirmed as foreign spies. Hertz wouldn’t bother covering for something that stupid.”

“Yes!”

“Also exclude those assassinated by outsiders for now. Forging a fake death would be too time-pressured for them.”

“Yes!”

“Fake deaths are hard to forge. That means what remains... is only real deaths.”

Celicia’s tapping finger abruptly stopped.

“I want the information on every official who died in an ‘accident’ last night.”

“Understood!” Veil answered in a low voice, moving quickly.

Celicia opened her eyes.

And at this moment, those thirty-plus files in front of her had already been reduced to only five. It seemed that because time was tight, or because the incident had happened too suddenly, the other side hadn’t had time to deploy too many smokescreens.

“So their operation was planned for a long time, but the decision to act at this time point was given on the spot. Why... because they knew that ridiculous Seventeenth Prince was about to lose?”

Celicia’s lips curled into a mocking, cold smile as her gaze fell on those five files.

By an almost eerie coincidence, all five officials—though their posts were different—had opportunities to come into contact with the Empire’s core information...

“Fell into the river... food poisoning, the whole family dead... stabbed to death by his wife’s lover, but he also killed the wife and the lover... died suddenly from overwork after continuous duty... and a fire.”

Celicia read them one by one, murmuring as if appreciating a decent stage play.

“Three households wiped out cleanly. How interesting. But among these, the cleanest way to die is...”

...

Belrand.

The Fifth Department, subordinate to the Central Intelligence Organization.

As the Empire’s largest intelligence organization operating in the shadows, the Central Intelligence Organization had thirteen subordinate departments in total, each responsible for different directions.

But even among those departments, the Fifth Department’s importance and secrecy ranked near the top.

It handled military intelligence.

Celicia walked into an underground building that looked like a fortress.

Strictly speaking, the Fifth Department’s headquarters was not in Belrand, but in a relatively remote mountain forest about thirty li from the city—desolate, with few people around.

So unlike the Central Intelligence Organization’s “hiding in plain sight,” this place was guarded with extreme tightness. Layer upon layer of posts were set. Large magitek devices were mounted inside concealment magic. Any intruder would suffer ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) at least ten magitek cannons firing in unison.

Aside from Celicia, even Veil had female soldiers specially search and check her body.

“Your Majesty.”

The one greeting Celicia was a withered old man. He seemed to have stayed underground for far too long; his pale skin looked like wrinkled paper.

He was the current head of the Fifth Department—code name: Mole. As for his real name, it had long been buried in the decades of the past.

“Do you remember Telfer Rokant?” Celicia asked straight to the point.

“I remember.”

Mole nodded.

“Everyone who enters the Fifth Department is personally reviewed by me. And since Telfer hasn’t been in the Fifth Department for long, my impression of him is still quite clear.”

“What kind of person is he?”

“Silent, efficient, capable.”

Mole didn’t hide his praise for that man named Telfer.

“A perfect intelligence operative.”

“Is that so?”

Celicia rolled those words around in her mouth.

“Per...fect? Heh.”

The two of them arrived in a dim, cramped room. This seemed to be where Mole usually worked. Not a trace of outside sunlight could reach in. Only an old exhaust fan was turning with a creak, creak.

The air was filled with a pungent cigar smell.

“Please allow me to smoke one, Your Majesty. Old habit. When I think, I need this.” Mole took out a cigar.

“Granted.”

“Thank you.”

Mole lit the cigar and took a deep breath.

Pale smoke spiraled into the exhaust fan and was shredded apart.

“Does Your Majesty believe he’s the one who leaked the intelligence?”

“It can’t be confirmed yet. His and his family’s bodies—burned into charcoal—are still being examined... but you control this massive intelligence organization. You should be the one answering that question.”

“...”

Mole fell silent for a moment, then spread out a map on the large desk in front of him. It was marked with red paint and various arrows.

“After the Belrand incident earlier, the Fifth Department also lost many people in key positions. To fill those posts, we began promoting capable individuals from all sides.”

“It’s not just you.”

Celicia nodded slightly.

Basically all of Belrand is in that state. The parasites were cleared out, but someone still has to do their work.”

“Telfer Rokant was one of that batch promoted afterward. He was originally just an ordinary official in the Lower District. Our people noticed him, and not long ago, he entered the Fifth Department’s system.”

Mole paused.

“Of course, since we are the Fifth Department, before we called him in, we conducted an extremely detailed investigation into his background and credentials.”

“No problems?”

“No problems at all.”

Mole sighed.

“Telfer Rokant—son of a down-and-out merchant family. He came to Belrand twenty years ago to make his way. Because he once saved the young son of a noble family who accidentally fell into the water, he was recommended and became a minor official in the Lower District. He held that position for nearly twenty years. During that time, he married the second daughter of the Romia family, who rapidly fell into poverty after losing a political struggle. They had one daughter. I’ve seen a photo of his daughter—she’s very cute.”

“Doesn’t sound like a spy.”

“There were no signs whatsoever of him being a spy. His twenty years of life here in Belrand are clearly visible—simple as a smooth, straight water pipe. You can see all the way to the end.”

“In other words, at least during these twenty years in Belrand, he was only a diligent grassroots official with a happy family.”

“Yes. These twenty years.”

A full twenty years.

For an ordinary person, how many sets of twenty years do you even have?

Even if he truly was a spy from the Kingdom—wouldn’t twenty years of domestic happiness, a wife and a daughter, have warmed and softened even a heart that might once have been cold?

Now it seemed... no.

“Then what were his responsibilities?”

“This.”

Mole pointed at the map on the desk.

But he wasn’t pointing at the map itself—he was pointing at the arrows on it.

“In reality, even if the Fifth Department is short on manpower, we still wouldn’t have a newcomer who hasn’t been in long handle anything truly core. So Telfer’s workplace was still inside Belrand—he didn’t come into here.”

“Explain in detail.”

“It’s simple: transcription. He was responsible for transcribing certain troop-movement information coming from the north, then passing it here. Of course, he only handled a portion. We would never let a single clerk grasp the full picture. Even his work overlapped and intermingled with others.”

Mole seemed to have anticipated the empress’s personal visit. On this map, those red arrows were categorized. Anything Telfer handled was marked with his name.

The arrows bearing Telfer’s name were scattered in messy disarray, with no pattern.

At a glance, you could tell it was tedious work—work that shouldn’t allow someone to grasp any meaningful intelligence.

Because during this period, within the Empire there were many troops whose movements showed signs of shifting under Celicia’s orders.

Celicia stroked her smooth chin and moved her gaze from those arrows to the whole map.

Yes. For an ordinary person who had crawled and struggled in the Lower District for twenty years, this kind of complex, chaotic information was useless.

But what if you raised the viewpoint?

What if you looked at it from the perspective of someone who once held a high position in the Kingdom, someone who already possessed important intelligence from various channels?

...Then this tedious mess would become like filling blanks in a passage—constructing a clear, complete thread and picture.

Celicia’s fingertip followed the tails of those arrows upward, all the way to the Empire’s northern border.

It was an extremely complex border. In just the last hundred years alone, it had changed several times.

And beyond that border to the north...

Was the Kingdom.

That’s right. What this picture was drawing was—

—The Empire’s border deployment map.

“Is... that it?”

Celicia closed her eyes and murmured softly.

“Once the Seventeenth Prince dies, no matter what the cause is, he still died inside the Empire—died on the academy arena. Then the Kingdom has its so-called strong claim. And on top of that... this time, they aren’t just playing around—they’re serious?”

“But... why would that be enough? The Empire isn’t at the point where it collapses at a touch. To think you can knock over the Empire with just this—doesn’t that sound absurdly naive?”

Thoughts kept constructing themselves in Celicia’s mind. Because she was inside it, it was hard to see the whole. But she felt she was already about to catch that loose thread.

And just then...

The quiet atmosphere of contemplation was abruptly shattered.

“Your Majesty!”

Veil rushed in, her face tense.

“Something terrible has happened!”

...

...

In a lavish estate blooming with flowers, an old man in white robes sat by a mirror-like lake, fishing.

The fishing rod he used wasn’t anything refined—just a bamboo pole with line and a hook. It formed a sharp contrast with the gold-inlaid white robe he wore, which was clearly worth a fortune.

Yet he was fully immersed, patiently waiting for the fish to bite.

“Your Majesty.”

Suddenly, a voice—suppressed as much as possible—still broke the lake’s calm.

“What is it?”

“The Owl has returned.”

“Oh?”

The old man raised an eyebrow.

“That stubborn bastard... he actually succeeded?”

“Thanks to Lord Hertz’s cover.”

“Hertz got away too?”

“Yes. But he lost an arm, and he was struck into severe injury by a Crowned One from who knows how far away. He looks rather miserable.”

“A Crowned One? Which one?”

“Still unknown,” the attendant said in shame. “We’re still investigating, but from Lord Hertz’s description, it should be that extremely mysterious head of the Empire’s intelligence organization.”

“Heh-heh...”

The old man chuckled.

“At a time like this, a Crowned One we’ve never even heard of can still pop out. As expected of the Empire.”

“And Your Majesty isn’t worried?” the guard asked in surprise.

“Worried? Why would I be worried? The enemy hidden in the dark is what’s frightening. Once they’ve shown themselves, what is there to fear? Besides, wasn’t that the point of sending Hertz and the others?”

The old man casually tossed all the bait beside him into the lake.

In an instant, the once-calm surface became lively. Who knew how many fish surfaced, fighting over that sweet bait.

“See?”

The old man pointed at the lake and sneered.

“As long as the bait is enough, why worry the big fish won’t show themselves?”