“…so you do really go around causing trouble, eh?”

“Yeah. Eve stays around to keep an eye for me, but I'm more about traveling and beating bad guys.” Elen answered me while using the nickname I gave to her maid as she kept on pushing our little group to where her father told us to go. “She’s my most reliable retainer still. Very useful when I need to tail someone and am too lazy to do so… Not that it always works.”

As expected from everything I heard earlier, someone was indeed keeping an eye on me while I was at the castle. And also, as expected, this someone was the deadpan maid.

I found her waiting in Eleonora’s room right after my meeting was over, so all became quite clear almost right away. The only unexpected bit was the fact that the reason why she would vanish when it was almost time to eat was so she could wake up the unhinged princess.

Either way, we were talking while moving deeper into the castle towards a place that could fulfill my first request. It was somewhere where I could find a way to keep myself safe, so it should be some sort of underground armory. And of course, I was sure to keep on talking all the while I was following the two girls.

“Well, you could explain yourself next time instead of talking about ‘targets’ or whatnot… Anyone would run in that situation, ain’t I right, Eve?”

“I ask you to leave me out of this discussion, milady.”

“And I ask you don’t call me ‘milady’, so I guess neither of us is getting what we want.” I pouted in answer and complained, again, about this overly proper way of calling me. No matter how long I lived, being called ‘milady’ or anything of the kind would never feel right, of that I was sure…

“If it is so, then I have to agree with lady Illia. Any prey will try to escape a possible predator, and that would define your Highness’ way of approaching people.”

“That’s mean! True for sure, but mean still.” The princess in weird clothes complained as much as she could even if I could see that she wasn't that angry. “What exactly do you want me to do after finding someone that not only could notice my gaze from a hidden spot but also seemed, even if only for a moment, so annoyed for having me interrupt her? She got my interest so fast I couldn’t control myself… And there’s more too.”

Wait, wait, wait! I wasn’t annoyed back there, right? I mean, she was interrupting and sneaking around, but it wasn’t anything unusual or unexpected... Was I slacking so much back there that I didn’t even notice my expression changing? Such a misstep…

Why this princess was staring at me with those hungry wolf eyes again was very disturbing, though.

“You should learn to control yourself, your Highness. Having a royal…”

“That’s my sister’s job, Eve. She likes this stiff hellhole for some reason and like studying even more, so all I have to do is move around and be sure she’ll be fine.” The master interrupted the maid’s words with something that I was sure they discussed many times before, but she soon let her real intentions slip. “Also, being the black sheep makes it very easy for me to travel the world. Especially so with this weird job dad created for me…”

“Weird job?” I asked since the idea caught my attention. “Is that linked to why you had to be called home and why you’re wearing these clothes?”

“Oh, these? These are because I was on the northern frontier scouting after the fortress line, so I got what the people there were wearing. I go a little heavier usually, but getting stuck on the wastelands would be bad…”

She started to talk about, as what I could only infer from the little information I had, the frontline of the fight against the demons. Most of what she was saying still went over my head, though.

As I said before, I only knew the very basics of how this place worked, and that was only because I lacked the unlimited mana to keep on ‘training’ forever.

Eventually, she got so deep on how she was working with the proper rangers up there and hunting stray demons that even my controlled expression couldn’t hide the fact I had no idea what was happening anymore…

“It seems you managed to break our guest, your Highness. Or at least you got her so confused she cannot even stop your ramblings.” Eve saved me after noticing my slacking expression that, when I noticed too, I tried my best to hide. “Either way, as what your Highness should have said, she is a ‘forward envoy’. Also known as someone who wanders around and pretends to have a proper goal other than dealing with problems on a whim.”

“Yeah, that’s a way to put it for sure… I prefer to define my job as the person who scouts for the proper envoys or even for the proper scouts. It’s still an excuse to go wherever I want while looking for trouble, but it sounds cooler.”

“That’s… well… that’s a weird way of defining a job for sure.” I tried to answer while my head was still getting around the whole idea. A princess who was a katana or a revolver away from being a wanderer-type was very fun, though.

“But that’s beyond the point right now…” Elen shrugged my weak answer as we reached a single heavy-looking gilded door with shining blue decals. “Now I have to present you the royal armory! Feel free to go inside first.”

Her words got me a little confused, but I still tried to move a little forward for once. There wasn’t much in the small underground room either way, so it wasn’t as if I had much of a choice too.

Only a staircase at my back, plain stony walls on either side, two torches which shone with no flame (some magic thing), and then the huge and important-looking door. A door that was likely magical since its decals were shining.

Reading what the spell should do was still beyond me since enchantments and normal spells were different, but I could get some words there. Only a small drop on what seemed to be a hyper-complicated spell, but it was still something, I guess. But the words in there were enough to tell me this wasn’t some complicated magical lock...

“Is this door booby-trapped or something of the kind? I don’t think it’s anything mortal since you told me to go on ahead, but I don’t like getting hurt.”

“Oho?” The tricky silver-haired girl rose an eyebrow with a smile that made me remember her father a little. “Are you this distrustful or you do really have an idea of what this door is?”

“What if I said that I was only bluffing to see if there was something in there?” I answered in a half lie since choosing either option would be a full lie. “I only felt the situation was off and I always favor the safest path.”

“Pht!” Eve suddenly reacted to my little trick but held herself very fast when she noticed we were looking at her. “Aham… She seems to have tricked you, your Highness.”

“It does seem so…" Elen answered even if not convinced by my words. "Not as fun, but let’s skip the fake vault then… Eve.”

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Eve then nodded at the princess' words and each one of them moved to one of the torches by the side.

“A secret passage?”

“Not exactly, but again, it’s nice that you get things fast.” She answered my confusion with a smile and started to let her mana flow on whatever was hidden there like Eve was also doing (and I was quite happy that I managed to notice this much). Then, soon after, the blue hue on the door started to change to silver before it then grew in intensity.

“It’s done, your Highness.”

“Good that it did alright… It’s been a while since I came here, so I wasn’t sure if all would go fine with the activation.” The weird princess went on with something that I could only get worried about and then worsened it even before I could say anything. “Since nothing blew up, though, I welcome you to the royal armory, Illia!”

Worrying about it wouldn’t be useful at all, so I instead took her motions as a sign to go on ahead and walked forward until I was in range to open the door. And then, with a push that shouldn’t be able to move something this heavy-looking, the path opened for me, showing what I could only describe as…

“Much smaller than I expected,” I mumbled without much thought to it other than the small room in front of my eyes. “Is this another trick or is there something hidden even deeper?”

The room was no larger than a 5x5m square filled almost to the brim with stands and glass boxes. Every single one of them had some sort of trinket or weapon inside and the lower parts of the storages were full of books, but it was a small room still.

Counting it very fast, there shouldn’t be more than fifty pieces stored in it, less than half of which were weapons or armor. It was a little underwhelming, to be honest.

“So most of our kingdom’s relics aren’t enough for you, eh? I wasn’t expecting to have such a demanding ally.”

“No, it’s not like that… I just… Well…” Her somewhat angry reaction, even if I could feel the joke deep inside of it, made me surprised a little. It was a little hard to go against her since she had a point. “I’m sorry for being disrespectful…”

“Now you suddenly get meek? I’m sure that’s more unexpected than the size of this armory…” The princess snorted while I tried to bring myself back. “Either way, I have no idea of what the hells is inside this place, so if you could, Eve…”

“Yes, your Highness.” The maid bowed and then turned to the weird objects stored around the room. “Last inventory reported we had forty-seven pieces stored on the royal armory. Thirty-three of which are suitable to combat and three of which are probably Age of Gods’ items. Twelve other pieces are currently outside the armory and in use, but all others can be borrowed if needed.”

"You have something that could make illusions or anything of the kind?"

"I believe there are three of such pieces, milady..."

Around three-quarters are battling equipment, eh? Either my overview was a little too wrong or there were many of the non-armor/weapon things in here that could be used to fight then... More importantly, though, I was in luck and they even had more than an option to present me, so it should work out fine.

Later on, I would like to ask how many of those twelve were with Mr. Protagonist, though. Getting a look at a real ‘Hero’s Sword’ was also something that I would like to risk, not that I wanted to have a try with it. Using it seemed like a pain.

“Believe it or not, these are more than two-thirds of all artifacts found in the continent. We also have almost every single one that’s old enough to be from the ‘Age of Gods’.” Elen added proudly even after her comment about not knowing what the things inside here did, something that made sense soon after. “Also, I’m one of the biggest contributors to this place. I only take and throw them here since I already have what I need, but that’s beyond the point…”

“The number was at nineteen if I’m not mistaken, your Highness… And the number of diplomatic crises caused by your spelunking and theft goes as high as twice this many.”

“No proof, so nothing they can do. I’m good, am I not?”

“I don’t think that’s something I should be hearing, so what about talking about those illusion things?” I cut through the dangerous bragging before I ended with even more dangerous information in my head. “Since there are three of them, at least one should work fine. I would like to be done with it fast since I’m a little tired by now...”

All the running right after training with magic followed by having to talk with the king was getting to me by now, I guess. It was still fine physically, but my head was starting to hurt quite a lot already. Enough for me to start hearing noises even. I needed some rest and silence after leaving this place…

“Fair. Wouldn’t expect someone to be fine after such an event-packed day...” Elen looked at my face with a hint of worry for the first time in the day and then moved to a corner of the room. “And don’t worry about something going wrong with these, I can shield you all right. Eve can also manage, so try out whatever you feel like.”

Hearing her say that was both reassuring and worrying, but that was for later. If I went around thinking about the fact that these old things were actually prone to failure, then I would end up fainting...

“Well then, milady…” The deadpan girl called me before I could lose myself on my own head again, and moved to where the items she wanted to show were. “This one, this one, and this one possibly have the effect you want. Here are the reports on each one of them.”

She then took three small booklets from the shelves beneath the items and gave them to me. They weren't so big and a good half of each was actually blank, so I thanked the maid and tried to fast read them all. What I got could be summarized to:

First, a ring that can cause hallucinations vaguely affected by the user’s will, but can only affect people with less mana than the user.

Second, a hand mirror capable of creating an illusionary copy of the wearer to obey a single order and vanish after some seconds.

And third, a gauntlet capable of changing how a magical circle and its effects look without changing the spell itself.

“They seem… very niche in use,” I commented considering that neither of them was exactly what I was expecting. “These books also say the three have some high mana drainage…”

“From what I know, the tests are very thorough, milady, so you can trust these papers even if you don’t like what you see.”

“Not perfect, but I can get some use here. Still…”

“If they were that useful, then someone else would be using them. The only advantage from relics to proper magical items is that they have weird skills we can’t copy.” Elen answered my comment with a very fair remark. “In all honesty, what we use is rarely something from the royal armory. You can have an artisan make something that fits your needs much better and without any weird caveats if you can accept something normal. Illusions are a little beyond any magical school, though.”

“Fair enough…” I resigned myself since I had an inkling suspicion that I wouldn’t be getting what I wanted anyway. “These will have to do then. Can I take the three, Elen?”

“Do as you wish. I can see you’re going for something interesting already, so I want to see this thing going off now…”

“Okay then.” I decided on snagging the three of them and making do but stopped my hand a second before opening the glass box with the items. “Can I take that thing too?”

It wasn’t more than a whim coupled with a coincidence, but my eyes were drawn away from the items I wanted and to a sword tucked by the corner. A somewhat hidden away golden and black saber without much in the realm of decorations or flamboyance other than its colors. It didn’t even fit with my overall aesthetics, so I wasn’t so sure why exactly it caught my attention even... Having a special weapon wouldn’t hurt still, so it shouldn’t bring any demerits.

It would be best if it was a rapier with a neater look and brighter colors, but a saber was good enough. Maybe the contrast would look fine with some work even.

“Huh? You can, I guess, but why?” Elen rose an eyebrow as she got close to the weapon and took it without much thought. “I mean, I’m the one that brought this thing here, and I pretty much gave up on it right away. This thing takes way too much for way too little…”

She then took the small book close to where the sword was tucked and threw it at me, resulting in an almost fumble that I would prefer to ignore. Still, since the book was in my hands already, I skimmed through what this thing seemed capable of as fast as I could.

And what I got made my whole expression get sloppy.

“Heh… Heheheh… That's nice…” I started to give a small laugh due to my surprise but failed, as usual, to control it into the right-sounding one, instead ending with something closer to my unfiltered smile. “Now this thing was made for me, wasn’t it? I’ll be adding this one to the list.”

“Is that so? Strike them out of the inventory and look everything while I go report to Dad, Eve.” The princess still plagued by an expression of surprise and curiosity smiled and then came closer to me while presenting the pommel of my new weapon. “Better get ready to move out, Illia, I'm sure Dad has something weird planned... By the way, should I call you Ms. Hero now?”

“I can’t force a princess to not do that, but I would hate it,” I answered with a hand on the saber and the other pocketing the other three trinkets. “Also, I’m pretty sure you would end up as the only person to ever call me that… I’ll be going now. Needing some rest after all this.”

My toys and their manuals were set, and my head was almost splitting by now, so I turned to the door and started to walk away without letting the conversation continue. I already had a feeling the next few days would be tiresome...