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I passed through the noble sector and arrived near the castle. Unfortunately, I’d used the Stealth skill while running on the rooftops of the sector, so I didn’t know its exact layout.

Nonetheless, I thought it was a beautiful place. Compared to the common sector, it seemed somewhat laid-back. But I guess that was a given. Superiors should always act calmly and with a sense of composure.

I couldn’t help but think about such things while being immersed in this atmosphere.

Yet despite everything, the royal family did not try to appear as if they were working that hard. It was fine not to show off, but that would in turn lead the people to begin doubting whether it was okay to leave their kingdom to such people.

All in all, I concluded that nobles had it tough too. Although I only had an idea of what it was to be from the novels I’d read, I still didn’t feel like I wanted to become one. I felt that if I went to a ball or something, I’d probably get a lot of comments and meet a lot of annoying people.

Now then, getting back to the subject at hand. The most alarming thing about the royal castle was the barrier surrounding it. Luckily for me, that barrier was not put up.

Instead, its walls were high, and the gates were packed with knights, which would normally make it quite difficult to sneak in. Fortunately, I could easily climb the walls, so it didn’t matter to me. And I was also using Stealth, so there was no way they could find me.

I quickly went up to check out the castle grounds and found that one part of the large area was completely isolated from the rest of the castle. It was the hero’s training area.

Overall, it looked like there was a school and a playground inside the castle grounds. Though I guessed calling it a school was wrong. It was more of a mansion for rich people.

I thought I heard a strange noise, almost like an angry voice, coming from it, but now wasn’t the time to focus on that. I’d come to find the spirit. I planned to search every nook and cranny of the castle, even if it took a few days.

However, before doing that, I decided to change my appearance from Finis to that of Toriyama.

‘Wait, I’m still wearing a skirt!’

I only noticed this after changing my appearance. I could make the skirt look like pants, but the skirt had the Lower Body Comfort skill. I’d already changed, and it wasn’t as if I had a son, so I decided to roll with it.

‘Infiltration mission commence!’

◇◇◇

‘Yeah, it’s probably here.’ A mysterious device in front of me was trapping the spirit. ‘This seems like it’ll be a pain.’

◇◇◇

It was late afternoon on the second day of the infiltration.

When I was stalking a woman who looked like a part of the royal family—maybe the queen because she resembled Princess Topersion—I used a hidden door in the library to go upstairs.

A hidden room in the library was an exciting situation, but unfortunately, there was no dramatic rearranging of books in a predetermined order or pushing of bookshelves. I simply had to use a key.

At any rate, it made sense from a security standpoint.

For starters, it could accidentally activate if someone randomly touched the books, or someone could figure it out later by sneaking a look at how to solve it. With a key, even if someone saw you open it, it didn’t matter as long as the key was well-kept.

And if you ever lost the key, you could simply proceed to guarding the entrance.

It was rational, but not cool.

Speaking of cool, the way one entered the hidden room was also lacking. It would have been better if it made a sound or transformed in a grandiose manner, but when the key aligned with the decorations on the wall, it simply opened like a regular door.

Due to that, I didn’t know what was inside since it would close as soon as someone passed through it. So, what I did was follow the queen after she returned and borrowed the key while she was bathing.

I couldn’t snatch it before that because she kept it close to her, and even I couldn’t simply take it just like that. Additionally, if I stole something that precious, it would definitely raise suspicion.

So I decided to simply copy and recreate it. It was hard to create something from scratch, but it wasn’t hard to recreate something I had on me.

Now it was time to appraise it.

‘Whoa! Technology from another world!’

And here I’d been thinking it’d be made using some kind of lost technology. And what did technology from another world even mean? Did the heroes have a hand in this? Could they summon heroes from worlds that already have magic?

They probably could. Rather, wouldn’t it actually be more beneficial to summon heroes from those worlds rather than calling people from Earth? It wasn’t like we could fight. I was sure there was some reason behind it.

Regardless, I had to do something about this otherworldly technology.

After all, I was kind of a god in this world. This meant that even if something was lost in this world, I could do something about it. Then again, when it came to other worlds, things were a bit trickier.

When it came to matters from this world, it was like I had a master key, but if it came to matters from another world, I didn’t have a key, so I had to break down the door by force.

Simply put, it wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, but it took time. Regardless, there was nothing else I could do, so I memorized the key’s structure and decided to recreate it elsewhere. It was really annoying.

After duplicating the key, I finally made my way to the hidden room in the library, where I believed they were keeping the spirit.

But actually, a lot had happened before I’d managed to get to this point. Some interesting and frustrating things occurred during my time here. For example, in about a month or so, a festival would be held to unveil the brave men and women.

One of the heroes, Iori Megi, who was part of the Neutral Team, and had the Misrepresentation and Charm skills, used them to operate behind the scenes in the castle. To be honest, I was quite grateful to Megi for his effort.

Another was that I saw the heroes’ training being quite tough for high school kids, but I didn’t think it was all that unreasonable. Besides, I didn’t really need to worry much about that.

There were various other things I wanted to look at, but as God’s gofer, I had to get my priorities straight.

The hidden door led to an uphill staircase that ascended to the highest point of the castle. Or rather, to the highest point of the tower that was next to the castle. It felt as if I was going to meet a trapped princess, despite the fact that I was not a hero.

As I reached the top, I encountered a neat space with a large window placed near the ceiling. In the center of the circular room was a mysterious device. It looked like several metal rings combined to form a sphere. In front of it was a crystal-like object, and inside it a weak, yellow, glowing sphere was moving about.

‘Is this light coming from the spirit? What is it, God?’

“That’s right. It’s quite weakened, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to disappear that soon.”
“So I just need to save this thing, right? Come to think of it, can’t you just locate the spirits, God?”
“No. Right now, God’s looking at it through you, Fi. It’s probably because of that device, but God can’t locate them. However, by looking back at the state of the world, God can say that no spirits have yet perished.”
“Okay, okay, I got it.”
“Do your best!”

After finishing the call with God, I turned my attention back to the device.