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The day of the operation would coincide with the heroes’ unveiling.

It seemed the entire royal family would be occupied all day, and I overheard the king and queen discussing how they wouldn’t have time to supply the cage with Mana.

The queen looked uneasy about leaving it unattended, but the king reassured her with data showing that it had been fine without a Mana supply for over ten years, which seemed to calm her.

Seeing the king and queen talk about the spirit without their subject present led me to believe it was probably only them and their children who knew about the spirit’s existence.

For people like them, who had grown accustomed to a life of luxury, the spirit was the kingdom’s Achilles’ heel.

This secrecy explained why only a select few were aware of it and why they exercised extreme caution regarding it.

With that information, my first castle infiltration came to an end. To be honest, it had been quite an enjoyable experience.

For instance, regarding Tsunoe, who was now in the slave shop, it turned out that Megi had been orchestrating her downfall from behind the scenes.

Due to his appearance, which often led others to mistake him for a girl, Megi was one of the more frequently bullied kids in our class.

He was often harassed by Tsunoe’s group, and it had escalated to the point where even Tsukihara and Ichinari had stepped in to warn them. It’s possible he was bullied without anyone noticing, but as I was a loner back then, I didn’t get involved enough to know for sure.

Fast forward to now, it seemed that Megi had, like me, realized the existence of the status window before meeting the king. Otherwise, it would’ve been impossible for him to go unnoticed with skills like Charm and Misrepresentation.

I assumed he’d likely used Misrepresentation to disguise his status as something ordinary.

Knowing the strength of his skills, he decided to hide by using Charm on his personal maid, building a secret hideout within the castle, and slowly expanding it while staying hidden from the royal family’s view.

The person who helped him with this was another member of the Neutral Team, Kuniya Monobe.

Monobe was a book lover and, arguably, the most knowledgeable person in the entire class.

I wasn’t sure how Monobe ended up assisting him, but I was certain that Megi had received his help.

Additionally, Megi’s Charm skill had a limitation where he couldn’t use it on multiple people simultaneously. However, by repeatedly using the skill on the same person, that individual would remain under its influence, effectively bypassing the skill’s limitations.

That was truly unsettling. It seemed like he could easily create a cult or something similar.

Moreover, Charm worked like a slow-acting poison, seeping in gradually, so neither the person being charmed nor those around them noticed its effects.

By this point, I felt the skill should’ve been called “Brainwashing” instead.

Initially, I thought that if things continued this way, it wouldn’t be surprising if Megi ended up controlling the entire kingdom.

But then I realized that key figures had already taken precautions against Charm, so at best, he’d only be able to control those beneath them.

Tsunoe was being sold as a result of various circumstances aligning one after the other.

“If we try to make an example of the heroes, some might end up dead. If that happens, some of them could become defiant. Do you have any ideas on handling that?”
“I’ve heard that the world the heroes come from doesn’t have slaves. If that’s the case, we could hurt them first and then sell them off to slavers. That should teach them!”

This was a conversation between a higher-up and one of Megi’s underlings.

Tsunoe had been targeted because she allegedly planned to use her skills to overthrow the kingdom, though I wasn’t entirely convinced of that.

If Megi’s reason for selling Tsunoe was revenge for being bullied back on Earth, I didn’t quite understand why he’d chosen to hide himself so early on.

He was probably afraid that, with me gone, the bullying would turn on him. So he’d created a space to escape if things took a bad turn.

Although this was just speculation on my part, I believed it was close to what Megi had done while in the castle. I couldn’t help but admire his initiative.

In comparison, the heroes’ group was fairly dull. They’d start training at sunrise and continue until sundown. They had breaks, and while their food was of lower quality than before, there was still plenty of it.

The training was spartan; even the smallest mistake would result in a reprimand. If anyone let their guard down, they’d be kicked immediately, but none of them suffered any serious injuries.

The heroes being this exhausted was probably a sign that the example set for them had worked.

◇◇◇

I made my way back to the common sector without any issues. Exiting the noble sector had been surprisingly easy.

The gatekeeper glanced at me, smiled, and said, “Good work,” then sent me on my merry way.

Though I’d only been in the castle a few days, in that time the common sector had grown noticeably livelier. This was due to the announcement of the heroes’ unveiling.

The announcement declared that God had sent the heroes to fight against the Demon Kingdom, which had been terrorizing the people for years.

Heroes were the hope of the people, though to be honest, they were pretty useless during peaceful times.

In fact, hearing about heroes generally made people think of crises. By attributing the trouble to the Demon Kingdom, the kingdom managed to avoid unnecessary panic.

In this kingdom, residents viewed the Demon Kingdom as the embodiment of evil. Rather than reacting with dread, they were thrilled, as if a festival was coming.

While I found it somewhat arrogant that the kingdom hid behind God’s name when it was they who had summoned the heroes, on second thought, the God in question would likely just ignore the whole situation.

God aside, I was curious what the religious state southwest of Fraus had to say about all this. Maybe they were the ones pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

Truth be told, I was quite eager to infiltrate their church.

Then again, we’d probably clash, and they’d end up furious with me. Still, a religious state in a world abandoned by its god was bound to wield considerable power.

Thinking about it, they might not even realize they’d been abandoned¹, so they could still have significant influence.

Leaving those thoughts for later, I decided to head back to the inn, remembering that I still had one more matter to attend to.

1. Robinxen: I like tropes similar to this.