With the situation ‘solved’, I followed the rogue princess with her maid staying one or two steps behind me until we reached her bedroom. It was in one of the most isolated wings of the palace, but that was fine in such a huge building. And other than that, the bedroom itself was very normal. Very messy with everything from piles of books to random pieces of armor, trinkets and weapons thrown around, but somewhat normal. Not that I had any idea of what exactly I was expecting.

  “Well then…” Elen sat down at her bed and pointed me towards a small tea table in the corner before laying down and starting to explain her offer. “The thing is simple: I got wind of some nobles stirring trouble and wanted to deal with them, but I can't just show up and do whatever I want at the moment.”

  “Makes sense, but why the rush? Can’t you just take your time properly prosecuting your suspects and all?”

  “That would be the righteous option for sure, but we don’t have time for that at the moment.” Elen stared away as if she had a huge problem and couldn’t really talk about it. “All you need to know is that our situation was very bad before you two came. Too many places to keep an eye and no real champion to hold them, so all the nobles got a little too conceited since no one was really looking. We could solve it with time, but we have a window to beat them right now, and I’ll take it.”

  “To think a hero could do this much of a change…” I mumbled in conclusion, which made the princess smile.

  “You have no idea. It’s pretty much like getting a brand new army to move around.” She smirked, checking me up right after. “Hells, if we had two, then I wouldn’t even care about the reasonable option. I could just strongarm everyone into submission with two heroes at hand, and then we wouldn’t have a single internal problem.”

  “And that’s where I enter, right?”

  “Exactly. We have some leeway now, but who knows how long that guy will want to stay or how long he’ll be able to fight. Prourene needs internal stability and I need a pretense to raid some places, something you're perfect for. And of course, I can make it worth your while.” She interrupted me with the answer before I could fully form the question, throwing her armor away while at it. “You're in quite a stable living situation, but people have many other needs beyond food and lodging, and I can arrange whatever you want for as long as you want. It may be a little different if you deal with my father or sister, but I can do almost anything and none will be the wiser, and that's for the cheap price of walking close by and taking the blame for the rash actions.”

  “Your Highness forgot, but we will also take care of your safety in the meanwhile.” Evelin added with a cup and teapot in hand. “Iced tea, milady?”

  “Oh! Thanks…” I accepted the cup while trying to figure out why she had ice lying around like this, but I couldn’t do so before Elen started to speak again.

  “What she said is a given since I'm asking to endanger you, but protecting someone is easy if you stay in the capital.” The princess continued to speak from the bed. “I know you can't call scheming like this a ‘good thing’, but I'll never let someone innocent die for my actions. Honestly, I would like to avoid having to use you at all, but we're not in the best of conditions right now and I'm having a bad feeling…”

  Her words were oddly earnest for what was said, and even then, it was still a reason to justify my presence and gain a reward for it. As I said, there were voices asking to have me sent back since an abnormality brought me here and all I did since then was mooch off, so I could use this chance just like the princess could use me. Also, it wasn't as if I cared that much for the worst case scenario this whole ordeal could bring.

  Still, I had one little thing that I wasn't satisfied with. It wasn't to be mean or to disrespect my new acquaintance, but her idea didn't seem like the most efficient way to go through the problem. Straightforwardness is hardly the best way to do things, in my opinion, and if all she wanted was a justification to raid some troublesome places, then I needed a little more information.

  “I like your offer and would like to hear more about this plan of yours…” I answered, but before Elen could react to it, I added the actual important thing I wanted to say. “But what about hearing an idea of mine first?”

  “Shoot it.”

  I smiled and tried to explain the whole thing the best I could. It wasn’t that complicated of an idea, and better than that, Elen had the tools I needed stashed close by. Actually, she had so much of it in her room, I even could spend an hour or so playing with maps and files until I had something to show off.

  “Then, if we cross these maps…” I layered the thin papers and drew some lines in them before showing the final results to Elen and Eve. “Voilà!”

  “And this is…?”

  “Location of the actual relevant places you want to raid, princess.” I proudly declared after using the information collected by Elen’s maids and all the monetary information I could get about the target city. “These places have weirdly high incomes for their locations and craft while also being the focus of suspicious activity. Either that or they have too much traffic for what they’re worth. Or at least that’s the best I can get with what I have here.”

  I got a better explanation after the first conversation, but the idea wasn’t that more complex than what Elen said before. She had a list of suspicious nobles and was planning to arrest, or at least cull their influence while the hero was working with external threats. It was a good chance to get them even with the demon threat since there was a safety net in place, but she was going with a very rough plan and too little manpower.

  From what I got, all she had were fifty or so spec-ops maids like Eve, and that was too little for a crackdown. Even teleporting around cities, which I think they can, it wouldn’t be fast enough to take everyone down. And that’s ignoring the fact that observing locations and trying to pinpoint targets would get her many unimportant locations.

  And that’s where following the money can help a lot, even if most information I have is based on taxes, which are not trustworthy in this situation. Who would think that all those administration and logistics classes would get some use on an isekai.

  “We could hit two or three cities at a time if these were all the targets, Your Highness.” Eve added after analyzing the map for a little while. “We could end the process in a week.”

  “Not an absurd increase, but it’s better than at least ten days straight with, at most, another ten or so to get things ready. A week without pause should be closer to our safety limit and would give us three extra days to prepare.”

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  “I could clear it up a little more if you give me some hours.” I said since, from what I could see, they had more people to bust than expected. “Not sure how much I can remove, but I didn’t go too deep into the information yet.”

  Ignoring the time to organize everything, I only worked on this for one or two hours. Would be even less if I had a computer to work things through or if I was actually good at it, but I could do a lot more.

  “That…” Elen stared at the map with at least a fourth of the dots removed from it. “That’s quite impressive, you know? You’re sure about these?”

  “I can explain the logic behind it if you want, but I’d need some papers to draw the tables and calculations…”

  “Yeah, I’m not hearing that.” She waved my offer away, like I thought she would, but then focused back on the matter at hand. “Can you do the same with all the others then? I’ll still need your name and participation, but we can probably clear more of them with this information.”

  “I hope it’ll be enough…” I bit my lips and sighed a little while thinking about the number of days needed to solve this whole thing. “I can only do basic analysis with this information, but I wonder how fast they’ll need to clean up after the first hit.”

  Even moving very fast, it’s likely that the last targets will have their faults most cleared after a week. Unless Elen got very lucky and information didn’t spread at all, she would only be able to really take down the first few she aimed at. Choosing the targets would be very important, but it was hard to be sure which ones were the most damaging from what she got here.

  Guess that’s the weakness of having a medieval fiscal and monetary system instead of a highly traceable and automated modern one.

  “When you say ‘basic’ do you mean you’re missing something?”

  “We have a good network into these cities, milady, so if you need something else, we could look for it.” Eve added before bringing another stack of papers to the table. “In some cases, we could even get someone infiltrated.”

  “Well, what she said. We’re not in too much of a rush, so we can manage to collect some extras if you need it.” Elen nodded at her maid’s words, leaning further into her bed with a smirk. “If I didn’t care about the repercussions and losses, we could even have most of them vanish.”

  I could see in her eyes that she wasn’t playing around, but that wouldn’t help me much. In fact, I’m not sure if there’s something they could do to get what I need. It’s very hard to get a good grasp on how much money nobles make, which then makes it hard to trace the money that isn’t meant to be theirs. Only reliable way I could think of…

  “Could you invade their mansions and try to copy a ledge or other financial documents? Maybe get letters and other incriminating papers while at it.”

  “You…” Elen instantly fixed her posture and glared at her. “You’re crazy or something? I could, maybe, do it with some preparation. Would be easy if I had easy access, actually, but they know me and wouldn’t allow me without a reason. It would take too long otherwise.”

  “Is that so…?” It got me bummed a little, but if the specialists said so, it should be true. “In this case, I’ll do what I can and then you can use my name to do whatever you want. Better than doing nothing for sure.”

  “That’s the gist, yeah. But don’t worry too much about it, we’re only taking the chance, so any win will be good enough.” Elen threw herself back to the bed and closed her eyes. “Now finish your tea and move on. Someone made me stay awake for much longer than I wanted, so I need to sleep… We can deal with this tomorrow.”

  It was a very obvious sign, so I only nodded to the maid before downing what remained of the tea and pocketing some cookies. Eve stared at me doing so, but didn’t react much at all, only opening the door when I got up.

  “Should I bring all the related documents to your bedroom, milady?” She asked right before I left the room. “It’ll take a lot of space, but should make your job easier.”

  “Sounds good. Just call me when you get there and I’ll help set everything up.”

  The maid bowed at my answer and I thanked her before leaving, finishing what was likely the oddest set of interactions I ever had. But more than that, it was the perfect chance for me to settle in this place. It would both be a good way to avoid people trying to kick me away and something that would help this kingdom stay around as long as I did.

  No need to force myself to stay awake and deal with this right now, though. I probably could rest for a few hours before, and so, I turned my mental map and started to head towards my room at the guest wing.

  Sadly, when I got there, a certain someone was just leaving his and I was too focused on planning my next steps to notice.

  “Emi…! I mean, Illia?! Rare to see you this early, or at all.” Hayato rushed closer to me, getting an angry glare when he tried to say something he shouldn’t, but recovering fast. “Would you like to have breakfast with me and my party since you’re here already?”

  “Not interested, thank you.” I answered coldly, already trying to think of a good excuse to send him away. “I’m actually going to sleep now. Ended too focused on the books…”

  “Books? So you were at the library all along… I was starting to worry since we never cross paths.”

  “Maybe you’re just too occupied, Mr. Hero.” I shrugged, turning away from the bland goody-two-shoes in front of me. “I, on the other side, don’t have much to do around here, which is more than perfect if you ask me.”

  “Is… Is that so…” He went on in answer to my boast, but then got out of things to say for some reason. “Are you… Well… Are you all fine? I heard you were having some troubles with…”

  “Hairdo? Yes, it was troublesome. This place lacks the products I need and I’m not sure if the ones they have are safe, so I’m making do for now.” I took over the conversation as if sure that was his question, going on with the intent of overwhelming the good guy. “My drills will be gone in a month or so unless I find some new trick, though… But that’s neither here nor there. Don’t you have a job to do? You and your friends will be leaving on an expedition today, or so I heard.”

  “Oh! That’s true. It seems that I’m quite strong already, so it should be possible to beat whatever’s the source of the demons already. Should make the country safe until the next one.” He answered, actually speaking much more than I expected and then continuing. “The only problem is that Valiria is busy with something related to the other nobles. Something about losing grip on the nobles due to having to spread their forces too much and that bribes were getting too common. I even heard her say that at least half of all the gold they should be getting was lost in one step or another…”

  So it’s something slightly bigger than I imagined, eh? Makes sense why someone would go for a risky trick like using the powerless heroine. Makes me wonder how much of these go for bribes alone… Some people must be spending a percentage of all their gains with it even.

  I guess I’ll be, without doing much, a hero of the common folk and the sworn enemy of nobility by helping Elen. Quite funny.

  Or wait.

  What if I went to the opposite? If I made everyone consider that I’m as bad as them…

  Mr. Hero was still talking about something or another, but he lost me long ago. In fact, I couldn’t even be bothered to find a way to escape from him right now, though I took notice that I own him one. It would be for another day, though.

  “What is that?!” I suddenly shouted, using my small hand mirror to create a floating piece of cloth with a certain interesting format. One that made the quintessential protagonist panic and get flustered like it was expected of him in this situation.

  “What? How?!” And with Mr. Hero utterly confused, I booked towards Elen’s bedroom without glancing back or thinking about it. She wouldn’t be happy that I interrupted her sleep for sure, but I couldn’t let this idea go away right now. Or maybe she would find it amusing enough to not be angry at me. That was honestly an option, I think.

  I would need some extra clothes to match with the persona I’ll be playing, though.