## Chapter 494 – 494. God’S Atlantis
494. God’s Atlantis
Yuria moved stealthily using shadow magic. It was shadow magic to hide from the undead, who were sensitive to life force.
The undead didn’t notice Yuria passing right by them. Yuria had completely erased her presence and moved only in the blind spots of the undead.
The only reason she was spotted by a gargoyle was that the gargoyle’s detection ability was better than she had anticipated.
Creek. Creak.
The eyes of the four demon-shaped statues glowed red, and they rose.
She abandoned the option of running away and shaking them off. If she did, she might be chased by other undead as well. It was much better to quickly kill the gargoyles here and get away.
Yuria snatched a dagger that had sprung up from the shadows and rushed toward the closest gargoyle.
The gargoyle’s body was hard. Most attacks wouldn’t work at all. But even the hardest rock had a particularly weak spot. That spot, called a point or a flaw, was visible to Yuria.
Her black aura-infused dagger aimed for a spot slightly below the right temple of the gargoyle.
Crack!
The gargoyle’s head shattered.
Kiiiiiiiiing!
Red lasers shot out from the eyes of the other three gargoyles. Yuria calmly twisted her body to the side. The six lasers didn’t even touch the hem of her skirt.
Having gained an opportunity to attack, Yuria finished off all the gargoyles in less than a minute and left the area.
‘This is the back door of the castle that Master mentioned.’
Yuria opened the wooden door hidden on the first basement floor and went inside.
A wide space appeared. It felt out of place, as if spaces had been pieced together.
「You have entered Zone 6,334, the Sleeping Princess’s Tower.」
「This is a hidden zone.」
「Conquering the tower will grant you dominion.」
Messages popped up, but she ignored them as she always did.
The wide space had nothing but a staircase leading up and an old door at the back. Yuria quietly walked through the space.
And then she stopped somewhere. A place where the sound of her footsteps was different. A place where she felt the vibration of air below.
Bang!
Yuria stomped on the floor with all her might. The floor collapsed, revealing a staircase leading down. Without hesitation, she went down to the basement.
It was dark when she went down the stairs, but as soon as she reached the bottom, light emanated from the stones embedded in the ceiling, and the surroundings were filled with glass flowers.
However, Yuria didn’t even glance at the flowers and walked toward the glass coffin in the center.
Inside the glass coffin lay a beautiful woman.
Karise del Felsman.
The woman Sung Yoo-jin wanted.
She had fresh blonde hair and wore a pure white dress. Her eyes were tightly closed, and her hands were neatly placed on her stomach. Her skin was pure white, and her lips were a soft pink. She was a beautiful woman.
Yuria carefully shattered the glass coffin so that the glass shards wouldn’t injure Karise’s skin, took Karise out, and held her in her arms. Then, she took out a pre-prepared space-movement scroll from the shadows and tore it.
•••
“Oh, so you really came.”
Yuria, who had torn the scroll and moved somewhere, found a woman with short blue hair sitting on a fancy chair. Yuria knew her from what Sung Yoo-jin had told her.
Yuria carefully placed Karise, whom she was holding, on the floor and greeted her.
“Nice to meet you. Duke Baldert. I am Yuria Grace.”
“Sung Yoo-jin’s boastful maid. I thought he was exaggerating…”
Elena’s blue eyes scanned Yuria up and down. In her mind, she had already finished analyzing and evaluating her first impression of Yuria.
“That wasn’t the case. It seems like it was even downplayed when I see you in person.”
“You flatter me.”
“Is that the sleeping princess that Sung Yoo-jin wanted? She’s pretty. Shall we try waking her up?”
“Master said that she can’t be awakened by ordinary means.”
“…Tsk. A god’s curse, huh? How boring.”
Elena took her eyes off the sleeping princess, Karise. The princess of a fallen kingdom didn’t pique Elena’s interest. Rather, the calm silver-haired maid caught her attention more.
Her visible physical abilities and the mana she felt were disappointing. You could easily find that level among the exiles. But when she made eye contact with her, Elena unconsciously tensed her back.
“Yuria Grace, was it? You’ll have to help me for the next few days.”
“Yes. I heard about it from Master. I will help you.”
Elena rested her chin on one hand. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Yuria.
“…You’re not bowing to me?”
“I bowed when I greeted you earlier.”
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“I’m sorry, Duke. I do not pledge my loyalty to you. The only reason I’m helping you is because of Master’s orders. And please stop testing my loyalty to Master. It’s unpleasant.”
“My apologies. I admit my mistake. Try not to be too unpleasant.”
“Yes. What do you need me to do, Duke?”
“I heard you can do anything. Assassination, managing territories, housework. He said that if you were a merchant, you could save a country, and if you were an artist, you would be an artist like no other in this world.”
“Master is exaggerating. I’m not that good.”
“Well, in short, it means you can do anything. However, I don’t trust his evaluation. People’s evaluations tend to be biased when they know each other.”
“……”
“I’ll start with something simple.”
Elena turned her finger to the side, pointing at the desk. On the desk were a thick book and dozens of documents.
“From tomorrow, you will be an inspector. That book is a law book, it will be helpful. The documents are suspicious reports and data. I trust that you won’t abuse the position of inspector like your master did.”
“…Are you suddenly giving me such an important position?”
“If it’s not a position of that level, you won’t be able to handle things smoothly. And if you’re incompetent enough to not meet my expectations, I’ll just take back the position. Tell me now if you can’t do it.”
“……”
Yuria walked towards the desk. She picked up the thick book and quickly flipped through the pages. Surprisingly, the letters written in the book looked like the common language of the continent that Yuria was familiar with.
“…What are you doing? Is that speed reading? Reading fast isn’t important. What you have to do is use the law with power.”
“I need to know it to use it.”
“…You don’t mean you’re memorizing all of that, do you?”
Yuria closed the book.
“I’ve memorized it all.”
“Hmm.”
Elena looked at Yuria with suspicious eyes. That law book was a compilation of all sorts of complex laws, including the kingdom’s common laws, laws that only applied to some territories, and laws that were applied differently depending on the area.
Elena had put the law book there for reference, not for studying.
“What are you doing now?”
“I’m sorting the documents. The ones that are certain, the ones that need further investigation, and the ones that can’t be judged.”
Elena checked the documents that Yuria had sorted.
They all fell into the correct categories. The only documents that Yuria couldn’t judge were the ones where she simply didn’t have information about the Baldert Duchy.
“…You sorted them in 10 minutes? That’s insane.”
“I’m used to sorting documents related to territories. Is that all for today?”
Yuria had been handling all the paperwork for the territory and the merchant guild instead of Sung Yoo-jin since the days when there were no proper personnel. If you added cleaning the mansion, preparing Sung Yoo-jin’s meals, and training and sex time, the time she could spend on paperwork was less than an hour a day.
“…Bring more documents. With more difficult and complex ones.”
•••
They had conquered four zones at once.
The A-Plan Legion was happy, but they kept the fact a secret. The A-Plan Legion still lacked the power to protect the zones from others.
The Legion members had to take turns organizing the zones, and Kang Myung-jin seemed to have become more thoughtful since conquering the hidden zone.
‘It must be because of the sleeping princess that Yuria took.’
After the cleanup was done, I took a vacation.
I immediately moved to Elena’s territory. I entered the Baldert Duchy using the method Elena had told me.
Elena’s face, which I hadn’t seen in a while, was bright. She smiled as she put a grape into her mouth from the ones on the desk.
“Did you come to get the sleeping princess? Or to pick up your maid?”
“Both? Where are Karise and Yuria?”
“The princess is in the annex. I put up a barrier. It’s a relief that I don’t have to feed her or anything.”
“You didn’t do anything weird, did you?”
“I tried to break the princess’s curse, but I realized that it wasn’t something that could be solved at the human level, so I gave up right away. Other than that, I didn’t touch her.”
Looking at Elena’s face, it seemed like she really wasn’t interested in Karise. It was a relief that things didn’t get complicated.
“Where’s Yuria?”
“She went out for a bit because of work. She’s a loyal and capable maid. If she knew you were coming today, she wouldn’t have gone out.”
“She’ll be back before dinner, right?”
My hands were itching to hold Yuria in my arms.
“If there’s nothing special, she’ll be back in the next two or three hours. About her… can’t you lend her to me a little longer?”
“Huh?”
Rarely, Elena was looking at me cautiously.
“I didn’t expect you to say that… Yuria is good at her job, isn’t she?”
“She’s not just good at her job. She’s excessively capable. No matter what I ask her to do, she brings results beyond what I expected. Since she came, more than half of my work has been reduced. She’s better than dozens of vassals. To be honest, I want to take her from you.”
“If it were you, you would have already tried to persuade Yuria, right?”
“…She refused both money and power. I only confirmed that there was only one reason she was helping me. It was your order. She would die right away if you ordered her to die. …How did you get her?”
Elena looked at me with curious eyes.
“I caught her when she was young and raised her.”
“Raised? You? You’re good at joking.”
“…It’s more accurate to say that she grew up on her own. Anyway, I need to see Karise.”
I got up from my seat. My mind was on Karise, so it was hard to concentrate on the conversation with Elena.
“Answer me. Can’t you lend her to me a little longer? With her help, I can finish the internal organization faster. It’ll only take a week.”
“Let’s talk about it again after Yuria comes back.”
“…Okay. Her own will is important. Here, the key to the annex.”
“Ah. Thanks.”
I was about to go out the door when I stopped and looked at Elena.
“…Do you have anything else to say to me?”
“You didn’t use illusion magic on Yuria, did you?”
“……”
Elena, who had been silent, smiled bitterly.
“I didn’t. People like her are not easily affected by illusion magic, and even if they are, they notice it soon enough. And there’s nothing as futile as trust and loyalty gained through illusion magic.”
“Oh… sorry.”
“It’s okay. Most of those who know about my abilities are suspicious. I want to call it prejudice… but honestly, I can’t say it’s not my fault.”
“That’s right. You used illusion magic on me when you first saw me.”
“Hmm. I have nothing to say.”
•••
I approached Karise, who was lying on the bed.
Rich golden hair. Pure white skin that looked like it would leave a mark if touched. Long eyelashes. Lively pink lips.
Karise had the beauty as described in the original work, and she was sleeping so quietly that I wondered if she was dead.
I lowered my gaze from her face to her chest.
Her swollen C-cup breasts were wrapped in a pure white dress. There was no bra or anything like that. Below, her slender waist and the voluminous dress skirt covered her lower body.
I lifted Karise’s skirt.
