The Unprincipled Ambush

As the saying went, "Stand as firm as a mountain; move like thunder."

Ogesha knew this principle well. She either let things slide and turned a blind eye, or she acted decisively and left no room for argument.

By the time the messenger returned from the Demacian Imperial Capital to Silvermine City, Lux's convoy was less than three days away.

To the nobles of Silvermine City, this was nothing less than an unprincipled ambush.

When they received the reply and learned that Ogesha had sent Lux to provide disaster relief and Kuren to audit the accounts, the collateral nobles of the Crown Guard family had gathered to divide up the spoils. They were completely dumbfounded.

After a moment of silence, the room erupted into a clamor.

"How could Ogesha do this?!"

"I was the one who introduced her to Peter!"

"I held Lux when she was two!"

"..."

"..."

Everyone clamored to voice their discontent. The reason they were so upset was simple: they were panicking.

Ogesha's guess had been right. Those bastards were cheating their own relatives. Silvermine City had indeed suffered a frost in the first year, but in the three years that followed, the weather had been so favorable that the city had practically enjoyed bumper harvests. Even the barbarians to the north had behaved themselves.

Under those circumstances, they had naturally collected the full amount of taxes.

Then, by reporting a frost, they could turn the land taxes they had collected into funds at their own disposal. They divided the money among themselves, everyone looking out for their own interests, while the main family remained loyal to the country and used its private funds to fill the shortfall.

Ogesha had sent an envoy before, but that hadn't been a surprise attack. The people of Silvermine City had received advance notice and prepared accordingly. They'd also paid out a share of the money, and ultimately passed the envoy's inspection.

But this time, something seemed off.

They had only just received the news, and Lux was already almost at Silvermine City. This was clearly a surprise attack!

"Quiet!" Amid the hubbub, an elderly man with white hair and beard, seated at the head of the table, finally spoke. "Settle down. Have you all forgotten how to conduct yourselves as nobles? Where have your usual manners gone?"

The old man was Codora Crown Guard. He was even a generation senior to Peter, and had always been the spokesman for the people of Silvermine City.

"What are you all making such a fuss about? Isn't it perfectly normal for the matriarch of the Crown Guard family to provide disaster relief and audit the accounts?" Codora declared righteously. "If she wants to provide relief and audit the accounts, let her. Lux needs a little experience in this sort of thing. We can all pitch in and help her put on a show, then hand her a perfect report. That's all there is to it!"

Codora's words eased everyone's worries.

Only then did they remember that the one coming was Lux!

She was only twelve this year, wasn't she?

What could a twelve-year-old girl possibly know?

Disaster relief? All they needed was to save face!

They could put in some effort, get the local farmers to act out a scene, then compose a song of praise for her on her way out. Wouldn't that make everything perfect?

The real problem was the steward accompanying her...

To keep that man quiet, they would probably have to bleed a little more.

"Don't think you need to put together anything too elaborate," Codora added, as if he'd seen right through their thoughts. "Once this is over, our matriarch will be able to give the King an answer. If the King waives Silvermine City's land taxes, she won't come looking for trouble again."

Exactly!

Lux was coming to provide disaster relief. As long as everything went smoothly, that meant Silvermine City's frost damage would be "officially confirmed" as a natural disaster.

At first, a bunch of collateral branches had joined forces to deceive the main family. But if they put on a convincing show, once Lux had made her visit, the collateral branches and the main family would be deceiving the King together!

The Noxians had recently turned their attention to Ionia, and Demacia was stable. The King had plenty of money!

Following this line of thought, everyone present began to speculate about Ogesha's motives according to their own wishes. Before long, they reached the utterly absurd conclusion that they would all be cheating Demacia together—without the slightest realization that anything was wrong...

At that moment, they finally let go of their anxieties.

By their usual standards, they had cheated the main family out of money as collateral branches, and Ogesha could hold them accountable. But if they cheated the country of Demacia out of money alongside Ogesha, then they were all one big family!

Now that made sense. They were all on the same side!

So, as long as they put on a good show and let Lux complete the relief effort without a hitch, everything would be fine. From then on, Silvermine City could claim to suffer frost every year.

After all, Demacia had plenty of places that were frequently struck by disaster. Even Freljord, not far away, claimed to suffer from "year-round rain and insufficient sunlight"!

That was even more ridiculous than frost damage.

And so, the Crown Guard collateral nobles, now at ease, resumed their discussion. This time, they were no longer frantic. Each of them had regained their noble composure and looked supremely confident, as if they were certain they could drag the whole family into it.

As they talked it over, they realized that bribing the steward would be easy, and getting a few farmers to pretend to be grateful would be easy too. The only difficult part was faking the aftermath of a frost.

As these nobles saw it, a twelve-year-old girl like Lux could only be deceived, not courted. Besides, they had nothing they could offer to win over the little princess of the Crown Guard family.

But they disagreed over how to deceive her.

Most thought they should put on a play.

Of course, some had other ideas.

"We could also send some young men to get closer to her." Among the nobles present, a handsome man with platinum-blond curls spoke up loudly with a suggestion. "The little princess is young. She should get along better with people her own age—"

The man hadn't been born with the Crown Guard name. He was a knight from a minor local noble family in Silvermine City, originally named Dili Malik.

Later, he'd married into a peripheral branch of the Crown Guard family and changed his name to Dili Crown Guard. That was how he'd barely managed to enter Silvermine City's upper circles.

But before he could finish speaking, everyone else was already looking at him with disdain and impatience.

No one interrupted him outright, but Dili's voice grew softer and softer...

Clearly, even among nobles who had no qualms about fleecing their own relatives, Dili was at the bottom of the moral pecking order.

Among all those who bore the Crown Guard name, this former outsider was always a little out of place.

At last, surrounded by unfriendly gazes, Dili had no choice but to swallow the rest of his words.

Reading people was one of his strengths. He'd only spoken up because his excitement had gotten the better of him. Since no one seemed to agree, he naturally couldn't press the matter.

"Ahem." Just as the man had embarrassed himself and sheepishly fallen silent, Codora cleared his throat. "As for the frost damage... I'll take care of it. By the time our little princess reaches Silvermine City, I'll make sure she sees a frost-stricken wheat field with her own eyes, along with a group of pitiful disaster victims. That should satisfy the compassion befitting a noble young lady!"

With Codora's promise, the nobles decided everything was in place. They rose one after another and left at their leisure, no longer showing any trace of their earlier panic.

They were brimming with confidence and had already begun thinking about how to steal the spotlight at the welcoming ceremony for Lux.

As he left with the crowd, Dili lowered his head and curled his lips into a faint smile. Those fools had the greatest opportunity right in front of them, yet they only cared about the little bit of tax money they'd hidden.

A pheasant was still a pheasant. Even with a phoenix's perch right above its head, all it did was keep pecking at the grains on the ground!

No wonder they were collateral branches!

At almost the same time the Crown Guard collateral nobles were meeting in Silvermine City, Kuren found Lux.

After considering the situation from every angle, he decided Lux was mature enough. So he planned to tell her about Ogesha's plans and intentions.

In other words, based on their interactions along the way, Lux had passed Kuren's test. The steward fully recognized his young lady's abilities, so he no longer intended to hide the true purpose of their journey.

When Lux learned all this, she was stunned.

They could really do that?

Even among the nobles of the Demacian Imperial Capital, Lux was a fairly influential "political figure." But she'd never seen anything like this before.

Or rather, she'd never seen anyone act with such blatant impunity!

Falsifying disaster reports to cheat the country out of tax money?

That wasn't skirting the rules or exploiting a loophole. If the Crown Guard family's actions were true, they were a textbook case of corruption!

Were there really people like that in the Crown Guard family?

Part of the reason for this blind spot was that the political scene in the Demacian Imperial Capital was highly sophisticated. Even when people sought personal gain, they followed the rules and made sure there were no visible flaws. Another reason was that Karya helped her judge situations and make decisions, while Ogesha personally handled the more complicated matters. So even if Lux had heard rumors, she'd never directly encountered anything so blatant and vile.

Perhaps anticipating that Lux would find it hard to believe, Kuren quickly produced the letter Ogesha had left with him.

Lux took the letter, broke the intact seal, and soon recognized her mother's familiar handwriting.

The situation Ogesha described in her letter was almost exactly as Kuren had explained it. Besides describing conditions in Silvermine City, Ogesha had added a few other things, mostly reminders and encouragement for Lux. She'd also told Lux that if she ran into any real danger, she could ask the garrison in Silvermine City for help, and so on.

After reading the letter, Lux drew a deep breath, then carefully folded it and held it to the candle flame.

The fire licked at the letter.

As the letter burned to ash, Lux finally calmed down completely.

Only then did she realize that, perhaps because of Karya's training, she'd already been mentally prepared to face something like this.

"So, Mr. Kuren," Lux said. Her golden hair flickered between light and shadow in the dancing candlelight. "What should I do?"

"You need to get to the bottom of the disaster and determine whether it's real," Kuren replied, his eyes full of admiration. "And... make use of your position. There are many things you can accomplish far more effectively than I can."

"I understand." Lux nodded thoughtfully, then raised her chin with confidence. "You can handle the audit. As for my 'relatives,' leave them to me!"