The Reason Accidents Happen

"I am very sorry, Your Excellency Purple Diamond. His Majesty feels tired and has decided to rest in the palace for a day. The planned city tour has been postponed. I apologize for not informing you in time."

At the gates leading to the Rose Palace in the Luen Nore Academy District, a young female knight in black armor bowed deeply to express her apology.

Standing before her were Purple Diamond and the magical girls belonging to the Crown Faction of the Magic Affairs Institute.

According to the original plan, today and tomorrow were the days when the Queen would personally tour the city of Luen Nore, comfort the people, and hold events.

The reason it was scheduled for these two days was that the qualification assessment was currently in the stage of Magic Armament testing, and this test was not convenient to observe. Therefore, the Royal Court's secretaries took advantage of the opportunity to arrange the city inspection segment.

After all, in a few days, when the assessment reaches the last two parts, the Queen will inevitably return to the audience seats in the examination hall. And after the assessment is over, she cannot stay in Luen Nore any longer— the Magic Kingdom is so vast, and there are many cities waiting for Her Majesty's visit.

With this in mind, the magical girl officials of Luen Nore took this matter very seriously, as it was a crucial opportunity for them to showcase their governance to the Queen. From the Emerald Zone to the Academy District, from the Mana-Free District to the city's outskirts, every corner was spotless and brightly decorated. At this very moment, they were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Queen and her entourage in the City Hall!

And now, the sole protagonist of this event, Her Majesty the Queen, is saying she needs a day off and isn't coming?

The Crown Faction magical girls present exchanged glances, already pondering how to explain to their colleagues and subordinates. Their gazes first lingered on the black-clad knight at the entrance, and then unanimously focused on the very front of the crowd—namely, Purple Diamond.

At times like this, perhaps only the words of the Gem Scepter could put an end to the situation.

Bathed in the gazes of the crowd, the current Diamond Scepter stood with a solemn expression and upright posture, seemingly contemplating how to handle the current situation. After a long silence, she finally nodded to the knight before her, then turned to look at the magical girls of the Magic Affairs Institute:

"I understand. I'll send someone to the city hall to inform them to postpone the event. As for you, lead the way now; I'm going to the Magic Affairs Institute."

Her words sent a chill down the spines of everyone at the Magic Affairs Institute.

They've arrived.

They thought to themselves, and couldn't help but sigh.

All the magical girls belonging to the Five Institutes know that the current Purple Diamond is an extremely strict leader who cannot tolerate any wrongdoing and has a particular fondness for overstepping his authority.

Although she is merely the Gem Scepter of the Finance Institute, she will reprimand and even punish any magical girl who does something against her will without mercy.

Among the other departments, the Investigation Institute and the Research Institute fared relatively well. The Yellow-Green Gem Scepter and the current Diamond were distant, and the two departments had clearly defined roles, so the Purple Diamond had little room to interfere. However, the magical girls of the Civil Governance Institute and the Magic Affairs Institute were in dire straits. The Pigeon Blood of the Civil Governance Institute shared a similar stance with the Purple Diamond and didn't concern herself with trivial matters; the Magic Affairs Institute, on the other hand, didn't possess the Gem Scepter at all, merely a figurehead whose power had been divided. This resulted in magical girls in these two departments frequently being severely reprimanded by the Purple Diamond for offending her.

Right now, these magical girls from the Crown Faction Magic Affairs Institute are just like that.

The "Confusion Spell cheating" incident that broke out during the qualification certification written test a few days ago has made Purple Diamond keep an eye on them. They have been criticizing them every few days over the past few days. Now, it is clear that they want to continue to use this as an excuse to come to the Magic Affairs Institute to "guide their work".

Is this ever going to end? Is this your first time being an official? You seem so eager to escalate things and indulge in your bureaucratic fantasies. I've never seen such a leisurely and degrading Gem Scepter. What business is the work of our Magic Affairs Institute with your Finance Institute scepter? Don't you have your own work to do?

This sentiment likely reflects the feelings of many of the magical girls present, but no matter how much they internally complained, they could never voice it aloud.

Therefore, on the surface, they could only obediently follow the other party's instructions and obediently bring him to the Magic Affairs Institute.

At this very moment, within the Magic Affairs Institute, a group of Crown Faction clerks were frantically busy selecting Magic Armament files.

The not-so-large service hall was crammed with more than a dozen people, their voices, phone calls, footsteps, and printing noises creating a chaotic cacophony.

The reason why selecting a file can cause such a commotion is that selecting a file is not actually just about "selecting" a file.

An assessment involves thousands of candidates, among whom at least four figures achieve a Magic Armament score of "Briza" or higher. Determining which of these candidates "have potential" is a highly subjective matter.

Not only does every file that is entered need to be discussed and voted on, but some files that have been given prior notice also need a "reason for selection".

The daughter of a leader's friend? A junior colleague of a high-ranking official at the Silver Gallery? A student of a senior faculty member at the Research Institute? There were far too many candidates who were related by marriage and therefore required to receive special treatment. It was difficult to manipulate the scores in other aspects of the assessment, so this Magic Armament test became the most important stage for leveraging personal connections.

However, special consideration does not mean that shoddy work can be accepted. These selected files will eventually be reported to the Royal Court. If things go too far and files that are obviously not up to standard are sent up, no one will benefit from the Royal Court's reprimand.

Therefore, "how to package files with nepotism" has become a problem for many Crown Faction employees. Everyone is a B-rank, so why recommend you? Highly impressive files naturally go without saying and will be selected through normal procedures. But at the same time, what kind of explanation can be used to get those relatively ordinary Magic Armament, which don't show many distinctive features, mixed in?

These messy and chaotic things, mixed together with the normal assessment process, naturally made what should have been a simple task incredibly complicated.

When Purple Diamond, several clerks in the office were arguing fiercely about whether a file that had been given prior notice could be submitted.

At first, no one even realized that the short magical girl who walked in quietly was Purple Diamond. After all, the Gem Scepter was of high status, and most magical girls had never seen Purple Diamond's face. So, some employees even tried to declare "No unauthorized personnel allowed."

However, when a few employees who recognized Purple Diamond suddenly fell silent, and the magical girls behind Purple Diamond slowly entered the office, most people sensed that something was amiss. The entire office then fell silent.

No one spoke; only the intermittent sound of the printer spitting out paper could be heard.

--"What do you mean by 'this candidate's family is a major sponsor of Silver Gallery, so we must submit her file no matter what'?"

Purple Diamond stood in the doorway, arms crossed, eyebrows raised. "Is anyone going to explain this to me?"

Still no one spoke. The magical girls who had been arguing earlier now acted more innocent than anyone else, each with their heads down, as if afraid of being recognized.

"Since no one is going to explain, I'll just have to handle it according to my own understanding."

Purple Diamond glanced around at the people in the office, then slowly raised her voice. "Is this the attitude you intend to use to present this kind of achievement to His Majesty?"

An employee sitting next to the printer secretly reached out and pressed the printer's operating button, and suddenly, the entire office was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

"If I hadn't come, how many of these 'must-report' files were you planning to include? You bunch of trash, you can't even handle the smallest things normally, but now that you've got a benefit, you're all so quick to scheme?"

Purple Diamond stretched out a hand and knocked on the door frame beside her, the "knock knock" echoing in everyone's ears. "Speak up? Weren't you so good at talking? You don't even want to explain anymore? 'Conserving your life for great things, forgetting righteousness for petty gains,' that saying perfectly describes you bunch of good-for-nothings!"

On the way here, this Purple Diamond had already given the magical girls accompanying her a thorough dressing-down because of the previous cheating incident. Just when she seemed to have finished venting and her anger had subsided a bit, she witnessed this scene at the Magic Affairs Institute. This was like adding fuel to the fire of her waning anger, making Purple Diamond's sharp rebuke audible across two corridors.

The numerous Crown Faction employees present were subjected to every insult imaginable, for over ten minutes, without repeating themselves. And when the Purple Diamond employee had finished berating them, he showed no sign of leaving, instead taking a few more steps forward to one of their workstations:

"Get out of the way. If you can't do it right, then I'll do it."

"Your Excellency... this is the work of the Magic Affairs Institute. From the perspective of the division of authority, you cannot..." the employee who was called out stammered.

"I don't need trash to teach me how to do things. Get out of my way, or do you want me to tell you to get lost?" Purple Diamond looked at her with icy eyes.

An ordinary clerk from the Five Institutes would never dare to disobey the Gem Scepter, so the employee left his seat with tears in his eyes.

"Selecting candidates from the archives and recommending promising juniors to His Majesty is a very sacred and serious matter."

Purple Diamond turned to all the staff of the Magic Affairs Institute present and said, word by word, "I will investigate your problems later. From now on, you will do whatever I say."

At the time she uttered those words, Emerald was still unaware of what was happening in the Silver Gallery.

From an objective standpoint, there was nothing inherently wrong with the plan to use Emerald to conceal Lin Xiaolu's file.

The plan involves overwhelming and even polluting the vision of the "Crown Faction" members with a massive influx of information to prevent Lin Xiaolu's file from being seen immediately. Then, the access permissions for the file are quickly increased so that even if the other party searches the archives later, they will not be able to find any trace of it. The file is then transferred to the Research Institute under the guise of "for a confidential research project," thereby blocking any potential follow-up inquiries.

If the operation is compliant, the process is discreet, and everything goes smoothly, no one will even know that such a file has been secretly transferred. Even if someone discovers some clues, they are unlikely to cause trouble for the Gem Scepter over such a "trivial matter."

Emerald believed that while the plan wasn't foolproof, the chance of it being exposed was virtually nonexistent. To gather evidence, a Gem Scepter would need to personally travel to the Magic Affairs Institute within ten minutes of Lin Xiaolu's file being uploaded, overstepping the Royal Court's authority, illegally interfering with the Crown Faction's work, using their own identity to access the Magic Affairs Institute's archives, and precisely finding Lin Xiaolu's file among that vast sea of records. At this point in time, it was impossible for any Gem Scepter to have the time to do such a thing.

Of course, all of this is based on the premise that "no surprises will occur".

When Purple Diamond forcibly accessed the Magic Affairs Institute's database using its privileges and insisted on filtering out all the "unqualified" files, it kept tracing back to the source. Finally, it discovered the file marked "S+" in an extremely hidden directory. This marked the arrival of the "accident".

Purple Diamond, who had been frowning ever since entering the Magic Affairs Institute and seemed incapable of finding joy in anything, had her expression turn to blankness upon seeing the file.

"... What is this thing? Did the people at the Research Institute make this up?"