Wildly tangled hair and a disheveled nightgown.

Anyone who knew her would have been shocked.

The person looking little better than a shut-in was none other than Chasey Einthoven, known as the Flower of Luteran.

“Euaaang—”

Burying her face in her pillow, Chasey stomped her feet in frustration, tormenting the innocent bed.

Since the private battlefield ended, she hadn’t stepped outside for two days, remaining holed up in her room.

‘I really don’t know!’

An unresolved dilemma kept surfacing in her mind, tormenting her endlessly.

Perhaps venting her frustrations into the pillow helped a little.

Rolling onto her back, Chasey stared at the square patterns on the ceiling and reviewed the recent battlefield once more.

However.

“Again, again, again!”

For the umpteenth time, her review process was blocked by a single imaginary shieldbearer placed at the very rear.

“Huu—”

Chasey let out a deep sigh.

A solution to the unconventional placement method that had shattered the Box Formation eluded her.

‘Should I have given the items to the druid instead of the gunslinger?’

Even after two full days, her dilemma only deepened.

Tap- tap-

Just then, a suspicious sound came from the window.

Whether the sound caught her attention or not, her reddened eyes darted toward the window.

“You’re back.”

It seemed Chasey already knew its identity.

Setting aside her complicated thoughts, she rose from the bed to open the window.

Stagger.

Perhaps from lying down for so long, blood suddenly rushed to her lower body, making her head spin for a moment.

The dizziness vanished quickly as she held onto the edge of the bed and stood for a moment, but as if it couldn’t wait even a second, another sound rang out.

Tap- tap-

“Alright. I’m coming.”

Rattle-!

As she opened the window, something shot into her room as if it had been waiting.

Flap-

The culprit making the noise was none other than a sparrow.

The palm-sized creature flapped its wings in front of her face as if greeting her, then familiarly perched on Chasey’s shoulder.

“What is it?”

Chasey stroked its tiny head with her index finger.

The bird thoroughly enjoyed her touch before…

Chirp- chirp-!

“A guest?”

It chirped to inform her that a guest had arrived.

Chasey dreamed of becoming a druid champion; while she might not be recognized through a skill yet, she could already communicate with small animals to some extent.

Chirp- chirp-!

“A scary person with white hair?”

The scenes the sparrow remembered were fragmented.

However, Chasey easily figured out the guest’s identity.

‘…Sister Ariel?’

Adjudicator Ariel.

It seemed she had returned to Luteran after leaving eight years ago.

“Thanks.”

Flap-

The sparrow departed without hesitation after delivering the message.

Left alone, her heart was inevitably complicated.

Ariel.

She was Chasey’s older half-sister.

Chasey’s father, Federer Einthoven, had taken two wives in his lifetime.

Of course, he hadn’t been unfaithful.

After his first wife—Ariel’s mother—passed away from illness, he remarried and had Chasey.

There was a fifteen-year age gap between her sister Ariel and herself.

She didn’t have many memories, but it seemed Ariel had taken good care of her when she was young.

The year Chasey turned ten, Ariel left Luteran, declaring she would go to the imperial capital alone.

Word had it that she became an Adjudicator…

Chasey had secretly felt disappointed that her sister never sent her a single letter.

‘Sister Ariel came back?’

Chasey looked at her reflection in the mirror.

Her hair, uncombed for days, was a mess, and dark circles had settled under her eyes, making her look haggard.

‘Won’t she fail to recognize me like this?’

Swish- swish-

Chasey quickly tidied her hair with a brush.

‘Ow, ow—’

There was a slight pain from the tangled hair that had been left unattended for days.

Since she was seeing her sister after so long, Chasey wanted to look pretty.

However, she couldn’t completely hide her disheveled appearance.

‘As for the dark circles…’

Nothing I can do about this.

It wasn’t overly noticeable, at least.

Creak-!

The door, which hadn’t been opened except for meals, finally served its purpose again after a long time.

‘She must have come to see Father.’

At this hour, her father would be in his office.

If she was looking for him, that was exactly where her sister would be.

Of course, she wouldn’t just barge into the office.

Not wanting to interrupt his work, she planned to wait outside.

‘This feels awkward.’

She used to visit the office every morning for lessons with her father, but after missing it for a few days, the walk there felt strangely awkward.

“Hm?”

No, it wasn’t just her imagination. Something had actually changed.

She passed the dining hall, only to find another dining hall where the office should have been.

Had the layout of the house changed in the meantime?

She had already circled the same spot three times.

Passing through the hallway and seeing the dining hall yet again, Chasey had no choice but to stop in her tracks.

A clearly bizarre situation.

She drew upon the mana within her body.

Shhhh-

Chasey possessed the qualities of a druid.

Druids were beings that communicated with nature, and because of that, she could easily see through unnaturalness.

‘It’s there!’

The exit to this maze was none other than the dining hall.

As the saying goes, the darkest place is right under the lamp; the answer was in a surprisingly simple place.

Exiting the maze through the dining hall, the office stood right before her eyes.

It seemed a simple magic circle had been set up near the office for security purposes.

“…”

“…”

Just then, voices echoed from inside the office.

Chasey had used mana to escape the maze.

Thanks to that, her five senses were enhanced, and she ended up overhearing the conversation.

One voice belonged to her father, and the other…

“…and the culprit is highly likely to be a member of the Assassin Guild.”

‘Sister?’

It was Ariel’s voice.

‘Assassin Guild?’

Having stayed in her room for two days, Chasey was completely unaware of the incident that had thrown Luteran into an uproar.

However, the conversation inside drew her interest.

“Hmm— So it’s certain that he has nothing to do with that shieldbearer?”

“Certainly not. He was a champion who couldn’t even handle mana properly, so I could see right through him with my ‘eyes.'”

“Then it’s ultimately the work of an assassin, but where is the evidence?”

“Residual mana was left behind.”

“It seems he hadn’t been dead for long.”

“Thanks to the shieldbearer finding him quickly.”

“Huu— This is a headache.”

It didn’t seem like they were talking about events in the capital.

Still, the content was intriguing.

From what she could gather, a murder had occurred within the Luteran territory governed by the Einthovens.

If her sister, an Adjudicator, was getting involved, it couldn’t be a trivial matter…

And then, shocking words spilled from her father’s mouth.

“Hmm… To think that Hans would die like that. This might make people suspect the ‘Einthoven’ family. I too have promised to help as much as possible to resolve the case.”

“Thank you, Lord Einthoven.”

“…!”

Chasey doubted her own ears.

‘Hans, that man is dead?’

The player who had crushed her and taken first place.

When she actually met him, Hans had surprisingly been almost entirely ignorant of player knowledge.

Her father had awarded Hans the prize money and sent him back without saying much else.

That was because he realized Hans’s skills stemmed from a ‘patron,’ making further conversation pointless.

“But it’s strange…”

Federer Einthoven had secretly assigned someone to tail Hans to uncover the patron’s identity, making this sudden death even more baffling.

“An Adjudicator handling the case instead of an Imperial Investigator implies a dispute between players, could it be?”

“Yes. The shieldbearer, Lee Shin. That man possessed a Player’s qualification. It was information that even the Imperial Investigator was unaware of.”

“Slipped past the investigator’s eyes, huh…”

From beyond the office door, the faint sound of tapping on a desk could be heard.

“Let’s keep this fact a secret and wrap up Hans’s case by uncovering the assassin’s identity. There’s no need to dig into something unrelated to the incident.”

“Understood.”

Federer Einthoven excluded him from the investigation list, thinking that if that man was an unrevealed patron, it could lead to troublesome complications.

The fact that he had been able to grow his territory so soundly despite being a Silver tier was thanks to his cautious nature in all matters.

“…Is the imperial capital livable?”

The conversation that followed was not between an Adjudicator and a lord, but a normal exchange between a father and daughter.

“Yes.”

“Alright, make sure to visit Chasey today. She has missed her sister dearly.”

“Yes, Father.”

Sensing the conversation drawing to a close, Chasey hurried back to her room.

She couldn’t embarrass herself by squatting in front of the office door during a reunion after eight years.

For the past two days, she had lived like a shut-in.

Now, she finally began to move busily.

Shrrk-

Drawing the curtains to cover the window, Chasey carefully removed her clothes and underwear and headed for the shower room.

She couldn’t present herself to her sister looking filthy.

The shower room located inside Chasey’s room hadn’t seen water for two days, leaving the floor tiles bone dry.

Shhhh-

Warm water from the showerhead flowed down her body.

Pure white steam billowed out, and only then did moist humidity begin to fill the shower room.

Standing under the warm water, Chasey ruminated on the conversation she had just overheard.

A hypothesis formed in her mind.

‘Could that player Father mentioned be the patron behind Hans?’

A player who even the Imperial Investigator was unaware of—didn’t that sound like someone with something to hide!

Her coming up with such thoughts might have been partly influenced by a novel she had read somewhere.

It was just a simple hypothesis for now, but there was no harm in checking it out.

“He said Lee Shin, the shieldbearer, right?”

If, just if, he was truly the mastermind who broke the Box Formation.

“He must know!”

The chances were high that he knew about the druid operation method she so desperately desired.

“Right, then there’s no need to stubbornly stick to a gunslinger deck.”

This might be an opportunity to root out both of the dilemmas that had been plaguing her at once.

“I’ll meet Sister Ariel, and then I need to go find him right away.”

Did the warm water wash away all her worries in one go?

Once she organized her thoughts, the headache that had tormented her completely vanished.

Feeling much better, Chasey finally began to enjoy her shower.

‘First, I need to wash up!’

Chasey washed her body thoroughly with a facial wash packed with precious medicinal herbs.

Then, she gently applied a rose-scented aroma oil (extracted by steaming rose petals) to her hair.

Nod.

‘Perfect—!’

A subtle, natural fragrance seeped into every corner of Chasey’s body.

The absence of the magitech products popular among girls her age was due to Chasey’s preference, as she disliked artificial and overwhelming scents.

After finishing her shower, Chasey stepped out.

Pondering for a moment in front of her large wardrobe, she picked out clothes that suited her taste.

“This and this!”

Her choices were a white peplum blouse with a ruffled hem and a long skirt that reached her ankles.

Nodding in satisfaction at her own discernment, she changed clothes and began busily grooming herself.

A pink flush floated on her pale face—whether due to the heat of the shower room or anticipation for what lay ahead, it was hard to tell.

It was just a simple intuition.

Lee Shin, the shieldbearer. For some reason, she felt like she could find the answer in him.

A bright smile graced Chasey’s lips for the first time in a long while.