Everyone Was Obsessed With Me After I Became the Youngest Princess Favorite

“Lord.”

In the dark, Duke Elad turned his head. Underneath the shining silver hair reflected in the moonlight, he had a statue-like face, and he had a ruthless expression as usual.

Sid lowered his head and said in a pitiful voice.

“We searched all the nurseries and alleys in the estate, but… We couldn’t find her.”

He couldn’t even raise his head because of his apology, but Sid could see that the face of Duke Elad, his master and the proud leader of the Lexion Knights, was frozen cold.

“From now on, the scope of the search will be wider. I don’t think I’ve left the empire yet, but I’ll check the ships that have arrived in the nearby kingdom.”

“Yes. And it is said that magic swordsmen from the Principality of Belus arrived a little while ago. Captain Maretta came directly.”

“The Count?”

The Duke hardened his expression even more when he heard that Bianca Maretta had personally come over the sea. When he urgently requested help from the Grand Duke of Belus, he believed that he would take the lead and help, but he did not know that he would send the continent’s strongest magic swordsman. Perhaps he made that decision because he knew better than anyone the seriousness of what had happened. The Duke, who had been as cold as ice, couldn’t hide his complexities and sighed shallowly. A few days ago, his second son, Allen, and his youngest daughter, Diana, secretly left the castle to watch a festival, and Diana went missing. He was enraged at the negligence of his subordinates who were in charge of escorting the child, but even then, the duke even went out to the Lexion Knights, so he thought he would be able to find the child soon. He thought he was simply lost, and his territory was safer than anywhere else. But it was arrogance. He couldn’t believe that there would be fools enough to touch the daughter of Duke Elad in the Empire, but even after a few days, Diana did not appear and the abduction was almost certain. The Duke belatedly blocked the way out of the manor, and at the same time controlled information and began secretly tracking Diana. Not only were they involved in useless rumors, but the criminals later realized the identity of Diana they kidnapped and are terrified and didn’t know what to do.

‘I’d rather ask for a ransom.’

Since it was Duke Elad, who was notorious in the Empire, it was virtually impossible. He would think he would get revenge if he asks for a ransom.

‘After all, I would choose to remove it cleanly…’

The Duke frowned and shook his head at the thoughts that kept flowing negatively. He felt his cold-hearted reason, which had never wavered in his life, crumble. It even reminded him of Diana, the laughing of his daughter when receiving a birthday gift from a friend with a tracking spell enchanted with it when Diana took it off because it was a nuisance.

“They say people never know unless it’s their job.”

In this situation, he could not help recalling the tragedy his friend had suffered. His one and only friend, who lost his daughter who was nothing more than a lump of blood and still suffers in agony. Even he, who was called cold-blooded, thought that he was deeply concerned about the incident, but when this happened to himself, the pain suddenly touched him.

“Taze.”

To evoke the feeling of sinking to the ground and somehow catch reason, the Duke called a knight standing nearby. Sid, who was giving orders to the knights under his command, hesitated and looked away.

“I heard that you haven’t slept or eaten for several days already. Are you protesting now?”

“No. I’m just looking for a lady…”

“That’s right. Diana must be found, certainly. But now it looks like your mental state has been eaten.”

“…I will correct it.”

Taze, barely holding back his emotions at the Duke’s words, clenched his fists. It was like a miracle that a commoner who was a mercenary became a knight and joined the Lexion Knights.

‘But when this is over…’

It won’t stop with sobriety.

‘I’ll be kicked out of the Knights and get my knighthood revoked.’

But he was willing to give his life as long as Diana was safely found. At that time, Taze noticed Sid, the vice-captain nearby, looking at him with fishy eyes. In an instant, a tantrum rose. He knew that he had listened to him and thought that I had been excluded from the lady’s escort. It was all a trap. However, they were all just excuses before the lord who lost his daughter.

While Taze was suppressing anger and regret inside, the Duke called Sid. Sid’s eyes, as he approached right away and looked down at the floor with his head lowered, flashed insidiously.

“You start tracking east from now on. Taze and I will go west, where the range is wide. Tell Count Maretta to join us west.”

“Johnny.”

Arsenic seeped into Sid’s mouth as he turned around in the form of a knight more loyal than anyone else. Things got worse than he had originally planned, but nothing bad happened to him. On the other hand, Taze would no longer be trusted by his lord. Meanwhile, the Duke, who was looking beyond the manor, remembered his childish daughter, Diana. His eyes were cold and hard like glaciers, but his heart was throbbing with worry and concern. Assuming that by now his little daughter would be crying alone.

* * *

“Kyaa! Brother, tickle me!”

Diana couldn’t stand it, twisting her whole body and bursting out laughing with a gurgling sound. A morning kiss on both cheeks, a friendly greeting, and even a light prank that tickles the stomach. She just did what she wanted her parents to do if they were there someday, and she was proud of herself because Diana liked them so much. But behind the smiling face, she was actually a little sad. It was because the shock of learning the secret of Tessar Nursery School was still there.

* * *

A few days ago, after putting Diana to sleep and completely erasing her presence, she headed to the empty director’s office. Even though there were only helpless children in the orphanage, the director locked the door every time he went out, and it was the same today. However, it was not a big problem for her, who came in and out of the aristocratic house, which was properly guarded and strictly guarded. 

First of all, she lightly blocked out the noise around the director’s office and set up a barrier so that no one approached. She took out the needle she had prepared in advance during the day. The needles bathed in the moonlight sparkled and reflected the light for a while.

Clap, cluck, cluck, clack.

After inserting the needle into the hole in the doorknob and moving it several times to lift the fixed pin of the rotating device, the door to the director’s office opened easily.

‘It’s been a while since I’ve been infiltrating like this.’

In fact, she was more used to going in and out through the window after clearing the presence with mana. However, it was not a task to unlock this level of lock, and it was much less mana consuming to build a barrier around the area for a while.

‘I don’t know what will happen, but I have to save it as much as possible.’

Although the amount of mana suddenly increased, it was difficult to control as precisely as before because the body was not used to it. In addition, it was a choice he had made to make it a habit to use less mana efficiently from the beginning.

“Come on, then let’s find out what you’ve been hiding.”

Entering the director’s office, she placed her short arms on her waist and glared at her eyes. From the day she returned to the past, she was instinctively convinced that the ledger was hiding something. Just as expected. She laughed out loud when she found the nursery school operation report and account book written for subsidy application on her desk.

“Ha, isn’t that ridiculous?”

If you didn’t know the letters, you wouldn’t know. It was her who entered the guild, took off the letters, and even learned simple accounting from the manager Lope, who was in charge of management. There was no way she wouldn’t be able to read this poor ledger.

“Compared to then, prices should be lower now, but we spend so much money on food?”

It was a sound that even a passing dog would not believe.

“How are you, water, books and toys?”

Even the children’s clothes were picked up from the village and put on.

“It’s okay. It’s not like I didn’t know that. But where is the real thing?”

These ledgers were probably not the secret the director was hiding. She looked again carefully, not missing anything from the desk drawer to the underside. But strangely, she couldn’t find anything. At that moment, a thought came to her mind and she closed her eyes. When she raised her spirits and activated the detection magic, there was something that touched her nerves. Only then did she find a mana stone the size of a fingernail attached to a lamp.

“…Why is this here?”

She opened her mouth when she saw the artifact equipped with the magic stone in question. The artifact was enchanted with cognitive impairment. Illusion magic, which deceives people’s perception and cognition, was one of the most difficult mental magics. She never thought she would find such an expensive magic item in an old nursery school in the backcountry of the mountains, not in the mansions of nobles or wealthy people.

“How long does it take to go through something like this…”

Unable to hide her absurdity, she immediately removed the magic from the artifact and looked around the room again. Then he thumped the floor right under the desk with his little foot. She felt a subtle difference from other floors. She quickly crouched down and pressed hard on the part caught on her fingertip, finally revealing the safe.

“…!”

In the safe, she found a ledger and sealed documents that were incomparably thicker than the ones from before, and she was cold. In the ledger hidden by the director, the names and ages of the children who stayed at the nursery school and left were written. And a lot of familiar names written next to it…

In the meantime, she had prided herself on being excellent in her own way among Terencium’s first-class informants. She was good at reading spirits and stealth, and she was able to do a lot of simple magic that rivaled her male colleagues. But most of all, she was confident in her powers of observation and memory.

Thanks to this, she was able to perform her duties brilliantly even in situations where she could not bring documents or information with her. This meant that she clearly remembered the names of the criminals who stirred up the empire with the slave auction.

“These bastards.”

—————————————————————

Translator Note:

Support me on Patreon