Chapter 86: The Worst She Can Say Is No

Lawyers.

They tell you what you can and cannot do. They also don’t tell you what you can and cannot do.

For Page, being caught up in a national defense project had been exciting at the time. The ensuing paperwork, however, definitely wasn’t something she’d wanted to be caught up in.

As soon as she arrived in the castle, she was ushered into a private room with Lord Shal-yen, Gellar, Researcher Deckert, Manager Alsae, and...some guy with a business smile.

“Librarian Turner, nice of you to join us,” Alsae said with a smile—that soon disappeared.

“Librarian Turner.” She used a harsh voice this time. “This is Lawyer Sharknel. She's here to formalize the details of your employment by the kingdom.”

Sharknel stood up and extended a hand. “Librarian, a pleasure to work with you today.”

Page saw her colors were dull and unpleasant. She reached out and shook Sharknel's hand. “The pleasure's mine.”

The people who witnessed that handshake were in shock. Her tone, her voice... That couldn’t have been Page! To speak so coldly, putting a mile-wide professional chasm between herself and the Lawyer...well, it was a Lawyer.

Alright, maybe they shouldn’t be too surprised. Page was licensed, and if she wasn’t capable of being business-like, she wouldn’t have gotten this far.

The two sat down with the others around a round table. Awaiting them were three thick stacks of paperwork.

Page’s eyes nearly glazed over at the sight of them. Ah, triplicate, my greatest enemy. For a moment, she got flashbacks of her former job in Clarinets, handling dumb documents day-in and day-out. Those poor pages would probably just be read by two dudes before getting stowed away in an archive somewhere, never to see the light of day again.

Well, whatever. For now, it’s not like she was the one doing the negotiating. Alsae seemed happy enough to argue the bigger points while Deckert signed off on anything that directly pertained to the new Royal Combat Librarian Department—which, by the way, definitely didn’t exist.

Stay quiet about it, okay?

The talk only lasted thirty minutes, to Page’s relief and surprise. Most of it seemed to have been talked out a long time ago, and everyone was just here to be extra sure they were on the same page.

Documents shifted around, and Alsae and Deckert got to signing—but, what is this? Page had been suspicious of the Lawyer for a while now, but with each signature that Alsae and Deckert laid down, the color around the Lawyer started to swirl and take on a purplish hue.

Good thing the documents were in triplicate, so Alsae and Deckert were taking ages to sign, giving Page more time to figure out just what was going on.

“Librarian Turner,” Sharknel called, spooking Page out of her thoughts. “These ones are yours.”

Sharknel slid over a stack of 50-something pages of legal gibberish.

“This is it,” the Lawyer thought. “The final blow.”

Page’s left hand reached for the stack, while a fountain pen found its way into her right hand.

The Lawyer suppressed a smile.

Page...set down her pen.

To Sharknel’s horror, Page started flipping through the pages, reading through the fine print.

“Librarian Turner, you don’t need to read through all of that.” She put on her best business smile, maximizing the amount of neutrality on her face as much as she could. “I have already gone through it with everyone else in this room.”

Page turned to Alsae, who nodded in confirmation.

Despite the assurance, Sharknel’s colors were shaking with yellow and amber.

“This is still my first time hearing about any of this, you know?” Page said. “I’m not signing this until I know what’s in it.”

That’s right. This girl didn’t get this far on clumsiness and adventure alone. Indeed, running away from home required a certain set of skills, skills which she had to learn the hard way over a long and lonely journey.

— Get ripped off once, never get ripped off again!

Sharknel was on the back foot. She was legally obligated to let people do as they please. “As you wish,” she meekly said. Still, she held onto hope that her hole-looping skills would save her. It had never failed her before, but this time...it might just be a close call.

When she looked into Page’s eyes, the raging inferno of detail-oriented fury nearly blinded her. She could tell by the way Page’s pupils darted in a cross pattern that she was cross-matching facts and figures, connecting the dots no matter how convoluted the overall picture.

Somehow, Sharknel was afraid...but also excited. She had finally found her match; victory here would be proof of her growth and ability as a fearsome Lawyer.

— One step closer to becoming a Lawyer of the Seat.

Such was the Occupation that all Lawyers vied for. There hadn’t been a Lawyer of the Seat in centuries, and for good reason.

They were said to be even more powerful than the King himself. The power to manipulate the Throne—the goddess-given thing which bound all of Lyrica together for thousands of years—was power over all of Lyrica itself.

However, it wasn’t simply that Lawyers vied for power.

They vied for escape.

Being a Lawyer was a constant battle against other Lawyers, and as such, there was no such thing as peace. Living as one meant casting away all forms of genuineness and putting on the mask of a devil. The moment one decided to try and leave behind such a life, they would be ridiculed by their peers and then be ostracized by the common folk for having ever been a devil in human skin.

Also, they had no other job qualifications. That was a pretty big reason right there.

So, there was no way to go...but up—up and away from the petty, back-stabbing squabbles of Lawyership.

Any Lawyer had at least two Skills: [Query] and [Account].

[Query] allowed them to ask the Throne a simple yes/no question with regards to what the Throne would allow or forbid. Both the query and result could be displayed for others as an act of transparency.

[Account] showed the Lawyer their standing with the Throne in terms of Reputation.

Conducting contracts which benefited Lyrica awarded Reputation. Maximizing these benefits awarded even more Reputation.

This contract Combat Librarian program, by the way, would give her [+1000 Reputation]. Most contracts just gave something on the order of 10.

Didn’t it make sense to trample on individual benefit for the sake of the country, then?

Sharknel waited patiently for Page to finish going through the whole thing. The naive girl’s face looked refreshed when she finally reached the last page. It certainly meant that she’d found nothing wrong with the contract —

Page shot up to her feet. “This is a slave contract!”

The sheer violence of her declaration made Sharknel lose her cool for a moment. “T-that can’t be!” she said, half trying to shout, half keeping it down, resulting in a weak, noncommittal reply that convinced no one in the room.

Still, Alsae, and even Lord Shal-yen, had gone through the contract themselves. There shouldn’t be anything wrong.

“Turner, calm down,” Alsae said. “I went through each of these contracts myself. Your employment benefits should be luxurious, all taken into consideration.”

Page shook her head. “Nope nope nope—nope!”

Somehow, her being like this made the others feel more at ease. Childish Page, although childish, was also more Page. Still, Alsae didn’t approve of this behavior. She was about to say something when Page continued,

“In the first place!” She pointed at Sharknel. “I’m only going to be considered an employee of the Royal Combat Librarian Department!”

“Y-yes,” Sharknel stammered. Her colors were already swirling around like an emergency light, telling Page that she was on the right track.

“Tell me!” Page slowly slid back the 50-something pages of legalese. She lowered her voice and the temperature of the room. “Where, in these papers, does the Royal Combat Librarian Department exist as a legal entity?”

This was the gist of the trap. Although the “Royal Combat Librarian Department” was named several times, that didn’t mean that it actually existed. It was like calling a school club a nonprofit organization—the latter was properly legal and got to have tax breaks, while the earlier didn’t even technically exist as an organization.

In the end, it was just a name without any kind of legal rights or obligations.

...Obligations like actually paying its employees.

All 50+ pages of the contract was just fictional fluff supported by cotton candy and official-sounding words.

Now that Shal-yen and Alsae thought about it, they were embarrassed to have fallen for it. It was, after all, necessary for the Royal Combat Librarian Department to be a shadow department that didn’t exist.

Had this trap run its full course, Shal-yen and Alsae would have been the ones paying Page out-of-pocket, and it would end up that the kingdom would be paying zero coin in exchange for all of their results.

It was like forcing scientists to pay for their own research, a situation tantamount to gross negligence on the part of the country.

“O-obviously, it exists!” Sharknel said, but at this point, her words were doing zero damage. She churned her brain to come up with something to turn the tide, but she couldn’t.

In fact, Page wouldn’t let her. “Hey,” she said. “Why don’t you [Query] it? It should be easy, right?”

In the corner of Sharknel’s vision, a little notification showed itself:

[Page Turner wants to share a Collection: Contract of Benefits and Obligations to the Royal Combat Librarian Department]

Indeed, this was ye olde file sharing. Librarians and Lawyers shared a...long history together.

Sharknel resigned herself. She uploaded the entire contract to the Throne and displayed a screen for everyone to see.

“What do you want to ask?” she said.

Alsae was the one who spoke. “ ‘Based on these documents and existing precedents, is the Royal Combat Librarian Department obligated to treat Page Turner as an employee?’ ”

Mhm. Yeah. That’ll do her in.

Sharknel punched in the question with dead eyes. Well, at least it wasn’t the end of the world, right? She’d just get booted out of here and get replaced by a far less ambitious Lawyer. It’ll be a while before she could find a contract as juicy as this one.

Well, it’s just a while, and she’s not the type to give up!

As expected, the result that came out was: [No.]

What was unexpected was a notification that only Sharknel could see:

[Minor infraction detected: attempted legal engineering against “Page Turner.” Enforcing disciplinary action on “Eliza Sharknel.” Prepare for forced teleport, destination: Golden Cage.]

“Huh?!”—were the last words anyone heard from her before the room was bathed in a golden glow. When it was gone, so was Sharknel.

No one in the room had any inkling as to what had just happened. Well, wasn’t that reasonable? After all, the very first domino to fall could have only been found by the Inquisition in Chello.