Isabelle’s POV:

 

The plan is set in motion, and the thugs from the same gang that the maid had beaten up foolishly accepted the proposal. As for the plan, it was simple. Take advantage of the lack of guards and sneak inside, then make their way to her room to kidnap her, and then bail.

 

At least that’s how they believe the plan would go… I’m quite thrilled to see the look on their faces when she uses her secret magic to defend herself. I’d say she might even end up killing them.

 

I was on the lookout at a distance, close enough to see the action but far away to be discovered.

 

***

 

After a while, the trio of thugs arrived. I could see them sloppily checking every corner to look for any stationed guards.

 

Idiots, the bunch of them.

 

If any guards were present, they would have been caught ages ago. Well, I hope she shows some mercy to them.

 

Slowly, they made their way to the maid’s quarters and found their target. After making sure that she was indeed their target, the taller man of the group threw something in through the window.

 

After covering their faces with a cloth, they broke in.

 

Hah, finally I’d get to see some action!

 

I waited for any sign of magic being used.

 

(Some time passed)

 

She sure is taking her time.

 

(Some more time passed)

 

Oh, someone’s jumping out of the window, it’s the tall guy from before. What happened? Are they trying to run away? I can’t tell what’s happening, I thought there’d be a commotion for sure.

 

Then another one jumped out… Wait, what’s in his arms? Don’t tell me!

 

It was the maid, why does she look unconscious?

 

In a panic, I charged in their direction.

“Wait! What are you doing?”, I yelled.

 

To my dismay, my scream fell on deaf ears, and they ran away in the same direction where they broke in from.

 

Oh no! I can’t let this happen! My Lady would not be happy with this!

 

I tried to chase them, but it seems like one of them had the Boost skill, which boosts the party’s speed and stamina. Hence, they outran me easily.

 

Due to the ‘plan’, the nearest guard was stationed pretty far away.

 

Even if I call them now, it’s already too late.

 

I need to fix this fast before the situation escalates and tarnishes House Rose’s reputation.

 

I quickly reported the incident to my Lady Beatrice before investigating the crime scene once again.

 

“How is this even possible? A guard-in-training (Letty) was incapacitated with… sleeping gas!?”, she said.

 

That is indeed unusual… Even the most newbie guards are trained to build immunity against it. Scratch guards, even I, a mere maid built up immunity against sleeping gas on my Lady’s order. It doesn’t make sense for a powerful mage to be incapacitated by mere sleeping gas.

 

I quickly got rid of any evidence of the sleeping gas, including the now-empty gas container.

 

“I don’t know, my Lady. Everything went smoothly according to our plan. To be honest, I was scared that she might end up killing the intruders. But unexpectedly… she actually got kidnapped”

 

“Shut up! Shut up! This is bad! This matter can’t get out, otherwise, our reputation is done for. We can’t let this news get out, did anyone else notice?”

 

“No, my Lady. I came straight to you”

 

“Good. Then come with me, we need to do this before anyone else notices. Guide me to the place where you met them”, saying so, she rushed towards the gates.

 

I took her to the place where I made contact with them.

 

“Now, let’s search for any oddities. I’ll check the left, you check the right. Call me immediately if you see them”, she ordered.

 

“Understood”

 

We split up to find any clues. Our surroundings were dead silent, as it was still a couple of hours before dawn. We need to be careful, as any loud action could alarm others. After about fifteen minutes of searching, I finally heard some bustling in a house.

 

I sneaked closer to have a look, and voila! I found the tall guy.

 

I quickly called my Lady over.

 

“Good job, now stay back and let me handle this”. Saying so, my Lady walked to the front door of the house, while I kept my distance so as not to get in her way.

 

She knocked on the door twice and waited. The thug must have gotten wary as he ceased his movements. After not getting any reply, my Lady used ‘Ice Arrow’ to break the handle and opened the door.

 

The tall man, startled by this, was caught off guard, and my Lady used the moment to form a knife out of ice and aimed at his neck.

 

“Don’t move, or I won’t hesitate to kill you”

 

Hah, I believe we’re done here. And it was as easy as a stroll in the park for my Lady. The possibility of any random thug posing a challenge to my Lady's brilliance is unfathomable.

 

The tall thug realized this and wisely surrendered.

 

“You’re after the girl, right? I’ll tell you where she is, just spare me. I didn’t even want to partake in this, I was forced to. Please trust me”, he begged.

 

“I’ll deal with you all later, tell me where the maid is and your accomplices?”, she asked, still holding the knife to his throat.

 

“The other two arranged a carriage to hide her in the forest, they just left a little while ago. Please spare me, I was forced against my will”

 

He’s lucky that we can’t turn him in, because that would go against our objective of settling this incident without giving away our involvement.

 

“Shut up, Moron! If we don’t find her, you’re a dead man”, she glared, making the thug whimper.

“Isabelle, let’s chase them”, she said to me. By the tone of her voice, I could tell that she was very angry. Not only was our plan a failure, but that maid actually got kidnapped, and now we don’t even know where they took her.

 

Due to this, we might not be able to make it back to the mansion before dawn.

 

My Lady stormed toward the forest, and I followed.

 

***

 

Aria’s POV:

 

Argh! I can’t sleep.

 

This was the fourth time I had woken up in the middle of the night. And even though I am dead tired after the party, my body is just refusing to fall asleep on this… average bed. It’s now like it’s too hard or something, but ever since my rebirth, my standard for such things has risen way over the top. In my previous life, I could even settle for a couch. But now, even this seemingly luxurious bed is not good enough for me.

 

Come to think of it, I also ended up switching the bedding back at the academy.

 

Am I too spoiled?

 

I get that not everyone can afford to use the highest quality bedding for their guest rooms, but how does one even fall asleep on this bed? When I was four, I heard a maid gossip about the poor quality of beds and how she hurt her back because of it. The next day, I made them replace every bed in the mansion with high-quality ones.

 

Sigh, I wonder if Letty’s sleeping well. What if she is also having trouble falling asleep? Oh no, I can’t let her suffer, maybe I can help her by cuddling. Yes! She’ll love it. This way, both our problems would be solved. Let’s sneak inside her room!

 

I covered myself with a shawl and clapped in a specific rhythm.

 

Clap clap … Clapclapclap

 

Without missing a moment, one of the shadow knights appeared.

 

“Sorry to bother you, but can you please help me sneak inside Letty’s room?”, I asked.

 

“My Lady, with all due respect, we are not your servants. You must only call us in the case of an emergency”, she said in her usual crooked tone.

 

Oh, this one is the lady shadow knight that Letty talked about. I can’t tell any difference between the three of them, but for some reason Letty always recognizes her. Her name’s Betty.

 

“Oh, it’s you! Betty, right? Come on, please do this for me, just this once. I’m sure Letty must be having a hard time falling asleep, so I am going to help her with that. You know her right? Won’t you do this for her?”

 

“Hmm, so you’re saying that it’s for her, not for yourself. Is that it?”, she asked.

 

“Exactly. It’s not like I’m asking you to sneak into a treasury or something. I just want to sneak past the guards outside”

 

“Sigh, alright, follow me, I’ll make sure you aren’t seen”

 

“Thank you so much, Betty!”

 

And so, she escorted me to Letty’s room. Betty faced no issues in keeping me out of their sight. I think we got lucky that we didn’t run into any guards on the way.

 

On confirming that it was Letty’s room. I knocked a few times, but no answer came.

 

Well, I guess I’m the only one having trouble sleeping.

 

After a few more moments, I decided to quietly sneak inside her bed, without disturbing her.

 

I entered and shut the door behind me. I tiptoed to her bed and ruffled the blanket.

 

What?

 

Where is she?

 

“Letty!? Are you here?”, I yelled, but not too loud to wake up the neighbors.

 

On getting no response, I quickly found the lamp and passed some mana to turn it on.

 

She’s not here!

 

Clap clap … clap clap clap

 

“Betty! She’s not here. Where is Letty?”

 

“Calm down, my Lady. I’ll go and check the restroom”

 

Until then, I continued searching the room. But she was nowhere to be found. At this point, Betty returned empty-handed, and I started panicking.

 

“My Lady, please try to keep calm, she must be somewhere around here. We just need to check our surroundings properly”

 

“I AM CALM! Sorry, I didn’t mean to scream. Let’s just search the mansion. Also, call the guard who escorted her around the city. Maybe something happened that we still don’t know about”, I said.

 

“Yes, but let me search for her. We can’t compromise on your safety”

 

“Are you telling me to sit here and wait, while Letty is nowhere to be found?! I talked to her on Mana-comm a few hours ago. Back then she was still here, but now she’s missing! How can I sit in one place knowing all this!?” I yelled again.

 

Betty called the guard who escorted her last night.

 

“My Lady, I don’t know if it’s relevant but we had a little incident…”, he told me about the pickpocket incident, and how she beat up a thug in the city.

 

“Why did you hide such a thing!?”. He just looked down and said nothing.

 

Sigh, I can guess that Letty must have asked him not to report it to me. Breath, okay, no use crying over spilled beans, I’ll deal with him later. For now, let’s focus on finding Letty.

 

We informed the nearby guards and started searching for Letty inside the mansion. The guards claimed that they were on duty the whole time and didn’t find anything suspicious, so she must be inside the mansion somewhere.

 

But then, where is she?

 

***

 

Beatrice’s POV:

 

Where are they hiding? Everything is going wrong. First, the plan just failed, and now the maid is missing.

 

If anyone at the mansion finds out that she’s missing, our reputation is done for! And not to mention that Father would not take this lightly.

 

After reaching the forest, I glanced back to see that Isabelle was following me in the distance. I forgot to cast the boost spell on her, but her natural stamina is nothing to scoff at. She should thank me for the harsh training I put her through.

 

Leaving her to catch up on her own, I traversed the forest to look for any tracks of a recent carriage.

 

After a good bit of searching, I found it and followed the trail. Finally, after twenty minutes or so, I found the carriage stopped in front of a cave. The thugs seemed to have reached their hiding spot, so I prepared an Ice arrow beforehand and moved toward the entrance.

 

I cleared the foliage and entered, immediately attracting the attention of one of the thugs. They had conveniently lit up the cave with a few mana lamps.

 

“Don’t move, if you know what’s good for you” I threatened them by aiming the Ice Arrow toward them. I also spotted the girl beside the other thug. She was wrapped up in some sort of bag.

 

“Shit, who are you? How did you find us?” “What’s a mage doing here?”, they asked.

 

“Don’t utter a single word, and do as I say. Release the girl, and I’ll spare you”

 

I intimidated them by showing I could strike them down any second.

 

The idiot still tried to push his luck and tried to get a hold of the hostage, so I released the arrow, intentionally missing his hand by a few inches. The arrow left a crack in the stone wall before falling to the ground. I quickly cast the spell once again and said,

“I won’t miss the next time”

 

Seeing the state of the wall, they finally used their heads and surrendered.

 

I saw the bag which was still lying on the ground. Surely she must have woken up after all this commotion, right? So why isn’t she moving?

 

As I was tying the thugs in their carriage, Isabelle finally made it here.

 

“My Lady, pant-pant, you could have at least pant-pant used boost on me”, she said while gasping for air.

 

“Either way, you’re here, so help me tie them up so we can check up on the girl”

 

We went back inside the cave to check up on the girl. To our surprise, she was still asleep.

 

“This girl! We went through so much trouble for her sake and she’s still sound asleep”, I said, looking at the peacefully sleeping figure of the maid.

“Well, at least this way, we can cover up this incident”, I said.

 

“Yes my Lady, it’s almost dawn. People are going to start waking up soon. We’ve got to hurry”

 

I asked Isabelle to pick her up, and we returned using the carriage.

 

After reaching close to the mansion, we got off and used Boost to enter the mansion through the secret tunnel which links up to my room.

 

Then, Isabelle checked the condition outside. And the entire time, I swear, this girl is still asleep. Does she not have any tolerance for sleeping gas? It just doesn’t make any sense!

 

“My Lady, this is bad. All the guards and Lady Aria have started to look for Letica. But thankfully, no other people are alerted yet, and they’ve just started to look around the maid quarters. And seeing that she’s still asleep, we can lay her down somewhere they haven’t checked yet and wait until she’s eventually discovered”, Isabelle said, after returning.

 

“Alright, hurry up and do it then. And sprinkle just a bit of water so that she wakes up as you leave”

 

Isabelle followed my order and carried her out. 

 

I saw Isabelle through the window, as she carried her inside our famous rose garden and gently laid her down.

Phew, I got really lucky this time. This situation could have ended way worse than it just did.

 

I don’t even want to imagine the ruckus that would have been caused if she were to be harmed in any way.

 

***

 

Aria’s POV:

 

There is no way that the thug whom she beat up yesterday did this as an act of revenge, right?

 

No no. It’s impossible for some random thug to break into this heavily guarded mansion and kidnap her.

 

She must be somewhere around here, I just need to look properly!

 

But what if… it happened. What if… the thug had some help and they somehow managed to do this. Oh no, this is horrible! She must be so scared right now. It’s all my fault… I should have insisted on keeping her at home. None of this would have happened if she didn’t come with me.

 

If something happens to Letty, I..I..

 

God, please keep her safe. I would do anything in return, but please, just please… keep her safe.

 

“My Lady, they found her!”

 

Hah, Thank you, God!

 

“Where is she? Is she safe?” I turned and asked Betty, who brought this news to me.

 

“Yes, she is unharmed. She was found in the rose garden. She’s on her way here”, saying so, Betty hid herself once again. After all, she can’t be seen by any outsiders.

 

I turned and saw Letty hurrying towards me. Thank God she’s safe!

 

“WHERE WERE YOU? Do you have any idea how worried I was when I couldn’t find you anywhere?”, I yelled, only loud enough for Letty to hear.

 

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know myself. One moment, I was peacefully sleeping in my room, and the next, I woke up in a garden. And all the guards said that you were frantically looking for me, so I ran here. I didn’t mean to worry you”, she said, clearly confused about the whole situation herself.

 

“Hah, I’m sorry for yelling. It’s just that I was having all sorts of weird thoughts when he told me about yesterday’s thug incident. I was so scared. Thank God, you’re safe”, I used every ounce of willpower to resist hugging her right now, as there are too many eyes and hugging my maid would make one heck of a hot gossip in the noble society.

I’m so relieved that she’s safe.

 

Letty, also understood that, as she positioned her arms to block a hug, in case I tried to. She mouthed the words ‘Not now’. Jeez, I am not an idiot, I’m not just gonna hug you in public.

 

“Don’t make me wait for you next time. I’ll make sure to cut your pay for disappearing all of a sudden”, I purposefully spoke in a harsh and loud tone, to dismiss any possible rumors among the maids and guards who helped us find her.

She got the cue, and acted accordingly, “I will accept my punishment. I’m sorry to keep you waiting, my Lady”, she subtly bowed.

I acted like a typical spoiled girl as we made our way to my room.

I guess I should maybe make an offering to the church or something. Nah, it’d be better to use that money for charity instead.

 

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