Non-bitchy

The first room, there was a well-dressed man, shouting and demanding to talk to the Sovereign. A thin-eyed man lazily explained to him why his request was being rejected.

'Oh?'

Savine looked around and found that there was a different gate to access this room. Outside was a sign saying that one needed to write their pleas on a piece of paper and submit it at the gate with a 2 silver donation.

Lamenting that she just needed to walk a few steps more instead of wasting her breath on a mulish guard, she continued on.

Soon, she found the royal library. Contrary to its grand name, the library was small. Savine guessed that there were less than 1000 books here. But when she thought about it, it was a big number considering the era. The printing press hadn't been invented so it was a great deal of effort to make books.

Regardless, she looked around. A well-dressed youth was in the library, reading a book. Savine read the page he was on and learned that it was a book on governance.

She looked around the room, skimming through the books' titles. If she were to divide the titled books here, 70% were on the study of mana and its usages, 20% were on governance, and the remaining 10% were on random other topics.

Savine hoped to find history among them, but her search was fruitless. The only books left now were the books without titles. Though Savine's Gift was called Areal Omniscience, naturally, it was impossible to read the insides of a closed book. Savine tried it before, it wasn't a fun experience.

She gave up on the books for now.

Her consciousness left the library and traveled around the palace. Aside from the library, there was the Court Room where a few people were working, the King's office, where a scarred man sifted through papers, the Servants' area, the living area, and the hidden compartments where test subjects wailed their hearts out.

All in all, it was pretty standard stuff.

But there were two areas that impressed Savine.

The deep, hidden underground where a giant area was hollowed out to reveal the Wisdom Tree's roots; and the room which was built entirely out of tamed wisdomwood.

Savine quickly realized that the latter was a giant Vasa, one that granted its user mana capacities greater than any mortal could hope to attain. It was 10 times larger than Savine's expected peak mana capacity.

Savine was impressed. The giant Vasa must be used by the Sovereign to remain peerless in his country. It was also deterrence against invaders as no one would want to fight with someone with so much mana under his control.

As for the giant underground cave, it was another harvesting area filled with guards and also a method to keep diggers away from the Wisdom Tree.

Really, there was no way for Savine to stealthily steal wisdomwood for herself.

Finished with the tour, Savine went back to her body. She had a look around to make sure nothing was out of place. The only thing she noticed was that the guard was glaring at her suspiciously. She supposed it was natural as she probably stood still expressionlessly for so long.

She ignored him and headed towards the gate where people could plead for a meeting with the Sovereign.

Savine arrived at the gate, bought from a stall close by a piece of paper and one time use of a fountain pen. The seller was surprised to see Savine's age, but he wasn't fussy. He was doing business, after all.

He gave some pointers on how to format the plea and smiled gently when he saw Savine's request.

Savine brought the piece of paper to the gate and paid the 2-silver donation. Seeing Savine, the guard here seemed to think she was on an errand for someone. Because of that, she was let in without issues. The guard didn't even bother seeing her paper.

When Savine arrived at the room she first saw inside the castle, she queued up for a few seconds and was soon met with the thin-eyed man.

Seeing Savine, he muttered something about the people losing respect for the Palace, always sending runners instead of coming themselves, before taking her paper.

Though, after reading Savine's request his eyebrows creased.

"What's this?" he asked, somewhat amused.

"I want to visit the royal library. I didn't know how I'm supposed to go about it, so I thought I should ask the Sovereign for his permission."

"Rejected."

"Can you please tell me why?"

"I often get scolded for allowing small matters like these go past me. I don't want to get yelled at again."

Surprisingly, the man was honest. Due to that, Savine decided to not act like a bitch as well. She also fixed her expression to look a little more like a proper teenage girl.

"I understand it's a small matter, but it really is something only His Majesty can decide," Savine said. "Also, I don't think he'll be too angry by this request, even if he rejects it. I daresay he might even be pleased."

"Hm?" the man looked up with amusement. "Why would that be?"

"I'm sure His Majesty has hundreds of difficult problems to think about – problems of the people, money, mages, and who knows what else. It would be a nice change of pace to receive a request so simple and easy to solve, don't you think? After all, it's a simple yes or no question. It'll take him only a second to complete, giving him that small bit of happiness achieved from successfully accomplishing a task, no matter how small."

"Hmmm…"

The man seemed surprised by Savine's eloquence and soon put his hand on his chin. He stared at Savine with assuming eyes before looking down on her piece of paper. He stamped it lazily and put in a basket.

"Whatever. Depending on His Majesty's mood, I'll likely get scolded for something else anyway," he shrugged. "At least if I give him this, I'll be able to give him your weirdly pleasant-sounding excuse."

Savine smiled and bowed respectfully. "Thank you, sir."

The man gave Savine a slip to show that her request was accepted and said.

"Come back tomorrow to receive your answer. Since you're such a polite girl, I'll sneakily put your sheet at the top of the pile," the man winked.

Savine thanked the man again and walked out of the Palace.

She glanced at the tree again with some want, but decided to mercilessly milk the temple for Vasas.

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