(Huh? Why does this feel... kind of peaceful?)

After leaving her bedroom and heading to the dining hall, Aelia sensed that something was slightly off while waiting for the maids to bring over the breakfast the chef had specially prepared for her.

As the Grand Saintess Candidate, and the foremost Saintess of the Messiah Kingdom, Aelia had her own private palace quarters. On normal days, dozens of maids rotated through to attend to her.

To show that she was a Saintess who was easy to approach, she allowed the maids to move about freely while she ate. She even permitted them to dine with her.

Though in the end, every maid except Elise declined to eat together with her, they would still stand nearby and talk about whatever interesting things had happened in the palace. Sometimes, they'd even report things to her directly, like human morning news.

But today, they did talk, yet not a single one of them brought up what happened last night.

Was it because last night's incident wasn't interesting enough? Or did they think the Hero cheating would make her lose face, so they deliberately avoided mentioning it?

Aelia couldn't figure it out, and there was no way she was going to lower herself by asking about it on purpose.

Still, the maids were perceptive enough. In the end, they did tell her that Elise had gone to deal with last night's matter.

(I see. So the news hasn't fully spread yet... Well, this isn't Earth. There's no friend circle or Weibo here.)

But expecting Aelia to suppress the curiosity in her heart, along with her eager desire to see a certain someone get what he deserved, was impossible.

Since she had no special plans today, after breakfast, she told the maids that she would be staying in the study to read and learn.

Yeah, hold on a second.

This wasn't a contradiction. It was her way of creating an alibi.

"Come forth, my clone!"

The moment she entered the study, Aelia impatiently released an AI self-disciplined Holy Light clone identical to herself. It would study in her place, while she herself slipped out through the crack of the door and rushed straight outside.

You're asking about the door crack?

That was the greatness of Holy Light magic. Anywhere light could pass through, Aelia could come and go freely.

By the same logic, even if she stood right in front of someone, she could make them unable to see her, treating her as nothing more than a ray of light... though in daily life, what she used more often was making other people's eyes focus on her.

Still, considering that this kingdom did have some hidden experts and people with special abilities, Aelia deliberately changed into a maid outfit. She also changed her hair to an utterly common brown, and used image-recognition magic to disguise her face.

Now, even without optical invisibility magic, she'd only look like a completely unremarkable background extra in other people's eyes.

Since she had already blended into the maid tier, Aelia naturally intended to act without restraint. Her first stop was the other end of the palace, where the Hero lived.

"The Hero? He went out, to deal with yesterday's matter," answered the maid sweeping by the residence entrance. "Which lord sent you? I can leave him a message."

"Thank you, but there's no need. Goodbye."

Aelia slipped away like light itself. After that, she headed to the palace courtyard, where the most maids gathered to chat. The plants there were protected by greenhouse magic, so even in the dead of winter, there were still piles of fallen leaves to sweep.

"Did you hear? About what happened last night."

Aelia had no intention of mixing in with the maids and doing hard labor like sweeping. After using optical invisibility and circling around for a while, she finally found two young maids slacking off and chatting.

"I heard. I really didn't expect the Hero to do something like that."

"Same. I was totally shocked."

Good, good, good. Keep talking. Say more bad things about him!

Aelia's mood instantly shot up.

"Yeah. When I first heard about it, I thought he was just like other men, but then... it was amazing!"

"That's the Hero for you. He's just different from everyone else."

What was going on? How did this suddenly turn from contempt into praise?

Aelia was a little dumbfounded. She observed for a while, and seeing that the two of them kept praising the Hero, she immediately judged them to be shallow fangirls who only cared about looks, then left the area.

(Looks like I need to find some slightly more mature maids.)

Fortunately, Aelia soon found three adult maids discussing gossip.

"What do you all think about that matter?"

"It's definitely a good thing. Lady Mary will probably rein herself in a little after this."

"You could say the Hero did the people a favor."

(What the hell? That was obviously my doing. How did it become his?)

Aelia was so angry her eyes widened. She stayed nearby and eavesdropped for a while, and finally figured out how the matter looked to outsiders now.

(They're actually saying that under my guidance, the Hero helped untie Lady Mary's emotional knot? Are they really this good at whitewashing? This good at slapping gold onto themselves?)

The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. Aelia quickly returned to her own quarters, changed back into the Saintess's white robe that looked almost like a wedding dress, and left the study.

Of course, no matter how furious she was inside, the moment she stepped out the door, her movements were still elegant and natural, graceful and proper, like a fairy maiden stepping out of a painting.

"I'm going to walk around the palace a bit. Everyone, please continue with your work."

After reassuring the maids so they wouldn't worry about where she was going, Aelia stepped outside and immediately activated optical invisibility. At top speed, she began searching for Elise. At a time when that bastard Hero was twisting black into white, only the elf maid who had witnessed the whole thing could turn the situation around.

For safety's sake, and also to avoid running into acquaintances while doing things she couldn't exactly show in public, Aelia had left a marking spell on Elise. So before long, she found her at the lower dining hall used by guards and servants.

(As expected of Elise. She's seriously carrying out the task I gave her.)

There weren't many people in the lower dining hall, but most of them were gathered around Elise. Clearly, she was describing the true events of last night to them.

Aelia couldn't help letting out a sigh of relief. It seemed that even without her interference, Elise would handle things properly.

But just as she was about to leave, the scenes she had overheard earlier surged back into her mind.

(N-no way...)

With unease in her heart, Aelia quietly moved behind the crowd. Then the very first sentence out of the blonde maid she had placed such high hopes in nearly made her collapse on the spot.

"That's right, I can testify to it. It was Sir Luke who used Lady Aelia's power to resolve the matter. From the very beginning, Lady Aelia intended to help Count Berg and Lady Mary reconcile..."

(Why are you the one spreading rumors, you thick-browed traitor?!)

Aelia nearly lost her mind. It took everything she had to suppress the urge to reveal herself and demand answers. Holding down her anger, she kept listening.

Then she finally understood everything. Elise hadn't betrayed her. That bastard Hero had simply stumbled into absurdly good luck.

Even someone as smart as Aelia could never have predicted that a person could fail to even start doing anything lewd, immediately enrage Lady Mary into entering a darkened state, then accidentally trigger her magic... and in the end, make it look to outsiders as if that bastard Hero had taken the lead in resolving everything, while she herself had only played the role of remote support.

And that whole string of conversations yesterday was even more ridiculous. What had actually happened was that after the matter inside the count's residence was resolved, in order to salvage that bastard Hero's reputation, the count, his son, Elise, and the other two went outside to explain things. Right then, the king had also sent people over to maintain order, so most of the crowd left half-believing, half-doubting.

As for the group that still refused to believe it, they were later convinced by Aelia when she arrived.

Because everyone had naturally assumed that Aelia had known everything from the start and planned everything, when she still had to come in and wrap things up at the end, both Elise and that bastard Hero had felt deeply guilty over their own lack of ability...

(Oh, screw all of that!)

The logic made sense now, but what she wanted was damage to the Hero's reputation, not this situation where she ended up getting pushed down a notch instead!

The most infuriating part was that, without even knowing it, she had helped that bastard Hero clean up the aftermath. Sure, part of this was because she had acted before fully understanding the situation, but she was a super ultra beautiful Saintess. How could this possibly be her fault!

Since the fault lay with that bastard Hero, what she needed to do was deal with him as soon as possible.

(Your happy days won't last much longer!)

Still maintaining her invisibility, Aelia turned and left the dining hall.

She was going to the residences of the other two invitees to improve the magic she had previously cast on them.

What Aelia didn't realize, however, was that while Holy Light and mind-reading abilities could both hide from each other within the domain of invisibility, the latter still had another method for detecting the former: locating someone by listening to their thoughts.

(This trashy pink-haired girl seriously has way too much free time.)

And the former remained completely unaware.