After winding through a maze of twisting streets, Aelia arrived at a shabby tavern for commoners.

There weren't many people inside. Everyone seemed busy with their own thing. But in truth, they were all lookouts. They were in a tavern, yet not one of them looked even slightly drunk. Instead, they kept casually watching Aelia.

Aelia, however, didn't disguise herself at all. She simply walked in with Princess Moonshadow's breathtaking face and signature brown ponytail on full display. The moment they saw her, their eyes practically popped out.

Even the innkeeper, who had been pretending to doze off, snapped awake at once. He hurried over, grabbed Aelia, and pulled her toward the secret passage behind the counter.

"My lady, you just caused a huge mess in the royal palace. How can you come here just like that?"

"As long as no one saw me, it's fine. Open the way." Aelia looked completely unconcerned.

You think this was way too different from her usual self?

Well, duh. Staying calm and pleasant all the time was exhausting. Since she didn't need to appear as the Saintess right now, of course she was going to keep things simple.

Besides, she was here as the one footing the bill. The fact that she wasn't putting on some arrogant, haughty face already counted as giving them respect... And the moment that thought crossed her mind, Aelia felt another stab of heartache and regret.

(Why didn't I just run back then? I was such an idiot!)

There was no denying it. Aelia had joined this organization with the mindset of sheltering under a big tree and leaving herself an extra escape route.

And the organization had lived up to expectations. Over the years, it had grown at a terrifying pace. Now, it had become the strongest force in the underworld, one no nation could afford to ignore.

But back then, she had been too inexperienced to think of one thing.

An organization needed constant funding to keep growing.

If a sheep's living conditions improved, where did the money come from?

Obviously, from the wool on the sheep.

And so, for the past eight years, Aelia had been forced to hand over every bit of money she had "borrowed" to the organization.

Yes. Every bit.

Most of the time, Aelia was busy with her very promising and perfectly legitimate job as the Saintess. As for being a thief, she was doing it mostly to vent. So throughout the year, she barely joined any of the organization's operations at all. Her usual contribution was practically zero.

Because of that, the only thing she could do was hand over all the money she got whenever she acted as Princess Moonshadow, as proof of her loyalty to the organization.

Of course, the organization... Shadow Phantom, after all, was a powerful force mentioned in the original game and even had named characters appear. They didn't divert all her money for the organization's private use. They would keep a portion aside to help the poor. So in the eyes of the world, Princess Moonshadow and Shadow Phantom were saviors of the poor.

Sadly, the truth behind that was that most of it got skimmed off...

You ask why she didn't just keep some for herself?

Aelia wanted to. But for some reason, those rich merchants and nobles all loved keeping ledgers. And they always stored them together in their little vaults.

In her early years, she had turned in the loot with the ledgers a few times. People in the organization had even checked the accounts right in front of her. After that, she didn't dare leave the ledgers out anymore. She even had to make recordings, just in case anyone suspected her of pocketing money.

Thankfully, the organization still paid salaries. She didn't dare spend that suspicious source of income while in her Saintess identity, but she could save it for emergencies...

It could be said that as far as being a thief went, she had it unbelievably rough. But she wasn't relying on theft to make a living anyway. She just treated it as paying for stress relief.

After passing through the long underground secret passage, the innkeeper opened the first door for her. Then she opened the second door by herself. At last, she arrived at the organization's meeting place.

It was a conference room with a distinctly modern feel. The walls were coated in silver-gray paint. The ceiling held bright fluorescent lights and a black metal dome. The floor was covered in spotless white tiles. At the center stood a huge blue table, with an office swivel chair placed every meter around it. There were twelve in total.

Every time Aelia came to this conference room, she had the strange illusion of returning to Earth. But in this world, quite a few Heroic Saintess figures were transmigrators. After so many years, let alone modern objects like these, even idioms and sayings that only existed on Earth no longer surprised people here.

When Aelia entered, the only person present in the conference room, a silver-haired middle-aged man, smiled and nodded to her.

"Princess, you've come at just the right time. There's a meeting today. You should stay and listen too."

"Okay."

Aelia politely returned the gesture. Then she obediently sat down across from the silver-haired man, in a position that was obviously the lowest seat.

That's right. This was the real reason Aelia had become a little more restrained and polite.

This silver-haired, golden-eyed man, whose whole body radiated overwhelming dominance, was the founder and leader of Shadow Phantom.

At the same time, he was the greatest hidden mastermind and driving force behind rebellion groups across the continent. He had long ranked first on both the assassination list and the wanted list. A true monster. The dragon-blooded warrior, Aragorn.

In the original game, he appeared as an independent force aligned with the neutral-good side. He had lent the protagonist's party a small bit of help when they fought the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon Lord's Army. Even though that was all his screentime, his strength was probably at least on the level of the Twelve Demon Generals. In other words, absurdly powerful.

If converted into Hero rankings, he was at bare minimum a top-twenty figure. Someone like Luke would get instantly killed by him.

(That's exaggerated,) someone thought. (I should be above him.)

Naturally, Aelia had no idea someone had followed her all the way here. As she recalled Aragorn's story, she once again felt sad over her own terrible luck in the past.

Because the person she had run into when things went wrong back then had been none other than this very big shot.

You had to understand, the city she targeted back then wasn't famous at all. She had no idea why Aragorn had gone there, and she didn't dare ask.

Fortunately, after years of proving her loyalty, she had managed to climb to the rank of weakest executive in the organization. A status like this, neither too high nor too low, was exactly what she needed. She wouldn't be used as cannon fodder, wouldn't have to touch the main plot, and could still get some information.

"Then, call the others."

Aragorn lightly tapped the table. A virtual window soon popped up in midair before him. After a quick series of actions, human-shaped projections appeared in the other ten chairs.

Since this was an organization spread across the entire continent, the executives naturally couldn't all stay in one country just to hold meetings. So the organization had specially built a long-distance magical communication network, allowing them to attend meetings like this.

As a side note, Aelia didn't get this treatment. And the others were collectively known to the outside world as the Ten Shadows of Night. That alone showed her place among the executives.

As the ten executives fully connected to the network, the conference room instantly became lively.

"Ah, Lady Moonshadow is here too!"

"Princess Moonshadow, good evening."

"I knew Her Highness Moonshadow would come this time!"

Don't get the wrong idea. Using honorifics was very common among the executives. She addressed the others that way in daily life too.

As for the delight on their faces, that was just an act. After all, anyone who could join an organization like this was unquestionably a seasoned schemer.

Sure enough, after greeting her, they stopped wasting words on Aelia. Instead, they naturally started chatting with the people they knew well or found interesting.

Aelia didn't care. She had no intention of building close ties with anyone here. As long as she didn't offend people and wouldn't get stabbed in the back, that was enough.

If possible, she would rather not attend these obviously boring meetings at all. She'd much prefer being a ghost executive.

Unfortunately, for some reason, every time she returned to one of the organization's contact points, it just so happened that a meeting was about to start. And most of the meeting topics had nothing to do with her...

So she could only sit there properly and wait for time to pass.

Luke, invisible beside her, wasn't spacing out. He thought for a moment, then used his mind-reading ability on the system built into the table.

Very quickly, ten different inner voices poured into Luke's ears.