[Estia Kingdom]

Located at the east part of the central continent, Estia Kingdom is renowned for numerous changes and activities regarding politics within their territory for the last 100 years. If the other kingdom had a situation wherein it is peaceful, focused on arts, and agriculture expansion, Estia Kingdom is a country that can be considered as active in terms of politics between the nobles and its royalty. At most cases, such country is always the talk of every person within the central continent due to the activities and events happening within it.

Few hours passed, the king and queen of Estia kingdom had finally returned after their short overnight visit on Asagi's sudden Christmas eve party(mistaken as her birthday celebration). The moment they arrived in the capital, the whole street close to the royal castle was flooded with people, as they protest all the misfortune that is happening in the kingdom towards the royalty.

To be exact the Kingdom itself isn't actually doing any better even after the strife with the empire had subsided. Because of the war, their resources which directly points towards agriculture had fallen down to considerably low stocks, because of that, the prices in the market begun to inflate in order for the businessman in the area to not lose their stocks and be bankrupted.

Alongside it, some people who weren't happy for the sudden ending of the war with the empire, begun to cause trouble all over the kingdom itself. One primary example is that about a week ago, the biggest city in the kingdom  was bombarded by attacks done by some armed terrorist, due to that incident, many innocent people were killed and injured during the process of suppressing the terrorist.

Another point is the numerous attempted assassination attempts to some influential figures in kingdom that happened in the past 2 months. Following it is the multiple serial murder case happening in the capital that are targeting both the poor and the rich. Lastly are the disappearance of people from all over the country ranging from all age and sexes ever since the war with the empire had subsided.

With all these problems piled up, the citizens in the kingdom finally reached the boiling point and pointed their fury at the royal family for their misjudgment in the situation. With all these happenings, the citizens were then scared and confused with the current happening, after all they don't know what to do in this situation where they would wonder when will they get killed or kidnapped, whenever they walked out of their houses.

At such stress, it only needs a little bit of push in order to make this people show their contempt towards the royal family.

Among the crowd, one particular person stood among them and begun to rally the people gathered to listen to his voice.

"Just how long will we have to suffer? How long will we have to wait for everything to calm down? When will they understand that if we simply wait it out, the more the situation could get worse? Everyday! Every night! I keep wondering to myself if i could stay safe whenever i went out to work, i also keep wondering on just how long will this situation will last... the feeling of living in fear... the feeling of anxiety whenever we walk the streets.... I don't want that... All i ever ask is for the royal family to do something about the happenings in the kingdom, but did they ever do anything?"

"NOO!!!!"

"Its just kept getting worse!!!"

"I don't want to live such a life anymore!!!"

"Exactly!!! That's why brothers! Sisters! we need to voice out our complain to the royal family to hear our plea or else nothing will change"

"YEAH!!!!"

As the person riled up the crowd, the voice of the masses begun to knock on the doors of the royal family, which forced the royal guards and soldiers of the castle to take pre-emptive measure to push back the crowd, cause if they don't do such a thing, the crowd would simply break through the castle walls just from the weight of their force alone.

Naturally such a scene was caught by the king and queen of Estia kingdom till they arrived at their castle and welcomed by their sons and daughters

"Mother! Father!"

As the prince and princess of the Estia Kingdom greeted their parents, King Edmund and Queen Arleth then hugged their children and begun to check their condition. After all it was reported to them that they tried to calm the crowd, but such a method bore no fruit and simply resulted in some slight violence.

One example of violence is that some random person threw a rock at the firstborn prince Lucious, which caused his head to bleed and was forcibly taken back to the castle. Luckily the wound was not deep and was immediately tended by some clerics in the castle.

The act of injuring the prince of a country deserved death, but since they cant find the culprit who threw the rock at prince Lucious, the king and queen cant do anything but stare at the injury their eldest son received from trying to pacify the people.

In that moment, King Edmund then remembered that they had brought a special guest with them upon their return and  immediately warned his children to remember the etiquettes when receiving a guest. As the king reminded his children, Asagi then finally took off her hood as she revealed her face towards everyone which mesmerized the prince and princess of Estia kingdom alike with her beauty.

Just behind her were two unnamed angel which will temporarily serve as her guard for this trip, after all every archangel she has is currently quite busy in their own task.

Asagi herself personally visited the kingdom with her real body, naturally this caused all the archangels to show their concern and disagreement towards her decision. However after some slight tweak of favor and convincing, the archangels finally gave in aside from Michael, her very first archangel in this world.

But not long after, he too finally gave in with a condition that his two best men would guard Asagi in replacement for the archangels themselves. With such condition, Asagi happily accepted as she then donned herself with a hooded cloak she had used during her infiltration in the Empire and went together with the king and queen of Estia kingdom.

Following Asagi's introduction, the king and queen proceeded to let everyone into the castle as they left Asagi to be attended by the maids in the castle, while they talk to their children. Following their will, Asagi then let the maids took care of her and gave her service in the guest room that was fully furnished just for her.

Soon after a hour or two has passed by, she was then called by King Edmund to come into his work room where everyone could communicate properly without any distraction. The moment she got into the room, she then saw the king behind the desk and some officials in military and social affairs' on the sofa opposite to her seat.

As she entered the room, the officials present immediately gave their respects towards her as a ruler, before they finally settled down and let King Edmund do the talking.

"I'm sorry that you have to witness all of this... chaos"

"Oh don't be! I've seen far worse than this"

"Far worse? That's weird, i thought your kingdom is a peaceful country"

Hearing that notion, Asagi immediately realized that she made a slip up on her experience on earth and immediately corrected her words.

"Ah yes! that's right, i was talking about other country's that exist"|

"... Yes... yes i almost forgot that you don't belong in this.... central continent..." said by King Edmund, clearly not yet used to the term to generally described the land that he is currently living in.

In fact this term was recently added in their vocabulary upon learning the information that there are other lands beyond the sea. Aside from the former emperor of the Amid empire, the other kingdom's were ignorant of the existence of another land beyond the huge body of water. So with such discovery and witness of another land filled with ice and snow, they had no choice but to generalize their land into one whole term as the central government and generalize the land of ice and snow as the northern continent.

"Anyway the situation in my kingdom is far worse than i expected"

"Indeed! based on what i heard from the people shouting outside, kidnappings, murder, inflation, terrorist? what is happening on your land? its like its being turned upside down"

"I know how it looks, but everything just seems too perfect, it is as if it is being..."

"Led, conducted by someone correct?"

"... Yes... i already have a guess but only too few of evidence... i cant condemn them"

In that moment the king's secretary or right hand man in charge of investigating this case then stepped up and offered his report of his investigation.

"Just like what his majesty said, someone is leading all this chaos and pinning it all towards the royal family"

"So this means their motive is that they want to take the royal family down"

"Exactly!"

At that the secretary then handed out some messages on the table containing some of the reports he had received from the spies he had hired.

"I've hired multiple professional people, all are excellent in information gathering to look into the situation and the perpetrator of this chaos, but unfortunately nothing came up at all and every report held no hidden meaning in their clean report.... it is as if they are declaring that this suspicious person who is behind the scenes doesn't exist at all"

After the secretary said that, the General of the army who is loyal to the king then spoke out.

"We believe that there are two ways on why this report is made... one is that its what the message said, everything is clean... and the other is that the people we hired had been either paid out by our target or caught and replaced by our enemy in the shadows"

"This is a mess, so your telling me that something or someone is trying to mess with your country's current rulers and try to overthrow you?" ask by Asagi

"At most yes, but this isn't the first time.... They did the exact same thing as what they did with my parents... turning the masses against their ruler and pressure them to death in order to overthrow the throne... but it wont happen again not as I'm alive" said by King Edmund

"Well looks like whoever your mystery person is, they're actually quite knowledgeable on how to overthrow a royalty from their throne... but that is not my main concern on why i am here... I'm here to find my people who are kidnapped and trafficked to your land"

In that moment, all the officials aside from the king were surprised by what Asagi had said and begun to wonder if any of this has any connection. Among them the secretary pondered deeply on such a situation until he finally gave out his thoughts.

"So they are going this far huh?"

"What do you mean?" ask by Asagi

"I'm sorry your majesty but may i ask you a question?" asked by the secretary towards Asagi

"... Sure?" answered by Asagi hesitantly

"Based on your findings, which country is the perpetrator for the missing people cases in your kingdom and what are your thoughts?"

"Well i found out that there is this smuggling group that kidnapped my people and traffi9cked them towards another area and after a few investigation and tweaking their minds, we found out that the people they captured are transported to your kingdom.... by that point i begun to feel doubtful whether your king and queen were involved in such a case" answered by Asagi

"So you thought of it that we are involved" said by the secretary

"Clarify yourself" ordered by King Edmund

"The moment Queen Asagi learned that our kingdom is involved in such smuggling of her people, it is quite possible that she may retaliate in order to get her people back... most likely Queen Asagi is the plan b for the group of people messing with the country.... if all else fails, they will pit the kingdom in the sky against us, which will most likely end up in our defeat and the death of the royal family, once the royal family is gone, whoever causes this chaos may proceed to take command of commanding the kingdom" explained by the secretary

"... My god... this could lead to an all out war if queen Asagi was reckless enough to attack us without confirming herself" reacted by King Edmund

"Wait so your telling me that someone i don't know is trying to get me to act in retaliation against this kingdom?" ask by Asagi

"Yes! but that would take time, so they will try to provoke you into attacking this kingdom by continuing their activity of abducting your people... and if that don't push you, then maybe they will try to pose as a soldier of this kingdom and attack your capital to enrage you... but such a plan would take time, they didn't even expect that they would be found out immediately so maybe they were re-planning ways to provoke you and push it to another date, while at the same time creating an ever greater chaos in the kingdom" guessed by the secretary

"...."

"But suddenly your majesty queen Asagi had an unexpected birthday celebration, causing for both of you to hear each other out.... such an event was an unexpected thing which somehow ruined their plans a little bit, because of that they had no choice but to rally this people into further distress and pressure the royalty even more... however your actions to silently visit our land had somewhat ruined their plans once more... whoever behind this don't know that you are here... about now i assume that they are still trying to pit the kingdom in the sky against us without even knowing that your currently clearing things out with the royalty" said by the secretary

"All this coincidence... why do i feel like I'm in some kind of a detective film" commented by Asagi as he saw the secretary of the King of Estia kingdom deduce the intention of their enemy

With all that and said, the secretary continued on as he gave out his deductions.

***ReadAtWebnovel***