The Low-Ranking Civil Servant Wants to Achieve Success Chapter 38

After that remark, a moment of silence fell.

Well, to be fair…

The joy and surprise of reconnecting with the past had already been thoroughly expressed—by the Empress, and far too dramatically at that.

Kiaros, too, seemed to be contemplating how to express his own emotions in this now-awkward atmosphere.

After a brief pause, Kiaros spoke in a solemn tone.

“Ah, first… about what I said earlier, that I had Lady Namia investigated.”

I responded politely.

“Yes, as I said before, it’s perfectly fine. If I appeared suspicious, then of course you had every right to investigate.”

“I’ve also ordered my personal intelligence agents to search for your missing father.”

My eyes widened at that.

He’d ordered the Crown Prince’s elite agents to look for my father?

No other information guild could possibly match them when it came to finding someone who had vanished.

“My father…? You mean not the Baron Roapia listed on paper, but my actual father?”

Well, if he knew I had lived in the southern regions, I suppose he could’ve found that much out too.

At my trembling voice, Kiaros cleared his throat and added,

“Ahem. It… it seemed like you wanted to find your birth father.”

My heart pounded wildly.

If Kiaros was on the case, I might actually find my dad.

I wouldn’t have to keep struggling to locate him on my own.

My only fear had been that Dad might have gotten wrapped up in something terribly criminal, but then—

“Your Highness! Whatever that old man’s done, I promised Namia I’d spare his life!”

The Empress, having clearly sensed my anxiety, shouted with conviction.

“Come on! He probably did something shady to get money! But his daughter saved the royal family! Let’s call it even, yeah? Give her the benefit of the doubt!”

“That’s not really what ‘benefit of the doubt’ means, and this is something that needs to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis…”

Kiaros let out a sigh, looking conflicted.

Then, mumbling something about how he always ended up as the villain, he firmly declared,

“If he hasn’t harmed innocent citizens of the Empire, I will do my best to honor the Empress’s promise.”

With that, I let out a long, relieved breath.

That was more than enough.

Even I knew that if my father had committed truly heinous crimes, I couldn’t just ask them to spare him no matter what.

The fact that Kiaros said he’d “do his best” to help, even in that case, meant a lot.

‘I can’t believe it… It’s all going to be okay now…’

My chest tightened with emotion.

Meeting Dad again—safe and sound.

That was what I had endured everything for.

Now, all I had to do was wait, and Kiaros would bring me to him.

‘I’ll get to see Dad again…’

All my personal problems were now being resolved—thanks to the intervention of the royal family.

But at the same time, the pressure to protect them, to prevent a war, weighed even heavier on me.

‘We barely managed to stop this incident. We still don’t know who’s behind everything.’

Thanks to the royals, everything was going smoothly, but what if they all died and war broke out anyway?

“Anyway,”

While my thoughts spiraled, Kiaros resumed speaking in a grave voice.

“Since that day… I’ve been searching for that girl for a long time.”

Ah, now we were in the middle of a gratitude monologue.

I put on a polite listening face.

Meanwhile, the Emperor was barely suppressing his laughter.

“I truly… wanted to repay that kindness.”

The way the Emperor’s eyes sparkled as he looked at Kiaros was quite something.

He didn’t seem like the type to be this silent, and yet he kept his mouth tightly shut.

‘What’s with that expression…?’

The way he looked at both of us, back and forth…

He looked just like a parent listening to their child’s first love confession.

Kiaros maintained his picture-perfect smile as he continued, voice soft and steady.

“I’m truly glad we were able to meet again.”

At that, the Emperor let out a muffled hooohh and clapped his hands over his mouth.

Kiaros, still looking deeply into my eyes, sighed heavily.

Then, sounding rather irritated, he asked,

“Your Majesty… is there something wrong?”

“No, no. Please continue.”

The Emperor’s shoulders shook with suppressed laughter.

“I’m just… really enjoying this. I’ve been waiting for this line as long as you have, and now it’s happening. Guhuhu. What a scene. Are you going to say it now?”

“…Now I don’t feel like saying it in front of Your Majesty.”

Kiaros facepalmed.

I kept my professional smile fixed in place and stayed completely silent.

Honestly, after the Empress went so over the top earlier, Kiaros’s emotional lines weren’t all that impactful.

And being surrounded by three royals had me way too tense to focus anyway.

‘Besides… I still don’t know if I’m about to be fired. What’s going to happen to the Scroll Management Department? If all the leadership got axed, isn’t that basically a disbandment?’

For a commoner like me, the future mattered more than the past.

Sure, I might receive a small reward for my role in all this.

But if I lost my government job, I’d also lose my ability to help guide Kiaros using the original story knowledge.

I could end up reuniting with my dad only to die pointlessly in a war right afterward.

‘Right now, having a stable job in the palace is more important…’

I used to whine about being a lowly civil servant all the time. That I couldn’t accomplish anything unless I became a minister or higher.

But now? Even being a low-level grunt sounded pretty great.

While I sat there with a tangled mess of emotions, gripping my skirt tightly—

“You mustn’t, Tower Lord! No! You can’t!”

Suddenly, a commotion broke out outside.

“Lord Tower Maaaasteeeer! Please don’t!”

“Out of my way!”

“Waaaah!”

The sound of someone being desperately stopped—and utterly failing—came in all at once.

“Tower Lord, please! There are procedures! Protocols to follow—”

“You too, shut it!”

“Please, get a hold of yourself! I’m the former Minister of Justice, and even I think—”

“You as well, kindly shut your mouth!”

Before long, the doors burst open.

And what I saw was astonishing.

‘Um?’

A white-haired old man in a robe was stomping into the room.

One hand dragging the Crown Prince’s aide, the other dragging the former Justice Minister.

The man’s strength was shocking. Even while hauling two grown men, his strides were long and steady.

“What is the meaning of this commotion?”

The Emperor stood slowly, his face stern.

The Empress, Kiaros, and I also rose from our seats.

The Emperor’s once-gentle voice now carried the weight of authority as he addressed the new arrival.

“…Tower Lord.”

I kept still, only my eyes darting around.

Even so, I couldn’t help but marvel inwardly.

‘That’s the Tower Lord!’

Despite his skull-like face, his eyes blazed with intelligence.

Those brilliant blue eyes sparkled like glass orbs.

And that long, flowing white hair—it all left a deep impression.

‘Once upon a time, I dreamed of joining the Tower too…’

Anyone with a passion for magic or scrolls would naturally dream of joining the Tower.

A place where only the truly gifted gathered to dedicate themselves to magical research.

A place where status and wealth meant nothing—only raw talent mattered.

‘I gave it up for Dad’s sake, though.’

Magical aptitude was something you were born with—it couldn’t be trained into you.

The Tower only accepted entrants in their late teens.

They even required an academic entrance exam to test your baseline intelligence.

‘Though students from the Imperial Academy get to skip the written exam…’

Not only that—they actively scout from the Academy to evaluate talent.

Even those lacking in magical ability can move into academic paths instead.

All kids with an interest and aptitude in magic eventually end up in the Tower.

As for me… I pretended I couldn’t imbue scrolls with magic to avoid that path.

‘Once you enter, you can’t leave until you’re thirty-five. That was too much.’

I loved studying magic, but my circumstances wouldn’t allow me to stay in the Tower that long.

So I hid my talent.

‘And that Tower Lord… is the greatest mage of this era.’

His raw mana capacity, his innovations in scroll crafting, his precision in spell activation—

He had surpassed the limits of what it meant to be human.

Even the royal family didn’t dare mess with the Tower lightly.

‘He’s here because of the Scroll Management Department. It must really be on the verge of disbandment!’

Even if the Tower usually didn’t care much about our department, it was still technically under their jurisdiction.

Seeing the Tower Lord barge in like this… the threat to our department felt very real now.

“Tower Lord, I understand how you feel, but when requesting an audience with the royal family, you must at least follow protocol—”

The Emperor began calmly, but then—

The Tower Lord’s eyes bulged as he shouted,

“Where’s Namia Roapia?! Show yourself, now!”

…Me?