After the Count's departure, I retreated to consider my next moves. I needed allies, real ones. Not the servants who reported my every action or nobles who'd smile while sliding knives between my ribs.
I called for the butler. "Show me to the office."
The man bowed and led me through the manor to a dusty room that smelled of old parchment and neglect. Ledgers lined the shelves, territorial maps hung on the walls, and a desk sat buried under papers that hadn't been touched in months.
I spent hours reviewing the barony's condition. The numbers painted a grim picture: depleted reserves, outstanding debts, tax revenues that didn't match population records. The ledgers were a mess of forged entries and creative accounting. The butler had clearly been helping himself to the coffers for years.
"Did he thought that he could mess with me", I murmured annoyingly.
But that could wait. I had bigger plans.
I leaned back in the chair, thinking through twenty-eight years of game knowledge. I needed information brokers, people who operated outside the law, who could move in shadows and gather intelligence the nobility couldn't access.
'The Crimson Raven Guild'.
A smile crept across my face. During my decades playing Eden, I'd completed countless quests for them. I knew their secret codes, their hideouts, their Internal politics. More importantly, I knew about Olivia Castellane—the woman who would one day lead the guild into open war against Duke Aldric Catellane.
In the game's timeline, Olivia had three driving goals:
1. Save her sister Elena from mana reflux,
2. Destroy the Duke who'd cast her aside like refuse, and
3. Reclaim the dignity he'd stolen from her.
After her sister's death, Olivia actively started attacking the duke. The war between the Crimson Ravens and the Duke had been one of the game's most significant questlines. Players could choose sides—support the duke's established power or back Olivia's ruthless vendetta.
I'd always chosen Olivia. She reminded me of myself—someone who'd lost everything and rebuilt themselves into something terrifying.
And now I had something she desperately needed.
That night, I slipped out of the manor and began my search. The first tavern was too clean, too respectable. The second catered to merchants. The third to soldiers.
The fourth tavern was different. Darker. The kind of place where people minded their own business and questions got you a knife in the ribs.
I studied the menu board, and there it was—hidden among legitimate drinks: Tequila Sunrise. A drink that didn't exist in this world. Instead, a secret message, which the guild had adopted as their contact code.
"I'll have the Tequila Sunrise," I told the waiter, sliding a folded piece of paper across the bar. "Prepare according to the instructions on this paper."
The waiter's expression didn't change, but his fingers paused for just a moment before taking the note. He nodded and disappeared into the back.
I ordered dinner, a roasted meat and dark bread. I ate slowly, projecting the image of a young noble slumming in questionable establishments. When I finished, I paid and left.
Behind me, the waiter unfolded the paper and read: "Want a raven which carries gold in its beak."
The tavern manager stared at the note, his hands trembling slightly. This was the guild's highest-priority contact code, reserved for clients with information or resources significant enough to warrant the Guild Master's personal attention.
And it had come from a baron. A seventeen-year-old baron who'd inherited his title yesterday.
He immediately sent word through the guild's communication network.
In a fortified compound three days' ride away, Guild Master Raven—the title carried by whoever led the Crimson Ravens, read the decoded message with narrowed eyes.
"How does an ordinary baron know our codes?" she murmured.
Beside her, her lieutenant shifted. "Could be a trap. The nobility have always been trying to infiltrate us for years."
"Possible." She tapped the message against her palm, thinking. "But this code… only five people outside the guild know it. And three of them are dead."
"Orders?"
She smiled—a sharp, dangerous expression. "Prepare the teleportation circle. We're going to meet this interesting young baron ourselves."
**NEXT DAY**
I woke before dawn and began a series of exercises to test this body's limits. Push ups, squats, basic combat forms from my past life. The body was young and untrained, but it would do.
"System, don't you have daily quests like in the game?"
"This isn't a game," the system replied flatly. "There are no daily quests."
"Then what's the point of you?" I muttered.
Silence.
I asked the system and rattled off a list: Saussurea petals, moonwort, silver sage, and several low-grade mana stones. The system had everything I needed.
I could use the ingredient from the system, so that no one could find the source. But I couldn't use it now, because the servants were keeping a watch on my every move. If there was any new thing they found without their knowledge, they could inform the count. After thinking about it I got an idea.
I called the butler and rattled off a list: Agropyrum, Maidenhair Leaf, Comfrey. "I need them by noon."
The butler's eyebrows rose slightly. "May I ask what purpose—"
"No. Just bring them."
He bowed and retreated, no doubt planning to report this latest oddity to whoever was paying him for information. Now I could use the laboratory without any problem.
I'd set up a makeshift laboratory in one of the manor's unused rooms. The space was perfect—isolated, with good ventilation and a fireplace I could use for heating.
Mana reflux. A condition that plagued mages when their mana channels became damaged or corrupted, causing excruciating pain and progressive loss of magical ability. In the game, it had been incurable for decades until a player stumbled upon the solution during a side quest. The discovery had made headlines in every gaming forum.
I remembered the ingredients but not the exact ratios or temperature. That meant trial and error.
For four days, I worked. Grinding petals, measuring mana stone powder, heating mixtures to precise temperatures, watching for the telltale color change. The servants watched constantly, their whispered reports no doubt filling pages in someone's ledger.
I smirked and thought the count would think, "I'm an idea, who's burning money".
But whatever he's thinking was right. I burned through nearly four hundred gold coins in materials.
On the fourth day, the mixture finally turned the right shade of blue—deep azure with flecks of silver light suspended in the liquid. I carefully decanted it into vials and sealed them with wax.
Mana reflux cure. Worth more than its weight in gold. And I had the only supply in the kingdom, no. I should say only supplier in the entire continent.
I sat back in my chair, exhausted but satisfied. Elena Whitmore suffered from mana reflux. Olivia would do anything and pay anything to save her sister.
And I was about to offer her exactly what she needed.
Now I just had to wait for the Ravens to arrive.
I smiled. The pieces were falling into place.
To be continued...