The Villainous Me Turned the Losers into Blackened Bosses-Chapter 204 - Treya’s Trap

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The Royal Palace.

Treya walked through the palace gardens, clad in black and gray armor, her sword at her side.

The atmosphere in the palace was heavy with tension.

Treya’s silver hair flowed behind her as she passed by servants who would glance back at her after she walked by, whispering amongst themselves.

“Do you think the Ninth Princess has the best chance in this struggle?”

“Hard to say. Everyone thought the Fourth Prince had it in the bag, but look how he fell.”

“Shh, the Seventh Princess has spies everywhere. We don’t want to be mistaken for her supporters.”

“Let’s talk about the Ninth Princess instead. Doesn’t she seem especially stressed lately?”

“She never shows much expression. How can you tell?”

“Can’t you see it?! She looks so worn out. The pressure in the palace must be suffocating her. She hasn’t smiled in days.”

“Are you kidding me? Has anyone ever seen her smile?”

…

As a half-elf, Treya’s hearing was sharper than that of ordinary humans, so she caught snippets of their gossip.

But as someone who was “not highly regarded,” Treya cared little for what others said about her. She treated it as background noise; others’ discussions were merely information to her, worth listening to briefly.

“Will was right.”

With her father’s health deteriorating—he had called for medical consultations several times in recent days and only allowed the current queen Anna’s children to attend him—everyone in the palace could sense the looming storm.

The royal family’s infighting had always been fierce. In the early days, when King Edward was still leading military campaigns and could have died on the battlefield at any moment…

The children had already been scarred by their struggles to “prove themselves.” The Second Prince had died in the conflict—stabbed in an assassination whose perpetrator remained unknown.

The First Prince had suffered some mysterious ailment that left him bedridden, his condition as dire as their father’s.

The Third Prince had disappeared after running away from home, with rumors suggesting he had been killed by the factions of the other two princes.

As for the first three princesses, they had been “losers” in the royal power struggle, marrying into other families to secure what little influence they could for their brothers.

—These were stories Will had told her.

—It was almost laughable that, as the Ninth Princess, she had known nothing of her own family’s affairs until an outsider had explained them to her in detail.

In this era of peace, the remaining children had never experienced such intense conflict.

However…

They had engaged in plenty of smaller schemes, like the ones Eugenie had orchestrated—petty intrigues combining both overt and covert tactics.

Lost in thought, Treya found herself standing before the Royal Guard Headquarters within the palace.

The headquarters was an imposing structure, about three stories tall and covering two to three hundred square meters, its exterior gleaming with golden paint.

But…

The flagpole at the entrance stood bare. The Royal Guard, a branch of the Royal Knights, had been overseen by the Fourth Prince, with the Sixth Prince as his deputy.

Now, with the Fourth Prince embroiled in a “rebellion” scandal, the flag representing his faction had been removed.

Treya pushed open the heavy doors and stepped inside.

Creaaak—

The moment the door opened, the lively chatter that had been audible even from outside came to an abrupt halt.

A hand holding a coffee cup froze mid-sip.

A hand flipping through documents stopped mid-page.

A pen signing a document paused as it touched the paper.

And most notably, the conversations ceased entirely.

Treya had caught fragments of their discussions while outside.

For instance, there was talk of a secret document the Fourth Prince had allegedly kept, detailing how he had killed the Third Prince and disposed of his body in a river.

Or that the Fourth Prince had secretly funneled money and dungeon treasures to the enemy during several campaigns to inflate his own achievements.

And that the Seventh Princess had only recently begun her impeachment efforts because she could no longer keep these secrets hidden, having covered for her brother for years.

…

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The palace staff relished gossiping about the royal family’s conflicts, finding solace in the idea that “the high and mighty royals live lives darker than ours.” It made their ten-meter-high stacks of paperwork seem trivial by comparison.

Treya walked silently a few steps further into the room, her silver boots clicking against the floor, the sound spreading an oppressive aura throughout the headquarters.

“I came to ask about the missing person notices I ordered. Are they done?”

She stopped in the center of the room and asked in a cold, flat tone.

Her voice was calm, but it carried a chilling authority.

“Your Highness, we’ve carried out your orders. The posters should already be up in various locations.”

The general on duty—a man who hadn’t seen battle in years and whose rotund figure reflected that—shuffled forward on the polished floor.

“Are you certain the notices have been posted in every city with a dungeon?”

“Absolutely. We’ve even posted them in cities that used to have dungeons.”

“…Good.”

Treya scanned the room.

Everyone seemed to be looking at her with fear in their eyes.

How strange. She didn’t think she’d been particularly intimidating today.

“Your Highness, there’s something I’m not sure I should say…”

“Speak. I’m listening.”

“If you truly want to find someone quickly, why not draft a secret arrest warrant and instruct the guards to bring them to the palace on sight? It would be much faster than posting missing person notices.”

Treya paused for a moment.

“This is your fiancé, Your Highness. Don’t worry, we do this all the time. We’ve caught the Fifth Princess’s useless consort several times in private establishments with slaves.”

“That doesn’t sound like a legal procedure. Do you use it often?”

“Oh! No, no, of course not. Forget I said anything. It’s just… when young masters from merchant families go ‘missing’… well, everyone knows what that means.”

To outsiders…

The Ninth Princess’s missing person notice might seem like nothing more than a desperate attempt to locate her fiancé, a “Hysterm family eccentric,” who had wandered off somewhere to enjoy himself.

“Will isn’t like that. He’s the kind of person who blushes and avoids cameras when called a ‘couple adventurer’ in the newspapers. He’d only be near a dungeon… pursuing his ‘work.’”

Treya firmly defended Will’s character while walking to a table.

On it were extra copies of the missing person notice.

She stared at the poster, at Will’s brown hair and deep blue eyes—features she had seen countless times.

Yet she couldn’t look away, her lips curling into a soft smile.

“But I understand. Even without an agreement, he’s probably the person in the world who cares about me the most. And he’s the only one who would understand the meaning behind this missing person notice.”

Treya didn’t expect her “family” to care much for her.

In her heart, and in Will’s…

This missing person notice was Treya’s “signal for help”—a photo, posted across the nation, signed only with her name, revealing nothing else.

“So, this is a trap.”

Placing the notice back on the table, Treya’s smile faded.

She believed that the moment Will saw it, he would come to her aid without hesitation.

He would return to her side, following his own instincts.

Just as he had that night, when he had reached out to her in the darkness.

That was what Treya wanted—her “color” in an otherwise gray world.