After seeing that Tasir was all better, Latil told him to take it slow and returned to the palace with only her officials.

The reason Latil didn’t take the injured Tasir straight to the palace was because she was aware of potential enemies within.

Would they suspect a connection to the auction house carriage incident if they saw Tasir’s burns? Therefore, she had to be extremely cautious until the very end.

“I wish you could help me, brother. Stay in the palace for about a week or two, helping Duke Sablere.”

Afterwards, Latil wrote a letter to her brother and sent it the next morning. Then, she began the task of interpreting the old map.

The Adomar, where the map was found, was a city of a onceprosperous nation now declined and disappeared.

The odd thing was that Adomar remained independent even as several countries were founded and destroyed.

Despite its decline, the city’s buildings were still grand and sturdy.

This was due to rumors of a curse on the city itself after successive internal divisions led to the downfall of the nations that had taken over Adomar, causing them to be wary of occupying Adomar.

As a result, Adomar remained as a city of a vanished nation, not belonging to any other country. Due to this, it continuously discovered all sorts of relics and dungeons, and is currently the most revered land among archaeologists.

Surely something must be there if it was a map from such a place. Latil groaned whenever she had time off work, visiting the library and piling archaeological texts on one side of her desk to decipher the map.

And during this process, there was one unexpected beneficiary.

“Your Majesty. You’re here again today.”

It was Guesta, practically living in the library.

“Ah. You’re here today as well?”

As Latil entered the library, she asked, and Guesta mumbled, clutching his collection.

“Yes. I came to finish what I was reading yesterday…….”

“You are really diligent. Do you ever have days you don’t come here?”

“I don’t have many close consorts… I don’t have much to do in the harem…….”

“But you came here often even before you joined the harem, right?”

Guesta stammered and seemed to smile shyly, making Latil realize she had made him feel awkward. She thought she should not have spoken about it, and chuckled along.

Contemplating whether to say something more, Latil eventually just patted Guesta’s shoulder and walked towards the archaeology section.

However, strangely, Guesta, who usually sat reading by the window a bit far away, followed Latil hesitantly today.

When Latil asked, “Why?” while pulling out a book, Guesta asked timidly.

“I noticed that you’ve been consistently reading books on archaeology. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Thinking of the old map hidden in her bosom, Latil laughed as if oblivious.

“I’ve been quite interested in this field lately. Given all the unpleasant things happening in the palace.”

To avoid revealing the old map, Latil had only written a few characters she wanted to understand on a separate piece of paper. That’s why she pretended not to know when Guesta asked.

“Um…….”

However, Guesta was still mumbling something around Latil.

“What is it?”

Feeling annoyed, Latil asked again, and Guesta quickly came up front, pointing to the cover of an archaeology book, and hurriedly said,

“Machunro.”

Why Machunro? Latil wondered why he called a perfectly fine book cover ‘Machunro’, and scrunched her face, but soon realized what Guesta meant and asked loudly.

“You can read ancient languages?”

“Yes. I had a period when I was really into it.”

As Guesta mumbled, looking at his own feet, Latil laughed brightly.

It was a hassle to look up each character one by one. I had an autotranslator right here. She thought this would speed up things considerably.

“Then, will you help me?”

For the next few days, Latil learned ancient characters from Guesta.

Of course, they couldn’t show the map directly, so they deliberately spread other pages with those characters and had Guesta interpret them as he read them all.

Even so, the speed quickly increased, greatly assisting them, and finally, on the day they interpreted the map faster than expected, Latil was so pleased that she asked Guesta.

“Guesta. Is there something you want?”

“Something I want?”

“Yes. You’ve saved us so much time. I want to give you a gift. What do you want? Jewels? A necklace? Clothes? Valuable books?”

In fact, she intended to fulfill whatever Guesta asked for.

However, Guesta hesitated and couldn’t answer easily. Even though he glanced at Latil several times, it seemed he couldn’t speak up about something that came to mind.

“That’s alright. Say anything, anything.”

When Latil made the atmosphere comfortable with her smile, Guesta finally plucked up the courage to make a request.

“I want to spend time with you alone on my birthday. I don’t care where, just the two of us……”

“Birthday?”