Herace’s luxurious mansion was unusually noisy from the morning.
“Schule! Sir!”
“I told you to wait.”
An unexpected visitor had arrived, creating a commotion.
“It’s an urgent matter, sir!”
The guest, who had just stepped into the mansion, was fidgeting nervously, while the host exuded utter calm.
Herace leisurely brushed his cascading lavender hair.
Sunlight poured through the glass windows, scattering over his radiant hair, making it shimmer in a kaleidoscope of colors.
Turning to face his visitor, Herace smiled serenely.
“I don’t think so.”
His mismatched eyes—one a vivid red, the other a brilliant gold—gleamed like gemstones, curving slightly as he smiled.
For a moment, the visitor forgot his purpose, entranced by Herace’s beauty, which was both sweet and otherworldly.
It felt almost sinful to demand anything from someone with such divine looks.
‘Snap out of it!’
But as a seasoned employee of the Dimensional Management Bureau, he managed to regain his composure.
“It’s urgent! The main character hasn’t finished defeating the monsters he was supposed to! And now, just as the romance scene is about to happen, there’s going to be an attack!”
“Wasn’t it because you were dozing off in a corner and didn’t notice?”
Herace extended a pale, elegant hand, each finger an artisan’s masterpiece.
After deliberating among the expensive ornaments, he picked out a pair of ruby earrings.
“Then it’ll take time to wake the creature, won’t it?”
“Well, yes, but we don’t know when it might wake!”
“Shh. Stop fussing. Didn’t your supervisor tell you how to handle me when they sent you?”
The employee clamped his mouth shut.
His boss had indeed advised him to tread carefully and accommodate Herace’s whims as much as possible.
Herace Schule was an extraordinary asset to the Bureau, a rare genius capable of resolving even the trickiest missions.
As troublesome as he was, losing him would be unthinkable.
“Good, you’re being reasonable.”
Herace’s praise made the employee blush, his words striking harder than they should have.
It was impossible not to react to the regal aura and dazzling beauty of the Grand Magician standing before him.
Even the act of fastening dangling earrings seemed like a scene from a masterpiece.
The employee opened his mouth to speak but ultimately stayed quiet, cowed by the sight of Herace meticulously dressing in his finest attire and donning white gloves.
“Shall we go now?”
“W-Wait, yes, let’s go!”
When his boss had warned him to keep calm around Herace, the employee hadn’t realized it would involve suppressing his awe and frustration in equal measure.
Herace’s natural elegance had now been elevated to a jaw-dropping spectacle.
The ethereal beauty felt like a divine masterpiece, something so mesmerizing that it was hard to focus on anything else.
“Schule, are you… an elf, by any chance?”
“No.”
“Then… a plant-based species? Like a Floran?”
Herace chuckled at the persistent questions.
“Human, actually.”
When they arrived at the Bureau’s control room, no one dared scold Herace for taking his time.
The employee received a few reproachful looks, but everyone understood it wasn’t a job just anyone could handle.
“Which dimension is it?”
“Romance Fantasy, ‘The Terminally ill Duchess Just Wants a Quiet Life.’ The monster has just awakened, so we need to act quickly—”
On the screen covering the wall, a creature stirred, furious at the intrusion into its domain.
Its guttural growls filled the room, oozing menace as it prepared to attack the oblivious couple enjoying their sweet moment.
“Leave it to me.”
Herace’s voice brimmed with confidence, almost arrogance.
The results were instantaneous.
A flick of his fingers, and his avatar appeared within the novel’s world, unnoticed by the original characters.
Delicate violet butterflies fluttered through the air.
The monster, unaware of the trap, let its guard down.
The enchanting butterflies drained its mana, leaving the beast shriveled and defeated.
The protagonist couple remained blissfully unaware.
The task was completed in moments, and Herace’s avatar vanished from the screen.
“H-How did you do that? Isn’t crossing dimensions without authorization supposed to carry huge karmic consequences?”
Wide-eyed, the rookie stared at Herace.
“It was just a projection. Projections don’t cost much karma, especially if they’re brief.”
“Wow…”
Herace made it sound simple, but it was far from it.
Creating a projection that could act independently required mastery and control.
While the control room was designed to facilitate such interventions, achieving this level of precision was no ordinary feat.
It was a feat only Herace Schule, an elite employee of the Dimensional Management Bureau, could accomplish.
“The causal points you used—let me know the amount, and I’ll get approval to reimburse you! How much did you use?”
“Not much, so there’s no need to return it. More importantly, could you check with the higher-ups about the magic book I requested last time? Is it still far off?”
“Oh, uh, yes…!”
Even as the staff stared blankly at him, Herace turned away, unfazed by their reactions.
As expected, it was a simple task.
It was a shame that his ongoing research had been interrupted over something so trivial, but it didn’t matter.
If this added to his accomplishments and expedited his request for the magic book, it would only help his research progress further.
While passing through countless dimensional management rooms, a scream suddenly pierced the air.
“It’s ruined!”
A premonition of more work.
Herace paused briefly, watching as other employees rushed toward the source of the scream.
“What is it? Did the male lead of a romance fantasy trip over a rock?”
“Or did the female lead sneeze while receiving a confession?”
“Wait, wait! Was it the protagonist of a fantasy story who left without picking up the loot because they were too tired?”
The joking guesses were examples of issues they often encountered.
Fixing these kinds of errors was their job, so while they teased about the inevitable overtime, they weren’t overly serious.
Normally, if such minor issues escalated, they would snowball to the point where Herace had to step in.
“The protagonist, who was supposed to be exiled and sent to a monster subjugation unit…”
But this time.
It had escalated without further embellishment.
“…was sold into slavery.”
From the start, it was a catastrophe.
“What?”
Even Herace was taken aback.
“And not just slavery—s*xual slavery.”
As soon as the words were spoken, a chilling silence blanketed the management office.
It wasn’t a situation they could laugh off.
A wholesome, all-ages fantasy novel was moments away from turning into an R-rated erotic story!
After a brief stillness, the employees of the Dimensional Management Bureau rushed out of the office, wailing as they sought someone capable of addressing the situation.
“What… what do we do?”
“This isn’t a minor error!”
“Why, why did this happen? I didn’t do anything! The story just started!”
Naturally, their desperation led them to the elite employee standing before them, Herace.
“…Hold on. Calm down. I’ll look into it now.”
Though he preferred avoiding people, to the extent of delegating his own requests to others, Herace had no choice but to directly meet with the Bureau’s higher-ups to get answers.
And it turned out the situation was far worse than he had imagined.
As soon as they learned the cause, the Bureau declared an emergency.
“It’s because of a bookworm.”
“But bookworms are our allied species!”
“That’s true… but what can we do? The evidence points to them. It’s the first bookworm in a thousand years.”
Bookworms were creatures that literally “devoured” books.
They tampered with the original storylines, deriving enjoyment from disrupting the original plot.
To the Dimensional Management Bureau, tasked with ensuring worlds progressed according to their ordained paths, bookworms were their mortal enemies.
However, the longstanding game of cat-and-mouse between the Bureau and the bookworms had ended a thousand years ago.
The two sides had begrudgingly formed an alliance.
“But bookworms migrated to a distant dimension centuries ago. Reaching them will take time…”
“Maybe this was their plan all along?”
“We can’t be sure of anything right now. Let’s contact them first.”
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