Governor's House
Port City Shelde
Duscon
February 3rd
Year 1053
Not too long after Evan finally found out the catalyst that he needed to aid in his advancement to the grandmaster level, Colonel Onas returned from Shelde, along with more soldiers and official carriages to carry the young hero and his party over to the Governor's House.
The monster-drawn carriages were far faster than normal horses so the journey was quite short considering the tens of kilometres of distance between the Giant Bear Woods and the port city.
Upon arriving at the city, Evan first went over to the adventurer's guild to submit one of the quests he had randomly picked up, before finally heading over to the Governor's house located at the city centre.
When he got there, he was met with not only Shelde's Governor but Lastham's too.
The two men received Evan and treated him with far more respect than they would an ordinary Noble child. This much was warranted, as Evan was an official titled Noble with the rank of Count, which was basically on the same level of power, if not higher than theirs.
Not to talk of the fact that Evan was the PM's son and a Hero.
They had a little early dinner where they discussed Evan's plan to alter the true details of the events that happened earlier in the day, of which they had already been briefed by Colonel Onas.
They were quite shocked when they discovered the assassination plot of the Demonic Hand, as well as the fact that an Epic Level existence took part.
Of course, Evan simply did not tell them about the Fake Hero #12 who was the second Epic Level existence.
Regarding his plan to alter the details of the day's Events, they were completely okay with it as the two men did not want to burden their citizens with the news that an Epic Level battle was happening near them, at least until the whole situation died down.
They were also more than happy to keep the matter of the assassination attempt under wraps too, but Evan did not forget to tell them that he would be informing the Duke and the Emperor about it.
The Magic Contracts were also spoken off, along with a deal for them to use their contacts to spread the altered news faster, so the Demonic Hand could hear it and have their assumptions of his strength skewed.
Too bad that the Organization's leader had already marked him as a highest-level threat and given all the Epic-level Senior members the order to kill him on sight.
All in all, the conversation went smoothly, and when they got to the part about how the damages caused by the battle would be handled, Evan offered some monetary support, given that he was the part cause of the whole fiasco.
Besides, the young hero was also a multimillionaire now, so he could afford to let go of a few million gold coins, with the exception of the wealth he was entitled to as the son of a Duke.
Towards the end, it turned into a talk between the two governors about how they were going to deal with the people and adventurers who were going to be out of work for a while at the Giant Bear Woods where they usually hunted, foraged, and adventured in was basically no more.
They had plans to call upon all the druids, preferably the elven ones in their states and others under the same political party to come in and help in artificially regrowing the forest, while they decided to put out quests for adventurers to capture monsters from other areas and bring them to the regrown forest.
When they heard that one of Craitid's breath attacks had left a crater in the ground that was large enough for a lake, they decided to fill it with seawater, fish and other aquatic life from the ocean.
By this time, Evan had already half-tuned out their conversation and was more focused on sorting through his current stats and the notifications from the system.
After the meal, Evan and Eliza returned to Lastham along with its governor, avoiding all the other politicians and civil officials who tried to curry favour with him and giving the stubborn ones perfunctory replies.
They spent the night at the Mahogany Hotel, with all of them going straight to bed without a word due to their high exhaustion levels. They ended up oversleeping the next morning, way past their checkout time.
But having known the identity of the group staying in their hotel after the Governor's carriage dropped Evan off the day before, the Hotel's management did not disturb them like they would normally.
Besides, they were very occupied dealing with the technical damages caused by the loss of all magical signals within nearly half the state after Hydran's power display fried a lot of signal towers.
Even the train rides were all rescheduled for the next day and it was only until late afternoon did Lastham finally get back to normal.
Of course, the Governor had the news agencies print out the 'details' of the previous day's events, and he gave an official speech to placate the very worried citizens and tourists.
The Anomalies slept through all that though.
Evan finally woke up in the evening and came down to the lobby yawning, surprising a lot of people who did not really think he was present.
Before he could make his way over to the counter to pay for his extended stay, he was swarmed by journalists, curious tourists, fans and nobles who had tons of questions, ranging from the reason why he was in Duscon, to the details of the previous day's battle and his current strength level.
Hotel security tried to clear the way for him but Evan simply teleported directly in front of the counter, finished his business and teleported back to the stairs after saying he was not taking any questions.
Then, he went on for Sleep Round 2, as his body and soul were very exhausted and needed to recuperate. He also needed to pay off his energy debt to the world.
Two days later, after getting a decent amount of rest, they checked out of the hotel and took the trains to return to the GWE, a trip that took them two and a half days, half a day shorter than the inbound journey due to route changes.
By the time they had reached Gerfast, the stories of his adventures in Duscon had already reached the Empire, courtesy of the Adventurer's Guild news channels.
There was a whole lotta noise when he entered the guild hall to have the dismantlers that he was contracted with work on Silverwing's corpse.
On a side note, he had completely paid off his energy debt by this time so he did not have to be worried about any adventurer noticing his weakened state.
Since the Guild Newspapers and the News boards had already covered the 'details' of his little trip, those who had used these services were already aware of everything that transpired, as for the others who were unaware, Evan's friends amongst the S rank and SS rank adventurers made sure to let them know with their loud booming voices across the guild hall.
Kayla's popularity also grew as the circulating stories showed she played a very crucial part in defeating this 'grandmaster mutant wyvern' that the group had encountered in Duscon.
That was part of the reason Evan and the Governors had come up with for why the magical signals went out, that the 'high ranking lightning spirit' and her subordinate spirits had used so much power that it affected everything in the area.
But with these now, the formerly ambiguous rumours about Evan being a grandmaster were practically now confirmed, and the fact that most A rankers and below could not sense his existence level only gave them more credibility.
The Hero in question was quite miffed about it as every time he heard someone talk about how he was a grandmaster, it reminded him of the fact that he was actually NOT one.
After he finished his business in the adventurer's guild, he made his way over to the Royal Palace while Eliza and the others returned to the Oak Avenue Manor.
◇ ◇ ◇
Cabinet Room A2
Royal Palace, Gerfast
GWE
February 8th
Year 1053
"…that's just about what really happened."
Evan finished his narration and the other people in the room could not help but look at him with an array of strange expressions on their faces.
Starting from the left, there was Laurene, Duke Roger, Ralphie, Finley, Emperor Rudeus, Luke and Jenson.
"…I don't even know where to start."
With a facepalm, Rudeus spoke. His expression was a mix of both surprise and resignation.
"So, you've known about these sham heroes from the start?"
"Yep."
"And I'm guessing you could not speak about them."
"Exactly."
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