"But... Finn... we’re in the Lord’s Palace."
Finn blinked and stared at the wall in front of him. The Town Lord? The most powerful man in Lotus Town?
Each Town had a Lord, and each Village had a village head. Border Towns were especially important and were even supported by royalty.
They tended to have good palaces that would defend the leader of the Town and the key members. After all, they were technically ’blocking the way’ for the rest of the safe zone behind them.
In exchange, they were granted power and a right to a certain luxurious lifestyle, despite being far away from the places of luxury, unlike their peers deeper inside the safe zones.
Anyway, the ’hundred meters’ between him and his missing sister, in this case, was easily well within the palace’s halls. No, it was certainly somewhere inside it.
Leiah had to grab his arm and pull him away, because his staring so intently at the Lord’s palace was way too suspicious.
They went to find a relatively isolated area to talk. They chose one of the tea houses that fronted the palace gates. The gates were open, but the guards seemed strong and ready to stab with those spears of theirs as soon as someone dared to pass the threshold.
"How difficult is it to get inside?" he asked, wondering if he should just try climbing in an area that seemed less guarded than other places.
"Very, and there are definitely guards inside," Leiah said, looking worriedly at him. "His guards are at least Awakened Tier 3, and they’re at the toughened stage on average."
"Then... when is it easy to enter legally?"
"It is generally not open to the public, unless there is an event or if there are important guests coming that they have to host."
Finn thought for a moment. "What about adventurers or mercenaries?"
"Even joining the adventurer’s guild might not help. Rather, it could even be counterproductive," Marcus added. "In every major territory, there are a few major powers: The Nobles, the Mercenary Hall, the Merchant Hall, and the Adventurer’s Hall.
"The balance would depend on where one was. In the inner areas, the nobles and merchant halls naturally had the most power. However, in the borders, that skewed a lot.
"Brute force was more valued in the borders. Although generally more powerful (in level) than those deep in the safe zone, the nobles here had relatively low battle power compared to the actual fighting professions, which comprised a good portion of the population in a border town.
"They could get quite insecure, feeling as if they’d be toppled by the others any time, and they tend to overcompensate by being... annoying."
Leiah shook her head. "The Lord here has a partnership with the Mercenary Hall, having married the daughter of the Town’s Mercenary Guild Master. They do not see adventurers nicely, and you don’t seem like someone who’d get along with most mercenaries.
"Even if you do take that route, that’d take at least a few weeks—especially if you don’t already have someone on the inside."
Finn clenched his fists and his feet tapped the floor impatiently as he pondered. His mind ran as fast as it could, trying to find a solution.
He pondered for a moment and observed the surroundings, particularly the gates of the palace and what was going on in the half an hour they were sitting in the shop.
At some point, he noticed something.
"Is that common, then?" He asked, looking at a group of four or five people carrying carts of items into the palace. The two followed his sight and were just a bit confused.
"Is it?" Marcus asked. "They’re just delivering stuff, I guess?" That wasn’t anything unusual, right?
"But that’s the third time in the past ten minutes," Finn said.
"What?"
"I... don’t think it is common, then?" Marcus said, unsure, but Leiah nodded, confirming that it wasn’t common. She was fairly observant herself and had been in the plaza many times, so she knew the norm in the area.
"Yes, people entering the palace should be relatively rare unless there’s an event."
Seeing their reaction, an idea came to mind.
...
After asking around and doing a bit of investigation, the trio found out that there was definitely an event happening in the castle.
Apparently, sometime the next day, there would be foreign nobles staying in the palace, using their place as a stopover of sorts. Since these guests were being treated as VIPs, the visitors would at least be from a City. Which City, however, no one knew.
They did not have information on who it was exactly, which was already telling enough that these were not low nobles, and probably had a higher ranking than the town Lord himself.
He then asked the two to teach him some basic etiquette, taboos, jargon, and so on.
It was a crash course, and commoners naturally had limited knowledge of it. It was mostly taboos commoners should not do, which was fine, because he could adjust accordingly.
Simply put, one just had to show respect to nobles and bow to them. A forty-five-degree angle would suffice.
They should not look into their eyes nor talk when they were speaking; otherwise, archaically, they could be whipped, possibly to death. This was especially true if they didn’t have the backing of any guilds.
Of course, strength mattered here, so these rules were much more lax depending on how powerful one was, especially if they were associated with the mercenary or adventurer halls.
"I’m curious about why you’re asking for these things," Marcus said, and Leiah nodded.
"Well, I have my reasons," he said. "Finally, I need to know: Do you have disguise shops or disguise experts here?"
"What are you going to do?" Leiah couldn’t help but ask. She had been concerned for a while now, even when they were still traveling. To be frank, she worried whether Finn was in the right state of mind at all.
But then he sent her that handsome, comforting smile of his. "All I can say is: A little roleplay can go a long way."