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For those of you who have completed The Legend of the Seven Heroes I, II, and III, we present to you [Story: The Change of Clausel]. Are you sure you want to start downloading?　≪ Yes ≫ / No ≫”

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“Download is complete. Do you want to start?　≪ Yes≫ / No”

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“The Legend of the Seven Heroes: The Clausel Incident” will now start

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This was before Ren Ashton was born.

The Imperial Library is the pride of Leomel and in the lowest level of the Imperial Library, there was a place that only a few people could visit. The name of the place is called the forbidden library, a special place where documents and precious grimoires that cannot be disclosed politically are stored.

Normally, this place is completely deserted, but for the first time in several months, someone had set foot inside.

He’s Viscount Givens, a nobleman belonging to the Heroic Faction and the assistant to the Minister of Justice.

He came to this place as part of his duties as assistant to the Minister of Justice, and only came to see the documents that the Minister of Justice asked him to check —-.

“This is…”

But his curiosity got the better of him, and he looked at some of the books in the forbidden library.

One that caught his eye was titled “The Travels of Ashton the Adventurer”.

It was in a bookshelf, strangely soiled and so tattered that he thought he would never be able to read what was written inside.

But his curiosity got the better of him and he looked through it.

Most of the pages were blacked out and the text was unreadable.

The title of the book was a common one, but he wondered why.

But it was impossible to read with all the blacked-out pages.

Viscount Givens gave up reading and was about to close the book……

“Hmm?”

He finally reached a page where he could read the text.

But it was just a series of names of places, which didn’t seem to make any sense.

Viscount Givens memorized all those consecutive location names.

This is one of his special skills: he quickly memorizes the contents of any book he looks over.

He’s not much interested in the names of places in a sequence, even if they are forbidden books.

Eventually he closed the book, muttered “boring” and put it back on the shelf.

◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

A few months after he read the mysterious book in the forbidden library, the environment surrounding Viscount Givens changed drastically.

The Minister of Justice had been defeated in a political dispute and lost his position.

As a result, Viscount Givens also lost his position as Assistant Minister of Justice, and he decided to leave the Imperial Capital and return to his own domain.

As a member of the heroic faction, it was frustrating not to be able to fight in the capital, but he realized that he wouldn’t be able to do anything if he stayed in the capital and he honestly tried to revive himself while enriching his own territory.

“Is this the right thing to do?”

But Viscount Givens was doubtful.

In his office in the mansion, he looked out the rain-drenched window and murmured.

The gray sky was darkening as night approached.

“No, it can’t be good.”

He feels a strong sense of significance in the expansion of power within his faction, and he believes that in order to share true equality with the people in time, the royalist faction must surely be diminished.

Yet, he wondered what he was doing in such a place.

“If only there was a chance for our heroic faction to gain momentum.”

He was sure that the nobles of the same faction are also worried about it.

But you shouldn’t have come up with that trigger just because you are worried about it.

Like the majority, he didn’t want to spend time carelessly.

Especially now that Marquis Ignat, the leader of the royalist faction, is increasing his influence, the heroic faction must take some action in order to break his fangs.

“Pardon me. Viscount, here.”

Viscount Givens received an assignment.

The knight handed him a report on the management of the estate and he went to his desk.

He makes quick work of the task he’s accustomed to, only to finish it as usual and exhale a sigh.

—- It was supposed to be the same on this day.

“Mmm?”

But unlike usual, he didn’t put down his pen at the end of the workday and stared at the words on his report.

The names of the places listed on the map were the same as usual, as if it were a matter of course.

Yet, he couldn’t understand why he was staring at the document and what he was feeling.

He was staring at the names of the places on the document, and that was all he could think about.

“That’s it.”

It was not until a few minutes later that he realized the reason why he was doing this.

The book he had read a while ago in the forbidden stacks of the Imperial Library.

He remembered the name of the places, which seemed to be a meaningless sequence of names.

The reason why he hadn’t noticed it before was that the names of these places had changed several times throughout history as the lords of these places changed.

He was looking at the map, vaguely remembering the old names, when he finally realized what was going on.

“From the imperial capital, proceed near the Baldor Mountain, then go south and further west.”

At some point, Viscount Givens got up from his seat and picked up a large map from the bookshelf.

Unfolding it, he turned his attention to the Baron of Clausel, which lies beyond the Baldor Mountain. He also pulled up a document with information on old location names and compared it to the map as he opened it.

“From here to the west again.”

He remembers the names of the places mentioned in the forbidden book and slides his fingertips along, listening to his heartbeat.

…… Eventually, his finger stopped.

He finished recalling as many locations as he could, and finally placed his fingertip on a certain place.

He marked it with a pen so that it would be easy to recognize.

It was a rare frontier in Leomel, which in the past was known as the “The Farthest Forest”.

Although it now belongs to Baron Clausel’s domain, before that it was no one’s domain, and there was a time when it was only classified as part of the Leomel Empire.

What he’s curious about is why this land was mentioned in a forbidden book.

The book started in the imperial capital and gradually moved toward the frontier and at the end of the book, it mentions a place called “The farthest forest”?

“Why? Why did this adventurer named Ashton go there?”

Normally, he wouldn’t be concerned.

An adventurer is nothing more than a person who belongs to a guild.

He wouldn’t be particularly interested in an adventure story written by such a person.

But this was a story about a book in the forbidden library.

So Viscount Givens was curious about the identity of this adventurer Ashton.

“I have no idea after all.” 

But there was too little information and not enough room to think.

Eventually exhausted from over thinking, Viscount Givens sat back in his chair and exhaled.

He rang the bell on his desk and called the knight to hand over the documents he had finished checking.