Chapter 187: Duck Service Squad!

Kaelus had bought her a massive stack of incredibly expensive, magically conductive parchment from the Capital’s artisan district. The paper was woven with threads of refined mythril and imbued with minor spatial-retention runes.

The ghosts stared at the pile of paper waterfowl.

Silence.

Agatha stared.

Sir Reginald stared.

Bartholomew stared.

The ghost dog barked silently.

"...Ducks?" Agatha asked, her translucent brow furrowing in profound confusion.

"Ducks."

"You intend to conquer the Imperial Capital with ducks?"

Seraphina put her hands on her hips.

"They’re not ordinary ducks."

She picked one up.

"They are the Duck Service Squad."

Bartholomew blinked.

"The... Duck Service Squad?"

"D.S.S."

She nodded proudly.

"Very professional."

Nobody questioned the acronym.

Seraphina sat back down in the center of the pile, then placed the duck on the carpet.

She closed her eyes, channeling a surgical thread of her Supreme Dark Core into the magically conductive parchment.

The dark mana didn’t destroy the paper. It soaked into it, anchoring itself to the mythril threads.

The paper duck’s tiny, folded eyes suddenly glowed with a faint, pulsing violet light.

The paper trembled.

The folded eyes glowed violet.

The duck stood.

It shook its paper tail.

Then—

Quack.

Everyone froze.

The duck looked around.

Bartholomew whispered:

"By the Light," Bartholomew breathed, staring at the animated paper construct. "You have imbued inanimate matter with autonomous, dark-mana pseudo-intelligence. That is... that is Grandmaster-level artificer work!"

"That is either genius..."

A pause.

"...or deeply concerning."

"Both," Seraphina said proudly.

She shrugged off the praise, her adult mind treating the magical animation like writing a simple script for a background process. "The dark mana acts as a battery and a receiver. But the ducks are stupid. They don’t know where to go or what to look for."

She looked up at the floating, glowing spirits.

"That is where you come in."

She pointed at the ducks.

"Now possess them."

The ghosts stared.

"Possess..."

"The ducks."

"...The ducks?"

"Yes."

Sir Reginald looked down at his armored body.

Then at the tiny paper duck.

"The dark mana in the paper acts as a tether. If you merge your ectoplasm with the duck, you gain physical mass. You can waddle. You can pick up small objects in your paper beak. And because you are steering the duck, you maintain your human intelligence. You become the ultimate, invisible, unsuspected spy."

"I am six feet tall, My lady."

"Not anymore."

"This is humiliating."

"It’s espionage."

"...I accept."

For centuries, they had been bored.

They had been relegated to haunting hallways and annoying the maids. Now, the tiny Sovereign was offering them a mission.

She was giving them purpose. She was turning them into the most elite intelligence agency in the world.

It was a hilarious, bizarre spectacle.

One by one, the ghosts began entering the paper ducks.

Bartholomew possessed a silver-threaded duck.

His ethereal form glowed brightly, and then suddenly collapsed inward, sucking itself directly into the paper.

The silver duck stood up, puffed out its paper chest, and actually attempted to adjust a non-existent cravat with its wing.

His consciousness connected instantly.

’Interesting. My center of gravity is approximately three centimeters to the left.’

He waddled.

’This is undignified.’

He waddled again.

’I love it.’

Bartholomew’s voice echoed directly into Seraphina’s mind, a byproduct of the dark mana link. ’I possess a highly aerodynamic chassis. The center of gravity is somewhat wobbly, but the stealth potential is undeniable.’

Soon, dozens became fifty.

Fifty became a hundred.

A hundred glowing-eyed paper ducks stood across Seraphina’s bedroom.

She stared at them.

They stared back.

Seraphina stood up, looking out over her legion.

A tiny smile appeared on her face.

"Operation House Cleaning."

The ducks straightened.

"Alright, D.S.S.," Seraphina commanded, her voice dropping into a deadly, serious whisper. "Phase One of Operation House Cleaning commences now. We have a severe security breach on the premises."

She pointed toward the East Wing.

"Head Maid Genevieve."

Every duck turned simultaneously.

"I want her room mapped."

The ducks nodded.

"Read every letter."

Nod.

"Record every suspicious conversation."

Nod.

"Find hidden compartments."

Nod.

"And if she writes another report..."

Seraphina’s smile became positively sinister.

"...I want to read it before the Empress does."

"Dismissed," Seraphina ordered.

The ducks did not use the door.

Because they were imbued with dark mana and controlled by ghosts, they possessed the ability to temporarily phase their paper bodies through solid matter.

The ducks began marching.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Seraphina watched.

Then she remembered something.

"Oh!"

The ducks stopped.

"No biting."

A hundred paper heads turned toward her.

"She’s still a person."

A pause.

"Mostly."

The ducks resumed marching.

Seraphina climbed back into bed.

With a collective, soft crackle of parchment, the entire army of origami ducks simply sank into the floorboards, phasing through the wood, deploying out into the massive Capital Estate like a swarm of silent, adorable, incredibly lethal paper locusts.

Seraphina smiled, walking back to her bed and climbing under the covers.

The Capital had no idea what was coming.

The Emperor thought he had eyes everywhere. The nobles thought they owned the shadows.

And frankly...

Neither did Genevieve.

They were about to learn that the shadows belonged to the Sovereign, and her ducks were always watching.

***

In the luxurious, highly appointed Head Maid’s suite in the East Wing, Lady Genevieve was currently having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad night.

First, she had been violently, humiliatingly shut down by the scarred brute of a butler.

Her uniform, which was made with expensive silk still smelled faintly of milk. She had been forced to scrub it in the basin herself, cursing the entire Northern lineage with every vicious scrub of the brush.

Her pride was wounded.

Her plans were failing.

Now, she was sitting at her elegant vanity desk, illuminated by a single, flickering candle. She had pulled out her secret, magically encrypted stationary, the parchment that automatically burned itself after being read by the receiver, and was aggressively, furiously scribbling her preliminary intelligence report to the Empress’s handlers.