Sneaking into the palace turned out to be far easier than they had imagined.

During their brief days working odd jobs, Iger and the others had done more than physically survey the terrain of Nabistin. They had uncovered a crucial detail. The Gospel essentially controlled every worker in the city to carry out their duties.

Certain workers were not underground laborers, but respectable citizens living in Nabistin's surface city. Yet even they operated as Gospel employees. Whenever they were on the clock, their work was purely efficient, robotic, and entirely devoid of personal emotion.

If ordinary surface workers were automated by the Gospel, it stood to reason that the palace servants were automated too. There was still a slight catch. The imperial family might hold onto old-fashioned traditions. Rich nobles often believed that real human servants were more prestigious, that imperial service should never be outsourced, or that serving the Isa family was a privilege meant to be felt.

Nevertheless, the crude plan had been a desperate gamble from the start. Unpredictable variables like these were entirely out of their...