Chapter 61: Phantom Thief Dauphin (5). A Conversation Beneath the Crescent Moon
Ashamed that his doppelgänger magic had been (had not been) seen through by Claudia, the Crown Prince poured himself into improving the spell.
He realized that just tinkering with it during breaks, as he had before, would take far too long to see any real results.
So first, to carve out more time for analyzing and improving the magic, he confiscated all of his subordinates' paperwork and completed an entire week's worth of duties by himself.
You might ask why he didn’t always work like this, but from the Crown Prince’s perspective, this move came with considerable risk.
Because when people see someone working hard and doing well, they’re impressed at first—but later, they just start to expect it.
Finishing a week’s work in one day doesn’t mean you get to rest for six. It means you’ll be expected to do even more during the remaining six.
No need to look far—the very reason he ended up sharing the Emperor’s workload at such a young age was because people around him kept praising how capable he was until he got carried away.
And then there’s the issue of morale among his subordinates.
When someone struggles for over a week to finish something, only to see another person breeze through it in a single day, the sense of futility and loss that person feels can be immense.
If it happens just once, they might see it as an incredible stroke of luck and feel grateful. But if it happens too often, it will inevitably lead to a decline in the organization’s overall efficiency.
Still, despite all those risks, he dedicated the time he made to nothing but perfecting the doppelgänger spell. The results were as follows:
– In the past, spilled blood or severed body parts would immediately convert into mana, making the duplicate easier to detect. But now, the new clone could leave behind physical traces for at least a week, allowing for a far more realistic performance.