Chapter 28

At dawn the next day, a carriage that smelled of blood stopped in front of the main gate of the Duke of Valois’s mansion. It was a carriage drawn by a single exhausted horse, without a coachman. When the guards approached in puzzlement, the carriage’s rear door creaked open.

And what tumbled out was not a person. It was a mass of flesh with all limbs severed and its tongue cut out, barely clinging to life. It was an assassin who had been a member of the “Night’s Claw” guild. A scrap of parchment was impaled on his blood-soaked clothes with a dagger.

“Your Grace! T-this is an emergency!”

The steward, pale-faced, woke the sleeping Duke of Valois. A moment later, the Duke’s face lost all expression as he beheld the hellscape before his mansion gates. Dozens of severed arms and legs lay thrown at his feet, and in the middle a subordinate groaned, a living corpse.

The steward handed over the parchment with trembling hands. On it, a single sentence had been written in blood.

‘The next gift will be your neck.’

“Khh… Khhkhkh…”

A grotesque sound, half laugh, half cry, escaped the Duke of Valois’s mouth. He began to laugh like a madman. It was not fear. It was a kind of exhilarated frenzy at the enemy’s cruelty and audacity beyond his imagination.

“Rian Aster… yes, yes. This is fitting. Only then is he worthy to face me…”

He sensed that his life hung by a thread. But at the same time, a twisted drive to win this cruel blood game seized his whole being.

At the same time, Aster Manor.

Rian moved pieces on a chessboard as Kael reported to him. His face was calm, as if the slaughter from last night belonged to another world.

“The ‘gift’ we sent to the Duke of Valois must have arrived well.”

“Yes, master. He’s probably tearing around madly by now.”

“You let a mad dog run until it exhausts itself. It’s time to send the second gift.”

Rian took out the information Argos had gathered through Old Fox. It was a ledger detailing the slave caravans and drug trades the Duke of Valois ran in secret. After the fall of the Marquis of the Reinhardt family, Argos had put all the capital’s dark dealings in the palm of his hand.

“Leak this ledger anonymously by different routes to the Imperial Inspection Office and to the clerics dispatched from Holy Kingdom Artemis. Make two separate powers bite the same man. No matter how much the Duke of Valois struggles, he can’t escape both imperial law and divine judgment at once.”

Rian’s plan was not simply to kill the Duke of Valois. It was to strip away everything he had, his social honor, political base, economic power, cruelly dismantling him as if flaying him alive.

Meanwhile, in the imperial palace, Kaion was having breakfast with the Crown Prince Julian.

“Kaion, I received a report that thieves broke into the ‘Dawn’s Trading Guild’ warehouse last night. However, the guild’s guards handled it excellently and there was no damage. Perhaps because your family sponsors it, their security is thorough.”

Julian spoke casually, but Kaion felt a chill run down his spine. He recalled the faint scent of blood that had wafted from Rian’s room last night. He could not even dare to imagine what his brother was up to in the capital’s shadows. But he believed Rian.

“Thanks to Your Highness’s grace. We will further strengthen security so that there is not a single hitch in the enterprises you take an interest in.”

Kaion faithfully fulfilled his role in the world of light.

A few days later, the capital was thrown into upheaval once more. Evidence broke that the Duke of Valois had been leading illegal slave trading and drug trafficking banned by the Empire. The Imperial Inspection Office and the Holy Kingdom’s Religious Tribunal simultaneously descended on his mansion.

Cornered, the fox could only helplessly watch his flesh being torn away within a trap sealed on all sides. Only bone-deep hatred for the young devil Rian Aster remained in his eyes.