Chapter 1
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 1
He thought he would succeed.
The informant wasn't just reliable; they were ironclad. Their forces weren't just sufficient; they were overwhelming.
And yet.
“You thought it would work?”
The question required no answer. The speaker’s booted foot was already grinding mercilessly into the man’s nape.
The man’s face loomed over him, silhouetted against the black sky.
He was the one who had severed arms and legs without his breathing even hitching. The man they had lured into a death trap, only for him to turn it back on them.
Beneath a mane of tousled black hair, his eyes were a chilling, piercing blue.
“Then again.”
The man’s face, as he smirked and brought a cigarette to his lips, was so terrifyingly beautiful he hardly seemed human.
Oscar Reinhardt.
Wreathed in cigarette smoke, he smiled.
“If you knew it would end this way, you wouldn’t have come. Would you?”
Gasp, choke…
As he watched the man’s agonizing final struggles, Oscar simply smoked his cigarette. Behind him stretched a wilderness reeking of blood.
A group of men silently carried away the assassins’ corpses, while birds of prey, drawn by the scent of blood, circled overhead.
“We’ve captured two alive. The rest have been confirmed dead.”
Oscar lifted his foot from the dead man’s neck. He wiped the blood from his boot on the corpse’s clothes and spoke.
“Bury the dead. Make the ones we captured talk.”
“Understood. What are your plans for the rest of your schedule?”
Oscar took another drag from his cigarette, his posture casually arrogant. He flicked the butt to the ground and began pulling off his black gloves. Turning to the man beside him, he smirked.
“A promise is a promise, Simon.”
He took a step forward and muttered.
“Though I’m sure that half-wit bastard was hoping I’d die here.”
As he strode across the corpse-littered wilderness, men in black suits, finished with their cleanup, approached from all sides. They quickly formed a path to his carriage, bowing respectfully as their master passed.
Once inside the carriage, Oscar wiped his hands and face with a wet towel as if nothing had happened. A few drops of blood had splattered on his cuffs, but changing was a hassle, and besides, there was no reason to.
Tossing the blood-soaked towel into a corner, Oscar’s gaze drifted out the window.
He was sick of the death strewn all around him. To be free of this wretched, nauseating business, there were only two ways.
Either he would take the head of Leopold, the King of Luxen, or he himself would die.
But he had no intention of dying. Nor did he have any intention of taking a loss. The idea of trading an arm for a head held no interest for him.
Oscar took out another cigarette and placed it between his lips. The acrid smoke seemed to wash away some of the stench of blood, and he took several deep drags. His piercing blue eyes, alternately veiled and revealed by the hazy smoke, were as hard and cold as the face of a glacier.
The victory he sought was no ordinary one.
He wanted an overwhelming victory.
An overwhelming, perfect victory, without spilling a single drop of his own blood.
* * *
Everyone in Pelfe knew of the magnificent stone mansion on the banks of the Daub River.
A century ago, the mansion had been a gift to a mistress the king had once doted on. Over the next hundred years, it changed hands many times, serving as a theater and later a summer villa for a noble family. Fifty years after the death of its first owner, the king’s mistress, the mansion finally reclaimed its original name.
Amang Rose.
If Herod had Tuberose, Pelfe had Amang Rose.
In Pelfe, where prostitution was legal, the most prosperous sanctuary of hedonism was right here, at the Amang Rose estate. It was a place where even the air was different from the run-of-the-mill brothels in the back alleys. As most of its clientele were royals or nobles from the Norfolk Continent, a single night at Amang Rose, even at its lowest tier, cost the equivalent of two months' living expenses for a typical middle-class family in Pelfe.
On days when well-known titans of society came to visit, the nightly revenue of the Amang Rose estate would easily surpass the monthly earnings of a respectable business.
And today was one of those days.
“He’s finally here!”
As the gatekeeper announced the arrival, Katrin, the owner of Amang Rose, hastily stubbed out the cigarette she had been chain-smoking. Her hand trembled slightly as she did.
“And what of the Grand Duke?”
At her quick, low question, a man who had approached her shook his head.
“It’s already chaos. The door is locked and won’t open. His Highness’s secretary is begging us to buy some time.”
“……”
She had been in this business for decades.
Her intuition told her something was going terribly wrong.
The man expected to visit Amang Rose today was a titan among titans, a name known to everyone in East Norfolk.
Grand Duke Baden, the King of Pelfe’s half-brother and the president of the Pelfe Bank, was a powerful man in his own right, but he was no match for the Marquis Reinhardt of the Kingdom of Luxen.
Unease had settled in the moment Grand Duke Baden arrived earlier than scheduled, uninvited guests in tow. He drank wine—each bottle costing between fifty and one hundred million Kerte—like water while playing pool with his companions.
Moreover, as the appointed time drew near, he made no preparations to greet his expected guest, instead escalating the debauchery of the party.
It was unmistakably rude. An extraordinary breach of etiquette.
For his actions not to be considered rude, there was only one possibility.
That Marquis Reinhardt, the man the Grand Duke was supposed to meet, wouldn't show up.
But hadn't she just been told the man had arrived?
Katrin swallowed dryly and glanced at the woman beside her.
Her dress featured a neckline so deep it revealed nearly all of her breasts. They were so voluptuous that another woman might want to touch them, and there was certainly no shortage of men desperate for a taste. But her chest wasn't everything. She had a captivatingly pretty face and an innocent, almost witless smile that seemed devoid of worldly cares. The reason she didn't seem vulgar, however, was surprisingly due to the weight in her voice.
Even to Katrin, who had been in this business for decades, there was no jewel quite like her. Unless a man was impotent, he stood no chance if a girl like this truly set her sights on him. Especially not the kind of men who frequented a place like this.
“Anna.”
The sound of carriage wheels slowed. Katrin straightened her posture and adjusted her clothes with a neat, composed air. Her classic, high-collared dress made her look less like a brothel owner and more like the King's Chief Lady-in-Waiting.
As she started walking toward the wide-open main gate, Katrin whispered to Anna.
“He’s a man who could spend Pelfe’s five-year budget in a single night.”
Anna’s vacant, witless expression sharpened in an instant.
A man who could spend Pelfe’s five-year budget in a single night.
It was no exaggeration.
He was the owner of the transcontinental railroad, the master of a colossal steel company known as the furnace of the Norfolk Continent, and the head of the historic House Reinhardt. To top it all off, he was still young, despite having achieved all this with his own two hands.
“If you play your cards right, you’ll be beyond comparison to some mere mistress of the King of Pelfe.”
“……”
“So, you buy some time. Just until the Grand Duke realizes the Marquis is here.”
As she finished speaking, the carriage came to a halt. Katrin’s perpetually serious expression transformed into a radiant smile, as if by magic. While she went out to greet the Marquis like a long-lost relative, Anna lingered by the door, waiting for her moment.
“Welcome, Your Excellency. We have been waiting for you.”
The Marquis did not respond to Katrin’s gentle words. Only the sound of his long-striding, booted footsteps could be heard.
Anna, who had been waiting for her chance, cautiously peeked out.
Covering her chest with one hand as if embarrassed by her revealing dress, she wore her signature innocent expression. She planned to block the young marquis’s path, as if by chance.
As the Amang Rose of Pelfe, she had met her share of high-ranking men. Just last month, the king himself had paid a secret visit. What was a young marquis from another country to her?
But Anna couldn't even dare to think of blocking the path of the young man who swept past her. All she could do was stare blankly, her eyes following his movements.
“……”
He was much taller than average, with broad shoulders that contrasted with a slim waist. She couldn't recall his features; the man now striding away was already just an afterimage. And yet, she would bet her entire fortune that no one she had ever seen possessed a beauty comparable to his.
Just then, Katrin jabbed Anna in the waist, snapping her out of her daze.
By the time Anna hastily collected herself and started after the man, he was already rounding the landing and ascending the stairs. Anna craned her neck to look up at him.
His slightly wavy black hair seemed at once tousled and intentionally styled. Beneath it, she glimpsed deep-set eyes and a straight, high-bridged nose. With one hand thrust into his pocket, he took the stairs in long, confident strides. There wasn't a trace of formal etiquette in his every move.
“Your Excellency.”
Katrin called out to him urgently, but the Marquis didn't even react, as if he hadn't heard her. Anna practically ran up the stairs, but she couldn't close the distance—not with the Marquis, and not with the four men trailing in his wake.