Chapter 17
Chapter 17
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 17
Chapter Title: The Emperor's Gift
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“Your Majesty... still hasn’t returned...”
The lavish banquet table in the imperial palace’s grand hall was laden with delicacies from land and sea,
yet no one dared to pick up a fork.
Only the sobs of Empress Dowager Elizabeth, seated at the head of the table,
filled the vast hall.
Her slender shoulders trembled faintly.
Her voice was soaked in grief.
“Your Majesty, please take care of your health. His Majesty is a strong man—he will surely return safely.”
One of the nobles at her side put on a mournful expression and offered comfort.
‘Strong, my ass.’
‘The Twilight Forest at night crawls with demonic beasts. He’s probably nothing but bones by now.’
The nobles’ gazes crossed secretly.
They were busily tapping away at mental calculators.
An empire without its tyrant.
The next power would naturally fall to the Empress Dowager.
The Empress Dowager covered her mouth with a handkerchief and smiled vilely.
‘Looks like Gauss took care of things properly.’
Captain of the Ashes Knights, Gauss.
One of the empire’s top swords, her enforcer.
A mere mad, rampaging puppet emperor couldn’t stand against him.
‘Die, Darcor. Time to follow your lowly mother.’
Suppressing a burst of laughter,
she rose unsteadily to her feet.
“My heart aches so. To search for His Majesty, we must immediately send out...”
It was at that moment, as Elizabeth poured her soul into the performance.
Boom.
The doors to the grand hall flew open,
and the nobles’ eyes snapped toward the entrance.
From the darkness beyond the doorway, a man
was approaching.
Thud. Thud.
Along with the heavy sounds reverberating off the floor.
The stench of blood wafted into the hall.
The chandelier lights overhead
illuminated the man’s figure.
Black hunting garb stained with dark, crusted blood.
Red eyes gleaming through disheveled hair.
The emperor, Darcor.
“...Y-Your Majesty?”
Crash.
The Empress Dowager flinched and knocked the wine glass in front of her to the floor.
“Y-Your Majesty, what happened?”
“L-Look at all the blood. What in the world occurred in the forest...”
The nobles recoiled in horror, as if beholding a ghost.
With every step Darcor took,
some stifled dry heaves in terror,
others collapsed, legs giving way.
But the mind of Darcor, who had terrified them all, was filled with utterly mundane irritation.
‘Ugh... I feel so grimy.’
His entire body was sticky with caked blood.
Too much had splattered when he’d kicked that old fart Gauss’s ass.
‘I just want to go wash up quick, so why are these idiots staring like that?’
The atmosphere was like a funeral home.
Were they hoping I’d died and holding a rite for me?
Darcor carelessly swept back his damp hair.
Even that trivial gesture had the nobles quaking, reading meaning into it.
“What’s with the mood?”
Darcor spoke in a dry voice.
“Were you holding a rite in hopes I’d kick the bucket?”
The Empress Dowager’s face drained of color.
She hurriedly schooled her expression and cried out in a trembling voice.
“Y-Your Majesty! H-How could you say such a heartbreaking thing... Do you know how worried your mother was?”
As she rushed down from the dais,
“Worried, you say.”
Swish.
Darcor raised a hand to halt her.
“For the mother who worried so much about me... I picked up a little gift from the forest.”
“A-a gift?”
The Empress Dowager’s eyes shook with unease.
Darcor crooked a finger at Edel, who followed behind.
“Edel, bring it out.”
At his command, her escort knight Edel dragged something forward.
A heavy bundle wrapped in burlap.
Leaving a red trail on the floor, it was dragged along.
An ominous sight.
Thud.
Edel dumped the burlap in the center of the grand hall.
And stripped away the wrapping without hesitation.
“Eek!”
“W-What is that?”
The hall turned to pandemonium in an instant.
Ladies screamed and covered their eyes,
men swallowed hard.
What emerged from the burlap was a person.
Or rather, what had once been a person.
Arms and legs twisted grotesquely,
face swollen beyond recognition.
But the Empress Dowager recognized him.
The crest on his tattered armor.
‘G-Gauss!’
Her most trusted blade lay at her feet, reduced to less than a beast.
“Mother’s favorite hunting dog got lost in the forest.”
Darcor strode forward and irritably nudged Gauss’s head with his boot.
“Guh... Urgh...”
Gauss could only groan like a beast,
unable even to resist.
The pathetic fall of one called the empire’s strongest swordsman.
Darcor looked up at the Empress Dowager with impassive eyes.
“His leash came off, and he barked without recognizing his master, so I gave him some education.
What do you think? Doesn’t he seem a bit more docile now?”
The Empress Dowager’s heart pounded like it would burst.
A warning message.
I’ve turned your sent hunter into this.
You’re next.
That savage intent shone in Darcor’s eerie red eyes.
“W-What is the meaning of this!”
The Empress Dowager gulped dryly and staggered back.
Admitting it here meant the end.
If it came out she’d plotted to assassinate the emperor,
not even the Empress Dowager would escape unscathed.
She desperately racked her brains.
She had to cut off the tail.
“I-I know nothing about this! Isn’t this man the one exiled from the palace long ago?”
The Empress Dowager shouted, feigning outrage.
“To dare harm His Majesty’s person! I’ll deal with this scum right—”
It was shameless acting no one could watch.
‘So that’s how you’ll play it?’
Darcor smirked, amused.
Even better.
The more she tried to wriggle free,
the better it fit his plans.
Darcor nodded along.
“Right? It’s completely unrelated to our Empress Dowager—purely his own actions, yes?”
“Y-Yes! This senile old fool must have held a grudge against the palace and...”
The usually refined Empress Dowager spat her tirade, veins bulging in her face.
“Then I’m relieved. To think Mother and I see eye to eye.”
Crunch.
Darcor’s boot mercilessly crushed
Gauss’s face.
“Keurgh!”
Gauss’s agonized scream echoed through the hall.
The nobles froze in terror, barely breathing.
Tyrannical cruelty, as expected.
But this brutality had justification.
Rightful punishment for a traitor who’d sought to assassinate the emperor.
Darcor looked down indifferently at Gauss writhing at his feet
and spoke coldly.
“No reason to keep a mad dog without a master alive.”
“...”
The Empress Dowager’s lips quivered.
Defending Gauss here would make her an accomplice.
She could only stay silent as her limb was trampled before her eyes.
‘This... demonic bastard...’
Darcor savored her reaction as he slowly approached her.
One step. Two steps.
An overwhelming pressure she’d never felt before
enveloped her body.
Unthinkingly, she backed away and collapsed.
Thud.
Darcor leaned down.
His lips drew perilously close to her ear.
A whisper intimate enough for only the two of them, unheard by the hall’s nobles.
"Mother, do you like your gift?"
“...!”
“Did I mess up the wrapping, even though I put some thought into it?”
Only then did the Empress Dowager see it.
The madness flickering deep in Darcor’s red eyes.
And beyond it, the venomous killing intent.
‘M-Monster...’
Only then did the Empress Dowager realize.
The weak, mad emperor she’d known was gone.
A man who held her life in his grasp stood before her.
“Hup...”
The Empress Dowager bit her lips in terror.
Darcor turned his back on her trembling form.
“Edel, clean it up. Ruining my appetite.”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ “Aigoo, my poor legs. Being a tyrant ain’t easy.”
Late at night, in the emperor’s office.
Darcor sprawled out on the sofa.
As tension released, exhaustion crashed over him.
‘People think it’s just posing and yelling, huh?’
Far from it.
This was an art form.
They had no idea how crucial timing and voice control were.
Especially whispering in the Empress Dowager’s ear earlier—
he’d been on pins and needles lest he flub it.
‘But the effect was spot on. Never thought I’d see her face like that.’
Recalling her ashen face,
he relished the heartburn receding from his throat.
⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙ [Hidden Quest Completed.] [You have perfectly suppressed the assassination threat and imprinted fear on the mastermind faction.] [Distributing rewards.] [Reward 1: Reputation within the Empire has greatly increased.] [Reward 2: Probability of rebellion decreases due to nobles' imprinted fear.] [Hidden Reward: Obtained Death Note.] “Oh?”
Darcor’s eyes sparkled.
A hidden reward.
Plop.
A weathered parchment scroll dropped from thin air onto his lap.
Unfurling it revealed the names of nobles colluding with the Empress Dowager, glowing blood-red.
Embezzlement, contract killings, treason.
All their weaknesses laid out in detail.
The empire’s pus-filled boils, visible at a glance.
‘Look at these bastards.’
A wicked smile spread across Darcor’s lips.
Just crushing them with force was amateur hour.
A true tyrant choked their throats until they self-destructed.
Gauss had been mere bait, after all.
Tomorrow, the real hunt began.
“Morning assembly’s gonna be fun.”