Regicide (3)
Equipment that grows stronger the more you use it, or gear that's outright broken from the get-go—which do you prefer? The latter tends to get outpaced by power creep easily, but the Rogue Master's Legacy boots I have feel different. If these things could get outscaled by inflation, the game's balance would have flown off to another galaxy by now.
"On duty! No anomalies!"
A guard responded to the patrolling guard captain that everything was clear. But there was something off. It was right in front of them. In fact, the patrolling guard captain himself was the anomaly. Because a cat had slipped into his shadow.
Using Shadow Walk to compress my body made me look like nothing more than a black shadow. I used the skill to hide in the guard captain's shadow and strutted freely through the palace. When I reached near the emperor's bedchamber, I waited for an opening and slipped into the shadow of a candle flame. Then, timing it with the guard taking a quick breather, I locked in a rear naked choke.
This was the most broken part of the gear. Turning into a shadow didn't mean I couldn't interact with the 3D world. Picture it: two hands suddenly bursting from the shadows to throttle your neck.
I had become the true shadow, the agent of darkness, the Grim Reaper himself!
Guards in front of the emperor's bedchamber came in pairs, so I had to move fast. I knocked out the first guy in seven seconds flat, then zipped behind the second. The sound of the first hitting the floor coincided perfectly with me choking out the second.
"……!"
The man tried to scream, but he didn't even have time to draw breath. In an instant, both guards were down.
I stole the key from the fallen guard's belt, unlocked the door from the front, and slipped into the bedchamber. The emperor was asleep, oblivious to the intruder right at his bedside.
There's a magical barrier up, but...
After raiding grand archmages' lairs and ancient kings' ruins, I'd gotten used to magic circles and traps. Dismantling a few outdated barrier layers was child's play. I knew exactly which part to break to shatter it silently. It just took a little time.
"Who goes there!"
Tch. I wanted to wrap this up quick and bounce. But with three layers of barriers, I'd burned a full minute. The fallen guards had drawn more—guards and the crown prince.
Just finished dismantling it.
In the commotion, the emperor woke. He saw me, and our eyes met.
"How much were you paid? I'll give you ten times that!"
The emperor, the tyrant who'd gone mad clinging to life after falling ill. The one who'd allied with the Demon Church, dabbled in black magic, and gotten executed by his own son. The empire's festering tumor. In this story, I'd be the one taking his life.
"Demon—! Gah!"
Before he could try any tricks, I ripped out his heart. At the same instant, a sword came crashing down like lightning toward my shoulder.
"Get away from my father!"
The future swordmaster, the boy who would become emperor. Fifteen-year-old Crown Prince Leonhardt. But right now, I was still stronger. Whether I'd ever reach swordmaster myself was up in the air, but at this moment, I had the edge.
I parried his swing and kicked out to widen the gap between us. Then I unleashed my long-hoarded Stealth Skill. To everyone watching, I'd just poofed into thin air. I strode boldly through the crowd searching fruitlessly for traces of me, bolting down the corridor to put as much distance as possible. Just before Stealth wore off, I Shadow Walked into another candle shadow.
After that, it was smooth sailing. I'd hop onto people's shadows as they ran around, hide out in decent spots, and creep forward when the coast was clear. The difficulty between standard 3D stealth action and using Shadow Walk was night and day. No one had ever thought this far. A person turning into a shadow to hide? Mages at best checked statues, paintings, and decorations—never imagining someone could lurk in the shadows.
So there was no way I'd get caught.
That takes care of the emperor's biggest trauma, then.
No more patricidal emperor, no more regicide arc. I'd stolen that role from the phantom thief. Alright, Leonhardt—live happily ever after from here on out!
Rogue Master.
Crown Prince Leonhardt had figured it out. The woman who'd casually murdered the emperor in front of a dozen guards and himself, then slipped away—she was the Rogue Master.
He'd witnessed her by chance while checking a letter at the thieves' guild. She'd been locked in a throwing contest with the guild master over the Rogue Master's Legacy. Her face had been cloaked in magical disguise the whole time. But Leonhardt, at his level, could see through it.
Not that he'd admit it lightly against an assassin, but she was unbelievably beautiful. Even he, who'd seen every beauty in the world thanks to his tyrant father's hobby of collecting women, was thrown off by her devastating looks.
"Shouldn't we form a pursuit team, Your Highness?"
The imperial knight commander asked, his face drained white. With the emperor assassinated, the entire knight order could be executed for incompetence and negligence—and they'd have no defense.
"Lord Bern. If you want to survive, swear absolute loyalty to me from this moment on."
The crown prince didn't automatically become emperor just because his father was dead. The empire was split between pro-emperor and anti-emperor factions. Now the real war began.
Can't issue a wanted order, that's for sure.
We knew next to nothing. If they issued one with what they had, it'd look like this:
[Age: ???]
[Gender: Female]
[Occupation: Rogue Master]
[Features: Tall with silver hair. Probably the most beautiful woman in the empire.]
Leonhardt pushed her from his mind for now. He had questions, but he'd have time to hunt her down after he became emperor.
The empire's investigative squad raided the Elbita underground thieves' guild. Pro-emperor faction's doing.
They'd always suspected the thieves' guild, of course. But without just cause, they couldn't wipe them out, so tensions had simmered. Now those tensions had snapped. The emperor was dead. To save their skins, the pro-emperor faction had to frame the anti-emperor side as traitors and purge them all.
"They're gone! All of them! They fled!"
But the guild site was empty—not a single ant in sight.
"These damn rats!"
They'd gotten word of the raid faster than the squad could mobilize and scattered. "Fitting for thieves—they run the fastest!" "We should've wiped them out before it came to this!" Pro-emperor courtiers who'd led the squad wailed in frustration. If they didn't find anti-emperor assassination evidence soon, they'd be the ones purged.
Meanwhile, in the east—three hours' hard ride from the capital—a woman leading a caravan on horseback spoke up.
"The new master's got fire. Pulling off a coup the day after claiming the Legacy? Bold."
Camilla, red-haired guild master of Elbita's thieves' guild. She was chatting with Diana, formerly the guild receptionist, about the Rogue Master.
"She must've been done watching the oppressed masses suffer."
"Guild numbers were swelling—getting hard to manage."
Elbita's thieves' guild wasn't your average thugs. It was society's shadows: artisans unjustly blacklisted by the emperor, demoted officials for honest counsel, nobles whose families were wiped out for not kissing the tyrant's ass. No wonder anti-emperor letters reached the crown prince through them.
"Long live the great Rogue Master! Guess that means we underlings gotta step up too, huh?"
The guild planned to scatter across the empire, evading pro-emperor pursuit. They'd resurface once the anti-emperor faction—now led by the crown prince—seized power properly. For the day their Rogue Master came calling again.
Erika had gained dozens of elite minions she'd never even recruited!
"The emperor is dead."
"Already?"
The place looked like a temple to Goddess Lavita above ground. But dig underground, and it was a sight. Traces of devil worship everywhere.
In the shadows of that fake temple, an emergency meeting unfolded.
"Did we misread the prophecy's timing?"
"It's not the date. He was killed by an outside assassin, not the crown prince."
"What?!"
The man recoiled in shock. A slight date shift was forgivable. But the perpetrator couldn't change. The patricidal emperor, wracked by guilt and madness—that was the biggest piece of their plan. Shattering it meant the whole scheme collapsed.
"We'll revise the plan. With our internal collapse plot failed, we'll have to breach the Great Wall in the north."
"It'll cost many lives."
"The one who shattered the prophecy and stole causality's thread... they'll pay in blood."
A feral red glow flickered in the man's eyes.