Commotion in the Imperial Capital (3)
The woman who had goaded the assassins smiled with a sultry, languid grace.
Her face looked far too young for her years, and that smile alone was enough to leave the assassins staring, spellbound.
“So you didn’t even know that, inside the Imperial Palace, the maids are stronger than the knights.”
That was how things worked here.
With those last words the assassins finally understood: the women in black cloaks were palace maids.
Maids? How could mere maids be the ones standing in their way?
This was the absolute worst. To be stopped here, of all places, by a handful of servants…
“How the hell is something that ridiculous even possible?!”
“It’s right here. Where else would it be? Can’t you see? Since you’re all going to die anyway, I’ll do you the kindness of explaining. The Emperor is far more rotten than you ever imagined.”
Rotten to a truly magnificent, spectacular degree.
She herself was living proof of it.
“What?”
“Rotten enough to hand the defense of the entire Imperial Palace over to the head of the Assassin Guild.”
Katrina’s lips curved into a wicked smile.
By now the palace had already become a slaughterhouse thick with the stench of blood.
They had known the Emperor possessed some rather eccentric hobbies, but never in their wildest dreams had they imagined it would go this far.
“A-Aaaaargh!”
The assassins were butchered without mercy.
Not one of them kept a whole body. Limbs melted, arms and legs were sheared clean off; no corpse remained intact.
“S-Spare me… please…”
“Sorry, but you’re all fated to die right here.”
“Damn it! I refuse to die in a place like this!”
They had been the ones who stormed in first, yet now they claimed they could not die here. Pathetic.
To think she had to temporarily open the palace to scum like these under imperial order… the Emperor was a woman she would never understand.
A small, spiteful urge rose in her.
This was the relationship between the Emperor and the Assassin Guild. A little prank of this scale should be fine. So…
“Guh! I’ll take the Emperor’s head even if it kills me!”
The one who shouted he would kill the Emperor and cling to her corpse—she decided to send him straight to the Emperor.
He was not the sort of man who would die from something this mild, after all.
She simply pretended not to notice. Looked the other way. Feigned ignorance. And let a single killer slip through.
All she wanted was to demonstrate that even people could make mistakes.
That if one trusted the Assassin Guild too completely, filthy criminals might still swarm into the Imperial Palace.
“Heh… hehahahahaha! You stupid bitches! You thought you’d killed every last one of us, didn’t you? But you were wrong! Even if I die, if I kill the Emperor here, everything ends!”
At last he crossed the corridor.
She would be in the bedchamber, surely. Only an idiot would leave the Emperor standing in the middle of a blood-soaked killing field while those damn maids ran wild.
“Huh. What do you know? The Emperor’s right here.”
A vulgar smile twisted across the assassin’s face.
She was even wearing a sheer white garment that barely concealed her skin.
If only he had the leisure, he would have thoroughly enjoyed that body.
“Just because the Emperor played a little prank…”
The Emperor was muttering something under her breath.
Had she gone mad? Had the fear of death finally snapped her mind? Well, what else could one expect from a woman who invited the Assassin Guild into her own palace?
“Keh-keh-keh. You pathetic bitch. Even if I’m alone, so what? You think a woman who’s nothing but a pretty bloodline symbol can beat me?”
Even as the assassin drew his blade, the Emperor paid him no attention at all. She simply continued in that sulky, dissatisfied voice.
“This is a little excessive, don’t you think?”
“Y-You’re ignoring me? In the name of my Master, I will kill you and shatter the arrogant fifteen-hundred-year history of this Empire!”
The Emperor did not so much as glance at him.
“Mm. I’m starting to get a little heated. I had no desire to dirty my own hands.”
“Huh?”
“If I had known it would come to this, I should have stationed a few of the Scribes who guard the archives. Those ones are rather skilled with a blade.”
She was merely talking to herself.
And behind Emperor Belia, something vast and dark began to gather.
It was not simply the gloom of the palace. It was the immense darkness that Belia herself carried within her.
Krrrrrrrrr…
“Well, it’s nothing more than a drifting cloud, really.”
“Wh-What… what in the world is that?”
The assassin’s eyes flew wide. He had no idea what he was looking at.
It was deeper than any abyss language could describe—something like a vortex of pure nothingness.
“How pitiful, little rat. If you had simply died by Katrina’s hand, you would never have had to die by mine. Truly pitiable and pathetic.”
So pitiable, in fact, that for a fleeting moment she almost wanted to spare him. But he had seen even a fraction of her true form; mercy was no longer an option.
“A… aa… ah…”
The assassin shook his head violently.
What stood before his eyes was something he could not believe even while staring straight at it.
Long ago a comrade had told him that seeing once was better than hearing a hundred times. Yet right now he could not even comprehend what his own eyes were showing him.
Was he even awake? Was this all nothing more than a hallucination?
Around that time, Emperor Belia carefully lifted her sword.
It held no real meaning, of course.
It was simply irritation at Katrina’s little prank.
So she decided to pour that irritation, exactly as it was, onto the rat standing in front of her.
“Dying by my hand…”
Krrrrrrrrr…
Darkness vast enough to warp space itself slowly closed in on the assassin.
He had never seen anything like it in his entire life.
“…is by no means a glorious death.”
Krrrrrrrrr…
He still had no words for the thing. He only knew it was powerful—powerfully hungry—and that it meant to devour him.
“Your flesh will vanish, and your soul will not even reach the cycle of reincarnation. It will simply be erased.”
Krrrrrrrrr…
“Your paltry few decades of history will disappear into the living, breathing fifteen-hundred-year history of this Empire.”
The colossal darkness of history crashed down upon the assassin.
Pssssshhhk!
He vanished from the spot as if he had never existed.
As though his very presence had been wiped clean from history itself. Nothing remained to prove he had ever been there. He was simply gone.
“Even a worthless life like his would normally have been granted a new chance… but he chose a poor opponent. Tsk, tsk.”
Whether the erased “nullified one” had family, friends, or a lover, no one would ever remember him again.
The only ones who still recalled him were the Emperor herself and Katrina, who had known him merely as a masked little rat.
By now, every member of Katrina’s guild had surely finished sweeping away the remaining assassins.
Come to think of it…
“Hmm. That damned Taesa. I even granted her the title of Imperial Teacher, yet she still ran off to protect Aslan. She didn’t even need to go; he would have been fine on his own.”
Was it the sort of affection that grew out of annoyance?
Or did some lingering fondness remain because he was her former fiancé?
Either way it hardly mattered, yet an oddly hollow feeling settled in her chest.
A complicated emotion she could not quite name. Olivia resembled someone she knew far too closely.
“Well, I can always summon her later.”
In the end she had valued the Emperor’s son more than the Emperor herself.
That alone would make for excellent teasing material.
Bang!
Having seized the eastern gate, Amelia put a bullet through the skull of the last remaining rebel.
“Worthless vermin. You’re going to die anyway, so why waste the energy?”
Still, thanks to them she had been able to put the newly issued firearms through a proper field test.
The unfortunate part was that the targets had been fellow citizens of the Empire. But what of it? The ones who started the rebellion were at fault; the one who killed them was not.
“Your Highness, what should we do with the rebels?”
“They dared to raise a rebellion. Kill every last one we captured. Leave only the bare minimum garrison and advance into the city center.”
The princess issued her orders without hesitation.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The Capital Army should be on the move by now. Judging by the location of headquarters, it will be better for us to take the outer districts and head for Atellina.”
There was no chance the Capital Army—excluding the rebels who had held the gate—had fallen into rebel hands. And men intent on finishing this quickly in a capital this vast would never have seized headquarters. Personnel from the Ashtar side were almost certainly there as well; by now they would already be moving.
“Atellina, Your Highness?”
“Even a useless younger brother is still a younger brother. Atellina is the place most likely to be in serious trouble this time, so that’s where we should go.”
Amelia and her forces began their advance into the Imperial Capital.
After skirting the outer districts for a while, however, a familiar flag came into view.
The banner of the allied kingdom.
What on earth was a kingdom flag doing out here on the outskirts?
“Hm? Isn’t that the kingdom’s standard?”
Looking closer, she saw kingdom troops locked in combat with the rebels.
Why were they here at all?
“Yes, Your Highness. An envoy party from the kingdom was scheduled to arrive in the Empire. It seems they timed it perfectly.”
“Talk about arriving on the worst possible day. What are you standing around for? We can’t have an ally suffering because of the Empire’s internal mess. Go save them.”
“At once!”
How mortifying it must have been—to come as envoys only to nearly die at the hands of imperial rebels.
Amelia’s muzzle swung toward the rebels attacking the kingdom forces.
Bang!
As expected, these guns were far more entertaining than swinging a sword.
The battle in Atellina dragged on.
We had already slaughtered every last one of those shadow-like figures—black mages, by the look of them.
Yet there were still far too many.
They must have set up more than simple equivalent-exchange magic; it looked like they had even laid down proper summoning circles.
Those bizarre shadows pouring into the place were clearly summoned monsters as well.
“There are more of these shadows than I expected.”
The woman who had just come back outside after dealing with the black mages spoke up.
“Yeah.”
Smashing the summoning circles would have been simple enough, but I had to consider the possibility that Atellina itself might suffer for it.
I always solved things with raw force; whenever a circle broke under my power, the entire surrounding area tended to get flattened along with it.
And this was the Imperial Capital. That fact had to stay at the front of my mind.
“Can’t you take care of them?”
“Those shadow monsters are weaker than—or about the same level as—my teddy bears, so as a summoner I’m still holding the combat advantage. But reaching the circles themselves is difficult. Honestly, just hunting them until my mana runs dry isn’t a bad option either. Besides, with that body of yours… if you handle it yourself, I can already picture what would happen to Atellina.”
“We’d need a specialist seal-master for that, right?”
At least no black mages remained. That was a small mercy. Now we just had to wait until the mana powering the circles burned out.
Those black mages had almost certainly left a few petty tricks behind as well.
If I put my mind to it and exercised careful control, I could finish everything cleanly and instantly. Seal magic existed precisely so that summoning circles could be sealed and erased without fuss—or even dismantled outright.
I was, after all, someone destined to stand among the ranks of the great mages. A little arrogance was fully justified.
But there was no real need to bother.
It was a hassle, for one thing. And I already held the position of Taesa. Capturing the black mages single-handedly with magic was achievement enough. That alone would be sufficient.
With just that, I would be recognized as a proper mage.
“You seem awfully relaxed, though. You’re not even fighting.”
“There are a few solid reasons I’ve completely cooled off.”
Very solid reasons.
“What are they?”
“First: your teddy-bear wave.”
With a teddy-bear wave rolling, there was no reason for me to step in and fight myself.
“Second: if I show off too spectacularly here, the Emperor is going to give me an earful.”
I was the Taesa. I could have gone to the Imperial Palace first, yet I chose Atellina instead.
To be honest, I had absolute confidence that the Emperor could protect herself, and equal certainty that Aslan’s combat ability was not enough to overcome Mains.
If Celia held the line, Aslan’s side would have managed even without me. Still, between the two options I had to pick the one that was even slightly more dangerous—Aslan’s.
The Emperor was the type who would summon me just to mock me for it.
“And third: it’s about time they showed up.”
Bang! Bang-bang-bang!
At last the gunfire of the Capital Army echoed across Atellina.