Chapter 35
Chapter 35
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 35
Chapter Title: James is Dead
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There was absolutely no need to explain it in painstaking detail, but Alexander could have dodged that strike with effortless ease.
Yet the calculated reason he chose not to was remarkably simple.
'Damn it all. Dodging this strike right here would completely blow my carefully constructed cover.'
Even if they didn't immediately peg him as an elite member of Owl—the Intelligence Minister's direct and lethal assassination squad—it would still raise enough suspicion to prove he wasn't just some ordinary, mundane guy.
So, with stoic resolve, he did not dodge.
He allowed the blade to take him right in a spot that barely, miraculously missed his vital organs.
"Ugh...!"
Even as he collapsed heavily from the agonizing stab wound, Alexander threw himself into the theatrical performance of a lifetime to avoid an ounce of suspicion.
In truth, he didn't even truly need to act his part.
No matter how often it happened in his line of work, the raw, searing pain of a cold knife never got any easier for a man to bear.
"J-James!?"
The woman who had just stabbed him—calling out the fake name he'd used for this deep-cover mission—collapsed right there on the spot in shock.
Her name was Karina Rochefield.
She was one of the various women Alexander had approached on the Minister's direct orders and kept as a devoted lover.
"I-I... What have I done in my madness...!"
As his rapidly blurring vision captured her growing delirium and total confusion, Alexander had one final coherent thought:
Go and call a damn doctor, you crazy bitch.
'Oh, this is becoming truly bad...'
Was he currently bleeding out more profusely than he had originally expected?
His entire life was beginning to flash before his fading eyes in a chaotic sequence.
All sorts of buried memories surfaced, but the one that burned brightest was from just a few days ago—the day the Minister had assigned him this specific solo mission.
As per the usual routine, hidden amid the stack of reviewed reports sat files detailing their sensitive personal information.
Intel on the daughters of two key Anti-Noble Faction power players... and two key Noble Faction figures.
The very moment he received those files, Alexander had instantly read the Minister's brilliant, hidden intent.
And he'd even bragged to his less-trusted colleagues about the honor.
Unlike you lot, I am trusted enough to receive a high-stakes solo mission directly from the Minister himself.
'It felt so incredibly good at the time...'
Recalling that moment of pride made him feel good all over again—until his failing mind snapped back to the cold reality of the floor.
'Wait, wait, wait! Someone—anyone—call the imperial knights or whatever! I am actually going to die at this rate!'
His thread of consciousness began to fade as his eyes slowly and heavily drifted shut.
Lamenting what a pathetic and unceremonious way this was to go, he worried if the department would even process his end properly as a death in the line of duty.
Just a second before his eyes fully closed, Alexander saw a familiar silhouette.
The Minister himself was approaching his fallen, bleeding form.
'...You even managed to predict this outcome.'
Clinging to the impossible and desperate wish that he'd been warned ahead of time, Alexander finally blacked out into the dark.
Karina Rochefield.
Emilia Barclay.
Violette Renoir.
Linda Abellier.
These were the distinguished names of the four women Alexander had been dating simultaneously.
To sum the situation up succinctly: he was juggling all four of them at once.
He eventually got caught in his lies, and one of them had impulsively stabbed him.
I have to give him credit—he is a magnificent and mad bastard, without a shred of doubt.
Wait a minute. Aren't these names actually quite familiar to me?
Racking my brain, I dredged up the painful memory of the arranged marriage candidate files my mother had once forced upon me "just to look at."
They'd vanished mysteriously at some point... Did Alexander actually steal them from my office?
Hold on. So this guy currently lying unconscious in a hospital bed deliberately hunted down and seduced each of his boss's potential marriage prospects one by one?
This is extremely bad. He is way crazier and more ambitious than I had originally thought.
"Minister. Alexander left this item behind. It was meant for you."
John said as he handed me a thick, intimidating stack of documents.
Please don't say he "left it behind" like that.
It makes it sound like he's actually dead. The doctor clearly said his life was no longer in any danger.
I dragged a chair over and sat by his bed, scanning the meticulously detailed files Alexander had compiled.
It was chillingly thorough—he'd documented absolutely everything about the women he'd dated.
From basics like names, physical traits, and hobbies... down to complex family ties, siblings, social connections, and even what all their distant associates did for a living.
Doesn't a breach of privacy this massive warrant calling the knights for an arrest?
"What shall we do with him, sir?"
I finished reading the last page, handed the stack back to John, and pondered the situation for a bit... but ultimately decided even reporting this would be going too far.
He is my subordinate, after all. Even if he strayed into madness for a moment, it is a boss's sacred duty to watch over him with warmth.
Not that I know exactly what a boss's duty entails. But it's probably something along those lines.
So when John asked what the next step should be, I answered firmly:
"Declare that James is dead."
"Understood, sir."
Upon hearing the news that Alexander had been stabbed and carted off to the infirmary, Celine tilted her head in confusion.
To be entirely precise, it wasn't the act of stabbing itself that puzzled her mind.
'Why on earth did he date them instead of just efficiently killing them?'
Karina Rochefield. Emilia Barclay. Violette Renoir. Linda Abellier.
These were the specific women the Minister had paid special, pointed attention to.
Rochefield and Barclay were Noble Faction daughters. Renoir and Abellier were Anti-Noble Faction daughters.
There was no way the Minister had ordered separate files made out of mere romantic interest.
They were high-priority elimination targets, obviously.
Including the names of Noble Faction ladies was a clear warning: oppose me, and no faction is safe from my reach.
That's exactly why she'd slipped their personnel files into the reviewed reports in the first place.
Apparently, the communication had broken down somewhere along the chain of command.
'Maybe the Minister actually wanted Alexander to pose as their lover to extract deep-cover intel?'
Even if that were the case, she would've had to deliver the files anyway. This was not her fault.
Celine shrugged the matter off and returned to her regular administrative duties.
Upon hearing the news that Alexander had been stabbed and carted off to the infirmary, Christina tilted her head in bewilderment.
She was utterly baffled by the circumstances of the stabbing itself.
'Why did he let her stab him? Wasn't the initial approach supposed to be a prelude for killing them?'
If one single man had murdered the daughters of key figures from both the Noble and Anti-Noble Factions, it would have sparked a massive, uncontrollable chaos.
Christina had figured that inciting mutual distrust and paralyzed suspicion was the Minister's ultimate goal.
Targeting the children was a classic, brutal way to drive rivals mad with a blind rage.
She had no idea what the Minister planned to do after that paranoia set in, but she'd assumed it was some grand scheme handed off to Alexander as usual.
'But Alexander got stabbed instead... So even this failure was part of the Minister's grand plan?'
She mulled over the various tactical possibilities but soon gave up the effort.
She simply couldn't keep up with the sheer speed and depth of the Minister's thinking.
'The Minister clearly has the entire situation handled.'
There was no way a man like him would die from a novice's clumsy stab. There was no need for her to worry.
Christina headed out with a light heart to begin her next mission.
Upon hearing the news that Alexander had been stabbed and carted off to the infirmary, John felt a sudden surge of overwhelming and profound emotion.
It was a very recent hobby of his, but John had been devouring classic romance novels lately.
In a world of his own, steeped in blood and death, those sweet-bitter tales of love were more than just escapism—they restored his fraying humanity.
So when he heard that Alexander hadn't dodged the knife from his own lover, he was deeply and fundamentally moved.
'Even if it began as a mission, you truly and deeply fell for her in the end.'
Falling for the enemy and meeting a tragic, bloody end was the absolute classic of romance literature: its origin, its pinnacle, and its perfection.
But a mission was still a mission. Once the intel had been squeezed out, eliminating the loose ends made perfect sense.
Yet the Minister's response to the question of "What now?" was truly astounding to him.
"Declare that James is dead."
Hearing that specific command triggered John's second, even greater wave of intense emotion.
The Minister surely knew Alexander's true heart—that he had been stabbed by the woman he truly loved.
And the Minister had chosen to honor that love.
He had acknowledged Alexander's will, his resolve, his conviction... and his love—allowing him to linger in her heart forever, even like this.
'Now she will never be able to forget him until the very day she dies. It is heart-wrenchingly tragic, but that is exactly what makes it so beautiful.'
Wishing that Alexander would wake soon and heal his broken heart, John returned to the department and tasked the staff with fabricating James's official death records.
Upon hearing that Alexander had been stabbed and carted off to the infirmary, Valdemar and Sergei showered endless praise on the Minister who had saved him.
"Predicting the exact, split-second moment of the stab? As expected of the Minister's foresight."
"Everything in existence is in the palm of his hand, isn't it?"
To the elite owls, a mere knife prick was just an occasional and minor hazard of the job. They didn't spare Alexander a single thought and spent the whole day in a heated discussion of the Minister's incredible foresight.
A scandal that turned the entire capital upside down suddenly exploded with a roar.
One man dating four high-profile women at once finally got caught—and one of them had seemingly killed him.
The killer had somehow miraculously escaped any legal punishment, but the people were thrilled by the rare and juicy blockbuster gossip.
Digging deeper into the details only made the situation weirder: all four women hailed from top-tier, influential families. Two were even high-ranking nobles.
The other two came from equally powerhouse lineages—and their fathers were all high-ranking Imperial officials.
To the commoners on the street, it was just another piece of juicy and scandalous entertainment.
But to those personally involved, it was anything but a joke.
"We simply cannot just let this insult slide!"
"This whole mess has the Minister's hand written all over it! We need to confront him at once!"
Prime Minister Erickson merely shook his head as the officials—the fathers of those girls at the scandal's heart—with veins bulging in their necks, shouted in a blind fury.
He was approaching the incident from a completely different, tactical angle.
"First off, we have no hard evidence it was the Minister's doing—it is just our own suspicions. But let us think this through logically. If it is indeed him, why would he touch even the noble ladies belonging to his own side?"
The Anti-Noble Faction members' eyes suddenly shifted in realization.
They finally grasped what the Prime Minister was subtly implying.
In the heavy, suffocating silence that followed, one member cautiously raised a hand and voiced what everyone was thinking.
"Maybe we have had it entirely wrong from the very start? The Minister... he has never truly been aligned with the Noble Faction."
The Prime Minister and all of his subordinates nodded their heads in solemn unison.
"But he is certainly not on the side of our Anti-Noble Faction either."
"Then whose side is he actually on...?"
"He is on no one's side. That is precisely why he sent this warning—and why His Majesty granted him the Grand Marshal title."
The Prime Minister was now entirely certain: his vague premonition had solidified into truth.
The Minister was the Empire's ultimate balancer and balancer.