Chapter 4:
Assassins
THREE MEN in matching uniforms patrolled the dorms of the First
Campus. They met up at an intersection of hallways, making small talk as they
continued together toward their destination.
"Nothing looks out of the ordinary back there."
"Everything was good on my end, too."
"Let's do this and get out of here already."
The student dorms housed many noble children and employed experienced
knights as guards. After all, many of the students here were from quite important
families. As a result, there was nothing strange about several knights walking
through the dorm's halls at this time of night.
From the shadows of the three knights, a man with a black mask appeared
without a sound. The man wore a reddish-brown cloak, with the red becoming
more pronounced toward his feet. Large though he was, his hands seemed even
larger than they should be based on the size of his head. His eyes could be seen
through the holes in his black mask, and were red as well.
The man was obviously suspicious, and when the knights spotted him, the
three drew weapons from their waists.
"Who are you? How'd you get in here?!"
The well-trained guards were poised for a fight, but the large cloaked man
simply held up his empty hands and greeted them in a carefree tone.
"Good evening! It's a nice night, isn't it?"
At that moment, other men dressed in the same manner as he appeared
behind the knights. They seemed to pop up out of the shadows, and soon the trio
was surrounded.
"A-are you assassins?" one of the knights demanded, taking a step
forward.
The moment the knight moved, one of the cloaked men threw a knife that
struck him in the forehead, killing him instantly.
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"They know what they're doing!"
"I'll kill you, dammit!" cried one of the two remaining knights.
"No! Wait, don't just rush them!" his partner shouted.
The furious knight leapt forward, overwhelmed by his fear, but a cloaked
man immediately dropped him with another throwing knife. He fell to the
ground and sank into the shadows of their attackers.
"Just my luck," the last knight said.
The eerie group overwhelmed him and restrained him on the floor.
The large, cloaked man gave a throaty chuckle. "Terribly sorry for
interrupting your work, but I've got some business to attend to, so you'll have to
excuse me."
The dorm the cloaked men had appeared in housed male students,
including Liam. The large man vanished from that spot as if he had sunk into the
floor and reappeared inside Liam's room.
Liam was in bed, snoring quietly. The large man reached out to him...and
pulled the loose blanket up to cover the boy's shoulders.
Liam opened his eyes. He appeared to have been aware of the intruder
from the beginning.
"That was quite a commotion, Kukuri."
The large man called Kukuri sank to one knee and bowed his head deeply.
"I apologize for waking you, Master Liam. Some noisy dogs got in, so we were
driving them off."
"Dogs? If they're someone's pets, make sure you return them to their
owner."
"As you wish, Master Liam." Kukuri was a suspicious-looking character,
but he worked for Liam.
Kukuri disappeared, sinking into the floor, and reappeared at the place
where his men had brought the captured knight. He looked down at the sole
survivor of the trio and spoke to him in a much more mocking tone than he'd
used with Liam.
"We can't have people sneaking into the dorms dressed as security now,
can we? And even worse, you were after Master Liam's life!"
The captive trembled with fear, but he made no attempt to respond. He
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was indeed an assassin who'd meant to take Liam out, having sneaked into the
dorm in the uniform of a security guard.
"I have an idea of who sent you here, but I'd like to make sure first. Please
look me in the eyes."
Kukuri's red eyes glowed ominously, and the assassin's face suddenly
emptied of emotion. In an entranced voice, he informed Kukuri about his
employer. "We were hired by Lord Derrick. He ordered us to capture Liam and
torture him."
When they heard that, Kukuri's men took out their knives, eyes burning
with bloodlust. Their shadows squirmed, an eerie creaking sound coming from
them.
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"Wait," Kukuri cautioned them, holding up a hand, and the men lowered
their weapons. "Master Liam's orders were to deliver this dog to his owner. Why
don't we take the opportunity to dress him up a little first?"
Kukuri laughed eerily, and his men followed suit.
The assassin came back to his senses and began to sweat profusely at the
unsettling group before him. "Wh-who are you guys? I've been in this business a
long time, but I've never seen anyone like you!"
Kukuri tilted his head to the side and introduced himself. "Who are we?
Well...you could call us a clan that was supposed to have been destroyed. Or
maybe a clan that's come back from the past? It has nothing to do with you, in
any case. Now, we'll just escort you back to your owner. Let's just get you
looking nice and pretty first!"
Kukuri's huge hands reached out for the man.
"N-nooooo!" the assassin screamed.
"Now, now," Kukuri whispered to him. "You tried to bring harm to
Master Liam. For that, you and your master clearly deserve death."
***
The next morning...
"Gyaaaaa!"
Derrick awoke to the scream of one of the dorms' servants. He rose,
holding his head.
"Shut up... I've got a hangover! My head's killing me! Who the hell's
screaming? I'll execute you, so step forw—eep?"
He spotted an object that should not have been in his room, and when he
realized what it was, he screamed just as that servant had. It was the trio of
assassins he'd sent after Liam, but they'd been transformed into a single
grotesque work of art.
"Eeek! Someone, clean that up!"
The monstrous artwork repulsed Derrick. He didn't want to believe that it
existed inside his room. It was enough to make him forget his hangover. His
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heart raced at the sight.
Wh-when...? When did they sneak in here?
Security in the student dorms was tight, and it was doubly so for Derrick,
considering that he'd planned on abducting and torturing Liam. He'd hired some
extremely skilled knights whose sole function was to defend him, and yet this
horrid art piece had been left here without anyone even noticing. How could this
have happened?
The knights flew into the room at Derrick's scream. They were left
speechless by the sight that greeted them. The servant who'd entered earlier
started to vomit.
"Are you all right, Lord Derrick?"
"D-do I look all right? I just pissed myself! A-anyway, hurry and clean
this up!"
"Wait... We need to report this to the school," one of the knights said.
Derrick quickly stopped him.
"A-are you stupid?! These are the guys I sent after Liam! They're not even
supposed to be here! I'm gonna be the one in trouble if it gets out that this
happened!"
Derrick knew that if someone were to look into this, he would be the one
in trouble. Plus, the people who had so brazenly broken into his room obviously
worked for Liam. Their art piece was a message for him that said, "We could kill
you at any time."
Derrick held his head. Damnit! The whole fleet I scraped together got
wiped out, my brothers are pissed as hell at me, and I lost that thing, too! How
am I even gonna recover from this?
With his personal fleet annihilated, Derrick had lost most of his sway
within the Family. His brothers were making demands of him and nothing was
going his way anymore. And worst of all, he'd lost that. There was even the
possibility the Family might simply eliminate him now.
"What? Damn it all! Why the hell does he have a fortress-class?!"
He couldn't believe the planet he'd sent his fleet to was being guarded by
a fortress-class ship. It was unthinkable that someone would station such an asset
to protect a mere frontier planet. Only the regular army or a small number of top
nobles even had one at all. If he'd known he'd be dealing with a monster like
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that, Derrick would never have attacked that planet.
"This is gonna affect my reputation. I'll have to get rid of Liam with my
own two hands, somehow."
By this point, Derrick was already a fourth-year student at the primary
school, with Liam being a second-year. If he didn't take care of this matter soon,
before he graduated, his siblings would move in and take care of it instead. If
that happened, Derrick would be deemed useless and he'd lose his place in the
Family for sure.
"I-I know! The tournament. If I get rid of Liam there, I can uphold my
reputation. He'll enter that for sure. The tournament's a dangerous event, and if
someone were to get hurt, well..."
It was always understood that the worst might occur during these battles
between formidable mobile knights. Students couldn't participate unless they
knowingly accepted the possibility of death. Derrick began to plot just how he
would kill Liam in that tournament.
***
Things had been rather noisy around me lately. Apparently, some dogs
had sneaked into the dorms during the night. Dogs, eh? I owned one in my
previous life, so I hoped they got back to their owner safely.
I thought about this Kukuri guy I'd recently assigned to my personal
security team. His name struck me as being amusingly cute, considering how he
looked. Yeah, Kukuri is too cute for this huge guy with such a sinister aura. I
gave him points for reporting the incident with the dogs, since it suggested he
knew I was fond of them. Like Marie, Kukuri was another one of the petrified
people I'd liberated, and he was a really great find, just like her.
In any case, I was now in my second year at primary school, but classes
weren't all that different from how they'd been in year one. At this point, I was
really getting tired of them. That was why lately I'd been spending all my time
thinking about how to get Rosetta to submit to me.
The noble lady's only solace was in her family's status, though they were
a dukedom in name only. House Claudia was poor, but their peerage at least was
legitimate. Like Wallace had said, her family had been suffering for two
thousand years because of some pig-headed emperor in the past. There was a
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limit to how pig-headed you could be...but since House Claudia still held their
heads high in the face of their accursed situation, they must have had truly noble
spirits! And if I could crush that noble spirit, I bet it'd be really entertaining.
"Won't be easy, though..."
I wanted the stubborn girl to bow before me, and then I would step on her
head. That would make me the picture-perfect evil lord. For my inspiration, I
had in mind some of the villains in the period dramas my old friend Nitta used to
describe to me.
It would probably be hard to break her pride with money. Of course, it
was only fun because that wasn't likely to break her, but that meant I had to
think of another strategy. I may have been a count, but she was a future duchess,
money or no. It would be difficult to leverage my position because as a duchess-
to-be she was technically of higher rank, but then again, Rosetta's family had no
actual influence. They were looked down upon so much that no one was likely to
say anything no matter what I did. And the fact that Rosetta still held her head
high despite her situation was the best thing about her.
As I sat in the classroom muttering to myself, Wallace caught sight of me
and grimaced. "Someone's in a good mood."
"Well, I'm enjoying myself right now." Fantasies of how to make a
haughty noble lady submit to me had been amusing me quite a bit lately.
"I don't understand how you think, Liam. I spend every day in anxiety."
What a weak-hearted character. He acts critical of me, but every time he
squanders all his allowance, he comes and pesters me for more. In fact, he did
that only yesterday! How bad is this guy's ability to plan if he runs out of funds
with more than half a month remaining until his next pay day? Does he even
recognize his position as my underling? He doesn't just think of me as his
walking bank, does he? I'd like for him to come in handy for me every once in a
while, but is there anything this guy is actually good for? I'm beginning to regret
becoming his patron now. No, wait a second...
"Hey, Wallace."
"Yes? You're increasing my allowance?"
I smacked him on the back of the head. "I want to know a way to raise my
peerage, and one that takes as little time as possible. You're an Imperial
prince... You must know something about that."
"Raising your peerage? If you don't want it to take time, then..." Wallace
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folded his arms and contemplated my question, but he came up with an answer
quickly. "Well, buying it would be the quickest way."
"What, the Empire just sells peerage? How much is it?"
"Well, not exactly. You'd be buying it from other houses."
According to Wallace, plenty of houses were nobility in name only. In
other words, houses like my own House Banfield had been under the rotten
leadership of my father and his father before him. Even if they had no real worth
other than their name, there were other houses who still desired their peerage.
Conversely, there were other houses that had real value but low peerage. One
way a house like that could elevate its rank was to take on the peerage of another
house. If a house was willing to sell its peerage, it first passed its power on to
one of its children, after which the buying house took in that child through
marriage. The child conveyed its peerage to their husband or wife, and thus the
buying family obtained a higher peerage.
Was that really okay? There was one big problem with this method,
however; houses with no real power tended to be swimming in debt to the
Empire.
"Since the purchasing house pays off these debts and whatever other
issues the house has, the Empire acknowledges the legitimacy of the peerage
transfer."
When I heard this, I got an idea. You can buy peerage if you have the
cash...
I'd been unsatisfied with my social position for a little while now. Being a
count was nothing special when there were so many other nobles with the same
title. Dukes and duchesses were a level above, and conveniently here before me
was a vulnerable noble of that rank. My idea was this: if I stole the one thing
Rosetta clung to, her peerage, I should be able to break her spirit with the added
bonus of becoming a duke.
"So to put it simply, if I pay off a poor house's debt and take a wife from
them, I can raise my peerage?"
Wallace nodded. "You could. In your current position, there's a limit to
how high you could rise, though. Things are a little different for a margrave,
but... Anyway, you're going to pay off some other house's debts? If you can do
that, then you could raise my allowance, can't you?"
I shut Wallace up with a flick to the forehead and began to formulate my
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plans. If I just walked up to Rosetta and told her, "Hand over the peerage you're
going to inherit," the only thing I'd be getting would be a glare with those cold
eyes of hers. While I enjoyed seeing her rebellious attitude flare up, what I really
wanted to see was her fall into despair. I wanted to watch her face when she
finally realized I'd stolen the only thing she had to be proud about.
I thought back on the people in my last life who laughed at my anguished
face when I was in despair. Now it was my turn to do the laughing.
I stood up from my chair, so Wallace followed suit.
"Going to the bathroom? I'll go too, then."
Hold on, why are you going to the bathroom with me? And now I see
Kurt's standing up, too. Why do these guys like going to the bathroom together
so much? I notice Eila's watching me and Kurt, and she looks really happy for
some reason. What's she blushing about? And why is she shooting glares at
Wallace?
I told Wallace, "I've got an idea, and I need to contact home. I'm not
going to the bathroom, so don't come with me."
In our classroom, I saw Rosetta sitting off by herself, hanging her head. I
thought it was great that she was always so aloof and withdrawn. Those dunce-
like grades she got were perfect too. She wasn't athletic at all. Despite all this,
she seemed to try so hard.
Oh, icy Rosetta, you pauper noble whose only strength is your pride. I
think you're just great.
***
In the palace on the Capital Planet, the prime minister was hard at work as
usual when he received an emergency communication from Serena, who was
still undercover at House Banfield. Thinking there must be some trouble, he
accepted the call right away.
"What is it? Is there a problem?"
"I felt I should tell you this as soon as possible. Lord Liam is considering
a marriage with House Claudia."
When he heard this, the prime minister's eyes widened, and he shook his
head. He would never have imagined Liam choosing to marry into House
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Claudia, of all families. Such a union wouldn't benefit him in any way. At the
same time, however, he almost felt like Liam was the only noble the troubled
House Claudia could be entrusted to.
"Anyone would think he's making a serious mistake, but I also feel as if a
great weight has been lifted from my shoulders."
The Empire's harsh treatment of House Claudia was something that had
been decided by an emperor a very long time ago, and many people were
uncomfortable with such an unfair arrangement. The prime minister was one
such person, but the damage was so deep he hadn't known how it might be
rectified. Since House Claudia was a dukedom in name only, and anything but
prosperous, they were saddled with a massive debt and couldn't clear the stain
on their reputation for having opposed a member of the Imperial family. An
immense amount of power would be required to help them, and yet whoever did
so wouldn't gain anything in return.
Serena seemed shocked by Liam's intentions and was flustered as she
made her report to the prime minister. "At Liam's request, Brian has already
contacted the head of House Claudia. They seem suspicious right now, but
they'll likely reach an agreement soon when they see that Liam is serious about
this."
"House Claudia has no reason to decline."
Naturally, House Claudia would be suspicious of the offer, since they'd
been tormented by other noble houses for such a long time, but they were
unlikely to get another offer like this ever again. For them, this would be their
last chance. The prime minister was certain that when they realized it was no
cruel joke, they would accept the marriage proposal quickly.
He said, "I'll personally advise them to accept."
"You're not going to stop them?!" Liam's decision was so strange and out
of the blue that Serena had wanted the prime minister's take on it, but she was
shocked by his reaction.
"I'm sure you are aware that House Claudia has endured enough."
"Surely there are more advantageous matches for him, though. Don't you
think you should introduce him to a daughter from one of the houses you're
close with?"
"That would have been fine, of course, but this pairing would make the
more open-minded nobles take notice of House Banfield. I wonder if that's what
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he's after?"
Serena was confused to see the prime minister smile. "What is it, sir?"
The prime minister believed he had hit upon Liam's aim. "Well, I thought
he was being foolish when I heard he was antagonizing House Berkeley, but he
must be thinking several steps ahead. First, he befriends Prince Wallace, and
now this with House Claudia, eh? If he's opposing House Berkeley, then it
makes sense to align himself with nobles who also resent that family."
"Opposing... Is that what he's doing?"
Serena realized what the prime minister suspected, and now both of them
were of the belief that all these decisions by Liam were pieces of a larger
calculation on his part.
House Claudia would be difficult to help and aiding them would gain
Liam nothing in return. There should be no merit in doing so...but that wasn't
strictly true. Liam's name would become known by those nobles who were of a
just mind if he helped the unjustly persecuted House Claudia. In fact, his
reputation would likely skyrocket with those houses.
And if he seriously intended to oppose House Berkeley, the prime minister
couldn't be happier. "All of these issues that have been left unresolved for too
long are being tidied up, one after another. Let's allow the count to continue his
good work."
"The palace will support this marriage proposal, then?"
"Absolutely. The Empire will profit and finally wash its hands of its guilt.
And if a powerful count becomes a duke and continues to support the Empire,
what else is there to do but welcome that? The Empire has fallen a bit too far
into disrepair. I've been hoping we could get things to run more as they should,
and Liam could be the fresh blood we need to make that happen."
Serena wasn't fully convinced, but she had to accept the prime minister's
stance on the matter. "I shall tell them that the palace supports Lord Liam in this
matter, then."
"Please do."
Their communication ended, and the prime minister murmured, "Count
Banfield... I am expecting much from you."
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