Chapter 31
Though Kim Yul, still going about life as a small-time citizen, hadn’t given it much thought, the Empire was a rather enormous country.
Especially if you looked for the country in Earth’s history that most closely resembled the Empire’s power structure.
It could be said to resemble England, the vilest and most wretched country in all human history.
Like any absolute monarchy, the Empire’s emperor couldn’t possibly oversee everything himself.
In the long, arduous history the imperial people called the ‘Unification War,’ unification had not been completed by some white-horse-riding emperor appearing to finish the job; far more of it had been the product of tedious, sinister political alliances and betrayals.
So naturally, it had taken a form closer to local rule by the nobility than to centralization.
A constitutional monarchy had emerged, divided into an upper house that collected the nobles’ opinions and a lower house that collected the citizens’ opinions.
The emperor was not exactly pleased with a situation in which his own power was constrained.
So whenever he felt like it, he would encourage the lower house from behind the scenes and quietly work to restrict the privileges granted to the nobles.
Even now, rumors were circulating that former Assemblyman Asterik, who had long since suffered a total loss of status, had been cured of Orange Bottle disease the moment the emperor sent a separate letter praising his service.
Naturally, Duke Bertus, once one of the emperor’s most trusted men, was also unhappy with the current political situation.
The lower house.
Why should he have to hand over even a portion of his power to the citizens, even if only in form?
And why was the emperor so damn determined to mess with him?
On top of that, those elf bastards, especially the House of Wisperaud, were even trying to slyly spread the ideology of their tree-loving, tree-loving country.
Since unification, not a single thing had gone in a direction he liked.
So.
If this country was to regain its greatness, a grand plan would be necessary.
And Duke Bertus had been steadily preparing for that all along.
There was even a green light.
Historically, the Holy Kingdom had been at odds with the elves, and an implicit understanding of support or tacit approval from that kingdom had been reached with the monstrous saintess.
Of course, it was pretty annoying that the saintess’s lover kept shouting ‘Revolyushun!’ and trying to stir up trouble through a novel.
But if you looked at it the other way around.
Since something that had already been foreshadowed in the novel was now actually happening, the shock the public felt would be a little lessened as well.
And now, at long last.
“All preparations for the night are complete.”
“If the night ends successfully, the Northern Grand Duke has also decided to join us.”
“The capital guard commander also contacted us to say he will minimize patrol personnel on the day of the operation and schedule an after-work dinner instead.”
“I have organized the movements and list of the main targets that need to be dealt with.”
Coordination with the collaborators was also proceeding without a hitch.
Of course.
“There is an assassin guild that has lost contact.”
There had been a bit of noise.
That was only natural.
How in the world could there be a perfect plan?
To spread attention out as much as possible, and to avoid leaving any trail, he had spent years laying all kinds of schemes.
So.
Even if one gear squeaked, there would be no problem.
The ‘Night of Knives’ was ripe.
The targets were the emperor’s underlings.
And the political enemies and the anti-abolition faction in the lower house.
Most of them would not make it through the night.
Right.
Just like the Ten Eunuchs.
* * *
[Title: Two Heroes: The Villain Hides His Ambition] [Current serialization: Chapter 38]
[Historical accuracy: Matches] [Quality assessment: A fine work]
[Public reception: Mostly positive] [Daily readers: 6,893]
[Daily readers needed to unlock next skill: 3,107]
[Must be sustained for at least 21 days (relaxed). (Current: 20 days)]
[Expected skill acquisition: [A-rank] Cao■’s ■bo■]
Hmm.
Apparently, the wall of 10,000 concurrent readers was a high one.
There was also a bit of a problem with Truth Daily’s scale.
It was a fairly major newspaper, but since it was run mainly from the imperial capital, its circulation apparently wasn’t all that high compared to other newspapers.
It was also said that the high printing costs caused by its use of eco-friendly recycled paper had hindered Truth Daily’s popularization, though…….
Still, there wasn’t yet a newspaper in this fantasy land that could sell hundreds of thousands of copies a day like the Daily Express or the New York World.
Even so, the fact that nearly 7,000 people living in the capital were reading my novel every day was something to be grateful for.
On top of that, the fact that my hypothesis had been exactly right made me grin from ear to ear.
Originally, the acquisition reward started out as a C-rank skill.
But because I secured the daily readership ahead of the reward deadline, the reward tier automatically rose, and the acquisition deadline was shortened as well.
In other words.
If I wrote a smash hit that took off from the very beginning, I’d have a much better chance of getting a good skill right from the start!
Hee-hee.
Please don’t laugh like that. You look frivolous.
That much?
Yes, that much. If the protagonist in the story laughed like that, the readers would be pretty unhappy.
“…….”
Hmm…….
Right.
It seemed like our tin can’s words had a point.
Maybe I should try laughing a little more solemnly from now on.
Keh-heh-heh.
“……Kim Yul?”
Gugubopgu.
For now, I’d tease it a little more.
This was the very spirit of ‘I don’t like it, bleh-bleh.’
The mindset that the great Americans and the even greater Black-Haired Generalissimo held up as a golden rule.
.
.
.
At long last, 00:00, about one minute away.
With the tin can clattering away at the keyboard and the sound of letters turning into text as my background music, I lay in a recliner listening to music.
[A-rank] [Cao Zhi’s Seven-Step Talent]
What kind of skill could it possibly be?
Honestly, I couldn’t gauge it at all.
Western figures could be roughly guessed even if a few letters of their names were masked, and if only the name was given, I could also roughly estimate the skill.
But.
How many people with the surname Cao are there?
Besides, what was that half-masked ‘bo’ supposed to be, anyway—bo?
For reference, HistoriA’s answer was.
- Isn’t it Cao Cao’s health tonic?
It was an utterly shameless dirty joke based on the prejudice that I was a married-woman killer.
I could tell from the way he was dressed.
“It’s the avatar you set, isn’t it.”
“Could be.”
What was I supposed to do if Eastern-style clothing was my taste?
If I’d known it would come to this, I would’ve dressed it in a qipao.
And then, tick, tock.
At last, 00:00 arrived.
Shadow Time did not occur.
Instead.
[A-rank] [Cao Zhi’s Seven-Step Talent]
“Cao Zhi was Cao Cao’s son, a man of both letters and arms, and an exceptionally well-rounded talent. Surviving the succession struggle was proof enough of his ability. Like him, you shall not come to harm in any situation as long as you take seven steps.”
“……?”
An unexpected skill had popped out.
* * *
“The time has come.”
Two in the morning.
The plan Duke Bertus had spent more than a year preparing finally burst into flame.
The hounds the duke had raised for this day scattered into the streets all at once.
Their objective was simple.
To personally deal with the people he couldn’t outsource.
And to deliberately disguise the traces, pinning the blame on someone else.
Also.
To eliminate everyone involved with the assassinations before dawn broke.
It was Duke Bertus’s seasoned scheme to ensure he would never be traced.
In truth, if a target had capable bodyguards, some assassinations would fail.
But even if the assassins failed and were captured, he had arranged things so meticulously that the trail would never lead back to Duke Bertus.
“Let’s go.”
As long as those hounds themselves didn’t fail, that would be enough.
Carrying that heavy burden.
The sharpest dagger that Duke Bertus had honed.
Klappen also stepped out onto the darkened night streets.
His first assigned target was the writer Ulysses.
The reason he had been assigned to him rather than to the other important figures who would have escorts was simple.
The monster saintess, Roseline.
An existence even more troublesome than any escort knight in the Empire.
“Capture her,” he had been ordered, but the fact that they had even assigned him to secure the prisoner personally meant…….
“That means they want both of them dead.”
He was confident.
No matter how much of a nonstandard monster she was, he too had monster blood in his veins.
.
.
.
After splitting up from his companions.
Klappen headed straight for Ulysses’s confirmed residence.
As promised, there were almost no patrols on the streets, and since he lived in a tenement district where only the poor resided,
there were no obstacles along the way.
It was fine until he lowered a rope from the rooftop and carefully stepped through the open window.
“…….”
Except that the house was empty even of furniture, let alone showing any trace that someone had lived there.
It was Klappen himself who had been monitoring Ulysses all along.
He’d gone back and forth between the newspaper office and the house several times.
At times, he’d go in and out with a woman with red hair, and he had also once seen him giving a ride on his shoulders to some cute blonde girl.
Up to that point, it had only been a light impression: the guy had a flashy love life and pretty wild tastes.
Was all of that just an illusion?
Klappen took a dispel scroll from his pocket and tore it, but his mind remained perfectly clear.
He hadn’t mistaken this for another house, either.
Then.
Had the monster saintess already spirited him away?
He felt confused for a moment.
“……?”
When he returned to the rooftop, he doubted his own eyes.
He definitely hadn’t sensed even the slightest presence.
But.
In that brief instant, Ulysses had somehow appeared as if he had torn through dimensions themselves, and he was stepping out of the building carrying some kind of club.
Was it the wrong house?
No, there was no way.
Even so, nothing changed.
Rather, he should be grateful that Ulysses had shown up.
And he couldn’t sense the monster saintess’s presence nearby, either.
The perfect opportunity to cleanly eliminate the target.
A moment later.
Klappen boldly revealed himself before Ulysses.
Normally, showing your face head-on when attempting an assassination was one of the taboos.
Klappen was the legitimate successor of the assassin family known as Killingfield.
And his family had long passed down a tradition called ‘aisatsu,’ though he himself didn’t know its exact origin.
He had once questioned the tradition just like his predecessors, but boldly revealing yourself and killing your opponent was also a way to show an overwhelming difference in rank.
And besides, assassination was.
Wasn’t it enough as long as there were no witnesses?
“Domo. Ulysses=san. Killingfield desu.”
As soon as the ‘aisatsu’ was successfully completed.
Klappen immediately lunged forward and swung his dagger to carve a distinct ‘line’ across Ulysses’s neck.
But.
“……!”
Ulysses, by simply stepping toward him once, smoothly deflected the slash aimed squarely at his neck.
Klappen’s eyes widened.
The duke had clearly said he was nothing more than a lazy writer who hadn’t learned any martial arts.
And yet how could he have dodged it?
The two men’s eyes met for an instant.
Within those ominous black pupils.
Klappen glimpsed an endless abyss.