At Kain’s question, Count Theseus Haren quietly closed his eyes, his expression darkening.
He seemed to be organizing the tangled thoughts in his mind, then slowly opened his mouth.
“So it has come to this.”
He had suspected as much.
Count Theseus Haren appeared to have already guessed the fate of the Hassassin.
In the Founding Day Catastrophe, the Emperor had become a corpse, every royal except Kain had been slaughtered, and countless loyal retainers and heroes who were meant to lead the Felberg Empire’s future had lost their lives.
It was an incident that occurred in full view of the public, so the scale of the damage could neither be hidden nor denied.
Yet there was one thing that remained unknown to the world: exactly how much damage the Emperor’s shadows, the Hassassin, had suffered.
Even Count Theseus Haren only had guesses; he did not know the details.
Though his family had once trained the Hassassin, after declaring neutrality to survive the threat of the Five Pillars, nearly all contact with the imperial house had been severed.
“Did Count Haren know about this?”
“It was merely conjecture, Your Majesty. But from the question you have just posed, I now fully understand the situation.”
Count Haren answered Kain without hiding anything.
“Then I would like your answer.”
The answer to whether he knew the means of contacting the Hassassin.
With the annihilation of the Hassassin, the night of the Empire had become precarious.
To protect that night, they had to quickly absorb the assassins and informants under the Hassassin before they scattered completely.
After the Haren family declared neutrality, another loyalist noble house had begun raising the Emperor’s direct shadows, but that house’s lord and every direct descendant had also perished.
That was how devastating the Founding Day Catastrophe had been to the imperial faction.
“Your Majesty. Though my house declared neutrality to survive, not for a single moment has our loyalty to the imperial family ever wavered.”
Speaking in a sorrowful tone, Theseus Haren suddenly stood.
At his abrupt movement, Baron Heinrich Denver, standing to Kain’s right, began to react, but stopped once he realized there was no hostility.
Count Haren, rising from his chair, knelt before Kain without the slightest hesitation.
“With the heart of a sinner, I renew my oath of loyalty once more. Please accept my house.”
He did not speak at length.
But lengthy words were unnecessary.
Count Haren was offering a transaction: forget the past when they had declared neutrality in exchange for the information to summon the Hassassin.
If Kain had been born an emperor, he might have flushed with anger at the audacity of putting a price on loyalty.
But Kain, who until recently had been a modern man, understood that they had had no other choice.
He tapped the shoulder of the count who was prostrating himself as a criminal and encouraged him.
“Rise, Count.”
“Your Majesty!”
“I have no intention of holding the past against you, so be at ease.”
“……! I will follow you with my life.”
Having received a clear answer from Kain, Count Theseus Haren soon took out a grey whistle from his breast pocket.
“This is the old method, so I cannot guarantee it is still in use.”
“Is this the means of contact?”
“Yes. It is a whistle used to summon the ravens that the Hassassin employed to communicate with their subordinate organizations and assassins.
A magic circle is engraved on it, allowing the sound—audible only to specially trained ravens—to travel extremely far.”
In a fantasy world where the expensive but reliable “magic telegram” existed, stubbornly clinging to ravens was truly assassin-like.
Well, it was a setting Kain himself had deliberately created long ago, so there was nothing particularly surprising about it.
“Your Majesty. It is not certain, but if the Hassassin were still using this method until recently, ravens should be stationed near the capital as well.
If you blow this whistle, a trained raven will arrive within days.
Then you may check or leave a message in the capsule it carries.
Naturally, communication through messages uses specific ciphers.”
At Count Haren’s kind explanation, Kain nodded and extended his right hand.
“No need to drag this out. Let us confirm it right now.”
Together with Count Haren, Baron Denver, and a few Imperial Guards, Kain approached the window of the audience chamber and blew the whistle.
Despite blowing with force, only the sound of air escaping came out.
Was it working properly?
When Kain turned to meet Count Haren’s eyes, the count assured him it had functioned correctly.
A short while later, a single raven flew to the window.
In the capsule the raven wore was a single note.
Count Haren deciphered the cipher.
And on that note was written…
—We have been waiting, Your Majesty.
A message from loyal assassins who had already been awaiting the new emperor’s call.
The Felberg Empire boasted a long and storied history.
Within it existed organizations passed down through generations alongside the continent’s own history.
Organizations whose roots stretched back before the mythic age.
The most representative among them was the corps of assassins directly under the Emperor: the Hassassin.
Normally, an assassination group would be secretive.
Yet unusually, the Hassassin did not hide their existence.
On the contrary, the imperial house openly proclaimed them the Emperor’s shadows, instilling terror in any who harbored disloyal thoughts by hunting and executing them in the dark.
However.
Even though their existence was known, the principle that their activities remained strictly confidential never changed.
Because this principle had been upheld for hundreds, even thousands of years, only the Emperor knew the exact numbers and strength of the assassins comprising the Hassassin.
Moreover, despite their fame, the Hassassin were an extremely closed organization, and the methods they used to contact the subcontracted assassination cells they commanded were treated as top secret.
Those who became Hassassin were selected in childhood and raised through special training.
The training process to become a Hassassin was not only intense but claimed countless lives along the way.
The training that lasted over fifteen years produced only a tiny fraction of true Hassassin.
Thus, most Hassassin operated separate assassination cells beneath them; they needed additional hands and feet to efficiently carry out the Emperor’s orders.
Yet in the grand banquet hall on Founding Day, not only the Emperor but every Hassassin guarding him and the nobles and heirs responsible for their training had been massacred.
As a result, most of the assassination cells under the Hassassin inevitably disintegrated.
Yet amid the chaos that engulfed the Felberg Empire, while most of the assassins under the Hassassin had lost contact or gone their separate ways, there was one group that had almost uniquely remained in place.
They were the assassination cell known as Nightmare.
“Captain, how much longer must we wait? Shouldn’t we make contact with the palace first?
Everyone is growing weary of this endless waiting.”
Beneath the merciless night sky, as a woman paced beneath the ruined spire of an ancient fortress, a shadow clad in thick black cloth slowly emerged from the darkness behind her.
Though the cloth was heavy, it could not hide the curves of her body; the mask and the clear, lovely voice revealed the shadow’s gender.
“What is the rush? We have plenty of time.”
When the pacing woman lowered the black hood that had concealed her face, a striking beauty with pale skin and crimson eyes was revealed.
She was Isabella Daywalker, leader of the assassination cell called Nightmare.
Exuding an aura that seemed somehow inhuman, with pale skin and red eyes, she displayed leisurely composure toward her visibly anxious subordinate.
“Your impatient personality is the problem, Rachel. Men don’t like restless women.”
“Captain, it has already been quite some time since Kain Felberg ascended the throne, yet there is still no word.”
“He has only just taken the throne; he must be busy.
As you know, most of the Emperor’s supporters and the neutral nobles were slaughtered on Founding Day, so even as Emperor, his days cannot be easy.”
Yet despite Isabella Daywalker’s continued calm demeanor, the time remaining to Nightmare was, in truth, not plentiful.
About two weeks ago, Duke Hans Deneb—one of the Five Pillars—had sent an offer for them to join his forces.
Because the internal information of the Hassassin was kept strictly confidential, even the existence of the subcontracted cells like Nightmare had never leaked outside.
Therefore, Duke Hans Deneb could not have known that Nightmare had originally been a subcontracted cell of the Hassassin when he made the offer.
He had simply extended the invitation to secure enough assassins while preparing for the decisive battle against the imperial loyalists, reaching out to Nightmare because of their considerable reputation among those who operated in the shadows.
Duke Hans Deneb was one of the Five Pillars.
If they accepted his offer, they would stand on the opposite side of the imperial house.
In the past, that would have been an act of denying Nightmare’s very roots, not even worth considering.
But after the Founding Day Catastrophe, the situation had changed.
With the Hassassin annihilated and all contact severed, Duke Hans Deneb’s sweet offer had arrived like ripe fruit.
A considerable number of the cell’s officers had already voiced support for accepting it.
Though a royal bearing a Sigil now sat on the throne, the power of the Five Pillars versus the imperial faction was currently beyond comparison.
They argued that since the link to the imperial house had been severed in the catastrophe, they might as well switch sides while they could.
Their contact had already been cut, and the other side had shown no move to reconnect the rope; they were as good as abandoned.
Thus, joining the Five Pillars would not even be betrayal—that was their claim.
“Captain, if we delay further, even joining the Five Pillars may become difficult.
Wouldn’t it be better for us to make contact first?”
Rachel cautiously offered her opinion, but Isabella remained unmoved.
Yet unlike Rachel, who lived by human time, Isabella—who had lived nearly an eternity—still wore a relaxed expression.
“Because of the uninvited guests on Founding Day and Coronation Day, the capital is currently under the highest level of alert.
Do you truly think they would open the door with a smile if we approached under these circumstances?”
The answer, of course, was no.