Chapter 68. “Where Are My Troops?”
Inside the Council Chamber, Logaris West briefly and concisely recounted the intelligence deciphered from the cult’s tos.
When the words “blood sacrifice,” “tens of thousands of soldiers,” and “summon an evil existence” were spoken clearly, the Demi-Human prince Alectos Huiyin, who had been quietly listening the entire ti, felt every muscle in his body tighten in an instant.
BANG!
He slamd his fist onto the long table before him, and cracks spread across the hard wooden surface like a spiderweb.
“Remington!”
Alectos Huiyin’s eyes were bloodshot, and veins bulged at his temples.
“How dare he!”
“How dare he treat the Empire’s soldiers as sacrificial offerings!”
He felt piercing rage and grief for his countryn, who were about to be treated as expendable tools and die on foreign soil.
The Empire he loved, the people he had sworn to protect, were being dragged into the abyss by a madman.
Seeing Alectos Huiyin on the verge of losing control, Alice rely stood silently beside him.
She said nothing, but the way she gripped her staff revealed that her own heart was no calr.
Behind his lenses, Logaris West’s eyes remained utterly still.
He simply watched in silence.
Only after Alectos Huiyin’s breathing had steadied sowhat did he push up his glasses and ask the sharpest question of all in the detached tone of a scholar investigating the unknown.
“Your Highness, I have a question.”
“Logically speaking, as an imperial prince, you should have commanded a considerable amount of military authority, and the protective forces around you should not have been weak.”
“Forgive my bluntness, but how exactly did you… end up being hunted down to this extent?”
The question was too direct.
It was almost as if he had ripped open Alectos Huiyin’s most humiliating wound and laid it bare.
Alice suddenly raised her head, clearly about to say that Logaris West had absolutely no tact at all, but Alectos Huiyin stopped her with a lifted hand.
Sylvia, seated to the side, shifted into a more comfortable posture with evident interest.
She was curious about this as well.
How had the rightful heir to the throne ended up losing so badly?
Alectos Huiyin remained silent for a very long ti.
The silence stretched so long that even the air grew awkward.
At last, he tugged at the corner of his mouth and let out a heavy sigh.
“You are right.”
“I should not have ended up in such a miserable state.”
He did not hide anything.
He decided to lay everything out plainly.
“It all began with a forged ‘secret imperial decree.’”
“That day, I received a secret order saying that Father was unwell and had summoned in private.”
“I did not think much of it, so I went alone to Father’s bedchamber.”
“But the mont I stepped inside, what greeted was not my father on his sickbed.”
“It was more than a dozen Fourth-Tier assassins who had already been lying in ambush.”
Alectos Huiyin’s voice was calm, as if he were telling soone else’s story.
“Among them were cultists from the Corruption Cult.”
“I will never forget their stench, even in death.”
Logaris West and Sylvia exchanged a glance.
So that was it.
“And then you—”
“I am not so easy to kill.”
Alectos Huiyin cut off Logaris West’s question, and at last there was a trace of princely pride in his tone.
“They thought they had cornered, but on the spot I used the final trump card that would save my life.”
“A precious Spatial Teleportation Scroll.”
“The price was one severed arm, but in the end, I escaped.”
He moved his left arm, now completely intact.
Later, Alice had used an extrely precious potion to regrow it, though the process had badly damaged his vitality.
That glimpse of hidden resources made Sylvia regard him a little more highly.
At the very least, he was not so naive fool who could only sit still and wait for death.
“After escaping, the first thing I thought of was finding my direct command.”
At this point, Alectos Huiyin’s eyes dimd.
“The Evergreen Legion was the Ninth Legion of the Demi-Human Empire, commanded by Morris, a deer demi-human and my closest friend, whom I had personally promoted.”
“It was an elite force of twenty thousand n, and my only hope of turning the situation around.”
“At the ti, I truly believed that as long as I reached them, there would still be a chance.”
However, what he said next caused the temperature in the entire Council Chamber to plunge to freezing.
“But what I never expected was that what awaited was not help.”
“It was the most fatal betrayal of all.”
“Less than half a day after I was attacked, that coward Morris, in order to prove his loyalty to Regent Remington, directly announced—”
Alectos Huiyin gritted his teeth.
Every word seed to be forced out from the depths of his throat.
“—that the Ninth Legion, the Evergreen Legion, would be disbanded imdiately!”
Disbanded?
One of Logaris West’s brows lifted slightly.
Even Sylvia was stunned.
What kind of move was that?
With twenty thousand soldiers in hand, even if he chose not to support the prince, he could still have used that army as leverage and negotiated terms with the new ruler.
But to disband the army outright?
That was equivalent to cutting off his own arm, throwing all of his bargaining chips onto the floor, just to show that he posed no threat and to win a smile from the Regent.
“The soldiers were dismissed and sent ho.”
“And Morris, anwhile, brought his personal guards and drew his blade against when I went to him for help.”
Alectos Huiyin clenched his fist again, his knuckles turning white from the force.
“He even twisted the truth and shouted, ‘Capture the traitorous prince!’ as he launched an attack on my already heavily wounded body.”
“It was while escaping from that siege that I was struck by the curse of Blood Withering.”
From that point onward, the prince began his long, drifting life of flight.
Only later did he et Alice.
The story was finished.
Alectos Huiyin closed his eyes.
His whole body was trembling, not from the cold, but from the betrayal carved into his bones.
Alice, who had remained silent the entire ti, finally could not hold back anymore.
She curled her lips and, in her usual sharp-tongued style, sneered,
“I have lived this long, and this is still the first ti I have ever seen a coward that ridiculous.”
“In order to wag his tail for his new master, he directly disbanded the ace legion in his own hands, terrified that having any value at all might get in his master’s way.”
“That kind of move is so stupid it feels refreshingly original.”
“It is almost awe-inspiring.”
Her words were harsh, but they eased the suffocating heaviness in the air, if only a little.
At the sa ti, they threw the absurdity and tragedy of that betrayal into even sharper relief.
Logaris West and Sylvia fell into a long silence.
They had imagined countless possibilities.
A palace coup.
A military mutiny.
Defeat in battle followed by capture.
Yet they had never expected such a farce as this—betraying a friend for glory and cutting off one’s own arm in the process.
This had already gone beyond the bounds of normal political struggle.
Just how rotten had the upper ranks of the Demi-Human Empire beco?
That Remington, and that Morris…
Were they truly fit to be rulers and generals?
The two exchanged another glance and read the sa ssage in each other’s eyes.
The Demi-Human Empire might be even more unstable—and easier to deal with—than they had imagined.
After a long while, Alectos Huiyin and Alice rose to take their leave.
Their backs looked sowhat heavy as they walked through the vast Council Chamber.
Alectos Huiyin was weighed down by worry for the fate of his holand, while Alice, for once, did not make another cutting remark.
She rely patted his back lightly in comfort.
Only Logaris West and Sylvia remained in the Council Chamber.
The air still carried the shock left behind by the story they had just heard.
Suddenly, Sylvia broke the silence.
She leaned lazily back against her chair, her long fingers tapping idly against the tabletop.
A trace of suspicion flashed through her silver-gray eyes as she looked in the direction Alice had departed.
Then she turned to Logaris West and drawled in a lazy tone,
“Co to think of it…”
“Other than a certain arrogant, foul-mouthed professor of magitech, Miss Alice is the second black-haired human I have ever t.”
Logaris West paused for a mont and put his glasses back on.
Sylvia looked at him with keen interest, the corners of her lips lifting slightly.
“Logaris, that sharp-tongued little girl is not so long-lost distant relative of yours, is she?”
“To be fair, the two of you really do look rather alike when you are both being irritating.”
That joking remark was like a feather, scratching exactly at the most sensitive place.
“The world is not that small.”
“We just both happen to have black hair, that is all.”
His rebuttal ca a little too quickly, completely unlike his usual composed manner, in which everything seed to remain within his calculations.
That reaction had been too fast.
So fast that it felt like he was hiding sothing.
The smile on Sylvia’s lips deepened.
Although Logaris West denied it firmly, his gaze drifted involuntarily toward the direction Alice had left.
His left hand rose unconsciously, and his fingertips lightly touched the corner of his left eye.
As if so unspeakable secret had once been hidden there.
Sylvia noticed that tiny movent.
A faint flicker passed through her sharp eyes.
She knew that Logaris West’s left eye held a story.
Ever since their academy days, that man had always worn a black eyepatch, and his outward explanation had always been that it was due to an eye condition.
She had asked about it before, but he had always responded with that infuriating expression that practically said, “What business is it of yours?”
Later, for reasons unknown to her, that eye began to appear completely normal, and the matter had gradually been set aside.
But now, that unconscious gesture stirred her curiosity once more.
Still, Sylvia did not continue asking.
The two of them fell once again into that unspoken understanding between them.
So secrets did not need to be exposed.
That silent consideration and trust was sothing they had forged together since their youth, fighting side by side through the perilous courts and academies filled with open blades and hidden daggers.
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