Emperor of Steel

Two days later, Baron Manuel had come back to the accommodation.

Luke had decided to accept the proposal of the Marquis.

He didn’t want to be used by either the nobles or the Emperor, but he wanted to be in a situation to his advantage as much as possible.

‘If the words put a wing on the nobles political power, Emperor Rudolf is likely to be forced into taking an armed action not to lose this empire.’

Luke wasn’t going to join the fight and was only going to build strength.

Then, when the two beasts of the Emperor and the nobles would get tired of biting each other, he decided to go out and take his revenge.

Without knowing Luke’s intention, Baron Manuel smiled with joy.

“Hahaha, you have made the right decision. Sir Marquis is holing a banquet tomorrow, so please join us in the event.”

“I think it will be better not to show myself out too much…”

“Please do not worry. It is a masquerade ball. All you’ll have to do is to avoid any eye contact at a moderate level.”

Baron Manuel handed over the invitation and a gold-plated colorful butterfly mask, taking his leave.

When Luke was getting ready to attend the banquet, Anna trembled into the room.

“Huge news, something unexpected has happened!”

“What is it?”

Philip who was attending to Luke asked with a bothered expression.

Anna was surely a girl with a talent for swordsmanship, and she had never neglected her job.

But there was one thing.

The problem was, her words would drift in after a while, and the party listening to it would have trouble concentrating.

But it was different that day, her voice trembled because she heard something about the capital visit.

“Please don’t be surprised! But Marquis Cavanill died in his mansion this very morning!”

“What?!”

Luke stared at her with shock registered on his face.

Anna continued to the matter, she was relaying everything to him in detail.

“Since he wasn’t out of his bed in the morning, the attendants had gone to wake him, but as they went into the room, they saw that he passed away in his sleep.”

The body had to be examined in detail to know of the cause, but it was highly likely that the incident would be considered as a natural death. It was a known fact that Marquis Cavanill had been suffering from a heart disease.

But, Luke’s mind was telling him something else.

After Manuel had left, two days back giving him the invitation, Luke asked Alex’s intelligence to find out about Marquis Cavanill.

He was suffering from a heart disease and was at an old age, but he was quite active and vigorous. He was a man who was energetic enough to cooperate with Luke by constantly sending him subordinates.

And how could such a person die in sleep?

That too, on such a timing, it seemed very crafty.

Luke hurriedly sent Philip over to the information guild and asked Alex to take care of the sources in Alex’s household.

He thought that information from two different places could shed light on unseen details.

“The nobles are currently upset with the sudden death of Marquis Cavanill.”

The nobles of capital had gone to Marquis residence, to bid him farewell for the last time.

It could be an assassination.

But, even with close examination, there was no trace of an assassination attempt.

The reports revealed the cause to be a heart attack.

And it didn’t seem so unusual as Marquis Cavanill was suffering from a heart disease.

The nobles were in turmoil.

The death of the Marquis was indeed a huge shock, but right before the hearing at the Imperial Court, the most reliable person to the noblemen had disappeared overnight.

‘Really, a natural cause?’

When Luke was in his own doubts, he began to think about confirming the cause. That way, maybe his anxiety would settle down.

He ordered the party to wait in the quarters and sneaked out to inspect the death of Marquis Cavanill.

Late that night, Marquis’s mansion was quite crowded.

The banquet, was the one which had to be held in the mansion, and it was later canceled, but the death of Marquis Cavanill brought the plethora of nobles of the capital into the mansion.

But their presence didn’t prevent Luke from infiltrating the mansion.

The proper use of reflective magic and the dark invisibility magic, Luke was able to enter the room which held the Marquis’s body without much difficulty.

The face of the Marquis enshrined inside the splendid coffin and it was like he was sleeping in there.

If he was indeed killed by someone, there was never a way where one would have a peaceful face.

Luke approached the coffin and scrutinized the body of the Marquis.

Wondering if he was poisoned by some unknown poison or magic, but there were no such traces at all.

‘Famous priests and wizards must have looked at him, and there was no such thing, the news would have spread if they found something.’

When he looked thoroughly at the body of the Marquis, Luke decided to step back and give up.

However, he was feeling a strange energy from the heart of the Marquis.

A dark, sullen energy, almost as if a small caterpillar had awakened.

Luke seemed to have sensed it somewhere.

‘What could this be? This energy is very similar to the demon that I summoned 500 years ago… ah!’

He was able to think of it.

That detectable heart energy, was the Round Worm, an insect of the Devildom.

Something that would be tough to identify even in the Devildom, once it enters the heart of the host, it begins to eat the body from the inside.

Naturally, a damaged heart wouldn’t function properly and will cause the host to die, the problem was it appeared to be a simple heart attack for the others.

In that time, 500 years back, Luke experimented with curiosity about the Round Worms that he picked up from the Devildom, and as a result, he was able to know more about them.

‘This makes it clear as to how the Marquis had been killed.’

Round worms were naturally spreading creatures of the earth. Someone must have summoned them from Devildom and used them.

‘A warlock in the Imperial or for the Emperor?’

Whatever the case, Luke confirmed that it was an assassination and not a natural death, and escaped from the chamber where the body was placed.

If he lingered anymore, he might get caught, and that would turn painful.

But, right when he was about to leave the mansion. A few voices entered his ears and made him stop halfway.

“Hu, this is a huge deal.”

“I know, right. The Marquis has passed away, there is no way that the Emperor can be held responsible in this situation!”

“But even then, is there no evidence, not one? We can’t even hold the Emperor responsible like this!”

“Isn’t there any evidence yet? If we had only a physical certificate, we could immediately go over to the Imperial palace and demand punishment.”

They were the young nobles in their twenties and thirties belonging to the nobility.

They were talking about the death of the Marquis which had been done by the Emperor.

But they were frustrated because they couldn’t reveal the murder method and evidence.

‘Oho, look here?’

Luke suddenly felt an idea to go through his mind.

Originally, the Imperial Parliament declared that the war with the Volga was a defeat, and not victory, and that made the Emperor pushed into an unfavorable condition.

But from the moment of Marquis’s death, everything seemed to be turning hot and unpredictable.

‘Huhuhu, I’m looking forward to it.’

With excitement, Luke went out of the mansion of Cavanill with a smile on his face.