章節 33: Expelled
Lysllette stood, staring at Arthur, looking for some trap or trick he was setting up; however, she noticed nothing.
"There's nothing to talk about."
She said this and began to walk towards Arthur with her hand firmly gripping her sword.
"By the power vested in me by the Pendragon family, Arthur Reclesia, you are under arrest for assaulting a member of the royal family.".
"The Reclesia family—you suspect them, don't you?"
Step-
Hearing Arthur's words, Lysllette stopped her steps and looked at him with slightly widening eyes in surprise before quickly returning to her stoic expression.
"What do you mean?"
She asked with some wariness in her voice, but Arthur, instead of answering her, just smiled at her and pointed to the empty chair in front of him.
Lysllette understood the meaning; she walked over to the chair and sat down.
'He can't hurt me anyway; if he tries anything, I will immobilize him immediately.'
She was an Aura master, the highest peak a warrior could aspire to. Very few things would be able to hurt her or pose a threat to her, and Arthur Reclesia was clearly not one of them.
She thought as the white-haired maid poured tea into her cup.
She looked at the tea for a second before deciding to take a sip. Even if it had some kind of poison or drug in it, that wouldn't do anything to him at all.
"It's good."
The tea was more delicious than she had expected. She wasn't a person who liked tea very much, but even she could tell that this tea was quite good.
"Thank you for the compliment."
The maid said as she curtsied.
"Now then, speak."
She said it in a serious manner as she looked Arthur straight in the eyes. He said that she was suspicious of the Reclesia family, which was true. However, no one, other than her father, who shared her suspicions, should know about it.
"Twenty-five years ago, when the current leader of the Reclesia family, Benedict Reclesia, took office, suddenly cases of people disappearing from the slums began to increase; not only that, but according to more inside sources, the presence of demons began to become more recurrent in the empire."
Arthur said this while maintaining eye contact with Lysllette without showing the slightest sign of hesitation.
Lysllette, who heard his words, became even more cautious. The data Arthur provided were things that normal people, not even nobles, should know, only those of the highest rank.
What Arthur said was true; when the current leader of the Reclesia family claimed the position, the number of missing persons in the slums and the presence of demons in the empire increased alarmingly.
As Benedict Reclesia was the only heir at the time, they could not replace him; in order not to make one of the Empire's shields look incompetent, it was decided to hide the information. Besides that, another factor played a role.
No one really cared about the people in the slums. In fact, they would be happy if they disappeared altogether.
Slums are notorious for harboring heinous criminals such as rapists, murderers, or bandits, as well as vagrants who would do anything for a few coins.
Most nobles view slums with disgust and do not even go near such places. Only nobles who engage in illegal acts such as slave trading or drug sales do so.
It was also attributed to Benedict's inexperience at the time. The former leader of the Reclesia family died prematurely due to a strange disease at the age of 45. Because of that, Benedict, who was only 25 years old, was forced to assume the position of head of the family.
Although the appearance of the demons was worrisome, as the years went by, the demon sightings gradually diminished, so it was all attributed to the inexperience of the then-young Benedict.
However, one person didn't think that way: the current head of the Pendragon family and his father, Orvyn Pendragon. He suspected that the sudden increase in demons and missing people from the slums was not due to Benedict's inexperience.
His father had entered the academy along with Benedict, and he knew full well that Benedict was by no means incompetent or inexperienced.
Strategy, economy, negotiation, insight, intelligence, and strength. Benedict excelled in all the qualities that a ruler should possess; besides that, he had also solved problems in his territory as practice to gain experience when the time came for him to become head of the Reclesia family.
Or, in other words, Benedict Reclesia, at the age of 25, was already perfectly qualified to become the head of the Reclesia family.
At first, his father thought that these disappearances and demon sightings were due to some other factor they were overlooking, so they conducted a thorough investigation to find the cause.
However, they were unable to find any trace of the origin of these events, or rather, all traces of the origin were erased before they found them.
Finding nothing, the investigation was abandoned, but Orvyn still had a bad feeling about this, so he continued to investigate on his own, visiting the places where the disappearances and demon sightings were reported and looking for any slightest clue that might lead him to the cause of these events.
After several months of investigation, Orvyn realized something disturbing.
The disappearances of people from the slums did not stop at all, as they had thought.
The rate of disappearance remained the same; it had even increased, but no one was reporting the disappearances.
Realizing this fact, the idea of a traitor already began to brew in Orvyn's mind, but not wanting to jump to conclusions, he continued his investigation alone.
During one of his night patrols, Orvyn got the first element that would help him find the person responsible for the disappearances.
A demon attacked a man in an attempt to kidnap him.
Orvyn acted quickly to stop the demon so he could interrogate him. Because this was his first real test in months of investigation, he didn't even consider waiting for the demon to kidnap the man so he could get to its lair.
Once he captured the demon, Orvyn took him to a secluded location so he could interrogate him and get information out of him.
But the demon turned out to be much tougher than he thought; only after hours of torture did Orvyn get him to say anything.
"The... of... red hair—uagh!"
But something unexpected happened.
A purple aura started to come out of his body when the demon uttered those words; it transformed into a snake that crawled until it reached his neck.
Orvyn tried to stop it, but his efforts were futile. When he tried to cut the snake with his sword, it corroded as if it had come in contact with a powerful acid.
In the end, he was unable to stop the snake from sinking its fangs into the demon's neck. Purple veins began to appear all over his body, and his eyes turned completely black.
The snake disappeared soon after, leaving only the inert corpse of the demon, which, to Orvyn's surprise, began to fade away as if it were dust.
Orvyn was frustrated at not being able to get any more answers from the demon, but its last words stuck in his mind.
The red-haired man.
When he heard those words, he couldn't help but think of a specific person. But this was too delicate a subject to state things with the ambiguous words of a demon, so he continued his investigation.
However, since that day, he has not managed to find a single clue. People continued to disappear, but he did not come across any other demons. This continued until his grandfather, the former head of the Pendragon family, discovered him conducting the investigations and ordered him to stop.
Orvyn stopped then, but he continued to have suspicions, and the last words of that demon stuck in his mind. He tried to tell his father about it, but his father told him to stop digging into a case that had already been closed and to concentrate on his duties as a guard of Faust Velvet, the then heir and current emperor.
So then his father abandoned the investigation completely, but when he got the position of head of the family several years later, he took it up again, this time using his personal forces to investigate. Even so, getting even one clue was difficult, but the few he found coincided with one thing.
It was all happening within the Reclesia family territories, and yet no one seemed to notice or care. This was enough for his father's suspicions to grow, and he warned her to be careful of the Reclesia family and, if she noticed any strange movements, to let him know.
"The Reclesia family has long been a source of suspicion for the Pendragon family. Orvyn Pendragon has given his all in order to be able to find anything that would point directly to Benedict Reclesia as the culprit behind the disappearances and demon sightings, but to this day he has only managed to find ambiguous clues."
Arthur explained as he sipped from his cup of tea.
Lysllette looked at him, squinting her eyes and releasing some of her aura. She asked him.
"How do you know all that?"
Feeling the pressure, both Livia and Arthur visibly tensed but remained calm.
"I have my sources; I think you understand that I can't tell you which one it is even if you ask me."
Damn Lissa, the information she gave me was very useful, but it cost me an arm and a leg.
Arthur thought bitterly, remembering what he had to pay for Lissa to get the information for him.
Lysllette understood and asked no more questions, but she still asked what had been bothering her since Arthur started talking.
"Why are you telling me this? What do you want?"
"I want you to help me destroy the Reclesia family."
This time, Lysllette couldn't hide her shocked expression. What Arthur said was something she did not expect at all.
"...Why?"
"Well, taking action when an injustice is being done is the right thing to do, right?"
Arthur said with a smile as he kept his gaze fixed on Lysllette's eyes.
This one, for her part, clearly didn't think that was Arthur's real reason for doing this, and she told him straight out.
"What is the real reason?"
Arthur stared at her silently for a few seconds before a hollow laugh escaped his lips.
"The real reason...?"
He stared at the tea in his cup for a few seconds before returning his gaze to Lysllette's eyes.
"I don't want to die."
The room fell silent, with neither of them speaking. They held each other's eyes before Lysette broke the silence.
"Even if you say so, we have nothing that can help us expose the Reclesia family; they are one of the ducal houses of the empire; presenting some vague evidence of their actions won't provoke anything."
"That's something not to overlook."
He said, and the next moment, a figure wrapped in a black robe appeared behind Lysllette, extending some documents to her.
Lysllette was not surprised by the figure's sudden appearance and calmly took the documents. After she took them, the figure nodded and disappeared again.
"You seem to have some tricks."
"I'm one of those who thinks you should always be prepared."
Lysllette opened the documents and began to read.
"We had a hard time compiling these; it may not be much, but I'm sure it's better than what you guys have compiled so far."
The documents had records about knights of the Reclesia family interacting with demons and some suspicious merchandise flows, among other evidence that pointed more directly to the Reclesia family than they had managed to gather.
"I've kept up the perfect idiot act by seeking expulsion so I can pursue my own plan, and so I need your help to keep the Reclesia family in check while I finish my preparations, and I agree that this little bit of evidence isn't enough to take down a family like Reclesia, but it will at least get them slowed down and keep them at bay."
He said this, and silence once again reigned in the room. Lysllette looked at the documents as she seemed to be thinking about the best course of action. Finally, she looked up from the documents and held out a hand to Arthur.
"Deal, I'm going to do my best to be able to keep the reclusia at bay, but I'm going to need you to explain everything about this plan of yours."
Arthur couldn't help but smile brightly at Lysllette's words, He shook her hand and began to tell her all about his plan.
From acting like an idiot so that the Reclesia family would ignore him and eventually be expelled to recruiting trustworthy allies to help him when it was time to fight the Reclesia,.
"I have to say, that's a well-structured plan, and it seems to have worked out well for you."
"Well, not quite; it turns out that the Reclesia family was already aware of my movements, but for some reason they didn't take any action, perhaps because they don't consider me a real threat."
Arthur didn't tell Lysllette anything about the Flow or what he had implanted in his body; he only told her what was necessary for her to understand his plan and the circumstances he was currently in.
"Then, I guess we should end this talk now."
As he said that, several figures appeared and threw other individuals dressed in black who were apparently dead to the ground.
Lysllette looked at Arthur, raising an eyebrow, and he explained.
"Well, we were talking for quite a while; we'll have to have an alibi for your tardiness."
"You're right."
Lysllette said as she stood up from her chair and walked over to Livia.
"Excuse me."
Thud-
She gave her a hit behind the neck that knocked Livia unconscious, caught her before she fell to the ground, and set her down gently. She then turned to Arthur with the aim of doing the same.
"Please be nice."
"I'll try."
She said that and then took a hit to Arthur's neck, but something happened that Lysllette didn't expect.
"Ugh... Didn't you say you'd try to be nice?".
Arthur didn't faint; instead, he groaned in pain as he held his neck where Lysllette hit him.
Lysllette's eyes widened in surprise before she hit Arthur in the neck again, this time knocking him unconscious.
With everything settled, Lysllette looked at Arthur for a few seconds and then looked at his hand.
' 'His body is a lot tougher than I thought.'
She didn't think much of that, and grabbing the unconscious Arthur and Livia, she left the room.
***
In a room resembling a courtroom, a woman with navy blue hair and glassesstood at a podium stood at a podium with a stern look on her face. To the sides could be seen several other students sitting on bleachers.
In the center of it all was Arthur, with handcuffs in handcuffs and being the center of attention.
The woman at the podium shouted and said,.
"Arthur Reclesia! Are you aware of all the crimes and misdemeanors you have committed so far?"
The trial for the expulsion of Arthur Reclesia had begun.
***
A/N:
I'm not dead!!!! Sorry for not uploading in so long, I was taking care of very serious and important things (I was lazing around and didn't feel like writing).
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