Chapter : 280

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"The 13th Unit is the most troublesome," the general growled, adjusting the medals on his chest with visible irritation. "That princess doesn't accept bribes. She doesn't respond to threats. She doesn't flinch when any reasonable person would."

"And she has that circus of a unit backing her every move," he added with contempt. "A lazy nobleman's son, a fire-crazy pyromaniac, a stiff soldier, and a bunch of girls playing hero. How are they destroying operations that took us years to build?"

Another nobleman, this one thin and bespectacled, cleared his throat. "It's not just the 13th Unit's combat strength that concerns me. It's their unpredictability. They don't follow standard investigative procedures. They don't follow any procedures at all."

"They literally stumbled into our Eastern District operation," he said, adjusting his glasses nervously. "Ken Eliot tripped over a crate and accidentally discovered our hidden warehouse. How do you plan against someone who defeats you by falling down?"

A few bitter laughs circled the table. It was the kind of absurdity that would have been funny if it weren't so devastating. A man who tripped over his own feet had done more damage to their infrastructure than three squadrons of Imperial soldiers.

"It gets worse," the bespectacled nobleman continued. "My sources tell me that Eliot also broke into a hidden chamber at Carrion's facility by crashing into a wall. A wall protected by Grandmaster-level magical locks. He broke it by accident."

The room went very still. The general's face reddened. "You're telling me this clown is accidentally dismantling our security measures?"

"That's exactly what I'm telling you. And his luck is uncanny. Statistically impossible, really. Either Ken Eliot is the luckiest man alive, or he is considerably more dangerous than he appears."

The general snorted. "I refuse to believe that a buffoon who trips over his own shoelaces is some kind of hidden mastermind."

"Whether you believe it or not," the bespectacled man replied stiffly, "the results speak for themselves. We have lost three major operations in two months, and every single one traces back to the 13th Unit's involvement."

Lord Voss raised one pale hand. The room fell silent instantly. When he spoke, his voice was calm and precise. "The Emperor's use of his children is clever. Each prince and princess operates with royal authority but no official political portfolio."

"They can investigate where traditional law enforcement cannot go. They can enter places where soldiers cannot follow. And because they are family, the Emperor maintains plausible deniability for their actions."

He paused, letting the words settle. "It is a masterful strategy. One that I might have employed myself, had I the foresight to breed such useful pawns."

"Then what do we do about it?" the heavyset nobleman demanded.

"We adapt," Voss said. "But that is not why I called this emergency session. The Succession War detectives are a problem, yes. But there is a far greater threat that demands our attention tonight."

He pressed a small button embedded in the table. The crystal chandelier dimmed until the room was nearly dark, the faces of the conspirators reduced to pale smudges in the gloom.

A magical projection appeared above the mahogany surface, hovering in the air like a ghost made of pale light. It showed a stylized image of a masked figure, the face hidden behind a theatrical white mask with narrow eye slits that glowed faintly.

A long dark cloak draped over the figure's shoulders like a shadow made solid, and the mask's expression was one of terrible, knowing amusement, as if it found the entire world to be a private joke that only it understood.

"Lancelot," Voss said, and the name fell into the room like a stone dropped into still water.

---

The reaction was immediate and visceral. Several people flinched backward in their chairs as if struck. One commander's hand instinctively went to the sword at his hip before he caught himself and lowered it with visible embarrassment.

The woman in the green dress went pale, her earlier composure shattered like thin ice. Her jewelry rattled against the table as her hands trembled. Even the general, who had been so dismissive of the 13th Unit, seemed to shrink slightly in his seat.

Lancelot. The masked entity whose absolutely overwhelming, god-like influence stretched across both the criminal underworld and the highest administrative offices of the Empire like invisible chains binding everything together in a web of secrets and fear.

No one knew Lancelot's true identity. No one knew where this shadow figure's loyalty truly lay, or whether loyalty was even a concept that applied to something so enigmatic. No one had ever seen behind the mask and lived to describe what they saw.

What they did know was terrifying enough. Lancelot's network of informants penetrated every level of government, from the lowest clerk in the records office to the highest minister in the Imperial Council. Nothing was beyond reach.

Every secret, every bribe, every hidden transaction, Lancelot seemed to know about it before the ink was dry. Operations that had taken years to plan were dismantled in days. Alliances cultivated over decades collapsed overnight without explanation.

"Three of our supply lines have been severed in the past month alone," Voss continued, his voice flat and clinical. "Our contact in the Port Authority was arrested by agents who knew exactly which dock, which warehouse, which crate to search."

"Our man in the Treasury was transferred to a remote outpost so far from the capital that carrier pigeons get lost trying to find it. Someone in the Ministry of Appointments signed that transfer order, and that someone was not one of ours."

"And our entire intelligence network in the Eastern District has simply vanished," he added, letting the word hang in the air like smoke. "Not arrested. Not replaced. Vanished. As if they never existed at all."

"Vanished?" the general repeated, his face darkening. "We had forty trained operatives in the Eastern District."

"Forty-one," Voss corrected coldly. "Every single informant. Every handler. Every safe house. Gone without a trace. That is Lancelot's signature. Not destruction, but erasure. Complete and total erasure, as though the universe itself forgot they existed."

The room absorbed this in grim silence. The Eastern District network had been their eyes and ears in the capital's commercial heart. Without it, they were blind in the most important theater of their silent war against the throne.

The heavyset nobleman wiped sweat from his forehead with a silk handkerchief. "If it weren't for Lancelot, our plan would have launched years ago! We would have swept the Emperor from his throne and established Greater Belmontia by now!"

A chorus of frustrated agreement circled the table. The grand plan, the treasonous conspiracy to overthrow the current regime and replace it with their own authoritarian vision, had been ready three times in the past five years.

Each time, something had gone wrong at the last moment. A key ally had suddenly defected with intimate knowledge of their operations. A critical weapons shipment had been intercepted by customs agents who should have been on their payroll.

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