Francis Leopold Quasor received the news of the attempted assassination of the Crown Prince with reserved but still present interest. He’d had no role in the dastardly deed, of course, but that did not mean that he couldn’t use his faculties of reason to guesstimate who would and could do such a thing. The list of people capable of surviving it being exposed that they’d made an attempt on the Crown Prince’s life was remarkably short. Including himself, there were probably only around 10 people in the whole Imperium who fit the bill and he knew for certain that over half of them were totally innocent.
Puzzling together who out of the remaining 3 or 4 people would dare be so brash as to attack the Imperial Emperor’s first son so openly was a challenge that Francis had burdened himself with ever since he’d gotten the news. Partly because he found the move fascinating intellectually speaking, and also partly because he had angled for the young prince’s birthday party to take place on his estate for years, and he would not let there be a bloody birthday on his watch.
So, he’d need to figure out who was out to slit the boy’s throat, and then just fail to invite them to the party – and or temporarily banish them from entering his territories for the time being. Pissing off another powerful person was not a thing he usually liked doing, but since reaching the Saint Realm, he wasn’t exactly an easy-to-mess-with person either. Especially as all were aware that if that damn Amean lord were to lift the sanctions on Francis, the man would, in all likelihood, ascend beyond the Saint realm quite quickly – his talent for cultivation was well known across the multiverse.
“Master, we have received word that the Marshall arrived back in the Capital only a few hours ago.” A crackling voice spoke from behind him, making Francis turn around to face his now quite aged butler.
“I see. Have our agents in the capital keep as close an eye as possible on him, that man is not likely to respond well to the big news. I want to know just how pissed off he is.” Francis responded decisively to the older man’s great unsurprise.
“As you wish, master.” The butler said, before the man spaced out for a second before placing a golden talisman on Francis’ desk – an object that Francis recognised almost right away.
“You found it?” Francis asked, both amazed and amused.
“Of course, Master. The young mistress’ favourite jewellery was easy for one with my skills to track down. Should I give it back to her in the morning my lord?” The old man said simply before a small but proud smile formed on his face. Francis pondered the question for a few minutes. After deliberating about his answer carefully in his own head, he came to answer.
His daughter had become too accustomed to losing her precious toys and jewellery on a daily basis only for her father, him, to have them found and given back to her the next day. Francis now suspected that his daughter was losing stuff on purpose just to mess with him, which was a juvenile inclination that Francis wanted to disincentivise. Plus, if she was truly so uncareful with her things that her losing things was so regularly a genuine mistake on her part, then perhaps having this most precious talisman be lost for a while would teach her a good lesson.
“No. Place the Talisman in the family vault and keep the fact that it was found from Isabella – it's time she learned to take better care of her things.” Francis said, finally, causing the older man to bow his head in submission, pick up the talisman once again, and then walk out of his master’s office.
Francis placed his hand over his face and felt the vibrance of his system-enhanced and prolonged youth. On the outside, he looked like a particularly handsome young man with powerful muscles, strong bones, and skin that actually radiated the very essence of life and vitality itself. Yet, as he ran his perfectly radiant fingers over his equally radiant face, he couldn’t help but mourn that he was as he was. Sure, he loved cultivation, and living a long time, but on occasion, he missed the scars that he’d had before his whole body had been rejuvenated by Qi.
He knew it was quite the luxuriant problem to have to be too beautiful, and or too youthful. Yet, for him, they were real problems that he struggled with. He was one of the few people born in the earliest known integration areas of the multiverse who had been able to discover where their family had originally come from.
He’d learned from his investigations that his family had originally been the heads of a large war clan back on his ancestral home world. Among the things that had delineated his ancestors from the rest of the primitive humans living on his homeworld of that era had been that they’d been the bravest and toughest fighters of them all. Fighting titanic beasts like wyverns and beast gods to provide meat and safety for the tribe, and in doing so they would accumulate dozens, if not hundreds, of scars. Those scars then served as a source of deep personal honour for them.
His family had continued the tradition of scar-bearing for generations, but with his own ascension into the highest heights of cultivation, nothing and no one could physically scar him any longer. Everyone in his family had been overjoyed by this development, but all it made Francis feel was isolated, which wasn’t helped by his father’s insistence that he “not desire misery” and that he should “be happy to be free of the scars”. Such words from a man who’d spent his whole life accumulating scars needlessly made little sense to Francis and couldn’t have been more hypocritical.
He pushed such thoughts to the side as he noticed that new intelligence had come in from his agents in the capital. Information about the Marshall? Already? His agents worked faster than he anticipated… or perhaps the man had already been informed of the situation and the meeting between him and the emperor had thus been more of a formality than a necessity. Ideas such as these were what he thought he’d receive for intelligence, but instead, he received a rather odd piece of information.
Companions? From what Francis could recall about the man who led the Imperium’s army with an iron fist, he was habitually very secretive. He rarely allowed anyone to enter his home, and when, on the very rare occasion that he invited someone over for a dinner party, the invited party was not only immediately railroaded into the dining room but forced to take an oath of secrecy not to reveal any details about the Marshall’s home. Yet, he had allowed some random strangers to reside on his ship – even now that they had landed in the capital?
This development almost made him reassess his opinion of the Marshall until he finished reading the document and began to piece together some of what must have happened. The person who’d flown with the Marshall on his ship to the capital was some kind of lower middle-tier cultivator who looked to be in his early 40s, however, though the man’s cultivation was not that impressive to Francis' agents had informed him of a detail that was intriguing, that the man had a “unsettling aura” around him.
Rumours that he’d heard being talked about throughout the empire’s high command finally began to fit into place with this most recent development. This man, whoever he was, must have been a native from the planet in defence of whom Maximus reportedly fought with a giant world boss monster. Combining what little he’d heard about the planet from the rumours, and the “unsettling aura” comment, Francis instantly knew that this man had been given transportation by Maximus so as to foster a good relationship with this new potential powerhouse. Leviathan Slayers were few and far between, and not even Francis had managed to acquire the title quite yet – it had strangely specific requirements that baffled scholars even to this day. So, for a mortal from the planet “Earth” to have it, he must be quite the man indeed.
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However, this man was as much a potential threat to the Imperium as he was a potential boon. Power begot the desire for more power, and Francis had learned the hard way that when it comes to the mighty, expecting too much good from them only ever led to disappointment. When one was mighty enough, no amount of righteous reasoning to the contrary, or duly made and virtuous law passed could stop you from doing exactly what you wanted regardless of the opinions of those weaker than you.
The only reason any nations survived was that whilst the might of a single individual may rule the day in most situations, at the same time, some amount of restriction on one’s individual power was always in place as no matter your strength, there was always a bigger fish hungry enough to consume you should you make the wrong decision or back the wrong cause. The brutal balancing force of the multiverse, the fear of getting consumed yourself.
Francis chuckled at what he considered a joke of a notion and then made a split-second decision, one that he knew his wife would not be immediately a fan of, but she’d come around eventually. It was time for him to finally go out for a night of gambling with a new friend.
Maximus’ feet hit the ground like a horse’s hooves as he marched towards the Imperial Palace full of an uncompressible fury. He had thought that him meditating on the issue might have calmed him down, but the closer he got to the Imperial palace and the more he thought about the whole incident, the more cantankerous became his heart.
The raw depth of anger he was feeling was clear to all who dared look him in the face before bowing their heads due to fear. There were few things that got Maximus well and truly angry, and the fool who dared try and kill the boy would soon find out that assassination attempts were one of those things. The emotional scar left behind by his own mother’s death had left a deep impression on his actions to this day.
Part of the reason he’d thrown in his lot with the emperor in the first place was that the man had vowed to him that every citizen of the Imperium would be safe from assassination under his watch, and so far, Augustus had done his best to hold true to that promise. Augustus may have been many things, but he’d always been a keeper of his word, and Maximus had grown genuinely loyal to the man over time, but the oath was the foundation of their whole relationship. And if not even the Crown prince of the Imperium was safe from attack, within the Imperial palace no less, then who in the Imperium was?
This whole situation reminded Maximus that the work of beating it into the heads of assassins that they weren’t welcome in the Imperium was an ongoing task and one that he’d been not doing personally for far too long. By the time he reached the door to his Imperial Majesty’s chambers, the Marshall had already convinced himself that he’d soon be decapitating traitors in the hundreds for their heinous crimes against the state. He honestly looked forward to it.
However, the emperor, as usual, seemed far more conflicted about the whole situation once he’d foregone the pleasantries.
“Maximus, the forces that move against me and my child are not so minor as a few upstart nobles making rash decisions otherwise I would have given them a bloody painful death with my own two hands. Something or someone else is involved in this whose power with illusions eclipses my own ability to dispel them.” The usually power-laden voice of the emperor was instead now full of caution and worry.
Maximus froze upon hearing this. The list of people more powerful than the Grand Emperor of the Imperium was a relatively long one with the number of powerful clan disciples out there in the multi-verse not being a tiny amount but the list did thankfully get a lot shorter when filtered by those who’d possibly want him or his child dead.
“You suspect demonic forces are at play, Your Majesty? That the abyssal sect is at it again with their insidious scheming as before?” Maximus asked, knowing the most likely non-Imperium suspects that the emperor’s mind would turn to when he thought of people most likely to try and kill him.
“No, I know for a fact they weren’t involved in the assassination attempt on my son’s life. In truth, I am unsure as to whom this force behind the scenes orchestrating my demise is exactly, but I hope that I can count on your strength to combat them whoever they are.”
“You shall always have my strength, your majesty. However, may I ask how you can be so certain that the abyssal sect was not behind the attack? It seems like something right up their alley to me.” Maximus replied, his confusion quite evident.
The emperor smiled a bit too weakly for his proud face before replying, “The would-be assassin did not bear the mark of the sect, nor was any corrupted qi found within their mana core during the autopsy. But, most definitively, I confirmed the assessment with a special divination provided by a bishop within the Imperium of Destiny.”
Maximus’ jaw almost fell off, and his face must have shown his evident surprise as the emperor’s smile grew larger and more amused.
“Don’t be surprised that you’re out of the loop my friend, in the last 5 years I think this is only the 9th time I’ve seen you in person. Though perhaps it is right that I tell you now that you are here.” The emperor paused for a moment before announcing casually, “When my son reaches the age of 16, he shall marry one of the Fated Princesses as per an arrangement I came to with the Emperor of Destiny himself.”
Maximus almost wanted to punch the man in front of him to test if he was dreaming or not, “Why the hell are you worried about an unknown force trying to assassinate you when you have one of the heavenly providences backing you up?”
The emperor’s smile evaporated, and Maximus realised there had to be more to this arrangement than what the man just let on. Some things were truly too good to be true.
Maximus looked at the emperor expectantly, and the other man eventually opened his mouth to speak but his voice sounded uncharacteristically frail. “Friend, I must confess that the situation with my son and the princess of destiny is more like a concubinage disguised as a marriage.”
Maximus immediately realised the implications of his lord’s words and he understood why the man seemed so diminished. The man loved his son more than anything, a fact that Maximus had witnessed and been told many times, and in recent times it seemed not only had he been forced to effectively sell off his only son for the prosperity of his family later down the line, but that same child had also nearly been killed a few days ago.
However, despite understanding the man’s motivations, Maximus fundamentally disagreed with the emperor’s decision. He’d originally married his wife because of politics, and it had only been after they’d actually come to love one another that the relationship finally worked. He’d been very lucky to have been married off to the perfect woman by his family, but not everyone would be so lucky and from the little he knew about the Fated Princesses – the Crown Prince would probably not enjoy a life married to any one of them.
“Your majesty, why not orchestrate a marriage with an alternative heavenly providence or any other major powers? Surely there would be others among them more willing to provide you with aid without the need for your son to become a concubine to some random woman he’s never met.” Maximus said, doing his best to keep his voice advisory and not combative.
Augustus laughed, before saying, “You know this better than anyone my friend, but no benefits provided by any other power could compare in quality to the kind of benefits capable of being provided by one of the Heavenly providences. Furthermore, the only reason my son got this offer at all was because of his [Epic] rarity Prophet class, and by the class’ very nature the Imperium of Destiny was a natural choice for forming alliances with him.”
Maximus knew his emperor was right but found the whole situation… icky. The emperor seemed to agree and decided to change topic, “Maximus, though the demons may not have orchestrated nor perpetrated the attack it would be advantageous for us to pretend as though they did. That way with the population and aristocracy riled up against demons we will have the political space to take care of two problems with one stone.”
Maximus slightly begrudged lying to the people of the Imperium, but he knew that political manoeuvring had never been his thing, so he’d leave all that to the emperor – doing that had worked out well in the past. At the end of the day, Maximus’ personal feelings about different actions didn’t really matter, what mattered, when it came to running a state, was whether or not the plan worked and brought about its desired result, and in this regard, his majesty had his full trust. After all, the man Augustus Hergalexy was among the best of plotters; better even than most demons, and so the Marshall felt no trepidation at all in leaving the forming and execution of a complex political manoeuvre to the emperor.
In accordance with the law, before Maximus walked out of the door, he turned to face the emperor, saluted and declared “Long Live the Imperium!” and then turned back around and walked back towards his ship.