Chapter 74: When the One Holding the Sword Is a Fanatic

A damp mist blanketed the central plaza of Verden, a satellite town thirty miles west of the capital.

The heavy scent of blood mixed with the acrid smell of burnt wood in the early morning air.

At the center of a dried-out fountain, a plump man in torn noble silk — the Grand Earl of Verden — hung bound by both wrists to a marble pillar. Across the chest of his silk robe, a deep gash formed the hollow-circle emblem [⭕], still weeping fresh blood onto the stone below.

Surrounding the pillar stood twelve young men in ragged black cloaks, dyed with cheap ink. They carried plain iron swords with no house crest, eyes bloodshot and hollow from sleeplessness, chanting a manifesto in unison, their voices thick with fanaticism.

"'...He who takes bread from the tyrant's table to feed the starving holds the scales of the divine! The blood of the oppressor shall water the seed of justice!'"

SLASH!

An iron blade swung up.

The Earl's head dropped onto the stone platform amid the ecstatic screaming of the black-cloaked mob. They planted strips of black cloth into the corpse and quickly vanished into the thick fog before the town's patrol knights could arrive.

On the roof of an abandoned bell tower fifty meters from the plaza.

Lucian, Eleanor, and Sylvia stood pressed against the moss-covered stone wall, watching the entire scene from above.

Lucian held a soiled sheet of parchment, taken off a captured cultist earlier — the Execution Manifesto of the Order of the Ashen Knight.

His dark eyes swept over the quoted line.

'He who takes bread from the tyrant's table to feed the starving...'

Lucian narrowed his eyes, his temples twitching faintly.

He remembered that afternoon at age eight, writing chapter nine of Volume 2. He'd been too busy playing chess with old Boris the steward and had missed his mealtime, stomach growling with hunger. To ease his hunger and hit his Old Elvish vocabulary quota for the System, he'd tossed off a quick scene of the protagonist sneaking into a stingy noble's bakery to steal two croissants for a snack.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

To justify the theft, he'd padded it out with a string of hollow, high-sounding rhetoric about "redistributing wealth," pulled straight from Ancient Elvish.

A scene about stealing croissants out of hunger.

And now, that exact same passage had become scripture for fanatics to behead a Grand Earl and slaughter his entire household in broad daylight.

Cold wind swept across the bell tower's roof.

Eleanor stood beside him, her white silk-gloved hand gripping the stone railing so tightly her knuckles went white. She stared at the bloodstained black cloak fluttering by the fountain below, her blue eyes shaking violently.

Throughout her years growing up in the palace, she'd read that book a thousand times, captivated by the image of a lone knight standing outside the law to protect the weak. She'd once believed that violence carried out in the name of justice was something profoundly romantic and sacred.

But when that violence actually stepped into the real world, there was no glowing light, no tragic swelling music — only the reek of blood, raw brutality, and a headless body abandoned in a pool of mud.

Eleanor slowly turned her head, looking straight at the side of Lucian's face, her voice hoarse.

"Lucian... when the author of that book wrote those lines... did he really want this continent plunged into a lawless, bloody purge like this?"

Lucian looked down at the crumpled manifesto in his hand, then down at the ruined scene below.

He crumpled the parchment and tossed it into the gap between the tiles, his voice flat, none of his usual sarcasm anywhere in it.

"I'll bet you ten thousand gold the author was only thinking about how to end that chapter in time for bed."

Eleanor said nothing.

She stared deep into the ten-year-old's dark, fathomless eyes without another word. The autumn wind tossed her golden hair, carrying with it the bitter chill of an unforgiving reality.

Click.

Sylvia climbed up the bell tower's stairs, carrying a sealed dispatch marked with the dark red wax seal of the Church's Inquisitorial Court — a flaming sword emblem.

She walked up to Lucian and lowered her voice.

"Master. At the sites of the western assassinations, the army found hundreds of leaflets bearing the [⭕] emblem, printed on specialty parchment traced back to Vance Commerce."

Sylvia handed him the dispatch.

"The Inquisitorial Court and the Royal Council have jointly issued an emergency summons: the Vance Publishing House's senior representative is required to appear before the Church tomorrow morning for questioning on charges of 'inciting social unrest and financing an assassination organization.'"