“…..”

A silence descended in the room as if they had come to a funeral.

“A madman.”

Ian spoke casually. But the bloodshot eyes clearly showed how angry he was right now.

“In the end, that bastard was the one who planned the assassination of Brother Shio?”

Ian had been using an honorable tone of speech until now, but it suddenly changed. But Duke Arangis could understand, and as such, he simply nodded somberly.

“That is right. However, as I said, the purpose did not lay in assassinating the crown prince. Rather, it was because he judged that the imperial castle and the entirety of the empire would fall into greater chaos with the assassination of Crown Prince Shio…”

“Ha! Hahaha…!”

Ian burst into laughter. It was a type of dry, woeful laugh. Raven realized that Ian’s laughter contained a plethora of emotions – animosity and admiration for Jean Oberon, the Nameless Necromancer, as well as anger directed towards himself. Everything had happened the way the Nameless Necromancer wanted it to after the incident with Crown Prince Shio. If Shio had left the world then, it was clear that the emperor and the empire would have anointed Ian as the...