Chapter 288 : Chapter 288
Chapter 288. Attack Candidates, Secret Preparations
Sylvia’s eyes focused.
Directly attacking the serving Prime Minister? Outside the Royal Capital?
“Reason,” Logaris said. He did not say whether it was feasible or not. He only asked for the core point.
“He is too perfect.” Dorg spoke extremely quickly. “Divination cannot detect him. Surveillance cannot find anything. Even his daily routine is as clean as a precision instrument. Conventional methods are useless against him, so there is only one path left—force him to act!”
Dorg leaned forward, his thin shoulder blades forming sharp arcs beneath his coat.
“When he goes to the monastery for the blessing ceremony, he will not bring too many guards in order to show his closeness to the people. Five Fourth-Tier Knights and one Fifth-Tier mage. That is the standard escort for his public itinerary. As long as we set up a sufficiently lethal ambush along the way and force him into a desperate situation where he will die if he does not retaliate—”
“Then he will have no choice but to use power beyond the norm to protect himself! A Prime Minister who should only be an ordinary politician displaying high-tier supernatural spellcraft in full view of everyone—that itself will be the greatest flaw!”
He took a deep breath, and a sickly flush climbed onto his cheekbones.
“With that evidence, we will have sufficient reason to immediately notify Swordsmanship Grandmaster Elena, the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Guard, and Dean Barnabas of Saint Arcadia! It is true that Seventh-Tier powerhouses do not interfere in internal politics, but that is under the premise that no one is secretly subverting the kingdom’s foundation!”
As his words fell, the reception room remained quiet for two seconds.
Sylvia did not agree immediately. Her slender fingers tapped twice against the armrest of the sofa while her mind rapidly calculated the gains and losses.
“Elder Brother, your line of thinking is good, but I believe this plan has one fatal flaw.”
Sylvia raised her silver-gray eyes and coldly locked onto Dorg. Under the dim light, those eyes gleamed with a metallic chill, like two thin swords freshly taken from a whetstone.
“Moran is so cautious that he even deliberately makes his daily itinerary flawless. On what basis are you certain that the person who appears on that train the day after tomorrow will definitely be Moran himself?”
She paused, and her tone grew half a degree colder.
“What if it is only an alchemical duplicate? Or some substitute controlled by mental spellcraft? We may pour everything into a beautifully executed ambush, only to blow apart a fake body. In that case, we will merely alert the enemy.”
She tilted her head slightly, the corner of her eye sweeping over Logaris, who was leaning against the bookshelf behind her. The reason she could think of this point at once was very simple. The person standing behind her was the best in all Astrelia at playing with duplicates, and he had pulled off more than one deception that fooled the heavens and crossed the sea.
“At that time, we will completely lose the initiative.”
Hearing this, Dorg frowned slightly. This was indeed the variable he was most worried about.
“Besides that, there is another fatal problem. Whom do we send to launch this attack?”
A rational chill flickered in Sylvia’s silver-gray eyes. “Sixth-Tier powerhouses in the kingdom are all subject to extremely strict registration. We absolutely cannot let anyone familiar carry out the ambush. If the assassination fails and even the slightest clue is exposed, what awaits us will likely be an endless stream of impeachments.”
“So, if we want to force out his trump card, the main attacker cannot be too weak. At the very least, it must be a top-tier Sixth-Tier assassin, and it must be an unfamiliar face that absolutely cannot be traced back to us. Elder Brother, do you have such a person?”
Dorg’s brows knitted tightly. An unfamiliar face above the Sixth Tier? Someone of that level was already rare in the kingdom, unless they spent a fortune to hire an assassin from the Mercenary Rankings.
At this moment, Logaris, who had been leaning beside the bookshelf as though the matter had nothing to do with him, suddenly chuckled.
“There is no need to worry about the duplicate problem.” Logaris pushed up the rimless glasses on the bridge of his nose, and a calm gleam flashed through his pale-blue eyes. Naturally, he could not reveal the existence of Mad King Maggie in the Tower of Inverted Truth on this occasion.
But a countermeasure model had already taken shape in his mind. Maggie had once mentioned that as long as the divination medium had a major causal connection with the target, she could break through secrecy. In that case, did a duplicate count as a divination medium with a major causal connection?
“As for the choice of attacker…”
Logaris raised his head, and his gaze happened to meet Sylvia’s silver-gray eyes in midair.
The two old ancestors inside the Tower of Inverted Truth.
The founding Emperor of Astrelia, Hero King Rolandain, and the Eighth-Tier demigod from a thousand years ago, Mad King Maggie. These two quasi-Seventh-Tier Memory Constructs not only possessed strength formidable enough to crush the vast majority of present-day Transcendents, but they also did not exist in any current registration records.
More importantly, that old bastard Moran not only wanted to usurp Astrelia’s realm, but had also turned Astrelia VI into a necromantic puppet and desecrated him at will.
Their own backyard had been overturned by a demon from Hell and a powerful minister working together. Inviting these two royal ancestors out to “clean house” was completely reasonable. They had no reason not to act.
Taking ten thousand steps back, even if those two old ancestors were restricted in some way and could not remain in the outside world for too long, Logaris still held one perfect backup card.
The Nullifier, Lilith.
That Sixth-Tier Anti-Magic assassin could be brought over through spatial teleportation by Logaris at any time and put to use immediately.
After all, when it came to attacking trains, Lilith had experience. She was more than familiar with it.
“As for personnel, Elder Brother need not worry either.” Sylvia understood at once and withdrew her gaze, elegantly leaning back against her chair.
“We happen to know two ‘seniors’ with rather poor tempers and solid strength. They have a very deep attachment to this land, so I imagine they will be quite willing to come out and stretch their muscles.”
“Exclusive methods? Hidden seniors?”
Dorg repeatedly savored those words in his mouth, and a trace of displeasure flashed through his eyes.
In his view, he had practically turned out even his underwear for the other side tonight—his top-secret intelligence network, actuarial data analysis, Moran’s route and itinerary. Yet these two actual controllers of the Northern Territory were still hiding things, throwing out a pile of mysterious remarks. It was truly not very frank of them.
But Dorg also knew very well that in this political gamble, the chips in his hand were far thinner than those held by the pair opposite him. He had no right to bargain.
Dorg remained silent for more than ten seconds. His fingertip finally rubbed hard against the rim of the white porcelain teacup. Then he released it, and his eyes turned cold once more.
“Since you are so confident, then we will proceed according to your plan. Remember, we have only one chance.”
“Tomorrow morning at nine, the operation begins on time.”
Logaris casually acknowledged him. He raised his hand slightly, and the space behind him twisted and folded once more without warning. Before the extremely guarded eyes of Dorg and Nevira, he and Sylvia’s figures vanished without a trace in an instant, accompanied by a faint blue glow of Aether.
The reception room returned to deathly silence. Only the two empty sofas proved that the two Sixth-Tier powerhouses had indeed visited this place just now.
Outside the window, the sound of rain grew even tighter, as though brewing a storm powerful enough to overturn the Royal Capital.