Chapter 311
Chapter 311: Cards on the Table—I'm Raising a Future Empress
Many nobles had begun to tremble. They suddenly collapsed to the ground, their bodies abruptly hollowed out.
Fissures reeking of nauseating rot quietly split open across their backs—as though torn from within—releasing malice into the air.
In that instant, the stench of decay and damp mold spread wildly through the space, and a thread of blood-iron smell sent chills coursing down the spine.
Before everyone's watching eyes, churning flesh and blood seeped out from their blackened bodies.
Shapeless black dust rushed across the surface at terrifying speed, shifting constantly—like phantoms born of chaos.
Amid the transformation, their bodies swelled into towering black mounds.
Black mist surged rapidly from the sacks of their flesh, forming into enormous maws that croaked and clattered.
Those maws produced garbled mutterings. If one listened carefully, a few distinct human words could be picked out among them:
"God…dess……"
"God…dess……"
"Mon—monster!! A MONSTER!!"
The scene left every noble present slack-jawed.
In horror, they flung their goblets away. The sound of shattering glass and the clatter of objects colliding rippled through this phantasmal cosmos.
At the same moment, the doors of the Banquet Hall were smashed open. Knights stormed in and immediately stepped into the roiling black chaos.
The nobles scrambled desperately to find an exit, trying to flee the filthy, chaotic miasma.
Amid the chaos, order was impossible to maintain.
Viktor, however, paid it no mind. He simply tightened his grip on his staff and said calmly:
"These—are the heretical cultists the Empire has been rooting out."
These cultists had infiltrated the Empire's borders. After slaughtering humans, they parasitized the hollow shells of their victims and wore human faces.
The moment the Knights arrived, the nobles felt a surge of relief.
Because they had no reason to be afraid.
Setting aside how many people were present, among the nobility there were also countless Mages and powerful warriors.
The Empire's strongest—Emperor Aubrey—stood right there before them.
How could he possibly stand by and watch creatures like these appear in the Banquet Hall?
So the nobles had nearly settled on a single conclusion.
The Mage Council had likely discovered these cultists in the Empire long ago.
And had used this banquet to expose them.
A staged performance, played out before them.
Few people became nobles by being fools—otherwise they could never have held their positions in comfort.
And the appearance of these cultists also meant one thing: someone's position was being reinforced.
They already understood perfectly.
Viktor's gaze was sharp as a blade as he stared at the cultists before him, a crimson light flickering in his eyes.
"These cultists have taken root in the Empire, biding their time, always searching for an opportunity."
Whenever the Empire changed its successor, these cultists would stir.
In the unstable period of dynastic transition, they would use human shells to loudly propagate their obsessive and twisted doctrine.
"Which is why His Majesty must designate an heir early—and that heir must command the loyalty of all."
At the very least, they could not afford to have a faction in disarray still festering beneath them once they took the throne.
Perhaps they would even need to spend energy dealing with them.
Every person present had arrived at the same reasoning.
Whether it was the First Prince or the Second Prince who ascended, there would always be nobles ready to take offense on the other's behalf.
After all, this was a matter that touched directly on their own interests.
If the First Prince ascended, then nobles in the Second Prince's camp would naturally rise up in protest.
On what grounds?!
The First Prince certainly had the achievement of slaying a great dragon—but the Second Prince was no lesser figure.
He had even led troops to investigate the Demons lurking in the Northern Frontier, sustaining injuries throughout.
Equally, if the Second Prince ascended, the nobles and ministers backing the First Prince would react in much the same way.
Even so, however one looked at it, ministers were still nobles—and though they had their own calculations, none of them could be called treacherous.
So unless someone was truly extreme, dealing with them in the shadows was out of the question.
After all, all anyone wanted was their own family's share of the spoils.
Indeed—eliminating them outright would have been the most efficient method.
To swiftly purge ministers who resisted, so that the new Emperor's Empire could be built on solid ground.
But that would be nothing more than surface stability.
The moment such action was taken, ministers and commoners alike would lose all faith in the Empire.
At that point, its collapse would only be a matter of time.
Not even Aubrey could force submission from everyone through sheer force.
What he could do was command awe through power.
To let ministers and commoners understand that he possessed the absolute strength required to govern a nation.
And to ensure the Empire never saw another purge like the one that took place decades ago, he had to guarantee that ministers would not descend into chaos when the time of succession came.
Since it was impossible to satisfy everyone, the only option was to satisfy no one.
And so it was entirely obvious.
The nobles present were completely bewildered. They genuinely could not be satisfied.
No one could accept this kind of reasoning.
Was this flimsy justification really enough to reduce every year of competition between the First and Second Prince to a farce?
To reduce the efforts of all these nobles—the tall wooden cathedrals they had built over years, sealed in resin—
to nothing but ash, burned to the ground by a single sentence?
Magnificent fireworks made for a princess?
Naturally, no one could accept it.
What reasoning, what principles?
None of it mattered to them.
At this moment, they had even forgotten: those black masses of writhing flesh were twisting and slithering closer to them.
Their horror was not worth half a fraction of what these nobles stood to lose.
Even with these cultists present—so what?
These nobles were like treasure hunters who had gone mad for power in the depths of a dark forest.
At the most critical juncture, they did not spare a single thought for the beast lurking behind them.
All they could see was wealth and status.
After all, they wanted only their own share—the bigger, the better.
What did cultists have to do with them, these nobles?
The Kingdom of Carencia wasn't theirs to begin with.
In that instant, the malice within the nobles' hearts—like writhing maggots—crawled all at once up from the cesspit.
Evil was amplified rapidly, until it consumed the nobles themselves.
In the minds of the vast majority, these frenzied thoughts could no longer be stopped.
They absolutely could not accept this absurd yet equal-opportunity justification.
On what grounds?!
On what grounds?!
No—I must win!
I must win!
Suddenly—boom!—a tremendous explosion rang out, jolting the nobles back from their maddened thoughts. They followed the sound to its source.
For some reason, one of the chaotic cultists had already detonated into ash.
Together with flesh and cinders, it had simply vanished into the phantasmal flowing starfield.
A single thought rose simultaneously in every heart:
Viktor had used Magic.
The nobles turned to look. They saw Viktor extend his staff, leveling it at a second chaotic cultist.
They assumed Viktor was about to unleash some terrifying, all-destroying spell.
To obliterate that twisted abomination within this unbreakable space.
But in the next second, everyone's eyes went wide.
Viktor wound his arm back in a full arc—and swung the pitch-black staff with everything he had, shattering space itself.
Carrying with it a faint trace of void, it drove deep into the writhing, indistinct flesh.
Boom!
The cultist bulged like an overinflated balloon. The entire mound-like body began to shudder in irregular spasms, and in the next instant the flesh exploded.
With a violent crash, the black flesh split apart and scattered. Countless still-twitching black tentacles dropped completely onto the starfield floor.
They thrashed twice—thwap thwap—in one last desperate struggle, then went still.
The teeth of the enormous maw fractured outward in every direction. A thick, reeking stench burst from within the colossal mass of flesh—the viscous reek of a dead fish rotting deep in a muddy swamp.
Once.
Again.
Every strike Viktor delivered clearly landed on the flesh.
Yet within the chests of all these nobles, something clenched involuntarily.
Every time they heard a blow land, the bodies that had previously hunched with rage seemed to sink even lower.
Fragile bones—as though shattered by the impact of the blows—were on the verge of no longer supporting the bloated, malicious frames they carried.
It was as though the staff was not striking the cultists at all.
But their own twisted hearts.
Perhaps in this moment, they and those cultists were not so different.
The cultists, for the return of their Goddess—
released their malice upon the world, then purged it away with their extreme sense of justice.
Perhaps in doing so, they could feel at peace.
Perhaps through it, they believed the Goddess of Justice could see that they had once again assumed a righteous posture—and would descend to the mortal realm, leading her flock of ignorant followers once more.
And as for these nobles—they too, for the sake of their own interests, had chosen to embrace malice.
The staff that symbolized justice passed judgment on them again and again, purifying their corrupted hearts.
As though even the evil they had harbored moments before had been entirely cleansed away.
Until the final blow fell.
Hard.
The last mass of cultist dissolved completely within the space.
Viktor lifted his staff and weighed it in his hand.
Only after confirming that not the slightest trace of foul residue clung to it did he plant the staff at his side once more, his expression still composed.
"A pity—not particularly elegant."
He exhaled lightly.
But the nobles' bodies convulsed wildly.
You call yourself a Mage? What the hell kind of Mage are you?
What Mage swings his staff at someone like a club—and you qualify as a member of the Mage Council?
You owe every Mage in the world an apology!
Viktor turned back around to face the nobles.
He simply straightened his back—and yet he stood like a colossus passing judgment over all things, bearing an inextinguishable gravity.
His tone, however, was flat as ever, as though he found all of this entirely trivial.
"I understand—you will still be dissatisfied with the choice of the Princess over a prince as Emperor."
"I can still explain."
As he said this, he extended one hand and closed it gently in midair.
The world around them seemed to be squeezed and crushed by a pair of invisible hands. The phantasmal starfield—like a sheet of thin, brittle paper—crumpled abruptly and began to collapse.
In the blink of an eye, the nobles found themselves back inside the gilded, radiant Banquet Hall.
The hall seemed to have been scrubbed clean all over again—somehow even more pristine than before.
The white of the tablecloths was almost startling.
The nobles looked around—and saw several withered corpses lying on the floor.
Their limbs appeared bound, as though restrained. A tautness rushed instantly into every mind.
It proved one thing to them.
Everything that had just happened was not an illusion.
Viktor planted his staff beside him—as though making a declaration:
"Only our Mage Council possesses the power to inspect and purge these heretical cultists."
"And our Mage Council will offer its unconditional support to Auréliane Sorel."
Upon hearing these words, countless nobles caught their breath.
The moment his words fell, the 3 Council Members standing behind Viktor erupted simultaneously with astounding vortices of Magic Power.
Formations of every color and manner began to spin rapidly into existence. Accompanied by a deep, thrumming agitation, the very air seemed occupied by Magic Power—descending into chaos.
Viktor stood at the forefront. Somehow, he had put on that worn black Coat once more.
Moving without wind, it flickered with 5 stripes of alien color.
Like some absolute terror from a primordial age stirring to wakefulness—natural energy surging alongside it.
He seemed to look down upon everyone present. The obsidian eyes half-veiled beneath the light glinted with brilliant radiance:
"My apologies—but we are the strongest."
"And therefore—"
"We can do as we please."