Chapter 108: The Butcher
"Over one thousand seven hundred!" Radahn exclaimed, his voice dropping into a state of total, un-courtly speechlessness. "Does this specific duke harbor the mad ambition to launch an open rebellion against the throne?"
Lucia's features remained anchored in a knot of profound shock and deep confusion. According to the ancient, codified traditions governing the arena guilds, strictly two tactical teams comprising a total of eight master gladiators would ultimately clear the gates to contest the championship hunt within the sewer waterways. Even if the ministries authorized an extraordinary variance to expand the brackets for this cycle, the absolute census of the Battle Festival would cap at sixty-four active fighters—a number completely out of all proportion to the monumental volume of this trapped livestock.
If deployed across a legitimate field of warfare, a ravenous, giant-blooded host of that magnitude could potentially overwhelm a standard vanguard of three thousand iron-clad Golden Knights in a direct, head-on collision!
Duke Duolis had clearly swept the entire northern frontier clean of prisoners, dragging every captured rebel into the capital ring to feed this specific festival. Enforcing the logistics, the hidden transport lines, and the subsequent clean-up operations would have mathematically consumed an immense reservoir of manual labor and house gold, all while exposing his lineage to the immediate threat of a supreme judicial audit from their Majesties. What specific, hidden dividend was his strategy chasing?
It appeared now that even the Serante manager, Old Hart, remained entirely blind to the true, un-veiled horror driving this incident. The administrative claim that the sixteen operators who survived the second round would automatically harvest the credentials of a Night Fighter was an absolute absurdity. Evaluated under these current, volatile parameters, this winter's Battle Festival lacked the capacity to proceed according to the historical scripts. If sixteen mortal warriors were threw into the subterranean warrens alongside nearly two thousand rabid Icefield Trolls, it remained a mathematical uncertainty whether a single soul would draw breath by the dawn watch.
"Your intellects must comprehend that the public Battle Festival and the vastly more secretive shadow duels conducted down in the dark do not function merely as common blood-sports to entertain the high boxes," Morgott spoke, his gravelly voice pulling their focus back to the oak table. "They operate concurrently as the ultimate battlefields engineered by the nobility to resolve territorial deadlocks and political fractures that defy peaceful negotiation."
"Duke Caven Duolis has historically been celebrated across the capital ministries for his un-chipped maturity and administrative prudence, yet on this watch, his hand has executed an almost irrational, high-fatality lunge. If our calculations are conformed to isolate a rational explanation for the variance, the ledger indicates his house has suffered a catastrophic defeat across the upper court struggles—forcing his hand to execute a desperate, absolute gamble to reverse the liquidation of his asset line."
Lucia lifted his silver eyelashes slightly, his fingers tapping the wood. "But the palace pages asserted that his carriage returned victorious from the northern borders only a handful of suns past. Analyzing the deferential attitude the Lord Consort Radagon broadcasted toward his shield during the grand state banquet, there manifest few ministers across the entire Golden Dynasty who score more triumphant than this duke across the current watch, correct?"
"Ha! By what metrics does your heart validate the theater of Radagon and his chosen pets!" Mohg scoffed aloud, his clawed fingers snapping through the air as his tongue made zero attempt to camouflage his deep, ancestral contempt for his stepfather.
"Three winters past, the supreme administrative seat governing the Guardian of the North fell vacant. The opinions dividing the high ministries were roughly split between two irreconcilable factions. The ascendant New Faction was prepared to support Marquis Osarion, who had executed the duties of the deputy commander for seasons, promoting his name to garrison commander and supreme lord of the Northern Legion lines. Parallel to that play, the conservative Old Party was prepared to recommend Chief Sirius to claim the northern frontier, utilizing his iron authority to completely extinguish the endless rebellions of the wild tribes. As for Duolis... he comprised merely a hollow, third option forced onto the board by Radagon's private executive decree."
"Naturally, since the Warlord personally wove his authority into the appointment, the modern nobles had nothing to say across the chamber. But evaluating the baseline of seniority and actual administrative capability, Duolis scores as an absolute zero match for Chief Sirius. If the Chief himself had not recorded an absolute lack of interest regarding the garrison seat, and if his sovereign lady mother had not desisted from issuing a clear executive statement from her palace, that pathetic duke wouldn't even have possessed the credentials to sit at the table!"
Kristoff, who had maintained a quiet watch throughout the strategy brief, offered a slow nod of acknowledgement. "The historical alignment matches your words, Prince Mohg. Yet, the imperial Gazettes asserted that Duke Duolis executed a commendable performance across the northern border, did he not? If his hand had not enforced that un-yielding defensive matrix, the tribal uprisings might not have entered a state of rapid liquidation."
"That defines the exact core of the failure!" Mohg shouted, his hairy palms executing a sudden, thunderous clap that caused the teacups to rattle against the oak.
"If his governance had stayed anchored to the baseline parameters of the northern seat across those three winters—merely patching the fractures and putting out the localized brushfires wherever the embers ignited—his ledger would have balanced cleanly enough. But do your thoughts truly simulate that his ridiculously stupid Iron Wall Strategy was implemented without a catastrophic structural cost to the empire?"
"The northern frontier does not share the mild, regulatory climate characterizing the Weeping Peninsula. Expecting to engineer an absolute, iron-clad fortress line across such a freezing, desolate wilderness of ice is a laughably incompetent calculus. Duolis expended three full winters, nearly a fifth of the active legion manpower, and twenty years' worth of grain and logistical supplies strictly to secure a meager, temporary three-to-five winters of artificial stability—and that tally omits the immense debt of political favors he now owes to the northern frontier officers and those fanatical Flame Archbishops whom his tongue manipulated under the guise of New Faction solidarity!"
"The terminal calculation reveals that, beyond harvesting the completely useless, decorative title of a 'famous general,' his house gained absolute zero across the northern territories. His personal connections and raw prestige among the mid-level captains of the Northern Legion score vastly inferior to the deep-seated networks Marquis Osarion has cultivated across decades of field command. Following the closure of this devastating Battle of the Iron Wall, the sub-captains who had been promised a king's ransom of institutional benefits by his pen are now broadcasting nothing more than a superficial, skin-deep loyalty to his banner. Concurrently, the high New Faction ministers across the capital court harbor a deep resentment toward his name, knowing his vanity expended the common resources of their entire coalition strictly to craft a solitary monument to his personal glory."
Mohg's dark, horn-ribbed visage contorted into a grotesque, mocking smile as he gloated over the decay. "From the opening movement to the terminal watch, this entire sequence was merely that idiot Radagon attempting to forcefully train one of his favorite hounds into a pillar of the New Faction ministries—an entity engineered to rival the immense martial weight clutched by the two great chiefs of the Forge. Regrettably for the throne, the hound under evaluation scores as entirely incompetent; his marrow lacks the capacity to bear the armor. Now, zero options remain on his board; he is on the literal precipice of being thoroughly dismissed and sent back to the capital ring under a synchronized, joint execution assault launched by both ministries."
"Calm your vocabulary, Mohg!" Morgott commanded with practiced, casual ease, the dark iron band of his cane executing a swift tap directly against his younger brother's forehead. "Duke Duolis remains a high-ranking minister of the imperial crown; your tongue is legally forbidden from releasing such vulgarities against his office."
Lucia silently rolled his silver eyes behind his cloak. Duolis was indeed a high-ranking official, and Radagon sat upon the absolute sovereign throne of the realm. Morgott, pretending your ears are completely blind to the treason formatting your brother's mouth does not magically transmute your identity into a truly selfless, pristine saint of the Erdtree!
"Consequently... this upcoming Battle Festival functions essentially as a high-fatality, absolute shadow gamble separating Duke Duolis and Marquis Osarion?" Radahn concluded with a sharp, martial shrewdness, his dark eyes shifting toward Mohg's position with a sudden touch of respect—regardless of how foul and reckless the Omen's mouth scored, the beast's strategic comprehension of legion logistics aligned perfectly with his own military training.
Morgott offered a slow, heavy nod. "The calculation is precise. The Marquis of Osarion functions indeed as one of the ultimate behind-the-scenes controllers anchoring these grand arena networks, and he stands across the court as the solitary candidate commanding the leverage to contest Duke Duolis for the permanent command of the Northern Legion lines. Evaluating the duke's highly anomalous behavior across this moon, it scores as a near-certainty that these two ministers are preparing to execute a terminal round of shadow warfare across the sand."
"The layout belongs to him without a shadow of a doubt—the clues align flawlessly," Lucia affirmed. Combining the brothers' advanced breakdown of the internal court friction with the specific data points clutched inside his own archives, every disparate thread across the capital had finally locked into a single, unified grid.
"Our vanguard learned from the private registries of the Caelid Colosseum that Marquis Osarion specially deployed his ministerial seals to invite the master Perfumer Rolo to register his blade for this specific festival. Concurrently, Duke Duolis's solitary legitimate heir, Carlyle, was forced into the identical grid of sixty-four participants. These two master combatants are conformed to operate as the primary proxy agents representing the two houses across this gamble."
"Most specifically this entity, Rolo," Lucia let out a slow, quiet sigh, his silver eyes flashing with a cold brilliance. "In truth... our vanguard cleared the grates and tracked a path to this underworld explicitly to cross his line."
"Your boots cleared the surface to target his signature?" Morgott clearly hadn't simulated that specific possibility across his calculations, his brow furrowing in deep bewilderment. "Disclose the source code behind that objective. What is your meaning?"
"Does your memory preserve the physical profile of the cold blade that nearly liquidated your vital readouts two moons past?" Lucia asked, his voice dropping into a flat, freezing frequency. "The probability scores at an absolute maximum that his hand executed the stroke."
"The assassin defines him?!" Morgott and Mohg exclaimed almost simultaneously, their postures locking into a sudden rigidity.
Morgott forced his mind to retrace the steps of that nightmarish, bloody watch—the leering, ecstatic smiling mask that had dominated his vision; a voice that emerged hoarse, dry, and thoroughly unpleasant, sounding exactly like a rusty saw cutting through dead oak bark. The assailant's physical frame had presented the illusion of a hunched, frail old physician, yet his operational velocity had scored on a ghostly, near-invisible tier that out-paced the reflexes of the line. Within the span of a mere ten martial exchanges, the killer's blade had aggressively shattered his defensive guard, completely slicing open his chest and abdomen while cleanly fracturing seven independent ribs with a solitary, continuous sweep of his iron!
"My vanguard intersected his path while attempting to rescue a trapped non-human hunting party near the border walls—my shield lacked the parameters to hold the line against his combat aromatics. Following my defeat, the monster brutally slaughtered twelve of my young outriders directly before my eyes," Morgott recalled, his gravelly voice dropping into a low, strained whisper as the trauma resurfaced. "His hand clearly commanded the structural opening to terminate my own life readouts across the flags, yet his steel deliberately arrested its momentum. He even went so far as to sprinkle a handful of a strange, highly volatile hemostatic dust across my raw lacerations. My system sustained an immense volume of blood loss, causing my consciousness to hit absolute zero within a handful of minutes. When my eyelids initial cleared the dark, my frame was already resting beneath the cots of Dr. Tolisha's clinic."
"That dust defined the absolute formulation of the Defiled Aromatic," Tolisha interjected from the bench, her cheeks draining of all color as her clinical registry verified the data. "Zero common pharmacological compounds across the empire command the chemical potency to instantaneously freeze the hemorrhage of a deep torso laceration of that tier. That specific signature matches the exact traces of defiled medicine my hands audited while cleansing your wounds that afternoon. Across that watch, my intellect simulated that some passing, benevolent field physician had extended a charity hand out of pure human kindness. Turning over the ledger now... it scores as a near-certainty that his own gauntlets carried your body into the alleyways flanking my clinic gates, ensuring my eyes would isolate your frame."
"He decoded your royal lineage," Lucia pondered, his silver eyes narrowing as his strategic engine resolved the variable. "Even an elite combat operator who has consumed the mind-shattering forbidden aromatics of the high guilds would lack the political madness to openly liquidate the life readouts of a sovereign demigod child of the Queen before the tournament opens."
He drew a long, deep breath into his chest, his gaze locking directly into the amber pupils of the Omen King with an un-bending, absolute gravity.
"But your heart must archive the terminal truth of this layout, Lord Morgott—the moment the iron gates drop to initiate the chaotic, un-monitored butchery of the upcoming Battle Festival, that mad hound who has completely extinguished his own humanity will record absolute zero mercy for the lives of your people patrolling the dark."
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