"ISUZU! Please wake up!"
Hanako screamed in panic while shaking her sister's corpse. Her face was barely recognizable, and the formerly beautiful and delicate features were completely deformed.
"Hanako! You finally arrived! I was tortured by the first princess this whole week, and I could only hope you'd come to save me."
Kisuke was kneeling next to Hanako and activated his charm. It was a delicate situation, and he had to make sure Hanako only blames Isuzu and herself, leaving him out of the problematic situation.
Hanako turned around to him when she felt his arm around her shoulders. He already cleaned himself with a Water spell and dried himself with a Fire spell, so she didn't have to smell the obscene scent anymore.
She felt relieved hearing that he was waiting for her to save him and that he didn't do it with Isuzu out of his free will, but she was still busy panicking about her sister's dead body.
"Kisuke, what should we do? I can't kill Isuzu inside the palace in front of everyone! I can't!"
"Hanako, you must calm down first. It's too late to change the past, and you need to deal with the current situation. What are the consequences of killing your sister?"
"Death! My mother would kill me for that!"
"Calm down, Hanako. Your mother can't blame you if your sister died because she didn't defend herself. I'm sure it's not the first time you attack each other with spells the other could easily defend against."
"But it's the first time that they didn't!"
Before Kisuke could reply again, a powerful pressure pressed them down to the ground, and all the fighting between the guards ceased at once. He felt a strong dread climbs through his spine, and it wasn't just him; everyone felt the same.
"Who killed my daughter?"
A strong authoritative feminine voice resounded in the area, and nobody dared to let out any noise. The place turned quiet instantly, and everyone went on their knees.
"Long live the Empress!"
The Empress was floating in the sky, and she looked down and saw the bizarre scene underneath her. A handsome young foreign man with green eyes and red hair was hugging her second daughter while the two of them looked at the corpse of her first daughter.
The weirdest thing about it was that both the man and the first princess were naked, and it wasn't hard to deduce the origins of the scent that was filling the air around the room.
The first princess' corpse was outside the mansion after Hanako's spell broke the wall, and Kisuke just didn't mind appearing naked in front of the fighting guards.
He did mind, but his goal of being by Hanako's side was more important to him than his dignity. If that was the cost of staying alive, he didn't mind giving the guards a glimpse of his assets.
Although the Empress would normally pay attention to handsome guys, she wasn't in the mood given her first daughter's death. By sensing the mana around the first princess, she easily knew the identity of the killer.
"Hanako, did you kill your big sister?"
ραпdαn૦νel "Mother, it was an accident. I only shot a simple fourth-rank spell while she was looking at me, and I expected her to defend. She didn't, and she took a direct hit."
"Does that sound plausible to you?"
A powerful mental pressure attacked all the people nearby. Everyone felt their head splitting in two, except for one person. The Empress adjusted the pressure she applied to the people's ranks, and Kisuke didn't have a problem taking on pressure meant for true mages.
"Mother, it's the truth, I swear!"
The Empress vanished from the sky and appeared in front of her daughter. She held her chin in her fingers and raised it so they could look into each other's eyes.
Hanako was filled with dread and fright as the Empress doubled the mental pressure on her mind, making her shiver under her touch.
She would never be able to lie under so much pressure, and it was the most basic way of questioning someone with considerably weaker mental power.
"Did you plan to kill the First Princess today?"
The Empress knew it would be useless to ask in general. All those wretched sons and daughters of hers were planning to kill each other. However, it required special guts to do it under her nose on the palace's grounds.
"No, Mother, I swear. I only wanted to save my lover."
"Your lover? The naked man next to you whose smell is all over Isuzu's body?"
"Yes. After his date with me, she forced herself on him, and I only got the news today. I attacked when I saw her having sex with him, and instead of defending, she took the attack straight on."
The Empress frowned upon hearing those words. She knew her daughter couldn't think straight enough to make up convincing lies and tell them with a straight face while being under so much mental pressure.
The only explanation was that she was speaking the truth, but why would Isuzu take the hit and die?
She looked at the only variable in this equation, the naked man by Hanako's side. After scrutinizing his body and face for a moment, she spoke again.
"You, wear some clothes."
One guard hurriedly threw clothes toward Kisuke after the Empress gave him the command and Kisuke dressed up in front of everyone without a choice.
A strong pressure assaulted his mind and Kisuke estimated it was around 20 MSU. The Empress was ruthless; a normal true mage would be writhing in pain if they were under such pressure. They could even develop trauma from such pressure.
"Did you do something to Isuzu?"
Kisuke acted his part as well as he could. The pressure of standing in front of a woman who could kill him in a single moment was making him anxious, not to mention that this woman's daughter just died. He couldn't read her mood at all.
"We had sex during the whole week."
He didn't lie but also hid the main part of the truth; he was charming her.
"I can smell and see that. Did you poison her?"
"I didn't."
"Do you know why she didn't protect herself?"
"I don't."
"You are now a widow of the imperial family. Since you touched my daughter's body, you were inevitably her husband. We will see the arrangements once we finish investigating what happened here."
"Mother, if he will be considered as my sister's widow, I won't be able to marry him. Please reconsider."
Hanako clenched her teeth and said with difficulty despite her surging fear. The Empress just looked at her daughter for a moment before coming to a decision.
"There are too many witnesses. Do you still want to have it your way?"
All the guards' expressions froze with trepidation when they heard the Empress asks such a question. The imperial family wouldn't let a bad name stick to them, which meant the only solution for the problem was having no witnesses. They all waited anxiously for the princess' answer.
"Yes, I must have him by my side."
Hanako said with a cold tone, and the Empress just nodded in response. The guards all kneeled and banged their heads on the ground in desperation.
"Wise Empress, I've seen nothing, I've seen nothing! Long live the Empress!"
Everyone begged for their lives, but the Empress didn't care about their plight. Since they were guards of the imperial family, yet a princess died in front of them, they weren't clear of guilt.
With a wave of her hand darkness filled the area, and Kisuke and Hanako couldn't see anything. Even the shouts and begging of the guards were gone the moment they were covered by the dark fog.
In under a minute, the fog cleared, and the view was open again. Hanako and Kisuke looked around them, yet there was no trace of the guards who were kneeling there just a minute ago.
The yard was empty, and not even corpses or belongings remained behind.
'This is the power of an eighth-stage magus. It's too scary; dozens of advanced mages and expert mages vanished in under a minute without a trace.'
Kisuke felt a shiver going down his spine when he saw the results. The Empress wasn't a merciful person.
"I can see why my daughters are interested in a handsome man, but I'd rather have you dead than my daughter."
The Empress said with a sigh. However, she didn't kill him; her daughter was already dead, and it wasn't directly his fault. By killing him, she'd only fall with her second daughter too.
"You too can go now to Hanako's house. I will call for you after I investigate the scene and learn more about what transpired here."
The two got up from their knees and went to Hanako's house according to the Empress' instructions. Kisuke and Hanako remained silent the whole way; they both weren't in the mood to speak.
Hanako was still shaken up from her sister's sudden death, while Kisuke was thinking about how to get out of this mess. He didn't want to marry Hanako, yet many guards were sacrificed for this goal by the Empress. It would be very problematic if the two didn't get married now.
-------
The Empress stood in front of a man with short black hair and a narrow face in a room underground. This man was the captain of the expert mages who were guarding the first princess during her death.
She spared him and the captain of Hanako's guards when she killed the rest because she wanted information. But they will pay their due soon enough when she was done with them.
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