Day 151-160/Day 151

Day 151
Well, a day has passed since the Minister was poisoned and died. In that time, just about every faction and organization within the Royal Capital and otherwise have begun making big movements, but none of them have made any moves that have greatly affected us.
For now, if I were to summarize the current information that I’ve gathered about the Minister’s assassination, it plays out like this.
First, the Sternbild Kingdom is unable to determine a culprit, or have any real idea as to whom the perpetrator might be. The frenzied investigation is being carried out by an actual excellent intelligence unit, though even with that, they can’t seem to make any progress on the matter. The only information they’ve really managed to gather is stuff that just about anyone could easily get with just a little looking around.
That more or less includes:
* The Minister was murdered in a private room within his own private residence.
* There were no traces of a conflict or resistance.
* None of the alarms installed within the complex were set off. Each of them were magical in nature, spread throughout the entire building.
* The first witnesses to the scene were the chief butler and the head maid that he had brought with him.
* The cause of death was by a special new poison.
Furthermore, the poison that had been used to assassinate the Minister caused purple pustules the size of small beans to form all over his body. The resulting effect was a partial necrosis. It seems that by the time he was discovered, there was already a distasteful smell in the air and the corpse had become pretty grotesque.
Because the poison seems to be a new type, the [Magic Pharmacist] and [Alchemist] of the royal court’s payroll have gathered samples from the Minister’s corpse for study and research. This was so they could use the samples to find the poison’s cure with all of their might to prevent further instances of poisoning within the nobility, but since only a short amount of time has passed since they began, there still isn’t one.
However, according to the old man serving as the head of their medical department, the poison is so dangerous that they aren’t even sure they can develop a cure, no matter how much time they spend on it. This was the gist of the report he had submitted to the king.
Well, to sum it all up at once, aside from the culprit, there is no one else with an antidote or means to produce one. Meaning everyone else that gets exposed to it besides the culprit would die from it.
For that reason, with the exception of that very same culprit, who was capable of assassinating the Minister who was heavily protected by powerful elites, it doesn’t look like anyone can be saved.
In that case, those who are being protected by bodyguards far inferior to that of the Minister’s will be completely incapable of resisting, all according to the whims of the culprit.
They’ll be poisoned and become rather unsightly corpses. It’s possible that entire families may be massacred during this time as well. It seems that this conjecture of the court caused a majority of the nobles to believe, “It’s probably going to become just like that,” which then planted a seed of terror in their minds.
Including nobles of influential families within the Nobles Faction led by the Minister, the number of people who couldn’t sleep at all last night was probably fairly high. After one night passed, there were already plenty of pamper bodied nobles with bags under their eyes. Their hollowed cheeks and bad complexions quickly began to be the common sight within many groups in the Royal Castle. Many tended to avoid even making eye contact out of paranoia.
There were even people who used their poor health as an excuse and secluded themselves within their residences. There were also those who moved about with an unchanged and total confident attitude. These, however, were only this way because they were either nobles from the [King’s Faction], strong bodied military men from the Nobles Faction who held confidence in their mighty constitutions, or others that are cunning and sly like a snake.
These people, however, make up the strong minority in the capital though. After looking at the overall situation, it seems that there aren’t a whole lot of nobles that actually support the King or the Royal Family.
One of the causes for this might just very well be the Tomboy Princess being a possible throwback, but I’ll be setting that aside for now.
Finally, some of the Minister’s assets have disappeared. That’s it. Since the opportunity has presented itself, I suppose this is the perfect time to sum up the Minister’s history. Several decades ago while the Minister was still young, he had been known as a brave general, the [Silent Destroyer General] by the neighboring countries. He seemed to have been a part of many battlefields.
His first campaign took place in the May of his fourteenth year where his strength was realized during a battle with a neighboring country. After he had defeated the enemy commander in a duel, the enemy nation became a vassal state of the Sternbild Kingdom.
Since then, he continued to expand the Kingdom’s territory with his sheer resourcefulness and military prowess. Even though he had his share of both victories and defeats, on every battlefield he only left the best possible results with great displays of bravery and valor.
Decades after his first campaign, he had expanded the Kingdom’s lands, saved countless lives of fellow soldiers and brought blessings to the people.
However, it seems that sometime during his forties during a skirmish with the Republic of Druvan, he received critical injuries in a battle in a swamp surrounding a deposit of the rare Mark ore mineral along with other desirable resources. These injuries forced the once great warrior and general to resign from his position as a General.
The Republic of Druvan has since then ceased to exist after being divided up and absorbed by the Sternbild Kingdom and Kirika Empire.
The battle had cost him his left leg below the knee, his right thumb, right ring finger, right pinky, among other various deformities. Afterwards, he became a tactician, making it partially believed that he would not leave the battlefield during the remainder of his lifetime. Though, as many had expected he moved into politics.
Sometimes he would put together important bills that would greatly influence the future of the Kingdom. Other times, he forged treaties with other countries that were highly advantageous to the Kingdom. It was like this that he outlined his political career. He laid the groundwork, got his activities and achievements acknowledged, and obtained his current position in a very short amount of time. After that, his very position was unshakeable for a long time.
In short, his influence was in no way inferior to even that of the King’s. Like that, the Minister left behind many great achievements. He’s even the one responsible for getting the Kirika Empire to form an alliance with the Kingdom on equal terms, despite the Kingdom even being slightly inferior in terms of economical and militarily strength. Well, doesn’t really matter anymore, since he’s dead.
Telling the whole story of how such a capable Minister became the Tomboy Princess’ opposition would be a serious pain, so I’ll just skip over that for now. Basically, he had a major change of heart for various reasons that are too complicated for me to really care about.
All that really matters is that with the Princess’ strongest political rival, the Minister, out of the way, the Kingdom has reached a critical juncture. Though, one might say that it’s a good thing. You could say… that the time for us to get some good money has finally come.
Now then, putting that story aside, the Minister had a number of little hobbies, such as telling his war stories of the past, training the noble knights and generals, and playing Army Commander’s Advance.
Army Commander’s Advance is a type of board game similar to shogi and chess in such regards. since the things like army type and terrain effectiveness are taken into account, it also actually serves as training for giving out precise commands smoothly during actual combat.
It seems that he had also gathered a collection of magical items with combat abilities over the years. I gathered approximately 300 of these. Just thinking about how much a magical item with combat abilities can sell for is enough to gather just how extensive the Minister’s assets had been.
Among these collected magical items, most of them were [Rare] rank, with a few dozen [Unique] rank and a handful of [Ancient] rank items.
It’s a pity that he hadn’t gained any [Legendary] grade items, but all of the items here were more than enough. They were all hand-picked by the wise Minister himself, so they’re all first-class magical items.
Aside from those items, there were also a few hand-picked gems to decorate the Minister’s private chamber. They were all being protected by a large number of anti-theft devices that were layered on top of each other dozens of times over using some sort of technique.
They were being securely managed. However, all of the anti-theft devices were destroyed and everything disappeared, that included all of the magical items. I wonder… where exactly did all of those magical items go?
There were many that had been very interested, but compared to the Minister’s assassination or the current political situation, the disappearance of a deadman’s assets wasn’t very important to them. They will probably never even end up getting mentioned during discussions. Even if it somehow surfaced to the topic, it wouldn’t get pursued anyway.
Indeed, just as I planned. I smiled wickedly as the items took up nearly 300 slots in my item box displayed inside my head. Aside from that… nothing special has happened. We just spent the day training without incident.
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Category:Novel
Category:Re:Monster Volume 4