Shut up, brave man! I don't want to atone for my sins to you!

"Even if we cannot obtain the holy sword in the hands of the hero, Victoria will surely rise. This is as it should be."

“War is the continuation of politics. But whether a war is born is never determined by the will of a few individuals, an organization or a group. What can start a war is often a nation, a country, or even the whole world.”

Victoria's Emperor, King Neville I, waved his hand, signaling the waiter beside him to take away the empty cup, and told Sissi:

"I have never issued an order to 'assassinate the brave', and my ministers will not do such a stupid thing."

Xi Rui would not easily believe King Neville I, so she asked:

"How do you prove it?"

The emperor was silent for a moment and shook his head.

"I have no obligation to prove anything to you, Miss Assassin, so..."

He looked at Xi Rui calmly and asked:

"Are you going to kill me again?"

At first, when she saw the man in front of her, Xi Rui even thought that rather than calling him the Emperor of Victoria, he was more like an elderly, thin scholar.

But now, although the man still had that calm expression and his tone was as steady as ever, she clearly felt a certain kind of majesty - a kind of majesty that could not be described in simple words and made her almost breathless.

King Naville I was sitting on a wooden chair in the cafe, but he seemed to be sitting on a huge and heavy throne high above, and he gave her a cold glance.

Xi Rui clenched the dagger in her hand, but never took it out from her sleeve.

At this time, perhaps seeing her hesitation, the man spoke:

"I still have things to deal with. Since you have given up on the assassination, let's say goodbye... I think we will meet again soon. By then, you may have thought clearly whether you want to assassinate me or not."

After saying that, the man stood up, left Xi Rui behind, and walked out of the cafe.

He didn't lie.

Indeed, there were still many things waiting for him as the emperor to deal with, and he never had the spare time to prove his innocence.

not to mention……

He never had time to care about those things.

[To be continued]

-

9. Conspiracy Melody

After listening to Xi Rui's complete retelling, the base suddenly became quiet.

After a while, Charles spoke first:

"The emperor who could build such a huge Victorian Empire from scratch couldn't be a mediocre emperor. I should have realized this long ago."

Lacele bit her fingers.

Through Celine's description, she seemed to have seen with her own eyes the emperor Victoria who was about to die from overwork.

He is thin and slightly hunched, like a towering mountain. The top of the mountain, that is, his face, is covered with snow that never falls off all year round. Therefore, his expression rarely changes. Only when he is giving a speech to his people will he reveal corresponding emotions with intense body language.

The Victorians seemed to be extremely supportive of him.

Therefore, every time he gave a speech, a huge crowd would gather around him. It seemed that half of the citizens of Sheffield had abandoned their work and walked through the streets covered by steam and smog to come to their emperor to listen to his advice and encouragement.

And this is what Sissi said:

"His words are filled with a certain 'power' that is more magical than magic, heavier and harder than steel, and more bewitching than the song of the Siren."

"He waved his arms on the podium, and the citizens below followed suit. I turned around and saw countless arms waving like a wave, extending from one end of the square to the end of the street in the distance."

"The owners of those arms, the Victorians gathered here, all had fanatical faces, their eyes fixed on their emperor, as if the emperor was the sun that would emit dazzling light. But they were not afraid of the emperor's brilliance at all. On the contrary, even if their eyes were about to be burned to charcoal by the light, they still wanted to stare at the emperor and deeply imprint the emperor's appearance in their minds."

"A great emperor lives with his equally great people."

Of course, Miss Assassin does not have such language skills and would never speak at such length.

The above content is all from a certain issue of the Sheffield Post.

Xi Rui only remembered part of the content and conveyed it to her companions.

In addition to this report, there is also an inconspicuous article worth noting:

"Ironically, the signs of war always appear first in the least obvious places. Long before the blood flows like a river and the bones are scattered all over the ground, long before the cannons roar and the flags flutter, long before the big guys are enthusiastic and the small guys are panicking and fleeing, the signs of war have already appeared.

War is such a great storm that it affects everything in the world.

The omen of the storm was that the iron pots and pans on the market disappeared quietly, and no matter how rich you were, it was difficult to buy metal utensils that were once worthless. All the pig iron was cast into weapons, which were sent to the army to deal with the upcoming battle.

On the other side of the vast empire, all merchant ships and fishing boats in the southern ports set sail, causing the price of salted fish to soar. It was rumored that someone had accidentally seen a huge ironclad warship as big as a mountain along the coast, and drunkards in taverns everywhere began to spread the rumor.

Storm is coming.

Fellow countrymen, we have reason to believe that the sacred war is no longer far away from us. "

After Xi Rui used her extraordinary memory to memorize the article, which she thought was very valuable, everyone except her began to look at each other in surprise.

Finally, Rachel put down her pitiful finger, turned to look at Godot, and asked:

"Gordo, has your father...or anyone in Ceylon noticed that Victoria is planning to attack you?"

Godot was quite familiar with Lacier, so he knew that what she meant by "ta ta kai" was to start a war, so he shook his head:

"No."

"No...no?" Lacie was shocked.

Even ordinary people in Victoria could sense the signs of the coming war, and the Sheffield Post even published an article like this openly.

As the party most likely to be defeated, Ceylon, from the emperor and grand duke to the common people, actually did not realize that war was coming?

Although she should be classified into the White Tower's camp, and although the White Tower is trying its best to remain neutral, Victoria doesn't care. When the war begins, she and the White Tower will most likely be regarded by Victoria as members of the wizard world.

That is, she, the White Tower, Ceylon and other countries can barely be considered teammates.

But where did these stupid teammates come from? !

Lacie could hardly hold back her slamming of the table—

How can we win the war with these insects?

No, this is not just ordinary slackness, we must strike hard!

So she asked Godot:

"Is this how you deal with Victoria? Aren't you afraid that Victoria will launch a sneak attack on you?"

Upon hearing this, Godot spread his hands innocently, sighed and replied:

"This is probably due to some kind of mindset. Although all the countries in the wizard world have predicted that Victoria will declare war on them sooner or later, the root cause is that mortals are too weak. They can hardly resist conventional spells, let alone super-level spells and forbidden spells that can destroy a city or even an entire country."

"In fact," he paused, organized his words, and then continued calmly, "Even now, even after I learned that Victoria had stolen the forbidden spell, I am still pessimistic about whether Victoria can fight against the entire wizard world."

He took out a magic wand from somewhere and gently stroked the fine patterns on the wand:

"Although I have more or less experienced the power of the forbidden spells passed down by you brave men, Captain. But, didn't you say it yourself? Not everyone can use forbidden spells."

"I don't know how the Victorians cracked the forbidden spell, but I suspect that the steam armored troops are not as terrifying as we imagined. After all, the forbidden spell itself is also a spell and is also restricted by the law of conservation of mystery..."

"Even the wishing machine can't get around the law of conservation of mystery, so I guess the Victorians are no exception."

"If that's the case, then there's nothing to be afraid of," Godot put away his wand again, "We will win, the wizard world."

"..."

Lacey pinched her thigh hard to stop herself from laughing.

"Will you really win?"

She thought while trying not to laugh.

"If Godot hadn't said that, it would have seemed like the Mage World would have won, but Godot has said that..."

Goodbye, "World of Mage", you are just an ordinary person who was born in an era without me!

Once the war begins, will the entire wizard world say "We're sorry we didn't let Lady Victoria use her full strength"?

Lacee didn't dare to think about it anymore, for she was afraid that if she continued to think about it, the situation would really turn out to be one where Godot asked her "What are you laughing at", and she would answer "I was thinking about something happy".

That would be hell.

After all, both she and Godot are part of the world of wizards.

At this time, Charles next to her spoke:

"Speaking of which, Xi Rui, why did you say before that assassinating Victoria's emperor could stop the war between Victoria and the wizard world?"

Yes.

Lacier then remembered that Xi Rui had said something like this just now. In fact, Miss Assassin had also practiced it herself -

Although, as she said, she did not succeed.

At the critical moment, she gave up.

Thinking of this, Rachel, Joseph and Gordo sitting opposite her all raised their heads and looked at Siree.

Xi Rui was silent for a moment and replied:

"After assassinating the emperor, the whole of Victoria will probably become leaderless."

"Then Victoria probably won't be able to start a war anymore, right?" Charles continued, "Do you think so?"

"Yes."

"Then why did you give up the assassination?"

"Because the emperor told me that he did not send anyone to assassinate you and Rachel."

Xi Rui's thinking has always been simple, so Charles understood -

When Xi Rui decided to go to Victoria to assassinate the emperor, she did not know that Victoria was planning to go to war with the wizard world. She wanted to assassinate the emperor just to avenge him and Rachel.

But the emperor told her that the information she had received was wrong.

In fact, the emperor never ordered the assassination of the brave and the priest.

In this case, after the "misunderstanding" was resolved, Xi Rui naturally gave up the assassination.

After sorting out Xi Rui's thoughts, Charles asked again:

"Then do you think that the Emperor of Victoria would lie to you?"

Xi Rui shook her head without even thinking:

"He didn't lie to me."

Without any explanation, she just thought so and answered like that.

Charles nodded seriously, indicating that he understood, and then turned to look at Joseph:

"You also heard it, Joseph. Xi Rui said that the emperor did not lie to her... So, it can only be that there is something wrong with the information you obtained."

Joseph became angry when he heard this:

"Understood, Boss. I'll go check out what's going on. If there really is a problem with the intelligence, I'll find a way to solve it."

No one questioned Xi Rui from beginning to end.

But this does not mean that they all believed the emperor's one-sided statement. On the contrary, they only believed in Xi Rui's judgment.

This assassin lady, who has extremely simple thinking and claims that she only knows how to kill people, possesses a very special kind of "intuition" that has nothing to do with magic. She is born with the ability to identify lies with an extremely high accuracy rate.

So, since the emperor did not deceive Xi Rui, the problem is most likely with the information Joseph obtained.

Thinking of this, Charles sighed silently, which was rare.

Assassination, intelligence, the game between Victoria and the Mage Empire, and the open and covert attacks -

If these were the prelude to the grand movement of war, then as a listener sitting in the audience, even though he knew nothing about music, Ciel could still hear it instinctively...

In this noisy prelude, he vaguely heard the melody of conspiracy.

[To be continued]