# Chapter 31
Grand Duke Verdit, having finished his work in less than an hour after entering the torture chamber, headed straight for the depths of the Imperial Palace, contemplating the contents of the assassin’s confession.
He stopped in front of the current Emperor’s office. As soon as the soldiers guarding the entrance announced Grand Duke Verdit’s arrival, permission to enter was granted from inside.
Inside, Grand Duke Verdit faced Emperor Tis, who was still fixated on documents even late into the night.
“Welcome, Ion.”
Emperor Tis looked up and addressed Grand Duke Verdit by his name with familiarity.
“Did that fellow confess?”
Tis put down his documents and leaned deeply back in his plush chair. Kayan, the reliable knight who always stood like a shadow beside him, naturally approached and began massaging both of Tis’s shoulders.
Ion nodded lightly.
“Of course. It didn’t even take an hour.”
“That’s fortunate. He looked quite stubborn, so I was about to order you to just kill him if it took too long.”
Ion approached Tis’s desk with an expressionless face and reported the contents of the confession. While listening, Tis continued to smile amusedly, while Kayan beside him frowned with an unsettled expression.
“So it was the Caron Empire’s doing after all.”
“I expected as much. Attempting to assassinate the enemy emperor during wartime is perfectly normal.”
Tis was completely nonchalant, as if this wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened.
The Delos Empire and the Caron Empire, facing each other across the border, were massive nations that divided the power of the Arpensia continent. Their territories were similar in shape, their harvests and climate nearly identical, and even their current emperors were both young usurpers. Because of this, some people occasionally referred to the two empires as the “Mirror Empires.”
The two empires had been in a state of war for three years already, but no real battle had taken place—they were merely on guard against each other. Since their national power, military strength, geography, and climate were so similar, an actual battle would inevitably result in heavy damage to both sides. So they merely watched each other warily without engaging in any bloody conflicts for three years.
“It’s annoying, so instead of these petty assassination attempts, I wish they would either engage in a proper battle or accept a peace treaty.”
When Tis spoke with a sigh, Ion narrowed his eyes.
“You have no intention of accepting a peace treaty anyway.”
Having hit the mark, Tis merely smiled with the corner of his mouth.
“That’s right. Why would I do something so disadvantageous?”
Tis pushed the documents on his desk to one side and leaned closer to Ion. His voice became lower and quieter.
“Besides, I made a promise to you, so we should start moving soon.”
Tis smiled with his eyes at Ion and rested his chin on his hand, elbows on the desk.
“But please understand. The Black Forest area currently has no value to us.”
Ion’s eyes twitched, and his fists clenched tightly.
“…I understand.”
The Black Forest, also known as the Forest of Death.
It was a desolate forest that belonged to no country’s territory, inhabited by mutant thorny trees that fed on humans and corpses. It was a place where not even small insects could live, let alone animals. Rumors had it that for a brief moment once, flowers and grass flourished there. Now it remained a forest of nothing but black thorny trees, making one wonder if those rumors were just baseless.
Since it was a gloomy forest dominated by man-eating thorny trees, no one wanted to claim it as territory; they were too busy rejecting it.
That was when the previous emperors of the Delos and Caron Empires were still alive.
Among the two empires, the Caron Empire took the lead as a usurper. They established their position instantly through terror politics, executing all imperial family members except the current emperor.
The young Emperor of the Caron Empire, called a tyrant by some and a cold sage-king by others, declared the Black Forest area as their domain a year later, absorbing it into their territory. At that time, Tis was staging a coup to overthrow the government and ascend to the throne.
It seemed as if the Caron Emperor had deliberately chosen that moment to smoothly take possession of the Black Forest. Of course, to those who didn’t know the forest’s value, it would have seemed like an utterly useless action.
Moreover, the Caron Emperor had deployed significant military forces around the Black Forest for nearly 10 years. Despite certainly not knowing what was inside.
‘It’s fine. It’ll be fine.’
Ion frequently reassured himself to calm his anxious heart.
The Caron Emperor’s interest in the Black Forest began 10 years ago.
At that time, it had only been 5 years since Levi’s orb had sunk into the pond for regeneration. Marquis Hest had mentioned that although Levi’s core had suffered significant damage, it would still take at least 10 years for the regeneration to complete and for him to awaken.
Yet the person who said this seemed anxious that he could no longer protect Levi himself.
Ion looked directly into Tis’s amused eyes.
“As long as I’m here, we won’t lose the war.”
Ion’s confident words, bordering on impertinence, pleased the Emperor. His statements were all the more reassuring because they stemmed from his actual abilities.
‘My intuition was right after all.’
Tis still remembered the intensely thrilling sensation he had felt from Ion when they first met in the Black Forest.
Night had fallen when Ion returned to his grand duke’s residence after finishing his duties at the Imperial Palace.
Ion, who had been sleeping in a soft bed, woke up feeling someone’s gaze upon him.
‘An assassin?’
Had an assassin come for him, just like they had for Tis?
‘It’s been a while.’
Recently, he hadn’t had many opportunities to encounter assassins, probably because he’d been dispatched to various places. He only faced them when extracting confessions using his abilities on already captured assassins.
‘Is it the Caron Empire again this time? Or…’
Just as he was considering other possibilities…
The assassin’s presence completely disappeared.
‘What? Did they just watch and leave?’
That wouldn’t be the case if they were an assassin.
‘Is their objective not assassination but just surveillance or reconnaissance?’
Just as he was becoming curious about the intruder…
“…!”
Ion’s eyes flew open at the soft, cool touch against his neck.
The owner of the disappeared presence was right in front of him.
The intruder who had sneaked into the bedroom was a slender man wearing a black mask. Thanks to the moonlight flowing in through the window, his silhouette was somewhat visible; without even that, Ion might have thought the touch of the man’s hand on his neck was an illusion, so masterful was he at concealing his presence.
Perhaps thinking he had been discovered, the man pressed down on Ion’s neck instead of hiding his presence.
But something was strange.
He wasn’t trying to strangle Ion to death, nor was he poised to strike down with great force. He didn’t appear particularly strong, but even taking that into account, he seemed halfhearted.
The man, on the other hand, appeared quite surprised. Though only his eyes were visible due to the mask, Ion could tell that his pupils were trembling in confusion.
‘What kind of guy is this?’
Ion couldn’t tell if he was a master assassin or just a mediocre one.
Either way, it didn’t matter.
If he was trying to assassinate him, Ion would just extract information about who sent him and then kill him.
Ion firmly grabbed the wrist of the man pressing on his neck and spun his body around. While doing so, he wrapped his legs around the man’s waist to prevent him from escaping, then completed the turn and pressed him down to the floor, completely reversing their positions.
“…!”
The black-masked man looked up at Ion with still-surprised eyes. Then, frowning his fine brows, he drew a dagger from his waist and swung it.
It was dark, and the speed was so fast that if Ion had been even a little careless, he would have been cut.
“That’s dangerous.”
Ion, grimacing, caught the man’s wrist in mid-air as he swung the dagger again and pressed it down. The impact caused the dagger in the man’s hand to fall off the bed, making a bouncing sound as it hit the floor.
With both wrists perfectly restrained, the man let out a shallow moan and twisted his body. His wrists, which were so lightly caught that they seemed like they might break with just a little pressure, couldn’t move at all due to Ion’s strength.
“Stay still before I break your wrists.”
Despite the warning, the man pinned beneath him paid no heed and kept twisting his body. Of course, it was normal for someone caught by the person they were supposed to assassinate to try to escape somehow, but Ion was getting annoyed as the man kept kicking his side with his knees as he struggled.
Finally, Ion sharply twisted the man’s left hand as a stronger warning.
