# Chapter 41
The atmosphere at Grand Duke Verdit’s mansion was as gloomy as Tis had expected. While the sky was clear and bright, everything grew dim as he approached. The soldiers guarding the entrance had faces filled with dark tension. Though that was understandable given an emperor was visiting, there was a clear difference in the color of tension compared to usual.
So he had fully expected to find Ion with a dejected face, lining up bottles of alcohol and wallowing in tears, but he presented a completely unexpected appearance.
“Couldn’t you have sent notice ahead?”
Locked away in his office with a visibly enormous pile of documents stacked before him, Ion was too busy to properly greet Tis.
“Did the summit conclude well?”
Ion, who appeared absorbed in scanning documents, asked about Tis’s situation in a voice that hardly differed from normal. Looking at this, he seemed so perfectly fine that it felt as if all the recent incidents had never happened.
Perhaps the shock had been so great that he was deliberately burying himself in work to forget. If that was the case, it wasn’t particularly good for him. Rather than blindly trying to forget, he should think about overcoming it.
As Tis approached the desk piled with documents and was about to say something—
“…What is this?”
Tis, who had assumed the stacked documents would be mere territorial management papers or petitions from residents, looked perplexed when he saw their contents.
“Capital city entry and exit records?”
What Ion was reviewing wasn’t related to his own territory but records of every person who had entered and left the capital city from six months ago until now. From slaves and commoners to high-ranking nobles, every person who entered or exited the capital had their date, time, appearance, and baggage contents recorded in detail.
The reason for keeping such explicit records even for nobles was that, despite never having engaged in a proper territory battle, they were still technically in a state of war. It was only right to maintain such vigilance since no one knew when or how the first battle might begin. Thanks to this, suspicious individuals had been identified early at this stage.
But for someone of Grand Duke Verdit’s stature to personally check each record one by one, rather than delegating to subordinates, seemed like the greatest of wastes, the most pointless of pointless tasks.
“You’d be better off drinking and crying. I could listen to some extent.”
“For someone like me who doesn’t get drunk, it’s just like drinking bitter water. I’ll pass.”
Ion, who responded without taking his eyes off the documents, twitched his eyes. Then he copied several items from the records to a place where he had already written something densely. Staring at this, Tis finally realized why Ion was doing this.
People who had records of entering but no traces of leaving. If there were people among them who were no longer in the capital city, they would be worth suspecting. By cross-referencing with the list of capital city residents and visitors that Ion had prepared for today’s date, he could identify suspicious individuals who had suddenly disappeared.
“So, have you found any leads?”
“I’m not sure.”
Ion finally looked up as he answered Tis’s question with a sigh. If not for his exceptional self-healing ability, his eyes would have been bloodshot with long, broad dark circles beneath them, but without those signs, he looked quite energetic now.
It was hard to tell where the crazed appearance from a few days ago had gone. Ion that day had been so out of his mind that even Tis felt chilled, crawling on the floor with his half-paralyzed body to search for the person called Levi.
‘It’s good that he’s come to his senses, but this change is too quick.’
When a person changes too drastically or recovers too quickly, it tends to be concerning.
“Have your subordinates do this much.”
“I want to do it myself.”
Ion gave a small smile and spoke in a tired voice.
“I need to be doing something like this to keep from going crazy.”
Since that was true, Tis didn’t add anything more.
Whatever the case, it was fortunate if Grand Duke Verdit’s mental state was relatively sound. Tis had prepared various topics of conversation and stern words to improve Ion’s mental state over a long period, but if he was like this, there was no need to waste time bringing them up.
So Tis abruptly told him what had happened at the summit. For Tis, who could analyze others but didn’t have much empathy for their emotions or situations, it was more useful to discuss immediate practical matters than to engage in pointless small talk.
After hearing the story, Ion finally put down his quill. With furrowed brows, he tried to picture the Emperor of the Caron Empire, whom he had never met.
“You took quite a hit there.”
“Right?”
Tis, who frowned along with Ion, made an irritated face as he recalled the black hair that flickered before his eyes.
“So I’m deliberating now. Whether to crush them first or wait for the right time.”
Because of this summit, countries that had been living in relative peace now viewed them with cautious eyes.
Since things had come to this, Tis wondered if he should crush one vulnerable country as a warning to others. At the same time, he foresaw that if he did so, other countries might feel threatened and join forces against them. No matter how weak their military power compared to the empire, if all countries joined hands, they would become a force that could not be ignored.
Among them, the biggest variable was the Caron Empire.
At present, they were in a forced truce for a certain period under the pretext of the summit, but once that period passed, they were unlikely to remain idle.
‘That’s why I desperately need this guy’s power…’
Tis actually wished that Ion would prepare the “immortal army” even now. If they created it early and proudly displayed it to discourage any attempts at confrontation, at the very least, the surrounding small countries would keep their mouths shut and behave.
But he couldn’t force this because, at present, Tis couldn’t perfectly refine what Ion wanted as a gift.
What Ion wanted was the person behind Levi, and Levi himself.
It wasn’t difficult to guess who had been using Levi from behind.
The sudden massacre in a marketplace full of civilians.
The group of Crown Prince Kalvern who infiltrated the Imperial Palace to steal Former Empress Claudia’s records at the same time.
Levi’s rampage was clearly planned to divert the Imperial soldiers’ attention, as anyone could see.
Even without Ion’s word, all witnesses gave the same testimony. Despite the perpetrator having no wounds, his clothes were torn in various places and covered in blood, which was horrifying. What made his tattered clothes even more incomprehensible was that the dead people showed no signs of bleeding.
But Ion immediately realized.
These were traces of torture by someone who was aware of Levi’s self-healing ability.
Additionally, since Ion himself possessed a similar but opposite ability, he said it seemed like someone had deliberately activated Levi’s ability to accelerate his starvation.
In the past, Levi used to delay his starvation as much as possible by frequently falling asleep. Remembering that the concentration of bloodstains on Levi’s clothes varied, Ion said it seemed like the person behind him had deliberately inflicted wounds at regular intervals to activate his ability. All for a severe state of starvation.
The fierce look in Ion’s eyes as he said this was not something even Tis could easily dismiss.
‘The King of Altia should be sincerely grateful to me. I spent three days and nights convincing him not to have his son’s body cut into pieces.’
Tis looked ruefully at Ion, whose face had now turned into one recalling someone.
‘The mastermind has been resolved, but… we can’t find the most important person himself.’
That day, Ion felt immense self-loathing for having lost Levi, who had been in his grasp, so easily. He had been focused only on the soldiers attacking and cornering Levi. That shouldn’t have happened.
From Tis’s perspective, he didn’t care how Ion had lost this person called Levi. What mattered was that the deal between him and Ion would only be valid if Levi was by Ion’s side.
Tis, who wanted to utilize Ion’s power especially because of the summit’s atmosphere, had prepared a special card for him.
“I’m going to make discreet contact with Narkisa.”
Tis mentioned the Kingdom of Narkisa, the pinnacle of the human trafficking business that managed all slaves.
“No matter the cost, I plan to gather information using all the slaves on the continent.”
“Information using slaves?”
When Ion looked puzzled, Tis nodded lightly.
“The guild master there isn’t a woman who simply sells human labor and leaves it at that.”
He recalled the confident face of the haughty Ensha. The expensive alcohol and high-priced tobacco leaves obtained from the far end of the continent would finally serve their purpose.
