Book 3, Chapter 106 (1/2)

Conspiracy

The Third Prince’s expression warped a few times, but eventually he just glared at Nyris and let him go. Nyris’ steps were graceful and steady as he made his way into the distance, the Third Prince’s expression growing even gloomier at the sight until his eyes were nearly spurting fire. He grabbed a follower beside him, “Go, find out why he used up all of his loan! Use whatever method you want, I want to know!”

At that very moment, the doors of the warehouse slowly opened up. A group of strong, muscular men carried heavy magic chests outside and piled them up into carriages nearby. Soon after, a troop of royal guards escorted the three carriages towards the island’s portal.

“Wait!” the third prince stopped the captain, “What are these, and who are they being sent to?”

Seeing that it was the Third Prince, the guard captain immediately replied respectfully, “Magic equipment, purchased by Young Master Richard of the Archeron Family.”

“Oh, alright. You can go,” the Prince stepped aside while maintaining his composure. It was only after the procession was far away that a shadow flashed in his eyes, “Richard? Don’t tell me he’s already ganged up with Nyris…”

“Richard?” a follower asked, “Is that the new royal runemaster?”

The Third Prince’s expression grew even darker. “Who cares about his status,” he said with a snort, “I can give him double what Nyris can! But if he’s not interested… Hmph!”

“I hear the dead would be more interested!” a follower tempted, but the Prince said nothing in reply.

……

The next afternoon, in Faust’s most famous restaurant. Nyris was sat together with Agamemnon once more, but looking at the spread of dishes on the table he actually seemed to have no appetite.

Agamemnon raised his head to glance at him and said harshly, “Eat! I’ll pay the bill.”

“Stop looking down on me!” Nyris shouted in reply, “I should be the one paying bills this month!”

“A pauper has no right to be arrogant,” the normally-silent youth responded, leaving Nyris speechless. The Prince then bowed his head down, pouring his anger onto the table of dishes. Even a full table could not bear being ravished by the two youths, wiped out entirely in the blink of an eye.

Agamemnon called the waiter in, “Another table.”

His tone was very dull, but in the face of a table full of dishes worth nearly 10,000 gold these words sounded somewhat domineering. “You look like you came into money recently,” Nyris snorted.

“Yes, I won a bet and taught several narrow-minded fellows a severe lesson.” Agamemnon was clearly proud of his victory to be saying so many words.

However, Nyris couldn’t care less about his friend’s flaunting. He instead leant against the table listlessly, “Oh, all my points this year… They’re definitely meeting a tragic end!”

However, high spirits returned to the prince in a flash. He pulled at Agamemnon, “Say, Ag, are there any good methods to earn lots of points without much effort?”

Agamemnon snorted, answering with a single word, “Deepblue.”

Nyris immediately grew listless once more. Philip was an eccentric Emperor. Many years ago, he had suddenly introduced an extremely complicated point system to evaluate the performances of his children. Every royal child was given a yearly budget that depended on their performance in previous years, but they would be given nothing more. Anything could earn points, from growing more powerful individually to obtaining more support for the family to performance in planar wars. The higher the points one accumulated, the higher their budget. And a higher budget was also an easier way to accumulate points. Thus, it was quite easy to fall into a spiral that went either up or down; every royal was racking their brains to maximise their advantages.

And this hitherto unknown system came exactly from the Deepblue. The core of it all came from Her Excellency Sharon. Nyris understood what Agamemnon meant when he mentioned the Deepblue; the legendary mage was a master in mathematics, so he definitely wouldn’t be able to find any flaws in her system.

Once he finished his meal, Nyris suddenly found Agamemnon looking at him with an expression that was half anger and half regret.

“What’s wrong?” Nyris began to panic in his heart.

“You forgot something important.”

“What?” the Prince started to feel more and more discouraged.