“Curses! Foiled again!”
The man slammed his fist on his desk in frustration as the messenger finished the report. Apparently, not only had their latest attempt to destroy Yerkchira failed, but the Hero’s Party was no more.
“Longman, that worthless piece of shit! I was prepared for his death, but why did he have to take all three of his companions with him?! Damn him to hell!”
He thought bitterly about the treacherous otherworlder his country had summoned. Granted, the man himself had fired the first shot in his feud with the dark guild, but he never dreamed his designs would backfire so spectacularly.
“Heeheeheeeee!” echoed an irritating, wheezing laugh from his colleague. “Did you think the guilds and our kingdom were overreacting? They call those villains a threat for a reason! And to think that you wanted to have your grunts wipe them out… heeheeheeeeeeee!”
“Silence!”
He couldn’t stand the joker’s laugh on a good day, much less under these circumstances. Unfortunately, the angrier he got, the more that infuriating fool seemed to enjoy himself. No threat could silence that buffoon.
“We can sweep the gray guild’s deaths under the rug. Your Knights, well, they knew what they were signing up for. But the Hero and his followers? Heehee, rough luck on that one! They weren’t your pawns to sacrifice. Even if His Majesty is an idiot, I imagine he’ll punish you all the same.”
“I said, shut your insolent mouth!”
The fool only laughed harder, without any care that he was inviting the wrath of the First Prince of the Kingdom of Efan himself.
“You don’t have to tell me that!” the prince snapped, pulling at his own hair in frustration. “I know the trouble I’m in!”
“Oh, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”
“It doesn’t?”
The companion snickered as the prince tried and failed to hide his interest. He enjoyed watching the blue-blood suffer, but he needed him to remain at large.
“Who says you have to take the blame?” he suggested casually. “Isn’t there someone else—a meddling noble, for instance—who you’d prefer be punished?”
“You mean… pin it all on them?”
“Of course! You’re the prince, aren’t you? Why would your dear father expect you to be the perpetrator?” He snickered cruelly. “I can’t say Her Majesty would be fooled, though. She’s frustratingly sharp.”
The prince’s lip curled at the man’s laugh, but he admitted there was merit in his words.
“Bah! Why should I give a damn about her? I am next in line to the throne, and all the real power in the palace is in my hands. I can throw her off my scent easily enough.”
“How bold of you, Your Royal Highness! How wonderfully cruel!”
The prince couldn’t be heard saying such things in public, of course, but the joker was the only one to hear his words. Even if he were to talk, nobody would believe him. Though he was an officially licensed adventurer, others knew better than to trust him.
“But if I might ask, what prompted you to target the Messianic Legion? Not that I’m complaining, of course. I should be thanking you, if anything.”
The adventurer chuckled gleefully. The prince shuddered at the sound before replying.
“Just as I’ve hired your people, there’s no guarantee my sister won’t run to the cretins of Yerkchira for aid. Better to crush them now before they can oppose us directly.”
“Heeeheee! Oh, politics, ever a bloody mess! But if you’re so wary of that guild, why not bring them into the fold?”
The prince snorted. “And make enemies of you and your men?”
“Guilty as charged, Your Highness!”
The prince let out a sigh of irritation. He had no grudge against Yerkchira personally, but the joking man himself hated the dark guild with a passion. He was the reason for the whole shadow-war.
“Of course you would choose to side with us!” the joker continued with a snide chortle. “We’re far stronger than those forest-dwelling fools could ever be!”
“You’re certainly more… infamous among the peasantry than Yerkchira, I’ll grant you that.”
“That’s not enough. Not enough at all! Why are all you blue-bloods more scared of those wretches than us?! How could we possibly stand the slight?!”
Most people didn’t even know Yerkchira existed, and yet all the key figures in the major guilds and in the palace alike had an unhealthy fear of them. Yerkchira’s guildmaster was supposedly the reason why they were feared so much as a whole, but the prince doubted any of them knew anything worthwhile about the man. None of them had tales of the master, after all, no justification for their wariness. Most likely, their ancestors were terrorized by him in some way, and over the years, only that pervasive sense of dread remained. A hundred years was a long time ago for humans, and anyone who knew the guildmaster at the height of his strength was long dead. The only information anyone had on the villain now was generation-old hearsay. The prince assumed Yerkchira wouldn’t pose any notable threat as a result, but it was getting harder to explain the deaths of so many of his men at the dark guild’s hands.
The prince sighed frustratedly. “At this point, I think our only course of action against them is—”
“Why, it would be our honor to humble them! Why hire us and not put us to good use, after all? To eliminate your opposition, was it? I’d say it’s high time we got to eliminating, then!”
The prince expected him to say as much. He wanted to avoid relying on the fool’s organization if at all possible, but he was hemorrhaging options. They were the only ones who could oppose Yerkchira now, and they had to be dealt with if he was ever going to be king.
“Fine, then. I’ll submit a formal request for their heads.”
“How prudent of you, Your Highness! I was afraid you’d say no, and I wasn’t looking forward to killing you.”
The prince didn’t so much as bat an eye at the threat. The joker had far more to lose from their secret meetings, after all, and despite the man’s impressive history, the prince was confident he wouldn’t go down easily.
“I’ll make it official—I want you, the Dark Guild Heinichen, the Steel Matriarch, to dispose of Yerkchira.”
He scrawled the request on a piece of parchment and handed it to the joker, who practically ripped it out of the prince’s hands.
“Done and done! Heeheehee, finally we’ll prove to the whole world which dark guild they should truly fear!”
The prince only shook his head in disgust. He never could get used to that horrible laugh, but at least now the fool would earn his keep.