Chapter 768: One Of The Many Ways

Chapter 768: One Of The Many Ways

"You need to eliminate 100 noble families."

Everybody looked towards Louis.

"100 noble families?" Lily repeated.

"Yes, and you have to do it without letting anybody know that I’m the one who orchestrated their elimination."

"But why?" Leo asked with a frown.

Louis raised 3 fingers.

"Three reasons."

"First, the Empire cannot eliminate every noble family that disobeys its rules. Every noble family has relatives, allies, business partners, and territories under its influence. If the Empire publicly executes so many of them, the remaining nobles will start wondering whether they could be next.

"Some will rebel, forming alliances against us to establish independent rule over this vast land, while a few may even turn to the demons for protection. Instead of eliminating a hundred threats, we might create a thousand more."

"Second, not every noble family is guilty of the same crime. Some conspire against important individuals in the Empire, some secretly collude with demons, and others are simply incompetent or dissatisfied with our rule. Many aren’t even suited to rule in the first place."

"Third, the Empire must never appear incapable of maintaining order without resorting to mass executions. If we openly eliminate those noble families, the public will begin questioning how deeply corruption has spread within our own ranks.

"More importantly, our enemies will see it as an admission that the Empire has lost control over its nobles and grow bolder."

"And well..." Louis shrugged after explaining everything.

"It’s simply not cost-effective to use the Empire’s forces to deal with every such matter."

Leo narrowed his eyes.

The best way to protect the Empire is to make sure nobody knows it was ever in danger... he thought.

Louis looked at Leo and Lily.

"The places you’ll be assigned to will indeed pose some challenges, as you’ll most likely face the entire army of certain cities. However, you already have multiple life-saving items," Louis informed them.

Apparently, the consumable items would be used in a particular order. If they were within Aurelius Academy’s area, the life bracelets would be used first, followed by the newly acquired talisman and, finally, the Heaven’s Gate Medallion.

"There are other objectives to this as well. For example, it gives me an appropriate reason to grant you Sovereign Immunity after you have contributed to a great degree to the Empire’s cause."

Though Louis didn’t mention it outright, he also had the hidden objective of spreading Leo and Lily’s names as heroes among the people they freed from oppressive rule.

After that, Louis explained how things would proceed and how the mission would give Leo the chance to acquire tons of resources and valuable treasures by looting the families.

Most importantly, it would give Leo experience in siege warfare, allowing him to learn how to use his beasts and the people under his command more effectively.

Louis even gave them a 5-year time limit to achieve this objective and prove they were worthy of the privilege they requested.

After that, Louis left, leaving them alone with Cyrandel.

He let Cyrandel hear this important information because she used such methods too. Apparently, it was one of the many ways they kept their Empire functioning.

"Hmm, now that I think about it, you should try establishing a territory that includes all sorts of races," Cyrandel suggested.

"And yes, they don’t necessarily need to be slaves, because we’re about to make a very important announcement at the end of the Competition speech."

Leo and Lily looked at each other.

"Oh, and by the way, do you want to meet the other students or go back to your territory?" Cyrandel asked.

"We’ll go back to our territory!" they both responded almost simultaneously, as if meeting the other students were a backbreaking chore they wanted to avoid at all costs.

Not only did Leo need to help his beasts absorb all the necessary treasures, but he also needed a good rest after more than a month of nonstop grinding.

They were in no position to engage in a mental battle against politically educated noble kids.

They unsummoned their beasts, and it turned out that Leo could even store the container holding the Riftweb Spider inside the ring Aurex had given him. Apparently, it was a special spatial ring that could store living things.

"Come to the Aeloria Empire as soon as possible to collect your rewards," Cyrandel said with a smile, then snapped her fingers.

The next moment, Leo and his group appeared inside the Aurelius Beast Academy’s private building, where a large screen displayed the Emperor’s live speech.

Kaelion was already there, watching the screen, though his unfocused eyes suggested that he was thinking about something else.

"Huh?" Lily was confused to see Cyrandel speaking mid-speech while a few other screens showed Aurex and Louis sitting in their chairs, waiting for her to finish.

But the interesting part was that Louis’s face made him look much older than the man they had just spoken with. Not to mention, their giant-like stature was nowhere to be seen.

Cyrandel was down to nearly the same height as Lily, around 5’8", while Louis was about Leo’s height—6’8".

Only Aurex was inhumanly tall, around 8 feet, and even then, he was shorter than the versions they had met earlier.

"They’re the Emperors’ body doubles," Brant suddenly explained from behind them.

"They have many other important things to do besides giving speeches, but the ones you met were real."

After Leo and the others listened to the speeches for a while, they learned about many things the Emperors had decided to implement—most importantly, removing the mandatory slave clause for other races.

Brant then brought them back to the territory.

By now, the snow had stopped, and the sun was shining brightly in the sky.

"Leo! I never realised you’d become this strong!" James was the first to greet him, his face lighting up with excitement.

"Oh, sorry. Excuse me, Count Leo, but I never knew you’d become this strong in such a short amount of time," he added with a grin.

Leo simply shook his head at James’s joke before turning to address the rest.

Throughout the competition, everybody in the territory had experienced one shock after another as they watched the livestream.

The elves were particularly excited when Sylrael dealt with those three elves from the Evergreen family.

Because of that, James and the other territory members organised a huge party, where Sera prepared multiple delicacies to replenish everyone’s lost energy.

However, the people who had actually participated in the competition were nowhere to be seen after the initial excitement.

That was because they had already tucked themselves into bed and fallen asleep, hoping to wash away all the exhaustion from their bodies.

---

After a few days...

Currently, Lily was lying on top of Leo as they snuggled affectionately. Night had already fallen, and the territory was very quiet.

"Leo, what are we going to do next?" Lily asked, pressing herself against him before rolling to the other side to do the same.

She was wearing a very thin fabric through which Leo could feel every contour of her body. She was particularly restless today, as if she couldn’t get enough of him.

"Argh... if only I had a few more hands," she groaned before peppering his face with kisses. Then, she pressed her cheek against Leo’s as he held her firmly by the waist and back.

Today, they had decided to keep things ’clean’ and simply enjoy each other’s company.

"Well, tomorrow, the Oreback Behemoth’s beast core will arrive. I’ll use it to enhance Howl."

"Then, the academy has decided to host training in the Astral Sanctum soon and is organising people. I looked it up, and it turns out that a solar eclipse will occur. It’ll be great for Nyxa."

Lily had already lowered her face to his neck, nodding rapidly as she rubbed her buried face against him and breathed warm air onto his skin.

"That’s great! And when will we go to Aeloria? Niri has been so restless to meet Empress Cyrandel again."

Leo lowered his eyes and saw Lily shift her position again. This time, she reached up and hugged him tightly, burying his face against her soft chest as she stroked his hair.

I wonder who’s restless here... Leo thought before giving her a small, harmless bite that made her jump.

"Bad Leo..." she said, then hugged him again with a huff.

Leo chuckled.

"I think it’s time we changed our territory’s location too. It’s been a long time since I’ve taken Howl for a walk."

For the past few days, they had done nothing but rest. Even the beasts had spent their time stuffing themselves with high-ranked meat before sprawling out in the open to sunbathe in the cozy rays.

Now, nothing prevented the beasts from appearing in front of people, since their existence had already been exposed.

Leo had even postponed using the various treasures and rewards to strengthen everybody because they genuinely needed some good rest.

Aurex’s life spatial ring still contained the egg and the Riftweb Spider, which Leo planned to take out after making the necessary preparations—the major one included enhancing Howl and, hopefully, increasing their territory’s land area.

The Gnomes also seemed to be nearing completion of their first Rock Golem prototype, which they had worked tirelessly on for the past month.

Just as their ’clean’ night was about to turn ’unclean’ because Lily’s restlessness had awakened Leo’s dragon, a sharp notification interrupted them.

It was Leo’s smartphone.

Lily snatched the phone in annoyance, as if she were about to throw it away, but the moment her eyes landed on its screen, her expression immediately turned serious.

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A/N: Only 1 Chapter today...