Chapter 28: Root an Stem

"I need to eliminate them," he murmured. "Root and stem. Before they even realize they are in a war."

The problem, however, was execution.

If Lucien personally assassinated Professor Graves or framed Marquis Crowe, he would leave footprints.

His SSS-Rank Necromancy core that was still ticking like a dormant bomb beneath his ribs, could not afford the scrutiny of an imperial investigation.

If the Imperial Inquisition started digging into an unawakened noble boy who was suddenly capable of shearing ironwood pelts in half and orchestrating political purges, Lucien would end up tied to a pyre in the central cathedral before Friday afternoon.

He couldn’t be the blade.

He needed a blade that was completely untouchable.

A blade whose moral righteousness was so blinding, so universally revered, that no one would ever dare question its actions.

A blade that had divine backing, astronomical combat stats, and the sociopolitical authority of the Seven Ancient Families.

Lucien’s quill paused on the paper.

Slowly, deliberately, he drew a circular ring around the four names on the vellum. And at the center of the ring, connected to every single corrupt target by a neat, dotted line, Lucien wrote a single, glorious name:

CASSIAN VALEMONT.

Lucien leaned back, letting out a soft, delighted chuckle that echoed wickedly in the quiet study.

"Cassian," Lucien whispered, a wide, dazzling smirk spreading across his handsome face. "My dear, brooding, morally catastrophic friend. You were looking for a way to repay your debt, weren’t you?"

It was the ultimate gambit.

Cassian Valemont possessed two defining characteristics that made him the most exploitable biological weapon on the entire continent:

First, his moral standards were ridiculously, almost offensively high. He was a paladin in an indigo tunic, a man who could not sleep if he suspected an innocent was suffering within a three-mile radius.

Second, he was a tactical prodigy but an emotional and political pushover. He solved problems the only way a shonen progression fantasy protagonist knew how: by finding the bad guy, drawing a glowing starlight greatsword, and beating them into a fine paste in the name of divine justice.

"Why should I dirty my hands?" Lucien grinned, his eyes dancing with euphoria. "Cassian wants to save the world. I want to eliminate my future enemies. Our goals are completely aligned! I will merely provide the breadcrumbs, construct the stage, and point the missile in the correct direction. He will think he is heroically uncovering an imperial conspiracy through his own keen detective work... while I sit in the cafeteria eating strawberry pastries and watching the fireworks."

It was an act of supreme, public-service outsourcing!

Lucien pulled a fresh sheet of parchment, his mind instantly constructing Phase One: The Crowe Disassembly.

’Damian Crowe’s rapier is shattered,’ Lucien plotted, his quill moving like lightning.

’His pride has been destroyed by me. A man like that cannot let it go. He will not challenge me openly again, he is too cowardly. Instead, he will use his family’s connection to the Logistics Bureau to target the one thing that hurts House Everhart without open combat: Rowan Ashford.’

’Rowan’s family barony relies entirely on the Western Reaches supply permits issued by Marquis Crowe. Damian will attempt to pressure Rowan into sabotaging me, or he will forge an academic penalty to have Rowan expelled.’

To do that, Damian needs the signature of a corrupt official. And who is the most corrupt signature-merchant in the administrative ward?

Professor Edmund Graves.

Lucien smiled.

The pieces were falling into place with terrifying, mathematical symmetry.

Graves has an unregistered gambling debt with the Vane Syndicate.

To pay it, he sells unauthorized access keys to the academy’s lower artifact vaults. If Cassian Valemont were to ’accidentally’ discover an encrypted ledger linking Graves’ vault keys to Marquis Crowe’s smuggling routes...

Cassian wouldn’t just investigate.

Cassian would assemble The Misfits, breach the vault in the dead of night, catch Damian Crowe and Graves red-handed in the act of high treason, and vaporize their political standing in front of the entire High Council.

"House Crowe loses their trading monopoly," Lucien murmured, ticking the box with a crisp slash of ink. "If Professor Graves is stripped of his academic chair and thrown into the Imperial Dungeons, then Rowan’s family is freed from any political blackmail. House Everhart’s western flank is secured. And Cassian Valemont gets another medal to polish while brooding on a balcony."

"And me?"

Lucien tapped his own nose with the feather of the quill.

"I will have been peacefully asleep in my dormitory, wrapped in three blankets, with six witnesses swearing under oath that I was suffering from an acute case of spiritual indigestion!"

’It’s a fair deal,’ Lucien nodded to himself with shameless self-justification. ’I am helping him fulfill his heroic destiny. I am essentially his unpaid narrative producer. He should be thanking me.’

Now, the only challenge was delivery.

How does an unawakened, supposedly bedridden noble student slip a piece of hyper-sensitive, encrypted financial intelligence directly into the hands of the most vigilant Vanguard in the empire without being seen? ℴ

Lucien’s eyes drifted toward the open window, looking across the moonlit expanse of the academy toward the towering, ivory spire of the Astra Party’s residential compound.

A memory from the arrival plaza flickered through his mind.

Silas Nightingale.

The degenerate, voyeuristic scout who liked to climb through windows and steal things just to prove he could.

’Silas is currently obsessed with me due to the rumors going around the academy, part of why I’m staying indoors just to avoid him,’ Lucien recalled with a faint, amused grimace.

’The System said his bond status was ’Predatory Romantic Intrigue.’ He’s probably lurking in the trees outside my villa right now, trying to catch a glimpse of my ’tragic, delicate constitution.’

Lucien stood up, walked over to the velvet drapes, and subtly nudged the fabric aside by half an inch.

He activated his [Soul Perception], the passive trait lingering beneath his skin.

Through the darkness of the midnight courtyard, roughly eighty yards away in the sprawling branches of an ancient silver birch tree, a faint, flickering emerald silhouette was crouched upon a bough like a lazy, oversized cat.

The silhouette was holding a polished spyglass aimed directly at Lucien’s third-floor window.

Lucien let the drape fall back into place, a glorious, wicked smile illuminating his features.

"Oh, Silas," Lucien whispered into the darkness. "You beautiful, nosy, degenerate idiot. You are going to be my favorite postal service."

Lucien returned to the desk, pulled out a small, non-descript slip of coarse, common parchment, the kind used by kitchen staff, and pulled a bottle of heat-reactive lemon-gall ink from the bottom drawer.

With swift, precise strokes, he encoded an anonymous tip at the lower botanical greenhouse, using an archaic cypher that only an A-Rank scout from the Nightingale intelligence lineage would possess the training to decode.

Of course, it’s something he learned from the novel, a secret passcode of Silas’s division.

He folded the parchment into a square.

Then, Lucien walked over to the desk beside the window, placed the parchment deliberately under a half-eaten almond tart, blew out the tallow candle, and audibly yawned.

"Oh, what an exhausting day of being an invalid," Lucien announced loudly to the empty room, stretching his arms with dramatic flair. "I certainly hope no one climbs through my slightly unlocked balcony latch to rummage through my private desk while I am deeply, soundly, irreversibly asleep in the adjacent bedchamber!"

He turned the brass lock of the balcony window to the unlatched position, left the door cracked by precisely three millimeters, walked into the bedchamber, and shut the door.

He didn’t go to sleep.

Instead, Lucien sat comfortably in the dark upon the edge of the mattress, pulled a fresh jar of strawberry glaze from beneath his pillow, and leaned his head against the headboard, listening with sharp focus.

Thirty seconds passed.

The autumn wind rustled the leaves of the silver birch outside.

Then, with the terrifying silence of a predatory ghost, the balcony latch gave a tiny, almost imperceptible click.

A faint draft of cool night air slipped through the study.

The soft, feline sound of leather boots touching the Persian rug echoed for a fraction of a second.

A moment of quiet rustling.

A muffled, delighted snicker in the darkness: "Well, well, what a careless little prince..."

And then, the soft whoosh of a body slipping back through the balcony, disappearing into the cold night sky.