Chapter 402: Roderick’s Schemes

"I have an idea," he muttered. "We have seen how strong he is. And I am pretty sure that if we went with our entire army, we could have squashed him. It would have been hard, but we would have won. And that is also probably why he waited there. He might have predicted that we would just go there with our small army of our strongest soldiers."

He paused and met Roderick’s eyes.

"But while he used our lives as a weakness, we can also use his weakness to get our way."

Roderick looked at him.

"What weakness are you talking about?"

Maximillian straightened his back just a little bit.

"Just like you sent your spies, I sent some of mine too. And based on the reports I got, he really, really loves his daughter. We can just abduct her. We can use her to force him to give us the land back, and also those weird sticks that he used against us. We can even tell him to give us the method to produce them."

Roderick just stared at him.

"Did you not hear from your people that Aria has shown signs of using magic?" he asked. "The highest level of magic seen from her wasn’t much, but she should be a first or second circle mage at best. If you want to abduct her, you might need to send someone strong. She is just a child, so a small group of knights should work, but you do need to keep in mind that she is going to have bodyguards."

Maximillian nodded quickly.

"Well, yeah. That is exactly what I am saying. A first and second circle mage is basically useless. I would rather have an F-rank knight or an E-rank knight instead. They are much more useful in a real fight. We can just send a bunch of knights and get them to abduct her. Even if she has bodyguards, there is no way that Adrian is going to give her his strongest people."

Roderick let out a long sigh.

"You are going in the right direction, but you are very, very wrong if you think that he is not going to use his strongest forces to protect his daughter."

Roderick crossed his arms.

"I had a few men watch the battle between him and the army of the Avarice Kingdom. The two S-rank knights that we gave him? They did not help him at all in the fight. All they did was stand beside Aria and make sure that no one got near her."

Maximillian looked up at Roderick. He just stared at him for a few seconds before opening his mouth again.

"Well, we can send the other two S-rank knights. And since his guards were on our side before, there is a high chance that they will just hand the child over to us. He basically put our people right beside the one he cares about the most."

Roderick felt a headache building behind his eyes. Hearing his brother go from giving out a somewhat smart answer to increasingly dumb ones made him feel a little frustrated.

But then he thought about it. ’There was no need to get angry. Maximillian’s information network just isn’t as strong as mine.’

He let out a soft sigh.

"Adrian is someone who uses soul contracts. I don’t know how he got his hands on them, but he must have a lot of them. And I do not think he is someone who wouldn’t use soul contracts on S-rank knights who used to serve the people who antagonized him. It is just not realistic."

He looked down at his brother.

"But like I said, your direction is right. I will deal with this myself. I hope that you can stay the way you are right now and actually think before you act. If I see you straying from this path again, I might have to replace you with one of your kids."

Maximillian swallowed hard but nodded.

"The best thing to do right now is to use the two S-rank knights that we still have," Roderick continued. "And the other thing is to use the knights from the Avarice Kingdom. They ran away after the war and they are under me right now. They have two S-rank knights with them, so with a total of four, I am pretty sure that we will be able to overpower the two on the other side."

Roderick began pacing slowly across the spacious room.

"Then we can abduct Aria. And like you said, we can use her to get what we want from him, and maybe even more. We will get not just everything that we gave him, but also the land that belonged to the Avarice Kingdom. But I feel like it would be better to wait for a while longer. When he attacks the Ironhold Kingdom, we will use that as a distraction to go for his daughter."

Right at that exact moment, there was a knock on the door.

Roderick looked at Maximillian.

"Hide."

Maximillian immediately scrambled to his feet. He ran over to the attached bathroom connected to the bedroom.

Roderick looked down at the two women still frozen on the floor.

"What are you doing still kneeling down? Follow him."

The two of them nodded in a panic and rushed right behind the emperor.

Roderick waited until the three of them entered the bathroom and the lock clicked shut. He turned his attention back to the main bedroom door.

"Come in."

The door opened, and a man dressed entirely in black clothes walked into the room.

Roderick looked the man up and down. His eyes caught on the stitching on the chest area of the black clothing. It was made with white thread and shaped exactly like a snake. Roderick recognized the symbol, but his focus quickly shifted to the sealed scroll in the man’s hands.

"What is that?" Roderick asked as he looked at him.