The Great Hall, moments before a tinderbox of shouted arguments and political maneuvering, now hummed with a strained, almost breathless anticipation. Lord Chamberlain Astolfo, his face glistening with sweat, held the ornate scroll listing the votes. His hand trembled visibly as he unrolled it. One by one, he had called the names, and one by one, the responses had echoed through the vast chamber.
"Duke Marius Thorne of the Eastern March, for the succession of Grand Prince Alexius Demetrios Leo?"
"Aye!" Thorne's voice was firm, a bedrock of tradition. His faction followed suit, a chorus of "Ayes" rolling through their ranks.
"Marquess Tiberius Varrus of the Central League?"
"Aye!" Varrus's declaration was like a hammer blow, decisive and unwavering. His military houses echoed him, their voices gruff and certain. The tide he had turned yesterday now became a flood.
Even when Astolfo called upon members of Duke Valerius's own faction, the cracks began to show. Several lesser barons, their lands bordering Varrus's or Thorne's, or those with sons serving in the border legions, cast their "Ayes," their voices perhaps a little shaky but clear enough. Titus Cornelius shot them looks that could curdle wine, but the momentum was undeniable. The required two-thirds majority was reached, then surpassed. A sigh of relief, quickly suppressed, rippled through Alexius's supporters.
Alexius sat still, watching, his expression carefully neutral, but inside, a cold calculation was running alongside the System's updated probabilities. [Succession Vote: 78% Affirmative. Legitimization Protocol Nearing Completion.] He had won the political battle.
"With the votes tallied," Astolfo began, "it is clear that this Noble Council has affirmed, by a significant majority, the rightful succession of…"
Before he finished his sentence, The great oaken doors at the main entrance of the hall burst open with a deafening crash. Armored shapes, faces hidden behind grim visors, their movements economical and brutal as they shoved aside the stunned ceremonial guards. At their head, resplendent in polished black steel armor inlaid with snarling silver wolves, strode Duke Gregor Valerius himself. His face, framed by a short, steel-grey beard, was a mask of cold fury and arrogant triumph. Behind him pressed his elite – the Nightblades, their black sun sigil showing ominously on their pauldrons.
"Apologies for my tardiness, esteemed nobles!" Valerius's voice, amplified by the acoustics and his sheer audacity, boomed through the hall. "It seems I've arrived just in time to correct a… grave error in judgment."
Panic erupted. Nobles scrambled from their seats, cries of shock and outrage mixing with Valerius's harsh laughter. Alexius is not surprise – the System had warned of 'unorthodox counter-measures'. He noted, with a detached part of his mind, a figure in the Royal Guard livery near a side entrance subtly signaling to Valerius's men. Vice-Captain Heston. The traitor. His treachery had given Valerius access.
"This is sacred hall!" Duke Thorne roared, his face suffused with righteous anger, stepping forward despite his lack of a weapon. "You dare defile it with armed force, Valerius? This is treason of the highest order!"
"Treason?" Valerius sneered, drawing a long, wickedly curved sword. The Nightblades fanned out, their weapons bared, effectively sealing the exits and surrounding the unarmed assembly. "Treason is allowing a feckless boy, a puppet for palace schemers, to usurp a throne he cannot hold! I am here to restore order, to establish a council that can truly lead Leo! Starting with the elimination of those who would see it crumble under incompetence!"
He gestured with his sword. "Begin!"
The massacre started without further preamble. The Nightblades, trained killers loyal only to their Duke, fell upon the nearest nobles. Because of the ancient, sacred pact that forbade weapons within the Great Hall during a Noble Council, the attendees were lambs to the slaughter. Screams echoed off the high stone vaults. Blood, sprayed across ancient tapestries and polished marble floors.
Lord Titus Cornelius, his smugness replaced by a mask of vicious glee, pointed out key figures from Thorne's and Varrus's factions, and the Nightblades dispatched them with brutal efficiency. A baron from the Central League, a famed veteran, tried to use a heavy wooden scroll case as a shield; a Nightblade's sword sheared through it and deep into his chest. Baroness Althea Varro, Thorne's niece, shoved her uncle behind a pillar, her face a mask of cold fury as she looked for any desperate chance, any weapon, but found none.
Alexius watched from his seat below the throne, expressionless. A part of Michael Sano recoiled in horror at the carnage, at the screams of dying men and women he had, moments before, been loudly debating on his succession. But Grand Prince Alexius, guided by the cold logic of the System and suprisingly remained still. [System Analysis: Current dead rate among nobility – 18%. Optimal target for reduction of entrenched opposition and future resource drain: 40-50%. Valerius is unwittingly performing a necessary purge.]
However, his thought was monstrous. He think Leo was overburdened with petty nobles, their endless squabbles and parasitic demands draining the lifeblood of the Principality and common people. Valerius, in his arrogant brutality, was helping him to reduce those parasites.
The military nobles, like Marquess Varrus and his men, even unarmed, fought back with the desperate fury of cornered lions. Varrus himself, roaring defiance, broke a heavy ceremonial staff from its holder and wielded it like a club, felling one Nightblade with a sickening crunch of armor and bone before two more swarmed him, their blades flashing. He went down, but not without taking a toll. Other military lords used overturned benches, heavy candlesticks, anything they could find, their resistance a pockets of bloody, hopeless defiance in a sea of slaughter.
Blood ran like a river across the floor. The air grew thick with the stench of iron of it, with the screams and the cruel war cries of the Nightblades. Duke Valerius stood like a dark god in the center of it all, his sword dripping, directing the slaughter, and satisfied smile appear on his face.
After what felt like an eternity, when the screams had lessened and the floor was carpeted with the dead and dying, when nearly half the assembled nobility lay motionless, the System pinged: [Dead of the Nobility target reached: 47%. Risk of Valerius consolidating control of remaining terrified nobles: High. Immediate intervention is highly recommended.]
Alexius finally rose. The movement was small, yet in the blood-soaked chaos, it drew eyes. Duke Valerius, noticing him, grinned, a wolfish baring of teeth. "Ah, the boy prince! Decided to witness the birth of a new era, have you? Don't worry, your end will be swift. Perhaps I'll even grant you the honor of my own blade…"
"Captain Gregor," Alexius's voice cut through the Duke's mocking, clear and cold as ice, amplified by some inner reserve of will.
From the side galleries, where they had been strategically, if seemingly passively, stationed, Captain Gregor of the Royal Guard and fifty of his most elite, handpicked men moved. They hadn't been idle; they had been waiting for the signal from their master. And unlike the slaughtered nobles, they were armed. Polished steel flashed as they drew their longswords.
"Royal Guard!" Gregor's voice was the roar of a lion. "Slay these traitors!"
The effect was instantaneous. The Nightblades, caught between their Duke and this new, unexpected threat, hesitated for a fatal second. Captain Gregor, a true Sword Master, was a unstoppable disaster. He moved with a speed of light and precision that seemed inhuman. The first three Nightblades to engage him instantly died before they could even properly register his attack, their armor rent, their bodies collapsing.
His loyal guardsmen, experts in their own right, followed his lead, forming a disciplined wedge that cut into the disorganized Valerius faction. The Vice-Captain Heston, the traitor, tried to rally some of Valerius's men near the entrance, only to find himself face-to-face with Gregor. The Sword Master didn't even break stride. A single, contemptuous flick of his wrist, and Heston's head flew from his shoulders in a crimson arc.
The tide of the battle, if the one-sided slaughter could even be called that before, turned with shocking brutality. The Royal Guard, fighting with cold fury and the advantage of surprise and superior leadership, began to systematically dismantle Valerius's forces. Nobles who had sided with Valerius, who had perhaps drawn hidden daggers to join his coup, were cut down without mercy. The remaining Nightblades, fierce as they were, found themselves outmaneuvered and overwhelmed by Gregor's sheer martial prowess and the disciplined fury of his men.
Duke Valerius, his arrogant triumph dissolving into disbelief and then rage, tried to rally his faltering troops. "Fight, you curs! Kill them! Kill the boy!" He lunged towards Alexius, his sword raised.
He never made it. Captain Gregor, disengaging from a slain Nightblade, intercepted him. The clash of their swords rang through the hall the Duke tried his best to counter attack he is at the knight level swordmanship because he is noble leinage he had to learn swordmanship even though he is untalented, thus he is ten times stronger than normal person who didn't learn a single swordmanship in entire life. But Valerius, for all his ambition, was no match for a true Sword Master, one man army. Gregor parried a desperate thrust, his blade sliding along Valerius's, and with a powerful, twisting counter, disarmed the Duke, sending his sword clattering across the bloodied marble. Before Valerius could react, Gregor's punch smashed into his face, sending him sprawling to his knees, dazed and bleeding from nose.
The fighting subsided. The silence that fell was broken only by the moans of the wounded and the heavy breathing of Gregor's men. Every Valerius loyalist who had drawn steel was dead or dying.
Alexius walked down from the throne, He moved with an unnerving calm, stepping over bodies and through pools of blood, until he stood before the kneeling, defeated Duke Valerius. The Duke looked up, his face now ruined, hatred and disbelief in his eyes.
"You…" Valerius spat, blood flecking his lips. "You planned this… you let them die…"
Alexius's face was devoid of emotion. He took Captain Gregor's sword, its blade still crimson with blood. "You were a cancer, Valerius," he said, his voice soft, yet carrying in the deadened hall. "A disaster upon Leo. You and your kind are, sucking the life from this Principality and killing it." He raised the sword. "This unstable, corrupted, evil era created by you and noble lords and your petty ambition ends now."
With a single, clean stroke, he beheaded Duke Gregor Valerius. The Duke's head rolled across the marble, coming to rest near the feet of a horrified Titus Cornelius, who had somehow survived by cowering under a bench and was now being dragged out by Royal Guards.
Alexius stood over the headless corpse, the bloody sword in his hand. He looked out at the surviving nobles – Duke Thorne, a wounded but alive Marquess Varrus, Baroness Althea, and a scattering of others, all pale, splattered with blood, their faces a mixture of terror, shock, and dawning, horrified respect.
"The traitor is executed," Alexius declared, his voice ringing with absolute authority. "Leo will heal from now on and become Stronger, United under one Crown." He let the bloodied sword fall from his hand, its clang echoing in the silence. "There will be no more corruption. There will be no more tryranny. There will be no more power struggle between noble houses. Who oppose this new era will follow suit to Duke Valerius and his supporters."
A shock went through the survivors. Then, slowly, hesitantly, Duke Marius Thorne, sank to his knees first among nobles. "Your Majesty," he choked out. Marquess Varrus, support by one of his men, followed suit. One by one, every noble still capable of movement knelt amidst the blood and the corpses.
A single voice, then another, then everyone inside the Great Hall began to chant in harmony: "Long live Grand Prince Alexius! Long live Leo!"
Alexius looked down upon them, his heart a cold, hard stone in his chest. The System flashed: [Primary Objective: Secure the Throne of Leo – Complete. Internal Opposition (Ducal Factions): Neutralized. Nobility Subjugation Level: High. System Update initiating
…..10%…. 25%…,,,100%
System Update:Completed.
Congratulation! You have officially became a soverign of the nation. Altough your nation is small among this enormous world it is a start point to step the conqueror path. Long Live Grand Prince Alexius! May the God Bless your noble path.
System updated to Principality System. You can access to details of the whole Principality and manage remotely. You can now have experience points and level up. By leveling up you can get skill points and allocate them to your status: such as strength, mana, stamina, aura etc…. Do your best in conquering the world. Good Luck!]
He was shocked. (Continue….)