Chương 281: Chapter : 281

A secret meeting had been infiltrated by Imperial investigators who arrived with detailed knowledge they should not have possessed. The pattern was too consistent to be coincidence, too precise to be luck, too devastating to be anything but Lancelot. It was as if they were playing chess against an opponent who could see the entire board while they could only see their own pieces. And Lancelot was always three moves ahead, smiling behind that terrible white mask.

Every time they thought they had outmaneuvered the masked entity, they discovered that their supposed victory was actually a trap. Lancelot fed them false confidence the way a fisherman feeds bait to a hungry fish. Lord Voss let them vent for a full minute before raising his hand again.

"I understand your anger. I share it. But anger without strategy is just noise. And noise gets people killed." A younger noble sitting near the middle of the table cleared his throat nervously. He was perhaps thirty, with anxious eyes and a carefully trimmed beard that he kept stroking as if it gave him courage. His hands were clasped so tightly that his knuckles were white.

"Perhaps it is time we consider the offer," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. Several people turned to look at him, and he shrank slightly under their collective gaze but pressed on regardless.

"The ZulFarah Black Magicians have reached out to us three times now. They are offering military strength, magical firepower, resources that could finally overwhelm the Emperor's defenses and break through Lancelot's interference." The room went quiet again, but this silence was different. It was the uncomfortable silence of people considering something they knew was dangerous, like reaching toward a snake coiled in the grass, knowing it might strike but unable to resist.

The ZulFarah Black Magicians were a name that inspired fear even among people as dangerous as this assembly. Their dark magic was legendary, their brutality unmatched, and their ultimate goal was whispered about only in the most shadowed corners of the world. Several people shifted uncomfortably. The idea of allying with the ZulFarah was like inviting a wildfire into your home to keep warm. It would solve the immediate problem, but the long-term cost was unthinkable. Lord Voss stood slowly from his chair.

Every eye tracked his movement. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of absolute authority, and there was a dangerous edge that made the young noble flinch backward in his seat.

"No." The word was sharp as a guillotine blade.

"We will not ally with the ZulFarah. Not now. Not ever. That is my final word on the matter." The young noble opened his mouth to argue, but Voss silenced him with a look that could have frozen a river in mid-flow.

"Do not embarrass yourself further. Let me explain what you clearly do not understand about our would-be partners." Voss walked slowly around the table, his footsteps muffled by the thick carpet.

"The ZulFarah Black Magicians do not seek to conquer the Empire. They seek to unmake it. Their goal is not Greater Belmontia. It is annihilation." The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Their goal is the resurrection of the Great Black Soul Sovereign. An entity of pure, world-ending destructive force that would reduce this entire continent to ash and shadow. There would be nothing left to rule. Nothing at all." He stopped behind the young noble's chair and leaned down.

"If the ZulFarah succeed, there will be no Empire. No government. No economy. No world worth controlling. Just ash, darkness, and the screaming of the damned for all eternity." The young noble swallowed hard, his courage evaporating like morning dew under a desert sun.

"But we could use their strength to win and then break the alliance before the ritual is complete. We could control the timeline. Set our own terms." Voss laughed. A cold, mirthless sound that made the chandelier crystals vibrate.

"You think the ZulFarah would allow themselves to be used and discarded? You think dark mages who spent centuries pursuing their vision would simply walk away when asked?"

"The ZulFarah's goals are fundamentally Anti-Greater Belmontia," Voss declared, his voice rising.

"Everything we are building, the organized hierarchy, the profitable monopolies, the controlled governance, their ritual would destroy it all without hesitation."

"Allying with such unpredictable darkness would completely erase the highly structured, profitable empire we have spent generations attempting to steal. We would trade a throne for a funeral pyre. I will not burn for anyone's cause but my own." The general nodded slowly.

"He's right. The ZulFarah don't want to rule. They want to end. You can't negotiate with something that wants to destroy the very concept of negotiation." The woman in green shuddered.

"Then we are trapped between the Emperor's children and Lancelot's interference. How do we move forward?" Voss resumed his seat and folded his hands.

"We move forward carefully. We accelerate the secondary plan. The Benjamin Group will be our shield."

"The pharmaceutical monopoly must be protected at all costs," he continued.

"If the 13th Unit traces Devil Flour to our operations, we lose our primary funding. Inform the Vice Director to stonewall any investigation with every resource available."

"Legal delays. Bureaucratic obstacles. Corporate security. Whatever it takes to prevent Princess Iris from getting those shipping records. I want that investigation buried under so much paperwork that it takes a year just to find the surface."

"And if stonewalling isn't enough?" the woman asked, her voice tight.

"Then the Benjamin Group has corporate mercenaries for a reason," Voss replied, his tone leaving no room for misunderstanding.

"Accidents happen in large corporations. Evidence has a way of disappearing. Permanently."

"What about the 13th Unit itself?" the general asked quietly.

"Could we arrange an accident for them? A training mishap, perhaps?" Voss considered this for a long moment, his silver eyes narrowing to slits.

"Not yet. Attacking a Royal Unit directly would provoke a response we cannot currently withstand. The Emperor would send the Royal Guard, and we are not ready for open war."

"But we can slow them down," he added.

"Feed them false leads. Create bureaucratic obstacles. Make their investigation take months instead of weeks. By the time they find the truth, our critical assets will be relocated and the trail erased." The bespectacled nobleman cleared his throat again.

"There is one more matter, Lord Voss. My sources within the Imperial Palace have reported that the Emperor is planning to expand the Succession War investigations next season."

"He intends to assign cold cases to every prince and princess, not just the ones currently active. That means a dozen Royal Units will be investigating different sectors of our network simultaneously." The room went cold. A dozen Royal Units meant a dozen different angles of attack, a dozen different teams digging into their affairs from different directions. It would be almost impossible to stonewall all of them at once.

Voss absorbed this without visible reaction, but his fingers pressed slightly harder against each other.

"Then we must act quickly. The Benjamin Group must be secured before the expansion begins. And we must find a way to neutralize Lancelot."