Chương 282: Chapter : 282

"Neutralize Lancelot?" the woman repeated, her voice dripping with disbelief.

"People have been trying to neutralize Lancelot for years. No one even knows if Lancelot is a single person or an organization."

"Then we find out," Voss said, his eyes glittering in the dim light.

"I am authorizing Operation Mirror. Every resource we have, every informant, every piece of intelligence we've gathered about Lancelot over the years, I want it analyzed."

"Find the pattern. Find the weakness. Find the face behind the mask. And when we do, Lancelot will learn what happens to those who stand between me and the throne of Belmontia." He looked around the table one final time, meeting each pair of eyes in turn.

"The Emperor uses his children as weapons. Lancelot watches our every move. The ZulFarah circle like vultures. But we are still here."

"We have survived worse than this, and we will survive this too. The throne will be ours. But only if we remain patient, disciplined, and united. Any crack in our resolve will be exploited. Any doubt will be weaponized against us."

"Remember what we are fighting for," he added, his voice dropping to a near whisper.

"A Belmontia that answers to strength, not weakness. A Belmontia where the worthy rule and the masses serve. That vision is worth any price. Worth any sacrifice." The meeting continued late into the night. Voices rose and fell as strategies were debated and contingencies planned. The pharmaceutical network would be reinforced. The intelligence gaps would be investigated. And Operation Mirror would begin at dawn. But the shadow of Lancelot hung over every word, every whispered agreement, every secret handshake.

The masked entity was out there somewhere, watching, listening, knowing things that no one should know about anyone. Far above them, the capital city slept peacefully under a canopy of stars, unaware that beneath its streets, the enemies of everything it stood for were plotting its destruction with the cold patience of predators stalking prey in the dark. And somewhere in that same darkness, behind a white mask with narrow eye slits, Lancelot was listening. Lancelot was always listening.

The estate library was a disaster zone. Every table was buried under mountains of botanical reference books, historical pharmaceutical journals, and crumbling trade records that smelled like grandmothers and forgotten attics. Sayma sat at the center of the chaos like a queen on a throne of paper. She had been cross-referencing for six hours straight, her sharp eyes moving between three open volumes simultaneously while her fountain pen scratched notes at a furious pace.

Empty tea cups surrounded her workstation like the fallen soldiers of a caffeinated army. The morning had started with optimism. Sayma had announced that the decoded journal contained dozens of references to Devil Flour, and with enough research, they could identify exactly what it was and why Carrion had been killed for it. Six hours later, optimism had been replaced by grim determination. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

The research had proven far more difficult than expected. Carrion's journal used a hybrid of Old Bel botanical terminology and his own personal shorthand, a combination that was about as easy to read as a foreign language written in invisible ink during an earthquake. Every time they matched one term, two more appeared that didn't fit any known classification. It was like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces belonged to a different puzzle entirely, and someone had eaten the corner pieces.

Sayma had pulled every botanical text from the estate's library, and Naomi had requisitioned additional volumes from the capital's public archives through a series of official requests that were probably illegal but definitely necessary. The books arrived by courier every hour, each one dustier than the last. Zinia worked beside Sayma with characteristic precision, organizing the decoded journal entries into chronological order and matching botanical terms to their historical equivalents.

Her notebook was filled with diagrams, arrows, and annotations in her tiny, meticulous handwriting. Every now and then, Zinia would pause and murmur something to Sayma, who would shake her head and point to a reference in a different book. The two scholars operated like a well-oiled machine, their combined intellect grinding through centuries of botanical records. Across the room, Laxmi was supposed to be helping.

Instead, she had fallen asleep on a stack of agricultural reports, her cheek pressed against a page about soil composition and her soft snores providing an irregular rhythm to the otherwise quiet library. Before falling asleep, she had spent two hours complaining that none of the books had pictures.

"How am I supposed to identify a plant from a three-hundred-year-old description?" she had grumbled.

"It says the leaves are vaguely ovate. Vaguely? What does vaguely even mean in botany?" Sayma had not looked up from her books to answer.

"It means approximately egg-shaped, which describes about forty percent of all leaves in existence, so yes, it's profoundly unhelpful." Laxmi had thrown her hands up in frustration and shortly thereafter fallen asleep on the reports. Ken was sprawled on the couch near the window, ostensibly reading but actually using his mystery novel as a pillow. He had contributed to the research effort by correctly identifying a picture of a cactus, which even he admitted was not his finest intellectual achievement.

"That's a cactus," he had announced proudly, pointing at the illustration.

"I'm almost sure. Ninety percent. Maybe eighty." Naomi had given him a look that could have curdled milk and returned to her translation work. She sat at a side table, methodically decoding passages from old pharmaceutical trade ciphers with the focus of a surgeon performing a delicate operation. Her knowledge of merchant code systems had proven surprisingly useful, a skill she had acquired during her years working undercover in the capital's commercial district.

She had already decoded three shipping manifests that confirmed the Benjamin Group's involvement. One manifest listed a mysterious commodity called DF-Extract with a price tag that could have funded a small war. Another showed regular shipments to a holding company that, according to Zinia's research, was a known front for the Anti-Empire faction. The third manifest was the most disturbing.

It was a requisition order for twenty vials of DF-Extract, addressed to a research facility in the capital's industrial district. The date on the order was three days before Carrion's murder. Iris stood at the tall window, arms crossed, watching the afternoon sun paint golden stripes across the library floor. She had been pacing for most of the afternoon, her patience wearing thin with every hour that passed without a breakthrough.

"How much longer?" Iris asked, unable to keep the edge from her voice. Sayma didn't look up from her books.

"Research takes time, Princess. You can't rush knowledge. Unless you have a time machine, in which case I have several questions about historical pharmaceutical regulations that I'd like to ask."

"What she means," Zinia translated smoothly, "is that we're getting close. The botanical classification system from Carrion's era used different nomenclature than modern references. We're essentially translating between two dead languages."