A steely glint flashed through the dark street and plunged into a running man’s back. One laboured step later, the man collapsed onto the ground, with blood staining the royal purple of his finely-sewn shirt a dark red. A few metres behind him were the corpses of his dead bodyguards. Blood was blossoming from all their throats, their glassy eyes reflecting the moon in the sky.

“That’s the eighth one, I think.” Gaius walked over to the nobleman from the House of Aquitaine, and slit his throat. From another person’s point of view, an invisible spectre had just claimed the lives of a House scion, given that the small boy was currently invisible.

“Ninth, actually.” Nexus replied. “Have you raised the alarm?”

“The first one doesn’t count, Nexus.” The boy shook his head, and the projection of a man stepped out from his little frame. The optical illusion was dressed in the colours of blue and green, the colours of House Varita…a little present for the rulers of Elinaris.

From afar, Gaius could hear cries and shouts approaching the murder scene, led by another illusion that Gaius created. The boy hadn’t used this ability much as a Harvester, but as a professional shit stirrer, it had proven invaluable to a point. For the past few days, the city had been on a total lockdown to prevent news about the dead promising young lords and ladies from spreading into the South.

Rumours, however, about a poised gentleman in the colours of House Varita doing the killing had spread like wildfire. The man, dressed in traditional robes, would vanish mysteriously after letting the incoming crowd catch a glimpse of him.

Gaius leapt into the air, perching on a building as the crowd appeared in his vision. The sight of multiple bodies whipped the crowd into an even greater frenzy, with the pitchforks and torches bobbing up and down madly as the crowd ran towards the man in blue and green.

The optical illusion bowed elegantly at the approaching crowd, and then scattered like dust as Gaius dispelled the illusion. Murmurs rippled through the crowd, some of them more panicked than the others. Some of them were already departing from the scene.

An anguished cry tore through the night, and the crowd parted as an older man, whose clothes bore an emblem of royal purple, rushed towards the fallen bodies. Others followed suit, but it was clear from his speed that the middle-aged man had a cultivation base of a Squire.

A woman, with flowy robes of blue and green, descended from above. “Lord Aquitaine!”

“Bitch! One of yours killed my son!” The man punched out at the woman, who parried it with ease. “Just you wait! I know what you’ve been doing, but I didn’t think you’d even do it to your ally!”

“Lord Aquitaine, please calm down! We’ve been framed!”

“Of course you’d say that!” He roared back. “Convenient, is it not?! You don’t even need to disguise your killer! We know how you operate, and I swear to you this, by tomorrow, everyone will!”

Gaius, who was listening from up high, made a weird face at the man’s words. He’d caught a lucky break or something, judging by how the words that he’d heard so far.

Caution welled up within Gaius as he cleared his head — the Houses of the South were skilled at scheming, if nothing else. The culprit framing himself was an easy and subtle way to prove innocence. But this man had managed to come up with logic that only a skilled schemer would use.

“Milord, please! We’ve been framed!”

“You’re aren’t the only one who has been studying the work of the Champions! I know what the hell the Big Lie is too!” Lord Aquitaine balled up his fist, but didn’t move to punch the lady again. “All the promising seeds of the Houses who came to Elinaris are dead, so why not kill an ally’s scion too? A brilliant move indeed! Extraordinary!”

The man spat on the floor, and his eyes clouded with grief as he walked over to his fallen son. After cradling the body for a moment, the man shot a look that promised retribution at the woman, before carrying the body off. His guards emulated their lord, bearing the bodies of their fellow guards and vanishing into the distance.

Gaius looked down at the forlorn scene. Sure, the men he’d murdered had been jerks, but it was a result of their upbringing in a privileged environment. But he didn’t care for such a flimsy excuse.

The boy had killed, because he wanted to. For his own goals. To him, Nakama’s awakening and safety trumped virtually any other consideration. Any other excuse, like for the sake of justice, was nothing but a lie. Even if his next target was an absolute paragon of virtue, if he stood in Gaius’ way, the boy would kill him all the same.

The woman below had called in a few squads of men to interrogate the crowd, while Gaius was lost in thought. The illusion he’d created to lure the crowd over had long vanished, however. No matter how much she scoured the city, she would never find it.

“Should I continue to kill more?” Gaius said.

“I suspect that stopping at this juncture would make things more…interesting, Master Gaius,” replied Nexus. “That Knight’s face would be an interesting sight to behold, if the murders stopped at this point. How convenient!”

“Quite the masterful schemer, eh?”

“That is indeed one of my merits,” Nexus replied evenly. “We’ll leave them to it. Go get some souvenirs for Isabelle, other than that file of yours. Some for Nakama too, I guess. This play will run on its own now.”

Gaius looked at the street, where the female Knight was gnashing her teeth and walking around with a huff, before snorting to himself. It didn’t take a genius to realise that she was worried about the events to come. The boy couldn’t even begin to fathom the outcome — if a former ally told the world that the House of Varita was responsible for killing a whole bunch of promising scions of the other Houses…

The boy couldn’t help but shiver at that thought. For a moment, Gaius felt like sneaking into the lodgings that the people from House Aquitaine used just to hear their thoughts.

Quelling that thought, the boy focused on the Astral Wind. He could feel a gentle pull, and Gaius let himself succumb to it. The scenery changed, and he was back in his room.

A good day’s work, if nothing else.