"Your highness, what do you mean?" Archer turned inquisitively to me before anyone else could.
Seeing the glare from all 3 I relented to answer them despite my laziness.
"Ok let me explain.
You see your sister and her group of friends have only one goal so far, I think; that is me.
Whoever your sister is working for, wants my complete and undivided attention.
They want to see my struggle, and my planning to capture your sister and her group of friends.
In short whoever is the mastermind wants me to go on a wild goose chase.
Can both of you guess why?" I turned towards Ellis and Archer as I asked them
Both of them thought for a while before Archer went first. "Trying to distract you, while they do something behind your eyes, that you would easily notice if you weren't occupied, your highness."
"Nope!" I crossed my hands to form an 'X' before turning towards Ellis.
"I was going to say the same thing but in different words your highness." Ellis replied in confusion.
"Still guess something else, Ellis." I motioned for him.
Ellis though for a few seconds before he opened his mouth. "Could it be they are planning to use you for something, while you go after them?"
"Wrong! But close. Do you want another turn, Archer, seeing that I gave Ellis another turn?" I asked.
"Could it be they are after your body due to that?" Archer implied not wanting to reveal much information about soulless condition and award to Luke
"Again, close like Ellis, but not right. Also, he already knows about my condition, probably from his sister's mouth." I pointed towards the stoic Luke, while Archer raised his eyebrows in question.
"So, what do they want your highness?" Ellis asked me as worry slowly crept onto his face.
"It is a really simple answer, once you put everything together really. The person behind Linda simply wants entertainment, right Luke?" To my question, Luke finally lost his calm, as an unbelievable expression came upon his face.
Tuning out the exclamations from both Archer and Ellis I kept my focus on Luke, who desperately wanted to ask how I knew that.
"From the report, we received last night, we know that Linda is high ranking award user; so powerful to the point that everything and everyone, around 2 km radius around the banquet hall, last night was frozen still, including the rain itself in mid-air.
Now an award user like her could easily kill me from outside the capital, and escape before any sort of attention falls on her.
Instead what does she do?
She barges into a high-security event, as if wanting everyone to see her, and stabs me through my heart like she could not just twist my head off and be done with me; followed by watching me heal right in front of her without stopping me.
What does all this point towards?
She wants to provoke me and along with agitating everyone inside the empire, to follow and capture a rogue award user like her.
Now, why would an extremely powerful award user- who has been hiding for so long without gaining any attention-, who also has a backer quite powerful as well wants to do something stupid like that?"
All 3 of them were silent.
"Simply because they are crazy!" Archer seemed unable to believe my answer, while the defeated expression of Luke proved me right.
"Now, what do crazy people want from a useless and worthless person like me? They want my attention.
Why do they want my attention? Because like them I am crazy too, but unlike them, I am a unique crazy person.
What do crazy people do when they are bored? They annoy other people in order to invoke some kind of reaction from them to simply get rid of their boredom.
And what better candidate to provoke that a rotten, powerful crazy genius prince who is waiting to die in 5 years!" I smirked while Ellis and Luke stiffened at my exclamation, especially Ellis with concern.
"I may be crazy and bored, but as I said I am a unique kind of crazy person. I am too darn lazy to do anything crazy unless I am annoyed.
Now your sister did something annoying, this should naturally provoke me to get to work.
However, unfortunately for her, I am an extremely busy slothful person with a limited lifespan and the brain to see through their plans.
I know if I go after them then I will spend the rest of my life chasing them, and the last thing I want to do is putting in any extra work when I am trying to free my hands of any schedules that are slowly filling up due to dealing with the throne succession game.
For all I care, they can try to get my attention any way possible, like last night and I will not bother to bat an eye towards them until I get enough rest."
Archer sighed in distress while massaging his forehead. "Your highness, we know that you like your resting time. But these people are very dangerous to the empire and we need to stop them before they proceed to do any more dangerous things to the empire to get your attention and for that we need him." Archer pointed towards Luke.
"He is precisely the reason I am going to laze around." I grinned at Archer's response.
"Why do you think his sister didn't take him with her?" At my question, both Archer's and Luke's eyes widened.
"Yeah, she could have easily taken him with her, but she purposely left him behind. She wanted me to use him to find her. They probably have fed him enough information and clues about their group for me to pursue them."
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{Luke PoV}
"...They probably have fed him enough information and clues about their group for me to pursue them." Hearing these words from Prince John provoked a memory in me.
A certain memory that he had in a rooftop of a building roughly about a week ago with a bartender and a mercenary.
For all his experience, he had forgotten to ask an important question on that day.
'Why were they telling him all those information?'
He had naturally assumed they divulged those pieces of information due to his sister being their holy one, a case of nepotism.
But now he realised that simply was not the case.
They wanted him to know that information because they had planned this exact situation.
They knew Prince John will notice his relationship with Linda and will capture him, and they wanted to use that situation to their goal.
He did not know what to feel at this moment in time.
On one side he had gotten close to Prince John's side to stop her getting his attention. However, she knew he was going to do that had used him for her needs.
In all honesty, he should feel betrayed, but he had realised something before he was drowned in the feeling of betrayal.
This was a sort of warning from Linda.
She made it clear to him to not interfere with her, and if I do, she will not hesitate to do worse than using me like now.
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{Ez PoV}
"See our every step will be guided by them if we use him. Besides who knows the information he was told was true or not?" I asked them seeing the look of betrayal and understanding passing through Luke's eyes.
"Not to mention by hiring him, his sister and group of friends are going to think that we are indeed using the bait that they laid for us and wait for us patiently for a while before they realise I am not making any progress.
Which will frustrate them and want to make them hurry me up. To do this they will strike again, and this time they will lay out more clues for me.
After all, why go after them, when you can make them come to you? Why waste energy and resource chasing after an impossible and invisible enemy when they will spend the energy and resource to come to you?" I asked.
The room was silent before it was broken by the voice of Archer.
"So, by being passive, we get more time to before they make their move along with that the next time they strike we will be more prepared. Right?" I nodded at his question.
"So, boy what's your decision?" Suddenly a grin was plastered on the ever-serious Archers face as he asked Luke the question.
"Would you like to serve him or not?"
---------------------------
{Ellis PoV}
I tried not to show anything on my face throughout the interrogation/recruitment process of Luke.
This was dangerous.
Very dangerous.
Not only was his highness so close to figuring out the identity and capability of the Fake one and his entourage with just one visit from them, but he had accurately identified their goals and plans along with the perfect way to go after them.
But what his highness did not know was the backer of Ms Linda was not just a mortal that is extremely powerful, but a deity.
No, he was not just a common deity but someone above the deities themselves, who plays with the deities when he is bored.
And for why a deity wanted to go after someone was still incomprehensible for me.
The only relief for me was that his highness had no intentions to go after them.
But if what his highness said was the truth then they will come after him, when they realise he isn't making any progress.
By then I have to be strong enough to stop them.
And to be strong I have to use every opportunity in the game realm to the fullest.
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{3rd Person/ Sophia PoV}
'Darn that bastard. He purposely let go of me, in order to let others, do the dirty work for him.' Sophia thought as she dodged another extremely sharp blade thrown towards her.
'They know they can't risk coming close to me, so they are using their strength of an award user to throw extremely dangerous projectiles to incapacitate me.' Sophia mused as she saw another projectile missing her and without any resistance piercing through the ground and disappearing as it made its way to the ground.
If any of those projectiles even as much as hit her, then she will be down for few seconds even with her physical strength and defence; and all those agents needed were those few seconds.
'Damn it, Albert, where are you?' Sophia cursed as she turned a corner where one of her puppets were hiding.
The puppet jumped onto the agent following her and trying to stall him as long as possible, which she knew only amounted to was only a second.
Suddenly a hand came from the shadows and grabbed her to the shadows.
Before she could even react the shadows made sure she was immobile and could not even move a bit.
'This...' Sophia's eyes widened in the darkness as she futilely struggled against the strength of the shadows retaining her.
'When did rank 5 agents become so free?' She cursed for the fift... actually she lost count how many times she had cursed today.
After what felt like a few minutes she felt the shadows holding her releasing its grip onto her and pushing her to the light.
Her eyes quickly adjusted to the sudden change in brightness and saw Albert standing in front of her, smiling.
"Thank you, Tom." Albert nodded to the person behind her.
Sophia turned around to see a being moulded in shadows nodding towards Albert.
"Lord Albert, I prefer it if you don't separate me from his highness for such a simple task again." Tom growled.
"Hahaha, well what to say? Apparently Smith had thought you were too attached to James and needed to be out more.
Go and beat him up for bringing you away from your prince." Albert replied with his usual cheeky smile.
Tom grunted before disappearing as he moulded back into the shadows of the buildings.
"So that's the rumoured loyal hound raised by the empress huh. Did not know he had turned into a bodyguard for that useless playboy. But that is to be expected after all, right?" Sophia smirked.
"You are a lot more problematical than I thought. That snotty brat had caused several of mine and Steven's agents to be out of work for a few days just because of you." Albert replied in an annoyed tone.
"So what? Are you going to kill me? Don't think you can kill me that easily. After all, if Steven finds out you killed me before I woke up his bitch, he will go on a killing spree." Sophia mocked Albert.
"As much as I don't want to do that and get rid of you somehow, I have other plans for you. I want you to lay low for a while." Albert said as he took a folder out of his suit.
"These scorpions had been up and running for a while now, close to 2 years. We had turned a blind eye towards them due to their targets not affecting us much. But recently they just managed to piss off a high ranking noble. The said noble wants them culled.
We had initially planned to pit these assassin organisation against John. But that brat had simply seen through our plan and had not chosen this mission and chose something else which he succeeded to everyone's annoyance.
So instead you end up with these buffoons. Deal with them however you like, and I will call you back once Steven has managed to calm down here." Saying that he threw the file towards Sophia.
Sophia glanced through the report before sneering. "You don't mind if I tame a few dogs do you?"
Albert shrugged his shoulders before walking out of the alleyway.