"Apologies, your Majesty." From the forest, a group of four men approached Charles and knelt.
These men also wore black clothes, with their eyes the only part visible. The only difference between them and the previous black-clothed men is their red dragon's head insignia on their left chest.
"Get up. Who's leading this time?"
"That would be me, your Majesty." The one in front stood up and bowed. He then removed his headwear and placed his bow and arrow in his back.
"General Sanjay Merit, currently leading the Red Dragon Squad 1, reporting!"
"You're the new general?"
"Yes, sir! I was picked by Master... no, Sir Lanz to continue his position."
"A disciple of my uncle? Interesting. By the way, why are you so late? protocol states that once the signal is received, troops should respond and assist within five minutes."
"Reporting to your Majesty, this lowly General didn't expect them to leave behind less than a dozen assassins. When we were coming from the forest, they ambushed us. There's no casualties and only two injured, but they delayed us for a minute or two. All of this is my fault, your Majesty! Please punish me as you see fit!" Sanjay knelt down on one knee and lowered his head.
"I'm not in the mood for punishing right now. Stand up."
"With all due respect sir, according to military law, I need to have a punishment. Please give me one."
Charles was surprised by the man's principled thinking. He really didn't want to punish the man since it was not his fault and even he didn't expect the assassins to leave some of their men behind. He pondered for a bit before an idea formed in his mind.
"Alright. For your punishment, You shall guard my son thoroughly whenever I call you!"
"Y-your Majesty?" Sanjay looked up and met Charles' gaze.
"You heard me. When I need you to, you shall protect my son from any sort of danger. I don't need you right now so maybe in the future. This is your punishment for your errors. Am I clear?"
Sanjay wanted to protest, but when he saw his superior's gaze, he knew he couldn't force it.
"I understand, your Majesty!" Sanjay stood up and bowed again.
"Very good. You all, stand up and help those adventurers. They didn't know about my identity but the assassins called me your Majesty so they might already know about it. Do your best to satisfy what they want. We don't want them to spread what happened around here as it will only cause distress to the people."
"Understood, your Majesty!" Sanjay and his men went to the adventurers. Earlier, Sanjay ordered some of his men to help the adventurers so right now, the adventurers sat on the ground and tried to process what happened to them.
"Fellow Adventurers, I'm sure you're curious as to what happened, so I'll let you in on the situation. The client you guys are escorting is a bit special and he said he didn't want the events that happened here to go out. Is this enough for you all?" Sanjay reached out a sack full of gold coins to them. The amount is almost ten times the amount they're supposed to get paid, so they didn't have any complaints about it. Besides, they did jobs like these knowing that their life is on the line, so even if they're unsatisfied, they couldn't blame the one who requested it as they were the ones who accepted it. It also explained why the reward money is too good to be true for a C-ranked Quest.
One of them stood up and approached Sanjay.
"Can I ask something?"
"Yes. You deserve the information so as long as it is allowed, I'll tell you what you want to know."
"One of the fuckers mentioned something about your Majesty. Is it..."
"Yes, it is as you think. However, I trust that no one talks about anything related to this anymore? His Majesty doesn't want to alarm the public, and assassinations like this would damage the morale of the people. Do you and your fellow adventurers understand?"
"Yes! If word of this comes out, the morale of the enemies should soar! Everyone, let's swear not to talk about this ever again!" The adventurer who stood up looked at his fellow adventurers with solemn eyes.
"Yes, we understand. We definitely don't want to antagonize the Royal Family. I swear on my family name that I will never talk about this ever again or else I'll die a miserable death!"
"I swear..."
All of them swore not to talk about the incident. After all of them, the one who asked the question earlier asked again.
"Why didn't you increase the difficulty of the quest then? Knowing that the Royal Family is involved, this should've been an A or even an A+ Quest! That way, the adventurers who will escort should hold on well against that kind of assassination attempt. Why the lower difficulty quest?"
"You don't understand. This escort mission should've been safe as nobody knows that the Royal Family are the clients. This should've been a safe journey so long as people don't know the clients. If the quest mentioned anything about the Royal Family, it'll probably cause a huge uproar, alerting more enemies. That way, more and more enemies will plot against this caravan, and those enemies are without a doubt much stronger and more mysterious. Besides, do you think the public won't mind about why the Royal Family is in this small town when they should've been guarded in the city?
Alright, that's all I can say. Speculate all you want. Any more questions?" Sanjay lightly smiled and looked at the other adventurers.
Nobody asked another question. They were too shocked by what Sanjay said. Indeed, a publicized escort mission would result in stronger and unpredictable enemies. Sometimes it's better to do it lowkey and this is the preferable scenario if a Royal Family wants to travel from a small town. They also thought about how the assassins knew the clients. From what they heard, this should've been a safe journey, which means nobody but only a few people should know about this. In this case, there's only one possibility: one of the few people who knew about it leaked it to their enemies.
It turned out that it was indeed an act of a spy. When one of Sanjay's men examined the body of the black-clothed man that Sanjay killed, he found out that the face looked familiar. Since the assassins wore a mask coated with mana to prevent leaking their identities, no one, even Charles himself, knew the attackers. Now that the man took off the mask, he found the face pretty familiar.
"Reporting to your Majesty! I looked into the one leader killed and I find the man's face familiar. Maybe your Majesty knows."
"Familiar? Let's see." Charles went close to the corpse and looked at the face.
"It's him? this bastard!" Charles narrowed his eyes.
"Why, hun?" Catherine went closer and when she saw the face, her expression contorted.
"This is that damn noisy Duke! Duke Cameron! To think he would betray the council! Hmph!"
"Indeed. Even though our opinions are always clashing, I never thought he'd betray us. We need to investigate all his close contacts right away. General Sanjay!" Charles yelled Sanjay's name.
"You called, your Majesty?"
"Get one or two of your trusted men to deliver this letter to the council. Tell them to share it only to the Grand Dukes. Dukes and lower nobles should not know about this!" Charles tore a piece of his upper clothing and using his fingers, started writing something. He then gave it to Sanjay.
"This is urgent!"
"As you wish, your Majesty." Sanjay bowed and went to his two most trusted subordinates.
"Hun, the Cameron family should be investigated!"