Chapter Thirty
EMPEROR SURVIVES
Long before the battle between Dionysus and Negata even began, two months ago, the Bloody Droplets attempted to put an end to the current royal lineage, and failed terribly. They got outside the palace, failed at breaching the courtyard, except for a few, and then it ended on a regrettable note.
However, not everything had gone wrong.
Left within one of the many rooms in the palace, four Bloody Droplets hid in multiple places around the room.
This room was, in fact, the emperor's bedroom.
They were utilizing one of their abilities to stay hidden with it. Specifically, one of the people that belonged to the third unit, who fell under the vice-captain of it, had an invisibility cloak that was twenty feet in length and width. With it, they had been able to survive until nighttime of the day of the invasion, and finally, their dedication paid off.
The Bloody Droplets should've been happy that their patience had paid off, but instead, some of them were even silently crying. The reason for that would be that the only way that the emperor had survived . . .
. . . was that the operation had failed.
"My, oh my, what lovely biscuits! Thank you for your work, madam Enri."
It was currently nighttime, and the emperor was still alive. The only thing this could mean was that the Bloody Droplets had failed terribly, and that their comrades either fled the palace, or that they were dead.
Of course, such as all of them being taken in as prisoners, but they weren't as likely as the first two.
"But, of course, my liege."
With a deep bow to the emperor, the maid left the bedroom in perfect shape, meaning that it might as well have been sparkling from how good the cleaning was. Along with that, she had left tea and biscuits on the dining table within the large room, to which the emperor seemed to rejoice.
"Alright, now's our chance!"
One of the three people who had accompanied the Lieutenant hissed violently, and although it was at a low enough volume that the emperor wouldn't hear it, the lieutenant still grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and gazed at him intimidatingly. Understanding that he messed up, the man quickly hushed.
After around half an hour of hearing chewing and sipping sounds, they saw the emperor walk towards his bed, which was certainly large for just a single person. His wife, the queen, had died ten years back, and since he had made no effort to marry another, he had been sleeping all alone.
He still had children and grandchildren at his beck and call, but as for him, and only him, his time was coming to an end. Even the emperor couldn't escape the lure that was time, and as it slowly dragged him towards his death . . .
Well, there was nothing a person, or at least a normal person, could do to fight against aging.
He was constantly hunched over and walking with a cane, clearly demonstrating that his physical peak had long since passed. He slipped into his bed with no real issues, and within ten minutes, snoring could be heard.
While the group did begin to hear the snoring ten minutes after he slipped into the monster sized bed, they waited all the way until midnight before pouncing.
After all, they were the last line of offense. If they didn't need to deal with humanly issues, such as food, water, sleep, and so on, they would've genuinely considered staying here for multiple days, just so they could memorize his schedule and assassinate him accordingly.
That was how desperate they were to make sure that things didn't go wrong.
"One of you, leave the cloak. Anyone."
The lieutenant issued an order, and although he wasn't a captain of a unit or anything, he was still in a position that held more power than the other three people there, so one of them obediently walked out from under the cloak with a somewhat terrified look on their face, as if they weren't fully sure they were safe.
Though, the lieutenant couldn't blame them for being scared, as the palace really was uncharted territory to them as a whole.
At first, it all seemed fine. He turned back towards them, and although he couldn't see them, he gestured, with his hands, for all of them to pour out from below the cloak.
At this point, the one who actually utilized the cloak as his ability was about to retract it, but when he remembered that it made a sound that was actually pretty loud when he did that, he just told the lieutenant and the other guy still left under the cloak to just walk out from under it.
They both walked out first, and then after a few moments, he appeared from thin air, right in front of them.
As the situation stood right now, the four of them were standing by the side of the bed, staring at the face of the sleeping emperor. He slept on his back, and although none of them would've felt comfortable sleeping like that, the emperor actually seemed to be relaxed in this position.
Obviously, they had to kill him, but this was where the issue sprung up.
'Whichever one of us kills him will be the one to make history. It'd be nice to be remembered in the annals of history, but being remembered as a terrorist that killed his own emperor in his sleep wouldn't really make me happy. Actually, I'd rather not get into history with that sort of thing.'
The lieutenant quickly came to the decision, in his own mind, that he didn't want to be the one to commit the actual murder. However, just one look at the fact of the other three showed that none of them wanted to be the ones to do it either.
Not only would the one who finished him be guaranteed a pass into the annals of history as a person who backstabbed his traitor, they'd also most likely be walking out of here with a memory that they'll never be able to forget either, what with stabbing an elderly man in his sleep.
The lieutenant, being in the position of power that he was in, took it upon himself to decide who would finish it. Unfortunately, for every single one of them, the lieutenant wasn't decisive, so he made the rock sign with his left hand, clearly expressing his will to rock-paper-scissors over it.
The three guys, besides the lieutenant, looked at one another before looking back at the lieutenant and nodding. They all readied their fists for the match that was to come.
"My, my, is this the capabilities of one of the lieutenants that belonged to those delinquents? No wonder you all failed miserably, your capabilities are terrible!"
A hoarse voice could be heard from the direction of the bed, and by the time the four guys realized whose voice this was, they were already jumping towards the bed, as when they heard the voice, they knew that they had messed up.
Therefore, they jumped towards the bed to quickly put the emperor in his coffin.
"Kneel."
SLAM
As if gravity suddenly became much more intense, all four of them immediately dropped onto their knees on top of the bed.
"Why are we listening to his order?!"
"I don't know, move!"
They all struggled to move, tried to force themselves to stand, and tried every other trick in the book, but for some reason, they wouldn't get off their knee. In fact, not only were they on their knees, but they were fully kneeling with their hands on their knees and their faces pointed down.
BVWHM
"My liege, is some-!"
A male butler entered the room, and at the sight of the four people kneeling on the emperor's bed, his confusion skyrocketed to the ends of infinite space.
"Don't worry about it, some people loyal to my cause have snuck in to tell me that they're glad I survived that terrorist attack. You may be on your way now."
The old man looked at the butler and flashed him a gentle, all encompassing smile, all while showing the kindness of a butterfly within his old, wrinkled eyes. Upon hearing his orders, the butler seemed to get a grasp on the situation, and without a hitch at all, closed the door and left.
"Now then, as for you four . . ."
Unfortunately for them, none of it was real. He wasn't a gentle, all encompassing man, nor was he as kind as a butterfly. In fact, he looked at them with sadistic eyes, eyes filled with the joy of thinking about what was to come.
The four men felt a slight shiver from the leg that they were kneeling on, and then the lieutenant finally figured out what was going on.
"It's not that we're loyal or anything, he must have an ability! We can surely break out from this if we try."
Indeed, his analysis that it was an ability of sorts was correct. They weren't loyal to him at all, yet he had forced them all to kneel before him.
However,
The thought that they could break out of it if they put their wholehearted attempts into it was nothing more than a fool's intuition. They continued to struggle for another minute or two, all for the sake of breaking out of that posture. As this played out, the emperor continued to sit up against his bed, all while looking at them with sick, sick eyes.
"Fools, all of you Bloody Droplets. You really should just let me grow old and die. Surely, you understand that I only have around another year at most, correct?"
They all understood that he was old and on his deathbed, but none of them expected him to just come out and admit it. Usually, a person in a position of power would want to maintain that power forever, but it seemed as if the emperor accepted that his life was coming to an end, whether or not he liked it being an unrelated factor.
"It's not just about you, you damned buffoon! Your whole lineage is a cancer, and as long as it continues to exist, we'll always be stuck like this!"
Surprisingly, one of the men, besides the lieutenant, actually spoke such harsh words, and right in front of their target. Fortunately for them, the emperor didn't seem to get pissed off, but the lieutenant swore that he could've seen the smile on his face twitch, albeit just a little.
"Ah, has that been your group's goal all along? I will admit, I did find it a little odd that all of this was organized to kill me, and just me, considering that I'm already on my deathbed. Now that you've said it, it all adds up."
"Wait, no, there's still something that doesn't add up. If you all really did organize this whole operation to kill the whole royal lineage, then why . . ."
HAAH
All of the intruders began to feel a raw emotion that all humans maintained within their bodies, fear. Whether or not they wanted it to, it, most definitely, intruded on their personal thoughts, and everything was thrown into disarray.
The emperor, although not actually releasing any aura at all, felt as if he was emitting a signal of death.
"Please do explain, why was your operation so utterly crap that you couldn't even kill me?"
After that, everything went downhill. Although, to the public eye, the Bloody Droplets had already failed, and died, as a group, in reality, the Bloody Droplets fully died on this fateful night.
Now, they had fully failed.