As morning came, the city was found shocked yet again.
The duke had been assassinated just a couple of days ago, which led to the royal soldiers coming into the city and occupying the castle in order to investigate what had happened.
And now another tragedy struck.
Well, calling those two things 'tragedies' was a bit of an overestimation as nobody amongst the citizen really like the duke, nor most of the nobles.
But what had happened during the late night hours was something that nobody had ever expected to happen in the city.
The noble house of Johanson, one of the medium-sized noble houses of the dukedom had been destroyed.
Hell, destroyed would be an underestimation of what had happened, annihilated would be more fitting.
The head of the house, alongside his entire family, guards, private troops, and servants were all dead.
Nobody knew what happened or how it happened, some servants who had been outside of the mansion had returned in the morning and found everybody dead.
Their throats were slit, hearts pierced, and some even had their entire bodies crushed to pieces.
The scene was horrifying and the royal guards quickly ran to the scene in order to block everybody from coming in and perhaps even tampering with any evidence the perpetrator had left.
There, however, was no evidence.
Not even a strand of hair of the perpetrator had been left at the scene.
The commander personally came, and after seeing the state the bodies were in, was shocked.
The most powerful being in the noble house was a low-grade Silver Knight who had barely been able to reach the realm and had been stuck at it for years with no way of improving.
Still, the old soldier was well respected by many since there had only been 3 Golden Knights present in the dukedom during the old duke's reign.
The three had all left after Orsted took over after his father's death, and upon seeing just how the young duke was behaving, and trying to correct him on numerous occasions without any success, they left.
Silver Knights were considered incredibly powerful in the dukedom, and seeing one dead was not something that usually happened.
"The heart has been crushed, sir." The soldier that inspected the bodies before said as he stood next to the commander.
The commander simply nodded before crouching and inspecting the body by himself.
"It wasn't done by a weapon, see how the flesh has some tears around the hole of the chest?" The commander asked the soldier who furrowed his brows and crouched down to look at what the commander was pointing at.
"Yes, I do see tears, but, it could have been a weapon that-"
"No, no weapon, this was done by using bare hands, I know it since I could have done the same thing, albeit with more error." The commander said as the soldier gulped.
"Sir, you mean to say-"
"The killer is a Golden Knight, and one that was probably more powerful than I am." The commander nodded before standing up.
"But sir, why would a Golden Knight come here, why would a person with such power do something as horrible as this?" The soldier said as he pointed at a small hill of bodies in front of them.
The Silver Knight was placed on the ground in front of the small hill, while the head of the house, Victor Johanson was placed on the top of the hill.
His eyes were wide open in shock as his throat was open, but it wasn't slit open, no, it was more likely that the Golden Knight had grabbed his throat before using his bare hands to tear it open.
"I don't know, I need to contact the higher-ups, something is going on here, first it was the disappearance of the archmage, then the Khilman arriving with bad news, the appearance of a person that was above a Titled Knight, and now this, this is turning out to be way above our capabilities." The commander said with his face scrunched up in worry.
He knew that if the killer wanted to, he could probably kill him and the whole company by himself.
He wasn't that worried about that happening as there would be no purpose for the perpetrator doing such a thing, except for wishing for death as touching the royal soldiers meant that an archmage or a Title Knight would arrive and use everything they had to capture the individual.
But the problem was the fact that the 3rd prince was here.
The prince came without any guards and was completely alone.
The commander had that thought as nobody except for Lyle and the nobles that had signed a blood contract knew of Reginald's presence in the city.
The old butler knew that the prince didn't want anybody to suspect anything, so he wouldn't show himself in the city.
Lyle had woken up some time ago and upon learning the news of what had happened, was slightly terrified.
'He followed me last night, shit!' Lyle thought before calming himself down.
'No, wait, had he been following me the whole night, it would have been me that died, not the noble.'
'He recognized the face and went to the mansion, killing everybody present.'
'No, that wouldn't be quite correct, he had no way of knowing whether the noble would return back home, so how did he-' Lyle's eyes suddenly opened wide in shock as he realized what had happened.
'The clothes, damn, he put something on the clothes I was wearing!'
"Damn it, I was too lucky last night, way too lucky.' Lyle thought as he gulped in fear.
The old butler was strong, even back at his peak, Lyle would have never been able to defeat such an opponent.
'I need to be more careful in the future, I also need to leave this city as soon as I reach the realm of Bronze Knight, hell, I might not even wait that long.' Lyle said before looking out of the window.
It was daytime.
He had come back much earlier than expected last night and even when he returned back to the inn, it was still night.
He woke up during the afternoon, which meant that he had quite some time to kill before going to the forest.
'On the other hand, why even wait, I don't need to sneak out of the city anymore.' Lyle suddenly told himself before starting to put on his disguise.
He didn't know what the prince was planning on doing in the city, and neither did he care.
What he did care about was what would happen to him and his alias.
For now, he doubted the prince would try to do anything to him.
He had returned last night when the prince was present at the gate. Even though the transformation had ended, there were still residual traces of his aura on his body.
It didn't matter if the prince thought it was the aura of whatever powerful being had appeared or his own, it would be enough to even hold back the old butler.
That was exactly what had happened.
Upon killing everybody in the mansion last night, Reginald returned and gave Sied his report about what he found.
Which was nothing.
No clues.
No suspicious individuals.
Nothing.
Sied decided that they would need to be a bit more careful in the future. He also told Reginald about what had happened at the gate.
The old butler was shocked to find out that the Khilman had actually come across such a powerful person in the forest outside the city.
The prince had given him the order to not, under any circumstances, go against the Khilman.
"I don't know why, but I have a feeling that even you would die if you fought against him, the aura I felt on him, as brief as it was, made me shake a bit in fear, and this man was in the presence of such a powerful being, and nothing happened to him, it seemed like he wasn't in the least bothered by the aura."
Without even knowing it, Lyle had given his second identity in the city a perfect cover.
He quickly scanned the outside of his window before going out.
The staff of the inn had already grown accustomed to him rarely leaving his room and never came inside it.
He wasn't the only one that did so, so they didn't suspect a thing.
As Lyle approached the gate under the disguise of being a Khilman, the soldiers all slightly bowed to him before he nodded at them and went out.
They had all known that he was powerful, but after what had happened last night, they were certain that the person in front of them was at the very least a peak Golden Knight, if not even a Titled Knight.
Lyle simply went out before heading to the forest.
Last night was bad when it came to improving his strength, so he was going to spend more time inside and hunt more powerful monsters this time.