Ray didn't find out any of this during his second life.
Eventually 'Dray Hadwyn' had died and his child Lloyd Hadwyn became the duke.
Of course it wasn't Lloyd once again.
Only in his third life did Ray discover this, and that too by chance… At that time he had obtained a necromancy skill from someone he had killed, and could raise souls lingering in the world to occupy dead bodies, forming a semi-undead army.
While raising souls all over he had met a few souls who were so filled with resentment, Ray pried into their memories.
One of them was Ermes Hadwyn's wife.
Immediately after he learned this, he went on to destroy the complete East duchy. Only then did he come to know of a horrifying plan Ermes had been working on.
Ermes had accumulated a lot of points and upgraded his skill from the shop.
This made him able to swap minds and bodies with people who were completely under his hypnosis. But the thing was… awakened people couldn't be hypnotized completely by his SS rank skill, and he didn't have the points necessary to make it SSS ranked.
As such he decided to completely hypnotize people who were not yet awakened.
After thinking for a few years, he had made a plan and implemented a new law in the East and it came out as something like this: 'Every newborn baby could visit the duke to receive his blessing and a small monetary settlement to aid their growth.'
And he didn't limit this to only nobles, but let any and everyone who birthed a new baby take part.
As such, most nobles brought their newborns to the Duke trying to build up favor, and every commoner started flocking the duke's mansion for the money.
Ermes had made a good plan. With one law he became the kindest Duke, who didn't discriminate between nobles and commoners, willing to help everyone in their needs and at the same time hypnotized every baby brought to him.
He would then marry someone, have children, choose his strongest child, take his body and slowly one by one the rest of his family would die in 'accidents'.
His plan was to keep doing this generation after generation, effectively surviving forever.
When Ray had killed him, and his entire bloodline in his third life, he could feel Ermes' soul suddenly teleport into a different body. When he killed that body, again the same thing happened.
Finally Ray found out that almost everyone in the East was somehow hypnotized by Ermes since their birth even without their knowledge, and he could keep changing bodies.
This was the reason Ray had completely obliterated the East, further plummeting his name to the rest of the world.
The only limitation this skill had was that he couldn't swap bodies with the other gender, but that didn't stop him from hypnotizing them. He didn't want to compromise his safety and took every chance to control as many he could.
Ray would have tried to assassinate him, but he couldn't.
Ermes possessed a weird 'Intuition' skill that started tingling the moment something bad was about to happen. Apparently this skill allowed him to take precautions and escape in the nick of time.
When Ermes felt a slight tingle, he would know a danger was approaching soon and take precautions. If he felt extremely tingly all of a sudden it meant an immediate threat to him and he would swap bodies without a moment's hesitation.
As weird as the skill sounded, this allowed him to escape every killing blow from Ray and swap bodies before it killed him.
He was a cockroach that just didn't want to die.
'But now… I'll use that very same intuition skill against you…'
Ermes' death last time didn't satisfy him and as such he swore to make it extremely pleasuring this time. After all, his life motto was to obtain every pleasure in life.
Of course that included sweet torture of an evil criminal.
Laughing silently, Ray started his plan and immediately connected his senses to Claire, his pawn in this game.
*******************************
The system that Claire had was perfect for deceiving people. Well that was pretty obvious from its name anyway.
Unlike normal systems that could change one's appearance or aura, this specific Unique system was specifically built for deception and that too from the strongest of people.
Its perfect disguise could literally show people whatever information the user wanted about herself.
The moment this 'Number 14' had killed her 'previous master' and become her 'new master' she only had to fake the slave mark on her forehead, and it worked out.
Right now, Claire had received a new order from Ray, her actual master.
She couldn't control her body against her master's will and couldn't go against his instructions.
Not that she wanted to. After an incident that shattered her life and she became a slave, she decided that she didn't deserve freedom. After all it was her own free actions that had brought the disaster in her life.
Right now, Claire looked at the corner of the room where a black mask, a black cloak that covered the whole body, a sword and a pair of daggers lay.
The man named 'Number 14' had handed it to her and asked her to wear it the next morning after she woke up.
Without much thinking she walked forward and picked up a single dagger.
Then she lay down on the bed with the dagger in her hand and held her breath.
Suddenly, she grabbed the dagger and slashed her throat lightly twice, in two different locations, drawing a streak of blood which immediately started flowing sideways and formed a thin streak of blood which slid around her throat to her neck, as she was lying down.
The cut was shallow and not life threatening at all.
Using her mana to clean the dagger completely, she left in its original position, and with the blood still streaking her throat walked out the door.
Moving along the corridor, she found a stairway but didn't get up. Number 14 had prevented her from visiting upstairs either way.
She could hear subtle moans of women from above the stairs, and one didn't have to think much to tell what has happening upstairs.
Without caring any of it, she kneeled at the base of the stairs, and with a loud, yet timid voice called out, "Master!"
Immediately, the moaning stopped, and an annoyed male voice shouted from above, "What do you want? I specifically asked you not to disturb me."
"Master also asked me to inform if anything happened."
There was silence for a few seconds, before a soft rustling was heard, after which the man came down wearing the cloak and mask.
"So? What happened? This better be impor-"
He stopped immediately watching the streak of blood flowing down her throat.
"Master… someone tried to assassinate me."