Several nobles besides Count Merita had also been plotting to assassinate Grandal.
There were those who had been living it up, betting on bribes to pave their way, those who kept numerous female slaves, and those buried in gambling debts—yet every one of them showed up saying the same thing: "Stop paying bribes, and we'll kill you."
Seriously, just how much had Grandal been paying out to the nobility?
The man was too good a target.
All that money had been raised by jacking up prices on goods—nothing more than leeching the lifeblood of commoners.
Truly, he should have been made to work for free for the rest of his life.
◇◇◇
"You wretch—has Grandal, who betrayed me, still not been dealt with?!"
Leticia, one of the Electresses, was seething over Grandal's sudden treachery.
He had been a frequent visitor to her court, currying favor tirelessly.
Grandal had been uncommonly skilled at ingratiation with the nobles, crushing rival merchants, and squeezing money from commoners—and that made him indispensable for funding her faction.
Yet Grandal, for reasons no one could fathom, had calmly returned the business he seized from Gambard, stopped skimming profits, sold off his mansion, moved into a small house, and was living modestly.
He was donating nearly everything he earned to orphanages and sponsoring young people who had ideas but no money.
"My deepest apologies, Lady Leticia. We have yet to find a suitable replacement merchant…"
Listening to this incompetent underling's report only made her more furious.
Gambard was the only one with anything approaching Grandal's business acumen, but he was inflexible—no substitute for Grandal at all.
Grandal had betrayed her and had to be executed as a public example, yet report after report kept coming back with the same inexplicable outcome: he kept coming back to life.
"His lifestyle is modest now and he no longer employs guards—it should be easy to kill him. What on earth is going on?"
"Yes, well… the thing is… the nobles under your command who attempted to eliminate the traitor have all been killed by an unknown party. The other nobles have lost their nerve and abandoned the assassination attempts altogether."
Nothing but spineless cowards and sniveling weaklings, every last one.
But that wasn't all. There were things known only to Grandal and a select few others.
The secret behind her youth and beauty.
It was the skill[Iron Maiden].
When her skin had begun losing its luster and firmness with age and she had started to despair, she had luckily come across a "Book of Skills."
The skill she had obtained through that thin thread of hope, by sheer fortune, was[Iron Maiden].
"His youth and beauty have been sustained by the blood of commoners that Grandal illicitly procured…"
The effect of[Iron Maiden]was to steal the target's youth and beauty—but activating it required the target to be a virgin.
At first, the skill only needed to drain enough blood to render the person unconscious. But recently, it had become impossible to maintain her condition without draining enough blood to kill two or three people at once.
And now that supply had been cut off.
At this rate, she would be unable to preserve either her youth or her beauty.
A truly dire predicament.
Leticia, the Empress dressed in a gown as red as fresh blood, let out a sigh.