Your Majesty, I’m Not that Man - Chapter 7: The First Outing (5)

The inn Lavinia had chosen was a popular spot frequented by travelers just outside the capital. Surrounding the inn were carriage drivers, always waiting for passengers heading to long-distance destinations. Lavinia quickly picked one of the carriages and addressed the driver.

“Can you take me to Eshton?”

“As long as you pay, I can take you anywhere! But I’ll need 5 gold coins upfront…”

Eshton was a small town not far from the capital. The price should have been around 2 gold coins, but Lavinia decided not to argue. Instead, she eyed the driver suspiciously and asked,

“Can you leave immediately?”

“Of course! I can depart right now!”

The capital only checked the identities of those entering the city; they were much less strict with those leaving. Guards would only stop and scrutinize people if a warrant or order had been issued for someone’s capture.

Lavinia handed over the gold and climbed into the carriage. From her location, it would take about half a day to reach Eshton.

“I’m meeting someone in Eshton for dinner. If we arrive on time, I’ll give you 8 gold coins,” she said casually.

Hearing this, the driver’s face lit up with delight. Although Lavinia was wearing trousers, her attire and demeanor still hinted at her noble origins. The driver was confident that she had the money to follow through on her promise.

“Say no more! Let’s get moving!”

The driver snapped his whip, and the carriage began to move. The one Lavinia had chosen was a small two-person carriage. She sank deep into her seat, hiding herself as much as possible, and finally felt a wave of relief.

Though there were rumors about her circulating in the capital, few people knew her face. Due to the emperor’s secretive tendencies and the suppressed atmosphere among the capital’s nobility, Lavinia’s identity had remained relatively obscure. Additionally, her time had been consumed by managing affairs for the Wendell family and preparing as a successor, leaving her with little social exposure.

As such, even the guards at the eastern gate, where her carriage was headed, likely wouldn’t recognize her face. While Lavinia was beautiful, her features weren’t distinctively striking enough to stand out.

“Still… just in case.”

Lavinia retrieved the teleportation scroll from her bracelet and tucked it inside her coat. She planned to use it to escape if a dangerous situation arose. While she had hoped to save it for crossing the border, she knew she couldn’t predict what might happen.

BOOM!!!

A deafening explosion shook the air, startling Lavinia, the driver, and even the horses, which reared up in fright. Turning to look back, Lavinia saw black smoke billowing from the direction of the dress shop she had fled earlier.

“Oh dear, looks like something big just happened! We’d better hurry! Sometimes they shut the gates when they’re looking for someone,” the driver said, urging the horses forward.

Lavinia frowned at the ominous sight, finding it strange, but she forced herself to look away.

＊ ＊ ＊

The knights of the Wendell family scattered in all directions, searching desperately for Lavinia. They hadn’t been told why the duke needed to find her, but it was said that the very survival of the Wendell family depended on it. The duke had promised a grand reward to the knight who located her first, and so the knights were searching with an almost frantic determination.

Albert, who learned of this belatedly from another knight, immediately understood.

“Lavinia must have decided to leave the emperor!”

His earlier attempt to convince her to flee had been foolish. Unless someone was physically held hostage, as concubines like Lavinia were not, escaping discreetly during an outing, as she was likely doing now, was the best approach.

Realizing this, Albert began considering where Lavinia might have fled.

Although concubines were allowed to go out freely, they were always accompanied by attendants and guards. She would have had to find a way to evade them to escape successfully.

“Lavinia isn’t particularly strong, though she’s adept at using magical tools…”

Unable to match Albert’s swordsmanship, Lavinia had instead turned her focus to magic.

Unfortunately, while she excelled in administrative and business matters, she lacked the aptitude for the type of intelligence required to be a successful mage. Even with great effort, her potential was evaluated to be that of a low-tier mage or theorist. Accepting this, she had shifted her focus to magical tools instead.

Still, she hadn’t acquired any extraordinary magical artifacts.

This was partly because Hans disapproved of her interest in such things. With a few whispered words to Maxim, Hans had ensured that Lavinia would be unable to acquire weapons-grade magical tools. As a result, she was left with a collection of trinkets, the sort of magical tools noblewomen typically collected as a hobby.

Although she had received some impressive items from the late duke, they were not powerful enough to help her face knights in combat.

“So, how could she have fooled armed knights…?”

Had she drugged their drinks? Lured them into a trap? It wouldn’t have been easy to deceive imperial knights.

The most plausible explanation Albert could think of was that Lavinia had sought help from one of the noblewomen she was acquainted with. Heading toward the home of Countess Agatha’s daughter, one of Lavinia’s close friends, Albert suddenly heard a loud explosion and instinctively turned his head.

“What on earth…?”

In the distance, black smoke was rising from the eastern commercial district.

It couldn’t be… or could it? For some reason, Lavinia came to mind.

＊ ＊ ＊

When news about Lavinia reached Kassion, it was nearing the end of the imperial council meeting. The officials had likely deemed it improper to report such matters during the meeting, yet they feared reprimand for delaying the report too long. Thus, they had waited until the meeting was nearly over to deliver the news.

Kassion was well aware that it had been nearly a month since Lavinia had entered the palace. However, due to the recent events involving Albert, he hadn’t expected Lavinia to make a move to go out so soon.

Bringing Lavinia back was a simple matter. All he had to do was issue an order for her to be summoned. But…

“Would that push her even further away from me?”

No matter how much care and affection he poured into their relationship, Kassion was acutely aware of the invisible wall that stood between them. Lavinia merely accepted his affection as dictated by circumstance; she neither outright rejected him nor seemed to truly welcome his advances. This awareness gnawed at him.

Lavinia wasn’t entirely devoid of feelings for Kassion—when he expressed his love and treated her gently, she showed signs of wavering. Watching her falter in confusion at his affection filled Kassion with hope and joy.

It would be so easy to shatter that fragile dynamic. He could confine her, force her to obey his commands… But such oppression would inevitably create an irreparable rift between them.

Kassion knew this all too well, having suffered himself under the oppressive yoke of his predecessor, enslaved to the title of emperor.

“She’s only just begun to open up to me. I won’t destroy that with my own hands.”

Suppressing his growing anxiety, Kassion refrained from issuing any immediate orders. When Albert had asked Lavinia to escape with him, she hadn’t taken his hand. Kassion clung to the hope that she would return to him of her own volition.

“Sire!”

Kassion’s routine became monotonous once Lavinia’s departure was confirmed. As soon as the council meeting ended, he had retreated to his office and buried himself in work. He wanted to complete as much as possible so that he could spend uninterrupted time with Lavinia when she returned.

“What is it?”

A servant rushed in, his face filled with urgency and a hint of fear. Kassion could sense a foreboding in the air. Whatever the servant had to report was undoubtedly grim—something that made him fear the emperor’s reaction.

“Your Majesty… The imperial knights accompanying the lady issued a signal flare for reinforcements. When the guards arrived, they witnessed an explosion… and managed to rescue a single imperial maid.”

“And?”

If the knights had issued a signal flare, it meant they were escorting someone of the imperial household. While Kassion had no immediate family, he had several concubines. Lavinia wasn’t the only one who had left the palace today.

“The maid… belongs to Lady Wendell’s service, sire.”

The servant’s voice trembled as he delivered the news, carefully observing Kassion’s reaction. The guards had only been able to save the maid, which likely meant she was the sole survivor. There was no mention of Lavinia or the knights who had been escorting her.

“Did I tell you today? That I love you?”

The veins in Kassion’s icy blue eyes bulged as he clenched his fists, his mounting rage palpable. No one dared meet his gaze; the sheer force of his presence was terrifying.

His throat felt raw, as if something had been torn apart. Unaware of how menacing his voice had become, he asked the servant:

“Have the bodies been identified?”

He couldn’t bring himself to ask directly if Lavinia’s body had been found. Saying it aloud would make it too real, and that terrified him.

“Not yet, sire… The wreckage is still being cleared. A powerful shockwave created by magic swept through the building. Witnesses say that masked individuals fled the scene just before the explosion, and the guards are in pursuit of them.”

The servant’s hurried explanation sounded more like a string of excuses. Kassion felt a surge of fury toward the knights who had failed to protect Lavinia and toward those responsible for the city’s security.

“Why her? If it was an assassination attempt, they should have targeted me!”

“According to witnesses, it appeared to be a robbery targeting stores frequented by nobles. Since boutiques often deal in gemstones, it seems they became a target…”

Despite dealing with valuable jewels, boutiques often had less security than jewelry stores. But something about this attack was off. The assailants had confronted eight imperial knights and even used a magical explosive. No ordinary robbers would be capable of such feats.

There were no such things as thieves who happened to include a mage among their ranks. The more plausible explanation was that the attack was staged to look like a robbery.

“Where is it? I’ll go myself.”

Resolving to see the scene with his own eyes, Kassion gathered his deputy and imperial guards before leaving the office.

＊ ＊ ＊

Lavinia’s maid could do nothing but weep. She had been fortunate enough to be sent on an errand at the time of the explosion, avoiding the disaster, but now that her mistress was nowhere to be found, she knew her fate was as good as sealed.

“So that’s why she suddenly summoned me…”

She had assumed that being assigned to serve the daughter of the Wendell family—a noble with an elevated status—meant Lavinia would be arrogant and conceited. Despite her attempts to ingratiate herself with kind words, Lavinia had always looked at her with disdain, as if seeing through her intentions. In hindsight, it seemed her mistress’s unfortunate nature had led to this disaster.

“That wretched woman! Why did she have to single me out of all people…”

If only someone else had been chosen to accompany her, this wouldn’t have happened. The maid bitterly thought herself unlucky. She had once imagined that serving a high-ranking noble in the capital would grant her a comfortable and influential life—not one like this.

The current situation was no different. The dead were simply dead, but despite being deeply shaken by her mistress’s apparent death, the maid couldn’t leave the scene. Even though she felt she was the biggest victim of this tragedy, no one seemed to care.

Pieces of mangled corpses were being carried out one after another from the wrecked boutique. The maid, unable to bear the sight, turned her head away.

The guards, pitying her, occasionally showed her salvaged items for identification. One guard presented a piece of arm protection taken from a corpse.

“…Is this from one of the knights?”

“Y-yes, it is,” the maid replied, glancing at the item briefly before nodding.

She had no close relationships with the knights who had accompanied her mistress on this outing. Though she recognized their faces, their notorious reputations had kept her distant. Getting involved with them would only lead to trouble.

In fact, some of those knights had been accused of serious crimes in the past, which were quietly resolved with bribes to avoid legal repercussions.

“Now that I think about it, wasn’t it strange? The lady specifically chose the worst of the guards for this outing.”

Even as she thought back on the fragmented corpses, the maid felt no pity. These were men who had relied on their family connections to misbehave and ended up being demoted to guard the emperor’s harem.

“Could she have known something? Did she deliberately choose us to humiliate us?”

The maid considered herself innocent, but deep down, she knew she had committed more than her share of malicious deeds. She had gone as far as driving someone to suicide with her threats and scheming.

＊ ＊ ＊

Though the massive shockwave had swept through the shop, William was still alive. The only reason he had survived was because he had hidden in a corner of the shop the moment the thugs let him go. It wasn’t an act of heroism but a desperate attempt to avoid getting caught in the fight, hiding behind a pile of clothes.

The boutique was destroyed, with most of the dresses torn or burned, but William managed to survive. His arms and legs were fractured, and a rib or two was broken, but he was alive.

“Ugh…”

What in the world had happened? All he had done was buy slightly outdated dresses and occasionally swap them out to collect payments from the noble club that owned the place. It had been a cushy job, free from serious danger, and now this!

William, pulled from the wreckage, was carried away on a stretcher. The guards bombarded him with questions, but he didn’t have much to offer in terms of answers.

All he knew was that the robbers had shouted something nonsensical about wanting jewels before killing the imperial knights. When one knight had thrown a signal flare, William had used the distraction to crawl to the corner of the shop and hide. That was the extent of what he had witnessed.

William said no more, especially when it came to Lavinia’s disappearance. To mention anything further would mean revealing the existence of the underground tunnel linking the boutique to the club.

With the recent explosion, the tunnel had likely collapsed. As long as William and the club’s associates kept their mouths shut, no one would ever know about it.

“I’m taking this secret to the grave!”

When the guards pressed him further about Lavinia, William feigned pain and stayed silent, determined to keep the truth buried.