Faking It

"You, shut up!" The assassin swirled his body and kicked Bowen's head, instantly rendering him unconscious.

"Eh? Why did you beat him?" 

Davis revealed a frightened expression on his face, but he could tell that someone was now targeting him.

"Haha, Prince Davis, no need to worry. I've been tasked by your imperial father to rescue you and this guard just won't let me take you away from here. My name is Tyke." The assassin removed his hood.

He possessed a handsome face that made him very easy to approach.

"Is it true? But why does my imperial father need to rescue me? Davis questioned.

"You don't know your highness? The war between our Loret Empire and two other Empires, the Raven Empire and Tritor Empire is ongoing for more than a year!"

"Really? Will my imperial father be able to win?" Davis asked worriedly. 

Inwardly, he became astonished as he finally knew what had and still has been plaguing his parents for so long. He had tried to find out before, but no one surprisingly let out a word of it.

Unlike modern earth, the information could be easily suppressed as long as people looked the other way, and the imperial castle was an enclosed space where information could be easily contained or let out depending upon the brass.

"There is no way our Emperor will be able to win against two Empires, that's why we are going to escape!" Tyke explained.

"Uh? Okay, so father did send you to rescue me, yay!" Davis cheered. His expression was as he had entirely believed him.

"Yes, your highness, let's go!" Tyke equally encouraged but sneered inwardly, and he felt somewhat pleasurable to trap a Prince with cheap tricks.

"Okay!" Davis smiled as he held Tyke's hand over his own accord.

Tyke almost laughed, but he kept his cool and smiled refreshingly at the prince. They looked as if they were father and son, happily walking while holding each other's hand.

Tyke felt increasingly wanting to tease the prince. He didn't think tricking a child of higher status can be this addicting and easy. His lips were slightly twitching, wanting to remove his own facade so that he could see the stupid expression on the prince's face. His eyes lit up as he thought up a plan.

Just when they were at the entrance, Tyke suddenly uttered. "Ah! Prince! I just remembered that I was sent by the invading empires and not your imperial father!"

"Eh? You're lying!" Davis made a surprised sound and an expression that said that he didn't believe him at all.

Tyke slowly turned around, his face filled with scars while not looking handsome anymore. He wanted to see the terror on the prince's face so that he can finally proceed to knock him out and abduct him.

Davis suddenly let out a mocking expression, his lips curving into a grin.

"Eh?" Tyke became astonished as he realized that the prince didn't seem to be terrorized.

"Why don't we end this farce? Mister Casper..." Davis calmly spoke, his adorable eyes becoming abnormally sharp.

Tyke's pupils dilated as he immediately felt that something was wrong and jumped back. His instincts as an assassin were screaming for him to retreat.

However, his eyes that were wide open turned soulless, and before long, he then started spilling out any information about the current situation he knew before he clenched his heart and died.

Davis removed Assassin Casper's spatial ring and bound it as his own. He then erased the soul marks of his father and mother using the power of the Death Book.

During the experiments, he noticed that the Death Book inside his soul emits a dark and perhaps an evil like energy which is especially useful to corrode and exterminate souls.

With this kind of energy at his disposal, he found it extremely easy to get rid of his parents' soul marks that hovered in his soul sea like a floating rock in the ocean.

He then wore the Low-Level Sky Grade Black Robe, which was given to him by Logan. It conceals a person's cultivation undulations deeply. He then proceeded to store Casper's corpse in the spatial ring as he made his way to the Northern Gate.

A few minutes later, after he left, Hendrickson reached the Prison. He was incredibly angry to see all the guards before the entrance was brutally murdered.

He went inside furiously, only to see the Head Guard, Bowen unconscious, and the prince missing!

He then woke Bowen up and managed to learn that Davis had been abducted. He then took out his crystal and reported it to Logan.

After arriving at the North Gate, Davis saw how his father despaired as well as how his mother got humiliated by them. With a hateful expression on his face, he imagined that he would immediately give the two Emperors cruel deaths but then realized that their soul was more powerful than his killing prowess with the Death Book by a few unknown levels and stages.

Davis had reached Low-Level Infant Soul Stage while he was in Prison.

He had found that the Death Book can absorb the souls that it kills, and refines it to increase his Soul Forging Cultivation. He was already on the verge of breaking through earlier from the Peak-Level, so this ability had helped him a lot in breaking to the Infant Soul Stage.

However, it cost the lives of a few prisoners as some of their Soul Forging Cultivation were very weak.

The people above the battlefield then talked about their armies fighting each other as Davis silently waited for his opportunity to massacre them.

He used his Death God Sense, the ability he gained after reaching the Infant Soul Stage during his stay in the Prison, to write the names of all the soldiers and commanders of the opposing army.

He used the Death Book in tune with his soul sense to use the Death God Sense. Using it, he could see the names and lifespans of all the people who were within the range of his soul sense.

The Death God Sense was used along with his Death God Eyes. Hence, his mind worked fast enough to cast the names on the Death Book residing in his soul. His soul force did all the work at extreme speed, writing all two million names within a minute on the Death Book.

After massacring them while watching it with cold eyes, Davis didn't opt to absorb their deceased souls afraid that he felt that he would get caught.

He felt that the gathering of millions of souls might attract attention, and he needed to be closer to a corpse to absorb it as far as he knew. Hence, the two million-plus souls had all gone to waste.

Perhaps if he absorbed it, there wouldn't be much of a change since the soldiers seemed to have no Soul Forging Cultivation. Even the prisoners were better as they had some level of Soul Forging Cultivation. 

Hence, even if he absorbed all these two million-plus souls, he felt that he wouldn't have much of an impact since he learned that quality matters when absorbing and refining the souls.

He perceived that even if he discarded all his inhibitions and threw away his caution to the wind and absorbed all these souls, he could tell that he would perhaps reach the Peak-Level of Infant Soul Stage and not the next stage, the Young Soul Stage.

Davis then promptly left the Northern Gate slowly when no one dared to speak or probe around with their senses in fear of the so-called 'senior'.

After that, he swiftly returned to the Prison and saw that there was no one present currently except the prisoners.

He swiftly had an idea.

He went into an isolated cell that hosted a living prisoner and entered it.

Davis then used the Death Book to write the prisoner's name to make him his puppet.

He then retrieved Casper's corpse, a dagger and a sword from the spatial ring, unbound it from himself and placed it on the corpse. He then gave the sword and the dagger to the prisoner.

The prisoner stabbed the sword at the heart of Casper's corpse. The sword plunged right into the chest, piercing into Casper's heart.

Davis then took a deep breath. He clenched his fists made his soul blindly fluctuate two thousand meters to his surroundings and made himself faint beside the corpse. This caused a slight amount of damage to his soul but was quite negligible in the long run as he could heal it.

The prisoner who saw that bit his own fingers and drew on the wall of the cell with his blood. He then stabbed himself in the heart using the assassin's dagger.

Hendrickson, who was wildly escaping with Clara and Bowen in the southern direction, immediately noticed the soul fluctuation.

"It's coming from the direction of the prison!" Both exclaimed simultaneously.

Hendrickson looked at Clara and gritted his teeth. He then gave Bowen a transmission crystal and ordered.

"Bowen, immediately check what's happening in the Prison!"

Bowen accepted and quickly went to check inside the Prison, only to find Davis fainted beside the assassin's corpse and a prisoner's corpse.

Bowen instantly went aghast but then saw some words written on the wall that looked like a dying message.

"I hope that with this, the Loret Empire will forgive my sins."

Bowen belatedly understood and checked that the prince was still alive and only fainted. He promptly reported it to Hendrickson, who then relayed it to Logan.

======

"Emperor! We've found the prince fainted in the Imperial Prison along with two corpses! One seems to be a prisoner while the other seems to be an assassin."

"What!?" Hearing that, Logan was so ecstatic that he couldn't believe his ears. After all, he thought that Davis was abducted.

"Yes! What I've said is true! I am at the Southern Gate of the Imperial Capital with Clara. Bowen made his way to secure Davis and escape!"

"No need! We won the war! Return to the Imperial Castle as quickly as possible with Bowen and Davis!" Logan commanded excitedly.

"What!? Did we truly triumph this war?" 

Hendrickson couldn't believe his ears. He remembered that the situation was in despair... How could it possibly change?

But there was no way the Emperor would lie to him, especially when the safety of Clara Loret, the First Princess, depended on him.

"Yes!!" 

Hendrickson immediately changed his course and headed back to the Imperial Castle while informing Bowen to return to the Imperial Castle with Davis hurriedly.

He trusted the Emperor's words, so he tried to return as soon as possible.

Logan hastily returned to Claire, who was still trying to get away from their encirclement while launching flaming attacks at them. However, due to pregnancy, her attacks were so weak that it was unable to harm the Family Heads of the Noble Families and the others.

They just passively defended, trying to quell the Empress's anger with words.

When Logan saw her, he immediately sent a soul transmission to her.

"Claire! Davis is safe!"

Claire, who stopped attacking upon sensing Logan's return, became ecstatic but also despaired that she lost Davis. Her heart sank, but when she heard Logan's words, she had an angry yet confused expression on her face that remained lit with hope.

"What!? You're lying! How!!?" 

She cried and believed that Logan was lying, just to make her calm down.

"Really! Hendrickson and Bowen managed to find Davis fainted inside the Imperial Prison, let's go back to the Imperial Castle and meet them." Logan excitedly explained.

Claire became stunned, 'A misunderstanding?'

She then became so ecstatic that she immediately left in the direction of the Imperial Castle before Logan could even catch up with her.

Claire reached the Imperial Castle, and just when she entered, she immediately saw the unconscious Davis, who was being carried by Bowen.

"Davis!"

Claire immediately took Davis from Bowen and wrapped Davis in her arms as she hugged him tightly, shedding tears of joy.

Logan also arrived and finally let out a contentful smile when he saw the spectacle. He then heavily heaved a sigh of relief as he thought of successfully avoiding the worst possible outcome after that mysterious 'senior' had saved them.