More than a month later, the Blood Moon Coup in the Lorenzo Kingdom had ended. The entire country was placed under Military Administration, with a curfew beginning at six each evening.
After a month of bloodshed, everyone who had survived in the kingdom, noble and commoner alike, felt nothing but fear for Cyrabelle, the Bloody Queen.
Unlike the kindly Prady XIV, Cyrabelle truly dared to kill. Dukes and Marquises who had once looked down on everyone lost their heads. Their wealth went to the royal family, their land to the people. She had abandoned even the pretense of restraint.
In neighboring countries, especially among the nobility, Cyrabelle's reputation was ruined.
Few kings had ever dared to slaughter nobles on a large scale. Forget killing hundreds of thousands in one stroke—even executing a single Count usually meant endless wrangling and, more often than not, a royal concession. However heinous a noble's crimes, exile or a fine was usually the worst punishment.
The moment Cyrabelle took power, the kingdom's desperate finances and its nobles' utter lack of scruples drove her to the brink. Land, cash, treasures, estates—she wanted it all!
In truth, what Cyrabelle had done caused enormous harm to the Lorenzo Kingdom.
As the nobles had said, they were the foundation of a kingdom. They were well educated and had received extraordinary training since childhood, advantages ordinary commoners could not match. Slaughtering hundreds of thousands of nobles at once gutted the Lorenzo Kingdom's strength. Where it might once have ranked among second-tier nations, it now sat near the bottom of the third tier.
But Cyrabelle did not care. As Green had told her, anyone she could not put to use was an enemy she could eliminate.
The Lorenzo Kingdom of old had belonged to the nobles, not the King.
Grand Duke