"Your Lordship, an adventurer wishes to speak with you," the tribune said respectfully from outside the villa's study.
Pan Long could hear more than the natural deference a subordinate showed a superior. There was heartfelt respect in his voice—the kind a person felt only toward someone he truly admired.
"An adventurer?" A surprised voice came from the study. "This is the first adventurer I've met who wanted to talk to me instead of seeking out wine or girls."
The study door opened, and a young man in casual nobleman's clothes stepped out.
He looked about twenty-three or twenty-four, handsome and straight-backed. With his black hair, high nose, deep-set eyes, and fair skin, he had a typically Roman appearance. Weariness showed in his face, suggesting he worked hard.
Beside him stood an ugly old man with sly, sinister eyes. Dressed in a tailcoat and every inch the polite gentleman, he looked like a butler. Yet the evil air about him made it hard not to wonder whether he was a bandit disguised as one.
Pan Long remembered both of them.
The young man was named Hamlet, like the famous prince who agonized over "To be or not to be." But this Hamlet was no hesitant soul. He was resolute, decisive, and swift to act, with a ruthless streak when the moment called for it.
In the game, this count-to-be had been lured here by his treacherous ancestor, who intended to seize his body through Body Snatching. With firm resolve and swift, effective action, Hamlet destroyed the evil arrangements his scum of an ancestor had left behind, one by one. In the end, the adventurers—the players—destroyed the ancestor's demonized body, and he went mad and died in despair. As sunlight broke through the clouds, Hamlet smiled and announced to everyone, "It's dawn."