The wheels rolled over the cobblestones with a dull, rhythmic rumble, blending with the clip-clop of horseshoes against the ground in an intriguing harmony.
Ordinarily, hearing those sounds would have set Flower's mind wandering, wondering what sort of composition could perfectly capture such lovely music.
But now that his country had fallen and his family had been driven from their home, the former musician-now the Bagnian Crown Prince and leader of the restoration army-had no leisure to lose himself in music.
Flower was deeply troubled.
The Emperor of Bohemia loved the music Flower composed and performed himself, but that fondness did not translate into any greater aid for the restoration army.
The emperor was cold, emotional, and utterly heartless.
That description was contradictory, but it was exactly how Flower felt about the Emperor of Bohemia.
This was Flower's fifth day in Bohemia's capital. He had spent the first three resting, then begun attending the balls held by the emperor in the Bohemian Palace on the fourth and fifth days.
Honestly, Flower could not quite understand what attending these balls was supposed to accomplish. Over those two evenings, aside from dancing, playing the violin, and meeting young nobles and ladies, he had done almost nothing of any real importance.
The emperor only met with him before each ball began, exchanged a little small talk, then swept off, leaving Flower at the ball.
Funding for the restoration army?
Well, the steward of the Bohemian Palace who dealt with Flower had mentioned it. He said equipment for an infantry regiment was being gathered and would soon be loaded onto wagons, transported to the border, and delivered to the restoration army.
Honestly, rather than equipment, Flower would have preferred the Emperor of Bohemia to assemble an expeditionary army, march into Bagnia, and hang every last traitor who had rebelled and overthrown the royal family.
But every time Flower raised the matter with the royal steward, the man said it required discussion in the Noble Assembly before any decision could be made. Mobilizing an army was a very serious undertaking.
Flower did not understand, though he certainly knew that mobilizing an army was no simple matter. His own restoration army of just ten thousand men was a bottomless money pit, constantly devouring the Bagnian royal family's wealth.
It was precisely because they were nearly unable to keep going that Flower had come to the Bohemian Empire's capital to seek aid.
As for Flower's father, the King of Bagnia, he had taken his remaining wives and children to the Minicia Kingdom to visit his wife's family.
Restoring the kingdom?
Flower placed no hopes in his father. He knew perfectly well that the man was a useless glutton. Eating, drinking, enjoying himself, and fathering children? Certainly no problem. Getting him to do anything meaningful... sorry, that was beyond his abilities.
Had the King of Bagnia been competent, the royal family would never have been overthrown by the revolutionaries, leaving the whole family to slink away and flee the country in disgrace.
Restoring the kingdom?
No, the King of Bagnia had no such desire. He had even left the task of assembling the restoration army to his eldest son, a musician.
It looked as though he had handed over authority, but he had done no such thing. He had not relinquished Bagnia's crown; it still sat on his own head.
Flower felt so helpless that he had come to the Bohemian Empire to seek aid in a fit of pique.
The royal advisers accompanying Flower all said it was not a rational choice, but Flower had done it anyway. It was hard to say that wounded pride had played no part.
What should I do tomorrow? Keep attending balls, or visit Bohemia's Noble Assembly, meet the noble delegates, and ask for their help?
As Flower pondered that difficult choice, he heard a strange knocking sound from outside his carriage-a dull thump.
Then came more, one after another: thump, thump...
Only at the third sound did Flower realize something was wrong. Something flew past him, and when he turned his head, he was stunned to see a small hole in the carriage wall through which he could see outside.
At last, Flower understood what was happening. Without a second thought, he threw himself down and lay flat on the softly carpeted carriage floor.
At the same time, the guards outside finally began shouting.
"Assassins! Assassins! Someone's shooting at us!"
"Quick, protect the First Prince!"
"Whoa, it really is the Bagnian Crown Prince! He's our assassination target!"
Lying on the roof of a villa, Lin Ruoyu watched the carriage guards descend into chaos, listening in surprise to the panicked shouts carried over by the night breeze.
"Holy shit, we actually caught the guy we were after!"
The other two players lying nearby with their hands on their muskets cried out in surprise.
From the outset, the players had known the assassination had little hope of success.
Players who had completed their compulsory education were no idiots.
An assassination required a thorough plan: scouting the location in advance, establishing the target's schedule and route, and ensuring the ambush was set in the right place.
Escape routes for both success and failure also needed to be planned beforehand. If escape proved impossible, how should the assassin kill himself? All such matters required advance preparation.
But knowing was one thing. Lin Ruoyu and the others had done none of it.
There was no other reason. They simply did not feel like it.
It was like playing Hitman. Some players became death incarnate, devising ingenious death traps that killed their targets in all manner of accidents, leaving no one but the assassin aware of the true cause of death.
Others did not want to think. They only wanted to show off their killing skills, turning Agent 47 into a berserker who charged around with a pistol, slaughtering anyone who stood in his way until blood ran in rivers and bodies littered the ground!
Lin Ruoyu and his companions currently belonged to a subset of that second group.
Without intelligence support, they knew finding their target inside Noble City would be difficult, but they had gone ahead anyway, simply because they had not thought that far.
Mission or no mission, they would get into Noble City first and worry about the rest later.
An unexpected encounter along the way had killed half the players, but left them with fine firearms and a map of Noble City marked with a route and timetable.
Lin Ruoyu and the others did not actually know what that information meant, but since they had the map, they might as well go take a look.
The three had a simple line of reasoning: the game designers probably would not introduce pointless items. Since they had made them "coincidentally" run straight into those three assassin NPCs, the information ought to have some connection to their target.
Players' thought processes were rather peculiar, but their core reasoning was simple... they were already here, so turning back now would be a shame. At worst, they would die and use up a resurrection slot.
With that thought in mind, the three set off.
The tunnel beneath the house was not particularly long. Lin Ruoyu and the other two reached its end after a little over ten minutes.
Beyond the tunnel's iron door lay a secret room piled with food and clean water. Beyond that was a luxurious brick-and-stone house with a pointed roof, full of signs of everyday life but completely deserted.
Lin Ruoyu did not know whether that was normal. He only regretted that the mastermind behind the human traffickers was not home and had escaped disaster. What a pity.
Once there, the three players were at a loss. A patrol passed along the street outside every half hour, and most houses in the Noble District also had armed guards.
Under the circumstances, Lin Ruoyu could only make use of the clothes they found in the house.
He changed into a nobleman's clothes, while the other two players put on servants' uniforms. They packed their muskets into violin cases to take along.
Then the three players sauntered out in plain sight. Despite a few tense moments, the patrols did not see through their disguises, and they hurried toward the spot marked on the map taken from the NPC's corpse to see what was happening there.
Once they arrived, they casually picked a house without a dog and climbed over its wall. Finding a ladder in the courtyard, they climbed onto the roof of the single-story house and lay along the ridge, waiting patiently.
After more than two hours, the other two were regretting their decision and considering logging off and leaving their characters idle. Then, at last, they spotted a carriage slowly approaching along the road, escorted by more than twenty guards.
The faint glow of the kerosene lamps hanging from its four corners stood out so clearly!
Then one player, tired of waiting, fired first at the light.
He pulled the trigger. The spring-driven flint struck over the priming pan, producing a flash and smoke that ignited the black powder inside the barrel. The explosion propelled the lead bullet toward the muzzle, and the rifling sent it spinning as it flew straight ahead.
A rifled muzzle-loading musket was accurate, but this player was firing casually at a carriage a hundred meters away in pitch darkness. Actually hitting his intended target would have been the surprise.
The second player fired right after the first. Unsurprisingly, his round-nosed cylindrical lead bullet also flew off to who knew where.
Lin Ruoyu was annoyed, but could hardly say anything. The other two players called him boss as a courtesy; that did not mean he was really their superior and could order them around.
Lin Ruoyu was not that naive, so he said nothing. He could only tighten his grip on his musket and aim at the carriage.
Only after Lin Ruoyu fired the third shot did a lead bullet strike the elegant, ornate four-wheeled carriage, punching a hole in its body.
Only then did the guards walking ahead of and behind the carriage realize someone was shooting at them.
The twenty-odd men immediately fell into chaos. Some stood rooted to the spot, while others scrambled aboard the carriage. It was impossible to tell whether they intended to serve as human shields or thought the carriage was safer and wanted to hide inside.
From beginning to end, this assassination was a farce, full of assumptions and careless indifference.
Yet through a string of accidents, the players had still found their actual target.
And the guards around the target of the assassination were hopelessly inept. All they did was shout and look around. Not one thought to cover their own First Prince as he got out of the carriage and away from danger.
The guards had not even identified the direction of the gunfire. Distance was one reason, but their own lack of vigilance and ignorance were even greater factors.
"Reload! Let's take another shot!"
As he spoke, Lin Ruoyu stood up, pulled a powder cartridge from his waist pouch, tore open its sealed top with his teeth, and poured the black powder into the barrel.
Then he tore open the lower half of the paper cartridge, took out the lead bullet at the bottom, and prepared to push it into the barrel.
"No time, boss! Look over there!"
The shout interrupted Lin Ruoyu, making him turn toward the direction the player indicated. He saw points of lamplight several hundred meters away.
They belonged to ten mounted cavalrymen carrying Storm Kerosene Lamps.
It was the Noble District's Patrol Unit. They must have come after hearing the gunshots.
Meanwhile, guards in the nearby houses had also noticed the unusual commotion and were poking their heads out of doorways.
Once they realized what was happening outside, there was a good chance they would come out with weapons to help.
Well, that settled it. The experienced Lin Ruoyu took one look and knew this was their best chance to escape. If they waited until the cavalry drew closer, none of them would get away.
If there had been a chance of killing the target, dying would have been fine. But the first player's reckless shot had already made success impossible. Staying would only mean dying for nothing.
They might as well run.
Realizing this, Lin Ruoyu dropped his musket without another word and was the first to run toward the ladder propped against the house.
"Split up! If you can't get away, figure something out yourselves..."
Leaving those words behind, Lin Ruoyu slid quickly down the ladder, vaulted the wall with a running start, and vanished into the darkness without looking back.
Even though Lin Ruoyu knew how unpredictable players could be, he was still annoyed at that moment. He had no intention of escaping with the other two; he had had enough of their antics.
His swift disappearance immediately brought home the seriousness of the situation to the other two.
One smart player followed Lin Ruoyu's example, threw down his musket, and ran in a direction he thought looked safe. The remaining player could not bear to abandon such a rare rifled musket and fled with it on his back.
As a result, guards in a roadside house spotted him fleeing. Their loud shouts drew over cavalrymen brandishing sabers and cavalry pistols.
Their horses clattered rapidly toward the spot, where they saw the fleeing player. The musket on his back proved he was the assassin, so they charged.
Realizing he had been spotted, the player turned to fight and fired his multibarreled pistol.
As it turned out, the multibarreled pistol was a piece of scrap metal that looked impressive but was clumsy and impractical.
The player fired as quickly as he could, but achieved absolutely nothing beyond producing three loud bangs, drawing more nearby patrols over, and giving Lin Ruoyu a better opportunity to slip away.
Other than frightening one horse in the charging Patrol Unit, he failed to hit a single man before the back of a cavalryman's saber struck him.
Before you continue