The day after the young Prince died, the air inside the Royal Guard's Military Camp seemed like congealed oil, ready to ignite at the slightest spark.
News of the young Prince's death ate into every soldier's heart like poison. Suspicion and anger toward their senior commanders mounted amid hushed whispers and exchanges of cold looks.
The camp was no longer a disciplined whole. It was more like an enormous powder keg filled with volatile, explosive gas.
The Royal Guard's soldiers knew full well that they owed their generous pay and privileges entirely to the Royal Family. Now its only heir was dead, leaving them terrified and uneasy.
The loyalist mid-ranking officers planted by Gray Shadow moved through the barracks' shadows and along the edges of the crowds like seasoned arsonists.
They no longer needed elaborate inflammatory speeches. Whenever the soldiers whispered angrily, they only had to add a timely remark...
"If we'd been the ones protecting His Highness..."
"Hasn't General Roderick been getting a little too close to the nobles?"
"I heard... the generals received quite a few benefits in the assembly."
These words fell like sparks onto tinder that was already bone-dry, making the soldiers even angrier and more unsettled.
Before they knew it, they had gathered on the parade ground, refusing drills, training, sentry duty, and orders to search the city for certain people.
And when General Roderick himself appeared on the main parade ground with his well-equipped, grim-faced personal guards, attempting to forcibly restore the increasingly unstable order through his authority, those sparks finally met the thickest oil fumes.
"Return to your posts and maintain discipline! The enemy's plot is to make us throw ourselves into chaos!"
Mounted on his warhorse and clad in armor, Roderick looked imposing, but his booming voice could not quite conceal the