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Edward held a pencil, idly writing in the blank spaces of a newspaper.
"Governor Number One," "Governor Number Two." "Local General," "Loen General."
Then he drew two opposing arrows between the two generals, symbolizing the discord between the Conservative Party and the War Party.
He stared at the four terms for a few seconds, smiled, and crossed out "Governor Number One" with the commonplace pencil in his hand.
"Anyway, apart from the new governor, none of the others need to stay alive, right?"
Edward crossed out both generals as well. If he did not need to secretly and silently push this mutiny forward, all he needed was their names and one or two people with relatively stable connections to them. Then a single round of phone calls could kill all three.
He set the pencil aside. Deep blue flames burned along the pencil marks, reducing the newspaper to ashes in an instant.
"Time for a business trip."
Edward stood up and went downstairs. The landlady was absent, perhaps having gone out, and the child was not in the lobby either. The noise outside continued, seemingly never having stopped. He placed a check on the counter, weighed it down with an ink bottle, and quietly left.
As he pushed open the inn's front door, the surrounding colors grew vivid. By the time they returned to normal, he had arrived on a low mountain over a hundred kilometers away. It lay in the undeveloped outskirts of Aldra City, and its summit offered a view of the distant city.
Edward looked around from the summit and soon noticed a mass of black clouds in the distant sky. Pure black, tinged with blood, and condensed from resentment, it resembled those that had hung over Capim's mansion back in Tingen.
The difference was that