Chapter 1091: Chapter 1091

The mansion, wrapped in a chaotic atmosphere, remained eerily quiet like the calm before a storm.

He heard Illyna through the communication crystal.

“Is there anything you need me to bring back?”

- Yeah, get me some ice cream from Earth.

“Alright, I’ll stop by and grab some.”

- Hehe. Love you, Davey.

Her love for ice cream was beyond imagination. There had been a time when Davey jokingly warned her she’d get fat if she kept eating it so much, and she had gone wild swinging Caldeiras around in a frenzy. In the end, nothing had changed.

Jeo-Seung, assisting Woochi in managing souls, asked as he looked at the late Chancellor’s spirit, “Have you finished saying your goodbyes?”

[I still have a selfish wish to see my daughter become fully independent... but that won’t happen, will it?]

“I can't keep purifying your soul forever.”

Leaving an exception that defied the world's system wasn’t an option.

Tsuna had left a message before parting, saying she’d go on a tour of the trading partners’ territories. She had asked Davey to stay just one more day if possible, but he ultimately planned to leave late that night.

Still, did she really have the time for touring when she had to arrange and prepare for the banquet? Davey couldn’t help but worry, as she had technically been his student for a couple of days.

[It’s strange, though. She should be attending the banquet, yet Tsuna hasn’t returned.]

Before Davey left, the late Chancellor’s spirit seemed deeply unsettled that his daughter hadn’t come back.

“The living should deal with the living,” Jeo-Seung said as he used his authority to open the Gate of Souls. He then bowed respectfully to Davey. “I’ll be going, then.”

Davey quietly nodded, and the late Chancellor looked surprised to see Jeo-Seung treating Davey so politely.

The door suddenly burst open, and a maid rushed in. It was extremely rude to enter a guest’s room without permission or even a knock, and the late Chancellor’s spirit frowned deeply at the discourtesy. Davey didn’t scold her, noticing that her face was already soaked with tears.

“What’s wrong?” he asked politely in a low voice.

The maid ran up to him and clung to his arm.

“Your Excellency... please save the young lady!!” she cried desperately, trying to lead Davey further into the hall.

Both Jeo-Seung and the late Chancellor’s spirit flinched. Without so much as another word, Davey immediately chose to follow her.

The place they arrived was the mansion’s central hall. Once there, he saw a young girl being carried in. Her pink hair was matted with blood, and her once vibrant, peach-colored cheeks had turned cold and pale.

Sometimes, even when a person just lay on the ground, it was easy to distinguish whether they were alive. Her personal physician, already drenched in a cold sweat and breathing heavily, was performing intense CPR.

“Stop... She’s gone, Doctor.”

“No! No, she can still come back!!”

It was clear to anyone that he was clinging to a lost cause. As someone who had spent a long time studying medicine, he should’ve been the most composed person there, capable of coldly assessing the situation. However, understanding the implications of her death better than anyone, his face was deathly pale.

The late Chancellor’s spirit staggered in disbelief, needing Jeo-Seung's support as his face was filled with utter denial.

“Prince,” the Head Butler, his face ghostly white, called out to Davey. The physician, eyes wide in desperation, rushed at him.

“P-Prince! You’re the prodigy recognized even by the Disease Control Bureau’s finest doctors! Please... please save the young lady!”

Facing such a plea, Davey silently approached the body. The wound was clean; she had been pierced straight through the spleen. Some might question how life-threatening an injury to the spleen could possibly be, but the spleen was still a critical organ. A stab to it would result in massive blood loss and shock that could lead to death within moments.

Davey shook his head, “It's too late.”

The physician staggered backward at the confirmation.

“Her soul has already left. This is just a shell now.”

Facing his death sentence-like announcement, some collapsed in despair while others stood frozen, unable to accept reality.

“No... No way! How could this happen?!”

“Step aside! I’ll save her!” Even the normally composed physician finally broke down, and Davey coldly took in the scene.

“Awaiting orders,” she faithfully responded.

“Follow the blood trail.”

“Orders received.” She tilted her head back, scarfed down the red bean bun she had been eating, and then vanished. Davey then turned to Jeo-Seung.

“Guide the Chancellor’s soul to ascend.”

Jeo-Seung nodded. “Understood.”

Davey closed his eyes, ignoring the spirit’s anguished screams. The warning he had once given Tsuna—that she trusted others too easily—was perhaps not something that applied only to her.

‘Who am I to criticize, anyway.’

“What happened?” he asked those nearby.

A maid simply sobbed and wailed for Tsuna without answering. Gripping her shoulder firmly, Davey asked again, and she finally spoke with difficulty, “A-After the young lady said she’d go on the tour, we couldn’t reach her, so we went to find her.”

They had found her near the royal palace, collapsed in a pool of blood.

‘Wait, near the royal palace?’

“The Chancellor of a kingdom gets stabbed and collapses near the royal palace, and no one noticed? The body was already cold over three hours ago.”

“T-That... I... I don’t know...”

Davey stood up, and the Head Butler took charge. “Bring the young lady’s... body inside. I will report this incident immediately to the royal palace. Nobody is to leak a word about what happened to Her Highness.”

The butler spoke while holding back tears, “If word gets out, everything Her Highness ever built will collapse! Remember that. Everyone must keep their mouths shut until further notice.”

The maids and servants were still sobbing, but they slowly began to move.

While they carried her body back into the mansion, the physician still sat on the floor, dazed as if his soul had been ripped away.

Following the Head Butler's judgment, the news of Tsuna's death had not been widely announced.

The King of Alberta was said to have looked shocked when he heard of her death and soon vowed to launch a secret, full-scale effort to track down the assassin who had targeted her. After all, for the Chancellor of a kingdom to be openly assassinated near the royal palace, and then go undiscovered for three hours, was an unspeakable disgrace. The King’s fury over her death was overwhelming.

“Master Davey, Rinne reports that the scene is currently under the knights’ control.”

Following Rinne, who had tracked the trail of blood, Davey looked at the location where Tsuna had been attacked.

Just a few hours prior, she had spoken so confidently with a bright smile. She then returned as a cold, lifeless corpse. Death was still something Davey found hard to get used to.

Naturally, the late Chancellor was violently shaken by the sudden murder of his daughter, but Jeo-Seung had suppressed him and kept him confined in the meantime. He knew there wouldn’t have been much point in sending him to the cycle of reincarnation in that state, anyway.

Davey stood blankly, pondering her wound’s appearance. “Weapon.”

Rinne tilted her head. “Rinne requests an explanation.”

“The weapon that pierced the spleen wasn’t a simple straight sword. Its shape was slightly twisted.” Davey quietly closed his eyes. “The weapon was a magic sword.”

There had been faint traces of mana lingering around her wound. Even at the scene itself, there were the remnants of some kind of barrier. It was clear that someone had deliberately targeted and killed her.

“It wasn’t the Assassin Guild.” Aina soundlessly approached and handed Davey a report before disappearing again. He stared coldly at the sheet of paper she had given him.

‘If it wasn’t the Assassin Guild, yet she was still killed with such professional precision... then the remaining suspects would be...’

“Maybe it was someone from Marquis Barogo’s side?”

It was a tragic event, but he wasn’t sure if he was really in a position to stir up a fuss about it. Maybe not. Still, letting it go didn’t sit right with him. No matter what, he knew it wouldn’t hurt to dig around a little.

Marquis Barogo slammed the table in a rage. “Do you think that’s something you can just walk in and say to me?!”

When he roared in fury, the man, who seemed to be an informant, quietly lowered his head. “I’m sorry. It happened beyond our surveillance—”

Before he could even finish speaking, Marquis Barogo threw a wooden decorative sculpture at him. Even as blood trickled down his forehead, the informant kept his head bowed.

“Get out. I don’t even want to see your face,” the Marquis muttered in a threatening voice, as if he was about to kill the informant on the spot. The tremblin man slipped away without a word.

“Damn it, this is bad! If she dies ...” he muttered as he clenched his fists.

It was only natural for him to act that way. If Tsuna were suddenly killed without any preparation, all the suspicion would fall directly onto him. Of course, he had once said she might have to die, but he hadn’t meant it. What he had truly wanted was to drive Tsuna into ruin and then pull her into his camp. If she died, it’d completely ruin that plan.

She had been killed before he could even make a move.

“Belga!! Belga!!” he screamed as he shuddered. Face full of disbelief, he summoned Belga and questioned him, “Don’t tell me... It wasn’t you, was it?”

Belga tilted his head at the question. “Hungry.”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Don’t lie! You’re the only one who could’ve killed her while evading all surveillance!”

Belga tilted his head again. “Her?”

“Yes! Tsuna de Murgent, the woman you were supposed to be watching!!”

Belga’s eyes widened slightly. Almost immediately, as if confused by his own reaction, he staggered and disappeared without even answering.

“Belga!! Belga!!” the Marquis called out, but he didn’t reappear.

“Damn it! Where did it all start going wrong?”

Given her popularity and influence, it had been safe to assume that no one would dare to assassinate her. Yet there he was, facing such an absurd reality. Grinding his teeth in frustration, the Marquis could barely contain his rage.

The sound of a window slamming open was followed by a chilling pressure. Before he could even turn around, someone dressed in black had pinned him down.

“Grgh. Gaaa,” he sputtered.

“I’ll be the one asking questions. You just answer.”

“I said I’ll be asking the questions.”

Hearing the coldness in the voice, he felt the blood in his body freeze. He trembled uncontrollably as if crushed under immense pressure.

“Did you kill Tsuna?”

“If you lie, I’ll show you a hell so deep, so dark that death would seem like a blessing.”

The Marquis had heard plenty of threats before—far worse, even. Yet for some reason, the moment he heard that voice, he instinctively saw a horrifying vision of himself being dragged into a pit of hell and suffering endlessly.

‘T-This guy's serious! This isn't something a human could do!’

The assailant seemed to be something transcendent, maybe the member of a high race one only heard about in fairy tales.

‘Who in the world had been protecting her?’

Trembling, he forced his mouth open. “I-I didn’t... I didn’t kill her! I never had any intention of killing her!!”

He wasn’t lying. At least in that regard, he was innocent.

Even so, the figure pinning him down didn’t seem convinced. “You expect me to believe that?”

“P-Please, it’s true! She was a political enemy, yes, and it’s true I was furious that she overwhelmed me in negotiations, but... but I never wanted her dead.”

The figure punched him so hard that his consciousness spiraled. As his mind drifted away, he could hear the figure talk to another being.

“If it’s not this guy, there are only two suspects left. Rinne, go catch that spiritual entity that ran off. You should be able to hurt that one too.”

The Marquis then completely collapsed.

All he could think before blacking out was that there was someone far beyond his understanding protecting Tsuna after all.