Crossover: Monthly Character Templates in the Multiverse Chat Group — Chapter 115

Chapter 115: Duke Cavendish’s Deal

It was already deep into the night when Finn finally regained consciousness. He forced his eyes open, only to be immediately blinded by the piercing, opulent glare of the palace’s crystal chandeliers hanging directly above him.

He instinctively raised a hand to shield his vision, wincing as the movement pulled at his skin. His face stung with a relentless, burning agony, the flesh swollen so severely it felt tight and heavy against his skull.

‘This is impossible…’he thought, his mind struggling to process the sheer disparity in strength.’How could the gap between us be so impossibly large?’

He forced himself into a sitting position, a wave of existential doubt washing over him. Were the Sarkaz truly this terrifyingly powerful? If they possessed such overwhelming, monstrous might, how had they suffered so many historical defeats?

Pushing the grim thoughts aside, he scanned his unfamiliar surroundings and called out to the guard stationed at the door. From the stiff-backed soldier, Finn learned that Her Highness had already departed for the evening’s grand banquet.

Panic flared briefly in his chest. He hurriedly attempted to straighten his rumpled attire, his fingers brushing against his heavily bruised face. He froze. If he walked into a gathering of Victoria’s highest nobility looking like a battered stray, he would bring immense shame to Her Highness. Left with no other viable option, he resigned himself to waiting quietly in the shadows at the entrance of the banquet hall.

Inside the grand hall, the atmosphere was thick with the cloying scent of expensive perfume and vintage wine. The Victorian nobles were dressed in their absolute finest. Wrapped in custom-tailored silks and dripping with heirloom jewels, they presented the perfect image of decent, civilized high society. In reality, Frez knew, the vast majority of them were nothing more than well-dressed beasts—predators who devoured their rivals and the common folk alike without leaving a single trace of bone behind.

Frez harbored absolutely zero interest in the tedious pageantry of the banquet. He stood near the periphery, nursing a drink in silence, until a distinguished figure deliberately broke from the crowd and approached him.

It was Duke Cavendish, one of the eight Great Dukes of Victoria.

“Respected Lord of Fiends, might we step aside to discuss a few private matters?”

Duke Cavendish wore a perfectly polite, practiced smile, but anyone with half a brain could see the nasty, venomous plots churning just beneath his aristocratic veneer.

“Of course,” Frez replied, his tone perfectly neutral.

The two men slipped away from the music and laughter, entering a heavily soundproofed secret room deep within the estate. Duke Cavendish’s personal elite guards immediately took up defensive positions outside the heavy oak doors, sealing them in.

Cavendish casually swirled the dark red vintage in his crystal glass, staring at the liquid as if savoring the sight of fresh blood. He smiled warmly. “Lord of Fiends, allow me to formally thank you for safely escorting Her Highness Vina back to us. If not for your timely intervention, I truly do not know how long the Victorian throne would have remained vacant.”

“The Sarkaz mercenary business is famous across the land for a reason,” Frez answered, leaning back against a velvet chair. “Her Highness Vina offered a price that was simply impossible to refuse. I had no reason to say no to such a lucrative contract.”

A distinct gleam lit up Duke Cavendish’s eyes. If this was purely a business transaction, then there was ample room for negotiation.

In the Duke’s mind, these vile demons of Kazdel were all exactly the same. Dangle a little bit of petty profit in front of them, and they would chase after it with reckless abandon—just like a beast-kin of the Perro race eagerly wagging its tail for a discarded meat bone.

“Then, would you perhaps be willing to enter into a cooperative arrangement with me?” Cavendish asked, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “It is a well-known fact that a Sarkaz will gladly betray their current employer if offered a significantly higher price, will they not?”

Frez sneered coldly in his heart. This pompous Victorian noble genuinely took him for just another desperate, coin-chasing mercenary.

Maintaining a facade of polite interest, Frez chuckled dryly. “Heh. That entirely depends on exactly what kind of price you can offer me, Duke Cavendish. If the sum is enough to truly move my heart, then helping you ascend to become the Emperor of Victoria is certainly not out of the question.”

A sudden, intense surge of heat flared in Duke Cavendish’s chest. Emperor. That was the ultimate prize he pursued in his darkest, most ambitious dreams. However, as a high noble bound by the complex web of Victorian politics, he needed a flawless, unassailable justification to take that final, treasonous step.

More, he needed the absolute military might to violently suppress the other Great Dukes.

That was a feat he currently could not achieve on his own. But if he could harness the terrifying, monstrous power of the Sarkaz… the gears of conspiracy began to turn rapidly in his mind.

Among the eight Great Dukes, Cavendish knew his own military and economic strength ranked only in the upper-middle tier. He was entirely incomparable to the sheer might of the Iron Duke Wellington or the cunning Duke of Caster.

Wellington commanded the most formidable, battle-hardened army among the eight, and possessed extreme personal military prowess. Yet, the old warhorse had never shown much interest in claiming the throne for himself, nor did he harbor any particular fondness for the Aslan Royal Family. If Cavendish attempted to crown himself King, Wellington would become a massive, bloody obstacle. The other Dukes currently used their equally noble titles to bind Wellington in a political cage, but no one truly knew if that crazy old man would snap and do something utterly terrifying.

Then there was the Duke of Caster. She was fiercely ambitious. If she weren’t a Feline, and instead carried the blood of an Aslan, she might have already used her royal connections to seize the throne.

The Duke of Windermere, on the other hand, had zero interest in the crown; she simply held the pragmatic belief that Victoria did not need a useless, figurehead King dragging the empire down.

As for the remaining Dukes… they were manageable. If Cavendish could secure the overwhelming, brutal assistance of the Sarkaz Royal Court, he would naturally elevate himself above the rest, finally standing on the exact same starting line as Wellington and Caster.

“Heh, you must be joking,” Duke Cavendish replied smoothly, expertly masking his burning ambition. “I am a Duke of Victoria, and I shall remain a loyal Duke for the rest of my life.”

‘Playing the humble servant before the grand usurpation with me?’ Frez thought, amused by the transparent political theater.

“In that case,” Frez prompted, crossing his arms, “what exactly does Your Grace wish to discuss in such secrecy?”

“The Steam Knights.”

Duke Cavendish’s smile turned sharp and cold. “Today’s Victoria no longer has any need for the Steam Knights. They refuse to follow orders, their maintenance costs an absolute fortune, and they rarely produce any tangible results for the empire anymore. Unfortunately, we currently lack the concentrated power to take them down ourselves.”

Don’t follow orders?

Frez translated that easily enough. They don’t follow the Dukes’ orders, more accurately.

The Great Dukes of Victoria naturally coveted such a devastatingly powerful branch of the military. If the Steam Knights had simply bowed their heads and pledged their allegiance to the nobility, Cavendish and his peers wouldn’t be plotting this purge.

But because not a single Steam Knight would ever defect, these heavily armored powerhouses—fanatically loyal only to the true Royal Family and the pure ideal of Victoria—had become a massive, lethal thorn in the side of the ambitious nobles.

The Dukes simply could not allow a supreme military force that they could not control to continue existing within their borders.

The consensus among the Great Dukes was unanimous: if they couldn’t leash the hounds, they should slaughter them so no one else could use them. Once Cavendish or another Duke finally sat upon the throne, they could naturally commission a brand new batch of Steam Knights, ones loyal exclusively to the new crown.

“So, you want the Sarkaz to act as your executioners and help you deal with the Steam Knights?” Frez asked, his tone flat.

“Yes,” Cavendish confirmed, leaning forward. “The Dukes are more than willing to heavily fund this operation. Collectively, we are prepared to pay an initial deposit of 200 million Victorian gold pounds, with another 200 million to be delivered upon the successful completion of the purge.”

The 400 million total price Cavendish and the others were offering was an astronomical sum, easily enough to construct several brand new sets of advanced steam armor. But the Dukes lacked the proprietary technology and the specialized production lines; all the money in the world couldn’t build a Steam Knight from scratch without the blueprints.

“Not enough,” Frez rejected instantly, his voice carrying the absolute authority of his title. “This amount is far too small. To systematically hunt down and eliminate fully equipped Steam Knights, I must deploy the absolute elites of the Sarkaz. My warriors are non-renewable powerhouses. If they die on your soil, they are truly gone forever. They are not like your clunky steam armor, which can simply be repaired or remanufactured in a factory.”

It was a grim reality of their race. The fundamental problem with the Sarkaz was that their natural growth rate was agonizingly slow, and the war-torn, scorched earth of Kazdel lacked the basic stability to safely nurture the growth of their young.

The only reason the Nachzehrers and the Vampires managed to thrive was because their very bloodlines were naturally adapted to the endless slaughter of war. In Kazdel, where conflict was the only constant, those specific courts could rise quickly by feeding on the battlefield.

But for the broader race, the birth and maturation of a true Lord of the Royal Court required hundreds, sometimes even thousands of years of brutal survival and growth. Compared to Victoria’s terrifying speed of technological mass production, flesh and blood were simply too slow to replace.

“This money is more than enough to sustain your mercenary forces for a very long time,” Cavendish argued, his brow furrowing slightly.

“Are you treating me like a common beggar in the street?” Frez’s eyes narrowed, the temperature in the room seeming to drop. “You want to hire the full, unrestrained might of the Sarkaz Royal Court for a mere 400 million? The price is at least 800 million gold pounds. Not a penny less.”

Through the invisible, ancient connection of the black crown resting upon his soul, Frez could clearly sense the chaotic fluctuations of Duke Cavendish’s emotions. Despite the noble’s outward hesitation, Frez knew his demanded quote was still well within the Duke’s maximum range of acceptance.

“That is one hundred million per Duke,” Frez added smoothly. “A perfectly fair price to remove the greatest obstacle to your ambitions, isn’t it?”

Cavendish fell silent for a long moment, his mind calculating the risks and rewards. Finally, he nodded slowly. “I will go speak with the others.”

“Do hurry. This specific offer expires very soon,” Frez said, a dry, dangerous smile curving his lips. “Once all the Steam Knights return to the capital and consolidate their forces, the difficulty will increase. And so will my price.”

Duke Cavendish snorted softly, having completely lost any remaining interest in returning to the frivolous banquet outside. He immediately departed the grand event, retreating to a secure location to use a heavily encrypted private communications line to discuss this bloody deal with the other Great Dukes.

In the end, Cavendish’s greed won out. He deliberately raised the quoted price to his peers to 1.2 billion Victorian gold pounds, smoothly pocketing the massive 400 million gold pound difference for his own personal treasury. Not only did he avoid losing a single coin of his own wealth, but he also made a staggering profit off the impending slaughter.

The very next morning, Duke Cavendish hurriedly arranged another secret meeting with Frez.

“We have agreed to the Sarkaz’s price,” Cavendish declared, his eyes gleaming with dark anticipation. “800 million gold pounds. The initial deposit will be securely transferred to your designated accounts later today. In exchange, we want you to execute the Steam Knights with absolute secrecy, and as quickly as humanly possible.”

“Easy enough,” Frez replied calmly, sealing the fate of Victoria’s greatest protectors.

As Cavendish left to finalize the transfer, Frez began to silently map out his own internal strategy. Once the Steam Knights were systematically dealt with, he would ensure that a significant portion of their highly advanced steam armor was carefully preserved. The massive, heavily armored suits would be absolutely perfect for the towering Goliaths of the Sarkaz to pilot.

He would use Victoria’s own captured production lines to build a new generation of steam armor belonging exclusively to the Sarkaz. As for the creation of true divine machines, the Victorian production lines here were far too primitive to build them just yet. For that level of technology, he would have to wait and see what could be accomplished on the Doctor’s side of the board.