Chapter 37: The Art of Deception

I pushed Royal's body until he was lying down, face down on the bed. I hefted a bust of a naked woman displayed on the corner, showing her nipple. I dragged Royal's body near the edge of the bed, so that the cushion wouldn't soften the impact. With a bit of effort, I used the bust to smash Royal's head once, twice, and then again.

Blood further drenched my clothes, and the stench of iron was starting to annoy me.

"That should do it."

Onyx tilted her head in curiosity as she held the fireplace poker, her bloody face somehow managing to radiate delight. She seemed far too comfortable with the carnage for someone who claimed to be new to this. Then again, her “newness” probably didn’t include sanity.

“We need to fake the crime scene,” I said, grabbing a Venetian mask from one of Royal’s displays and handing it to her. The mask was half black and half white. It suited Onyx. She slipped it on with an exaggerated flourish, spinning like a ballerina.

“Oh, Master, does this mean I get to play pretend? How fun~!” Her voice was a syrupy sing-song, but the glint in her eyes behind the mask suggested she was enjoying this far too much. "Do we get to play capes then?"

Ignoring her theatrics, I surveyed the room. The bust of a naked woman I’d used to smash Royal’s head lay discarded on the floor. Blood spattered the marble floor and furniture, and the heavy stench of iron hung in the air. The sight started to look less like a professional assassination, instead, it appeared as something else. It screamed vengeance, if anything.

I grabbed an ornate six-inch dagger from one of the cabinets and assessed Onyx. “Start looking for valuables. We need to make it look like a robbery gone wrong.” It was a way to make the scene look like it had been tampered with, suggesting the intent to hide the real motive of the murderer. In this case, the motive I wanted any investigator to walk here think... was that the murderer killed Royal out of emotion and had disguised the crime scene clumsily as a robbery.

However, the truth was I wanted to kill Royal because he was starting to be a nuisance. In a way, I wanted revenge too for the shit he pulled.

“Leaving me with the dirty work?” Onyx pouted, but her playful tone quickly returned. “If it’s for you, Master, then I’ll do it~!” She giggled as she began rifling through Royal’s belongings, her movements unnervingly lighthearted.

As Onyx busied herself, I crouched by Royal’s body and began pulling out my cards. Blood spurted from the wounds as the plastic edges dislodged. The cards had a peculiar property... they remained intact even after embedding into organic matter. Useful for combat, but I couldn’t afford to leave a single trace of them behind.

The body was a mess. Deep gashes, a fractured skull, and blood pooling in unnatural patterns. This wasn’t clean. I jammed the ornate dagger into one of the wounds, twisting it to mask the original entry point of my cards. I worked methodically, treating the body like a puzzle that needed rearranging.

“You’re so thorough, Master,” Onyx cooed from across the room, her voice dripping with something between admiration and hunger. “The blood, the brutality… It’s so primal. So you.”

I didn’t respond. The longer I spent with her, the more I missed Silver’s quiet and gentle demeanor. Onyx was chaos personified, and she seemed to thrive in the madness.

"How are you going to hide the evidence?" asked Onyx.

"Bury them," I said offhandedly. "Like this..."

After recovering every card I could find from Royal, the bed, and just everywhere, I gathered them in a single stack, made them intangible, and then slipped them onto the floor. Just to be sure, I made myself intangible and fell deep on the ground, letting one hand hang from the surface. I let go of the cards and undid my intangibility on them. I pulled and returned to the surface, murder weapon no longer in my possession.

By the time I was done, I was drenched in so much blood. Royal's carcass hadn't been cooperative, spraying me with his blood. I would have liked to use my intangibility to remove the blood around me, but my control wasn't fine enough to attempt something like that.

Onyx sauntered over, carrying a pile of trinkets and jewelry she’d collected. “Wowsie~! You look so bloody, Master. It makes me so aroused.” Her words sent a shiver down my spine, though not in the way she intended.

“This isn’t good,” I muttered, stepping back to assess the scene.

“What’s wrong?” Onyx tilted her head.

“The wounds are too brutal. It looks personal. Anyone investigating will think this was a slaughter, not a robbery. I did attack, motivated by revenge, but I wanted the robbery angle to be more believable to mislead the discerning eye. I want this to look like the murder had been done out of emotion, but not revenge. How do I do that?”

Onyx twirled a dagger she found from one of the cabinets, the same one I used to cover the card-wounds. “Framing it as an assassination is impossible. Not unless the client specifically requested a show.”

“Exactly,” I said, pacing the room. My mind raced for a solution. “We need a story. Something plausible enough to explain this mess, but vague enough to keep the Monarchy from connecting it back to me. There should be something...”

“Any ideas, Master?” Onyx asked, her voice uncharacteristically serious. “I might not look it, but I’m new to the biz. My know-how is… amateurish, let’s say.”

"That's awfully honest of you," I clenched my fists. “But there is no need to think like an amateur. It's the work that defines your ability. It’s about the kinds of work you survive and will survive.” And I’d survived more than my fair share of intense encounters. Whether that was bad luck or just the world being this shitty, I didn’t know.

I glanced at Royal’s body again, then at Onyx. An idea began to form, though it was risky. “Onyx, how good are you at improvisation?”

She grinned beneath her mask. “Oh, Master, you have no idea.”

Onyx clapped her hands, the bloodied dagger in her grasp, and sent a small spray of droplets onto the floor. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Her voice had a singsong quality, the mask she wore adding an unsettling layer to her tone.

“No,” I replied flatly, already knowing I’d regret asking.

“Boohoo~!” she pouted, twirling the dagger theatrically. “Pray tell, Master, what are you thinking?”

“First, tell me what you’re thinking.”

Onyx’s eyes sparkled with mischief behind the mask. “Simple! We kill them all. The mundane servants, your coworkers, and anyone breathing within Royal’s property. Then we fake our deaths, pin the whole thing on the brainwashed slaves in the basement, and voilà! We’re golden! After that, we can live happily ever after in some sunny coastal town, sipping drinks and watching sunsets... wherever the wind takes us! We'll then make lots of babies... And then... our babies will make babies. We will be one big happy family!”

She spun in a circle as if already imagining the carefree life she’d just described.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, taking a moment to breathe. “That’s… not the worst plan I’ve ever heard,” I admitted begrudgingly. “But it’s too much work. The Triplets and Blackout aren’t pushovers, and they’ll come down on us the moment they smell blood. We don’t have the time or manpower to pull it off.”

Onyx sighed dramatically, tossing the dagger from hand to hand. “You’re no fun, Master. But fine, what’s your brilliant idea? Something with less murder, I presume?”

I crossed my arms, stepping over the pools of blood as I started forming the details in my head. “We don’t need to kill everyone. Just make it look like this wasn’t us. A frame job.”

“Hmm~? A frame job?” Onyx cocked her head. “That’s far less romantic than my idea, but I’m intrigued. Go on.”

“We make it look like Royal was assassinated by someone from within the Monarchy. Pride and the others already operate on shaky alliances. All we need to do is stoke some mistrust, plant evidence pointing to internal sabotage. If they’re busy tearing each other apart, no one will think to look for me... or you.”

Onyx tapped her chin with the tip of the dagger, smirking. “Oh, clever, Master! So much delicious drama. And who gets to be our unlucky scapegoat?”

“Lion King,” I said without hesitation. “He’s Mathilda's. If anyone has a motive to take him out, it’s him, considering recent events. The problem is how to make it believable.”

Onyx’s grin widened. “Oh, I like it~! I don't know who this Lion King is, but if you say... He'll be our perfect patsy. But how do we make it stick?”

I surveyed the bloodied scene, Royal’s mutilated body lying in the center of the carnage. The staged chaos looked convincing, but there was more work to do. The next part of the plan was delicate, requiring precision, timing, and a touch of insanity. Fortunately, I had Onyx for that last bit.

“You confident with your hands, Onyx?” I asked, wiping some of the blood off my gloves.

She tilted her head, her grin wide behind the half-black, half-white mask. “And my mouth too~! Want me to blow you?”

I ignored her, holding back a sigh. “Lion King is a lion shifter. We’re going to make this look like a lion attack. Think you can manage?”

Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Oh, Master, you wound me. I was born for this. Leave it to me.”

I grabbed a nearby laptop and searched for images of lion attacks... wounds, claw marks, anything we could mimic. Onyx knelt beside me, her gaze flicking between the screen and Royal’s body as she took mental notes. Once she seemed satisfied, she set to work.

Onyx proved herself possessing better body coordination than even me...

I watched her carefully as she began to recreate the wounds with surgical precision, slashing at the body in deliberate, measured strokes. Her enthusiasm was unsettling, but I couldn’t deny her skill. When she finished, Royal’s corpse looked like it had been mauled by a feral beast.

“You’re good at this,” I admitted reluctantly.

Onyx twirled the bloodied knife in her hand, her grin never faltering. “I told you, Master. I’m good with my hands.”

I shook my head and returned to the laptop. Destroying evidence was second nature by now. I disassembled the hard drive, melted it with a small blowtorch I found in the room, and buried the remains deep underground using my intangibility. No one would ever find it.

Why was there a blowtorch in Royal’s bedroom? I have no clue…

“The next step,” I said, turning back to Onyx, “is to lure Lion King here, kill him, and stage it as if Loyal and Lion King took each other out.”

Onyx paused, tapping her chin with a bloodied finger. “There’s a problem with that, Master.”

“What problem?” I asked. "If it is Royal you are worried about, then I believe Lion King has a fair shot of even killing him if he did it while Royal was busy with... Loyal. It is also possible for Lion King to have enough mental training to resist Royal even for a few seconds, so that has to count for something, right?"

"Give me a second," requested Onyx as she closed her eyes and hummed to herself. "Sister, can you please kindly do us a favor?"

Her hair turned silver white as the 'other her' appeared. Silver, as I called her in my head, meekly addressed me. "I... I will see what I can do." She closed her eyes, working her magic. After a few seconds or so, she opened her eyes once more. "I... I will let the other me take over."

Silver vanished, and Onyx appeared.

“Loyal is way stronger than Lion King,” she said matter-of-factly. "I don't think he has a fair shot at this."

I raised an eyebrow, already somewhat aware of the answer. “How do you know that? You were in prison until a few hours ago. I didn't think Silver was capable of this much telepathic prowess...”

She gave me a smug look. “I can gauge power levels, Master. Did you forget? I’ve got telepathic ratings too. And it just so happens, my dear other self was better at measuring and poking for information than me. Anyway... mental strength correlates to real-life ability in most cases. Loyal’s mind is like an iron fortress. Lion King’s? More like a sandcastle. I think he might even be suffering from mental trauma... so sad... makes me want to stuff him and hang his head on the wall.”

I rubbed my temples, muttering a curse under my breath. Royal had made similar claims about the said power. It wasn’t good news, but it wasn’t insurmountable either. Onyx was making quite a valid point.

“We’ll frame it in a way that makes sense,” I said finally. “The slaves in the basement... if we free them, we can make it look like they escaped and caused enough chaos to give Lion King an opening to strike.”

Onyx clapped her hands together. “Oh, Master, you’re brilliant! This is going to be so messy~!”

We began planning the finer details.

Frankly, a lot of the plan was purely Onyx’s idea… and I was merely parroting what she said to me. I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Lion King. [Urgent. Come to Royal’s quarters immediately.] I was tempted to use Royal’s phone, but it was too glaring a contradiction. Royal could telepathically just order his goons if he could.

Once the message was sent, I turned to Onyx. “Head down to the basement. Free the slaves. If you can, untangle their brainwashed minds a bit. They’ll be more believable as chaotic elements if they’re lucid. While you’re at it, cure the servants of their brainwashing too. The more chaos, the better.”

Onyx saluted me with a mock seriousness, her mask hiding what I assumed was another manic grin. “Consider it done, Master. I’ll whip up a frenzy down there that even you’ll be impressed by.”

She skipped toward the door, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in her wake. I watched her go, my mind already racing through the steps ahead. Dealing with Lion King wouldn’t be easy, but I had the advantage of surprise... and the perfect setup.

Now all I had to do was wait.