POV Swap – Roman

[Year 2, Day 118… Approximately one hour earlier]

The library of the palace had been covered with various writing and papers. Various books were spread throughout the area and appeared as though they had been read extensively.

Roman poured over the various notes and books in the area. His current appearance seemed worn out and exhausted.

He spent a year in this city and had known almost as long that there was more behind the scenes than was shown on the surface.

Roman had spent nearly that entire time building together a small group of powerful and trustworthy people.

Although the brawl that happened outside seemed random and chaotic, the eventual outcome of his leadership had been decided long before any weapons were drawn. Anyone untrustworthy or too chaotic had been secretly targeted and disposed of through that fight.

When all targets had been eliminated, they stopped the fighting and instead forced the competition to turn into a rigged poker game.

The door to the library and Roman turned toward the new arrival. Once Samuel entered the room, Roman covered up several papers.

Roman hoped to finally receive good news. He was utter exhausted at this point, immediately after they dealt with the previous internal problems a new problematic person had popped up.

Turning to face Samuel, he asked. “Has the new clone been dealt with?”

Samuel reported, “Yes, Xiong Yin and William worked together to trap the clone within the mirror dimension.”

“Good. If my divinations are accurate, Stanley shouldn’t be able to summon another clone until that one expires or dies. That gives us a twenty-four hour window.” Roman praised, before cautiously probing, “What’s the status of the manipulation of fate?”

“No notable backlash, yet…” Samuel replied with a slight frown.

Roman clicked his tongue in annoyance, “Tsk… That’s not a good sign. Backlash will make the upcoming battle more difficult.”

Samuel pointed out, “We couldn’t risk Stanley intervening in the battle.”

“I know…” Sighed Roman. He was unsatisfied even if it was done out of necessity. “However, it’s too dangerous to set ourselves up with a backlash from fate with an upcoming battle. That’s effectively assuring someone amongst us will die.”

Taking out a pen and blank paper, Roman inquired. “What was the exact wording used to manipulate fate?”

As Samuel ignored the pen and waved his hand over the paper, letters began to appear. Eventually they formed into a complete sentence.

The person who introduced himself to us as Stanley will not intervene in the upcoming battle between our group and the doppelgangers.

After reading the sentence several times, Roman sighed. “That will have to do. Inform everyone to gather, we need to act quickly.”

Samuel left the room to gather together the group. Hearing Samuel’s footsteps as he walked away.

As Roman confirmed Samuel wasn’t returning, he uncovered the papers on his desk.

Each letter was a piece of a puzzle and together the notes told a story.

Nearly a year ago now, he’d received the first note from a mysterious source.

As you’ve begun to suspect, there are people behind the scenes controlling this city. Their leader controls the teleportation beacon and prevents people from advancing to the next zone.

-Z

At that time, the letters were nearly indecipherable and were written in a script he couldn’t understand. It was only through repeated utilization of divination methods from his universe that Roman managed to understand the basic meaning of the notes.

Over time, he received more letters.

Some informed him of recruits to join him his group, others included the current location and identity of doppelgangers.

It was partly through this mysterious backer’s help that he’s managed to not only avoid alerting doppelganger forces to his presence, but also managed to quietly weaken their forces while collecting together a group of powerful people.

A problem occurred, Elisabeth escaped along with her secrets. Someone named Stanley interfered and rescued her. The plan failed and the teleportation beacon is still guarded by Elisabeth. A targeted assassination is necessary.

-Z

As he received more letters, it became obvious that his mysterious backer was another doppelganger with a desire for power. The language used and the knowledge he was privy to made that abundantly clear.

Roman frowned as he stared at the letters. While Roman had received help from this mysterious backer, the situation has already changed. The new system map alone had completely changed the situation.

The ability to identify doppelgangers allowed him to immediately identify and clear the doppelganger spies put into his ranks and gain complete control.

Staring at the documents, Roman felt disinclined to help this mysterious backer any longer.

Launching an ambush on a prepared target is completely different than an unprepared target. When they’d captured Elisabeth and handed her over to them, that was supposed to be the end of their relationship.

The first ambush on their leader had already resulted in several deaths on their side, even with the advantage of surprise and advanced preparation.

How was he supposed to explain to his group that she had managed to escape? Elisabeth was only supposed to provide information regarding the inner facility before being killed. There never should’ve been a possibility of escape.

Apparently, this mysterious backer was utterly incompetent in this matter and managed to completely screw up the situation.

The people interrogating Elisabeth should’ve just killed her the moment they realized there was the slightest possibility of a rescue operation.

After learning of Elisabeth’s escape and the arrival of the system map, he decisively abandoned all connections to that mysterious backer.

Roman had no desire to be the running dog of anyone. They had been in a mutually beneficial relationship that was supposed to end when he left the zone. The relationship ended earlier because the other sides information had become obsolete.

Unfortunately, after spending some thought on it, he realized that dealing with Elisabeth had become a necessity.

Elisabeth certainly wouldn’t forgive them for capturing her and handing her over to her enemies. She was likely attempting to discover his backer’s identity before targeting his group specifically.

Once she found this mysterious backer, and he had no doubts that would happen, their situation would only become worse. Her power level was on another level compared to the other doppelgangers. She needed to be dealt with.

Hearing footsteps, he covered up the letters with other documents again.

The door opened and a woman entered the room.

Roman recognized the woman and stood upward, “Myra? Something the matter?”

“Everyone has gathered in the courtyard.” She reported moving toward the exit immediately afterward.

“Alright, thank you. I will be there in a couple minutes.” Roman answered before blankly looking down at the papers on his desk.

Picking up all the letters that he’d received from this mysterious backer over the past year, he swiftly utilized his fire manipulation ability to burn them all into ashes.

He’d been saving the notes in hopes of discovering clues to his backer’s identity. However if the notes continued to exist, they could be used as evidence against him or to find his backer. Either situation was not preferable.

Roman left the room and traveled toward the courtyard.

Twenty different people waited in the courtyard for his addressment. Out of the twenty, only seven would be directly useful in a combat situation, excluding himself. The rest would be staying behind.

“I have received bad news. Elisabeth escaped. That person who had caused trouble earlier, Stanley, broke her out of our interrogation cell several days ago.” He informed his group of the bad news, while attempting to deflect the blame as much as possible.

Those who had joined before the brawl understood exactly why this was terrible news and their expressions deflated to reflected the severity of the situation. Others in the crowd simply displayed puzzlement.

Roman took the opportunity to explain the problem, “Elisabeth won’t let us, or anyone involved in her capture escape. We need to deal with her before she chooses to act. A defensive war would put us at a massive disadvantage. Our only option is to assassinate her before she gets chance to retaliate.”

“With that in mind, the attack commences in an hour. We’ll begin with an explosion to open a path into the compound and draw her toward that location…” Roman began explaining his plan.

[Approximately an hour later…]

Roman stood at a safe distance behind cover and blocked his ears. By appearance he seemed to be alone. The explosive device was in position.

Boom!

Explosive debris flew though the air and the ground shook from the explosion.

Roman spoke to seemingly thin air, “It’s showtime people. I’ll hold her attention. Follow the plan, the first strike must be a killing blow.”

His voice carried on the wind, yet nobody responded. The surrounding silence lacked even crickets.  

Doppelganger guards armed with spears soon arrived on the scene. Although the guards noticed Roman and understood he was the  culprit, instead of charging toward him they moved to block the opening.

Their priority was securing the location and preventing the deaths of weaker doppelgangers instead of dealing with the culprit.

Meanwhile Roman’s priority involved killing Elisabeth, it wasn’t worth it for him to deal with these guards. That would be a fruitless endeavor and would force him to reveal his hidden cards early.

Thus a strange scene played out, the guards moved to secure the location exposed by the destruction. Whilst the culprit behind the destruction stood quietly outside.

Neither side acknowledged the other’s existence.

Elisabeth arrived soon after the location had been secured by the guards.

However Roman scowled at her appearance. While he recognized her, Elisabeth's appearance had completely changed. She'd gone from relatively plain and normal to an outstandingly beautiful woman.

What he scowled at, though, was the addition of pure white ears atop her head and tail that seemed to be attempting to imitate some grotesque mutation from supernatural elements.

Roman needed to attract her attention and move her into a more vulnerable position for his people to attack. The best solution was to rile her up and have her make mistakes, Roman attempted to provoke her. “Elisabeth, how was your mandatory vacation in an interrogation cell?”

Instead of Elisabeth responding, another familiar male voice responded, “Bastard, you promised to give me twenty-four hours!”

Roman gaze instantaneously shifted toward Stanley, who stood nearby Elisabeth.

How could he be here? Fate should’ve kept him far away to prevent him from interfering with the battle.

Elisabeth put her hand on Stanley’s shoulder to quiet him down, before responding. “Kidnapping me? Setting of explosives in our city? Do you think us weak and helpless? The powerful from the intelligent races might have learned some new tricks in the face of annihilation to teach their younglings, but that’s pointless if they didn’t teach you all some common sense.”

Although Roman had no clue what she was talking about, he responded as confident as ever, “Common sense, huh? Guess they decided it wasn’t that necessary after all.”

Elisabeth’s anger flared, “Despite your best efforts, there are still powerful monsters in existence. Don’t think your status as one of the intelligent races will be sufficient to protect you when you’ve so blatantly disregarded the rules.”

Roman fell silent.

Clearly Elisabeth understood more about the politics of this universe than he himself did.

It seems he made a mistake in his judgment and his mysterious backer had been less than forthcoming with the actual situation. Elisabeth had restrained herself from retaliating against them in the belief that someone powerful from his race was backing them.

Simply put, while Elisabeth knew they had been responsible, she lacked the necessary evidence to accuse them of breaking the rules to placate his backer.

Now that he’d charged in and placed explosives outside her mansion, Elisabeth had the necessary evidence.

However, Roman probably would’ve made the same choice even knowing the full situation. She needed to be eliminated, otherwise even through diplomatic methods, it would’ve been impossible to leave this zone.

The main problem with the current assassination plan was that Stanley was nearby and could potentially interfere. Even though it should theoretically be impossible for him to interfere, it’s too risky to bet whether that’s truly the case. The easiest way to prevent his interference would be a duel.

Thinking the situation through, Roman challenged her. “I demand a life-death duel.”

Elisabeth laughed at his demand, “And why would I agree to that? You’ve already committed political suicide.”

“Because if you don’t, the people who used the explosion to sneak into your base will start randomly killing doppelgangers inside.” Roman confidently replied.

It was Elisabeth’s turn to fall silent.

After Elisabeth ran through possible scenarios in her mind, she spoke. “Fine, if you want to die that badly. I’ll accompany you.”