Chapter 181

181 Empty Threat

“What? No!” Hamilton exclaimed and took several steps back from Caspian. “There’s no way I am doing that!”

Caspian gave a mocking smile to Hamilton and then glanced at the sofa. In the blink of an eye, he grabbed the same pistol that Hamilton had used to shoot him and pointed the pistol at his cousin.

He then spoke in a calm yet utterly bone-chilling voice, “Okay, you have two options with you. Either you become my wife’s personal guard for a week. Or you stand there and I will shoot you. But I will close my eyes while shooting you, so the bullet can land anywhere.”

Caspian cocked the pistol, the same way he had seen his cousin doing it before shooting him. He then pointed the pistol at Hamilton’s eyes and said, “And if one of those shiny bullets lands in your pretty eyes, I am pretty sure that you cannot grow them back. So...” He gave a creepy smile again and said in the same chilling voice, “Choose wisely.”

Hamilton sighed in frustration because neither of the options was any less bad than the other. He gave a pleading look to his cousin and asked, “Why don’t you simply snap my neck and call it even?”

Caspian shook his head and pointed the weapon at Hamilton’s heart. “I wonder what will happen if this bullet gets stuck in your heart,” he mumbled with a sinister look on his face.

“Er...” Hamilton gave a nervous laugh and asked, “Let’s not find that out at the moment, okay? You can always test it out on the prisoners at the isolation center. Oh! I know... Why don’t we head there and see if it can also kill vampires?”

Caspian chuckled eerily and shook his head. “Nice try, cousin. But, no. Right now, we are talking about you.”

“Argh!” Hamilton growled in frustration, but he couldn’t argue with Caspian anymore because he already knew this was coming his way.

.....

He drooped his shoulders and finally came to terms with his punishment for being careless earlier. “Okay, then. I will come along with you and the Queen. But I won’t be her personal bodyguard. I will go there as your cousin, nothing more and nothing less than that.”

Caspian smiled and finally lowered the pistol that he had been pointing at Hamilton. “We have a deal then. The carriages will leave at 7 AM tomorrow. Free up your schedule and be there at the castle in time.”

Hamilton furrowed his brows and asked with an unimpressed look on his face, “We are going there by carriage?”

“Yes, unless you want to volunteer to carry my wife all the way to the capital of Xanmar, we need to go there via carriages.” Caspian also further elaborated on the travel plan, “And, we won’t be staying there in Xanmar. We will leave after watching that bastard getting crowned. So, we should be back home by the fifth day. You can inform Aunt Edith accordingly.”

Hamilton heaved a deep sigh as if he had just lost a huge bet. And he sarcastically replied, “Okay, I will be there, Your Majesty.” He further said in a sluggish voice, “Make sure to take care of my diet though. I won’t be carrying my own flasks of blood.”

“I would never keep you hungry, cousin. What do you take me for?” Caspian smiled and looked at the cocked pistol that he was holding. He was happy that Hamilton acted on his impulse earlier because it made his task easier.

Originally, Caspian had come there to the Wintertide Mansion to ask his cousin to accompany him on the journey to Xanmar. As Hamilton was more or less on a similar power level as Caspian, he wanted his cousin to be by his side, in case something bad was to happen on the trip to the enemy kingdom.

Caspian, however, was almost sure that Hamilton would never agree to travel together with him. But taking a bullet to his arm did the trick. So, he was never really angry about the shot that Hamilton fired at him.

Now that it was confirmed that Hamilton would be coming along, Caspian held out his hand with the pistol on it and asked, “Umm... how do we undo this thing?”

Hamilton looked at the pistol with contempt as if that pistol was the reason he ended up getting tangled up with Caspian’s unreasonable demand.

He instantly grabbed it and pointed it at the wall this time. “I guess, like that?” he answered, and pulled the trigger.

However, apart from hearing the sound of the trigger clicking, nothing else happened.

“Huh!” Caspian nodded his head and actually believed that his cousin had nullified the loaded bullet somehow, not realizing that the pistol wasn’t working. However, he pretended to know what his cousin just did and mumbled, “Why didn’t I think of that? It’s pretty obvious.”

Hamilton gave a corner-eyed look to Caspian and grumbled, “I did nothing, you idiot!”

He then immediately face-palmed himself and cursed his fate, “I forgot that you have to manually insert the bullet in the barrel first. This was the sample that was previously loaded by the sellers. Argh! I was afraid that you would shoot me when the pistol was empty!”

“What? I was threatening you by pointing an empty thing at you the whole time?” Caspian laughed at his cousin’s carelessness. “You dumb arse!”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh at me. That’s why I was born, right? To be laughed at by you.” Hamilton gave a glare to Caspian and threw the pistol back inside the box.

After laughing at his cousin for a while, Caspian finally calmed down, and raised an important and serious question, “But hey, what’s the use of that pistol if you have to put the bullet inside it every time you have to shoot a werewolf? By the time you insert another bullet after shooting the first one, they will come at you and bite you.”

Hamilton also agreed that it was the fatal flaw in that marvelous invention. There was no point in bringing that weapon to a fight where even half a second would make a lot of difference.

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“I will talk with the inventors and ask them to come up with an upgraded version of this weapon,” Hamilton reassured his cousin. He looked at the box full of pistols and sighed thinking that they were useless now.

Caspian also clicked his tongue and said in a sad voice, “I was hoping that we could bring a few of those pistols with us on our journey. Although impressive, it’s sad that they aren’t very useful to us.”

Until now, all the royal guards were listening to the conversation between Caspian and Hamilton.

Rupert cleared his throat and asked the King, “Your Majesty, if you don’t mind, may I say something.”

“Yes, Rupert. What is it?” Caspian looked at his guard, expecting him to say that it was late and they should return to the castle now.

However, Rupert dared to give a suggestion to the King, “I think we should still carry one pistol each. We can load it with one bullet beforehand. And we could use it to bluff the enemy. They might get fooled after the first shot is fired.”

Caspian stole a quick glance at Hamilton and nodded his head. “I think that’s also not a bad idea.” He pointed at the box and said to his cousin, “I’m taking all of that. Teach my guards how to use it.”

“Now?” Hamilton raised his brows in disbelief. “It’s already evening. How can I teach them how to use it in such a short period of time?”

Caspian went and sat down on the sofa. He looked at his guards and excitedly asked his cousin, “They are fast learners. Just teach them.”