Chapter 54: Cursed Star Poison

Chapter 54: Cursed Star Poison

A room inside the military academy.

There, a nobleman from the Berkley family confirmed the contents of a suitcase that his followers had brought.

This is the cursed star poison?

Inside of the suitcase was a capsule that contained a purple liquid.

The liquid inside of it was poison.

Try your best to avoid contact with it. Rather than poison, its more of a curse.

So this thing will really curse whoever I use it on?

The underling began to explain how the cursed star poison worked,

If you use this, you can kill Liam without ever being found out. The power of the curse is no joke. Its the literal materialization of those who were burned alive when their planet was destroyed.

When a planet was destroyed, all living beings residing on it were killed as well, this liquid was the manifestation of their negative feelings.

If you were to ingest it, youd suffer from its powerful curse until you died.

The only way to treat it would be to use an elixir, and if you didnt have one available, you were finished.

If enough time had passed, even elixirs wouldnt be able to save you, leaving death as your only escape.

father and the rest of those old men are acting too conservatively. Ill be the one to kill Liam, which in turn will allow me to rise as one of the familys executives!

The follower lowered his head.

At that time, please dont forget to give me credit.

I know. Anyways, where did you even get this from?

With a sly grin, the henchman gave an unexpected name.

Do you know the Planet Restoration Activist Group?

Ive heard of them.

Theyre actually dealing with these items under the table. While theyre a charity organisation on the surface, in truth they illegally steal various things from the destroyed planets. They dont take that planet restoration crap seriously.

While they did have the capability to do so, they tried to avoid revitalising the planets if possible.

Instead, they dealt with and moved illegal goods for enormous profits.

Well, that doesnt really matter to me. So I just need to put this in Liams meal?

The capsule itself will melt, but its contents will be undetectable. If you mix it into soup, itll just be mistaken for another ingredient.

hehehe, this day will be that guys last.

Interrogation room.

The person sitting opposite to me was the brigadier general of the military police.

Such a guy was taking an imputant attitude, treating me like the criminal responsible for the recent death in the academy.

Count, Ive heard that you were currently quarrelling with the Berkley family.

The brigadier general was choosing his words carefully, despite the fact that I was still only a cadet.

I was that powerful afterall.

However, I was innocent, so I wish theyd stop treating me like the culprit already.

Whats the basis for these accusations? Wheres the evidence that shows that Im the killer?

The dead cadet was a member of the Berkley family.

What about it? Theres a lot of people with the Berkley surname. How am I supposed to know which Berkley youre talking about? Or are you just trying to pick a fight with me?

In the first place, the fact that some cadet died didnt interest me at all.

And beyond the interrogation room door

You bastard! To actually lock up Lord Liam like this! Ill kill you! Dont think you can just imprison someone with no evidence and get away unscathed!

Marie was yelling out while using vulgar language.

It seems that the military police were forced to gather just to hold her down.

Please calm down!

We have permission from the academy for this!

Were only checking his alibi!

Listening to such words, I turned to the brigadier general in front of me.

So its your personal judgement thats determined me to be the criminal?

Well, no matter how you look at this situation

Just because Ive declared myself hostile to the Berkley family, Im the murderer?

I hate false charges.

It reminds me of being falsely accused of things during my previous lifes divorce.

A new person appeared outside the room.

The imperial palace.

The prime minister could feel his temper rise as he read the report from the military academy.

His subordinates around him were nervous.

who approved the handling of cursed star poisons treatment without authorisation?

Questioning his subordinates, the prime minister wondered what punishment would be appropriate.

The problem was that the offending party was connected to the Berkley family.

Any normal punishment would bring various troubles.

It was necessary to crush their status first.

Normally, the execution of their house would be appropriate, but one house is but a small fraction of the whole Berkley family.

Even though they were a collection of small barons, together they held the power of a ducal household.

Since they were a gathering of baron houses, even if they punished one of them, itd just be like cutting the tail off a lizard.

The Berkley familys no, Cashmiros neck couldnt be touched.

How did they prosper so far you ask? Besides the fact that theyre the only stable supplier for elixirs, they had also received much favour from the former Emperor.

They approached his majesty with gifts of elixirs, and in return he covered-up all their illegal deeds.

Before he had even noticed it, they had grown too large, bringing many headaches to the prime minister.

He had to crush the Berkley family for the sake of justice, they were growing too powerful in the Empire.

They had that much influence.

I wont be able to reach Cashmiros neck at this rate.

Yes. In that case, wouldnt it be better just to accept his existence and receive the elixirs he offers instead?

Id rather die.

The prime minister placed many expectations for Liam in his heart because he knew that he had the power to overcome this situation.

If the Empire could move, theyd be able to easily solve this problem, but they were too big and couldnt react quickly enough.

And once they started moving, itd be difficult to make them stop.

Because they couldnt easily move, this situation would eventually lead to the Empires collapse.

A subordinate gave a report on another matter.

Minister, because weve recently replenished our stock of rare-metals, the military is asking to replace their lost fleets.

what theyre asking for is impossible.

The Empire wasnt the only intergalactic country out there.

There were neighboring countries adjacent to them, and even if you said there was quite a distance between them, they still had trades and disputes with them.

Naturally, they had armies stationed on the borders to solidify their defenses.

Sometimes they even invaded and conquered their enemies territories.

But the Empires large size only meant that they had more borders they needed to protect. Furthermore, there was always a war happening somewhere.

Resources were being used faster than they could replenish them.

Rare metals were needed in the all-important engines for ships.

Substitute metals could also be used, but due to the obvious difference in performance, there were many requests for ships built using rare metals on the front-line.

The army heard that Liam had recently sold a lot of rare metals to the Empire, so naturally, they took this chance to petition for resupplies.

The prime minister looked at the results from the most recent war.

Were being pushed on various fronts.

One of his subordinates explained why,

There are various reasons, but I believe the main one being that resources arent being used efficiently. There are cases of patrol fleets being increased to sizes far larger than necessary.

Patrol fleets.

They were important forces that protects imperial territory, among them were fleets directly prepared by nobles.

Those cases happened when an aristocrat didnt want to subordinate themselves to another, immediately becoming the commander of the fleet they arranged after they graduated from the academy.

While others had histories of preparing fleets full of obsolete equipment so theyd be relocated to areas free of strife they could laze about in.

In anycase, there was a rise in wastefulness.

Some of them had even deserted to become pirates, turning into a problem that needed to be dealt with quickly but they didnt have the budget, the staff, nor the resources needed to do so.

What a headache. Itll cost money to reorganise them, but we cant afford it.

Their dissolve wont fix everything, there was also the handling of their fleets equipment and the reassignment of their personnel to consider afterwards.

In the first place, there were multiple patrol fleets that were poorly controlled, where the soldiers werent even properly trained.

A fleet that didnt conduct training regularly quickly lost its skill, so conditioning was absolutely necessary.

The strength of the Empire was enormous, but they werent omnipotent.

Now, what else is there?

The prime minister was stressed by the problems that endlessly popped up, one after another.