088.5 Sidebar: Present Day, the Four Heavenly Kings

Two posts today. Short one.

"Prince’s been taken out, it seems."

"Fufu… He was the weakest among the Four Heavenly Kings…"

"Defeated by a natural-born prince? A disgrace to our bloodline…"

Three avatars sit around a circular table in a secret conference room set within the neural network.

Looks like the remaining three of the Four Heavenly Kings.

"So, was the Prince rescued in time?"

"Even if he only saved his life, brother… I did that."

"You used the Personal Ship, didn’t you?"

"Never thought I’d end up deploying the ace against the First Prince… there…"

"Did the First Prince catch on?"

"That speed of cleanup afterward… How much did he already know?"

One of the Four Heavenly Kings appears to be the Prince’s older brother, who sent a mysterious Personal Ship to rescue him.

The other two are unquestionably bloodline princes, descended from the Emperor.

The conversation grows increasingly ominous. Seems even the First Prince is now a target.

"Prince being disowned… and his lands handed to Akira? That stings."

"Even if it’s the frontier, those territories were rich in resources—plenty of meat on the bone."

"Can’t we somehow thwart this… again?"

"Both the stewards and nobles are already under our thumb."

"Akira’s a novice. He wouldn’t know the first thing about governance."

"That’s… a crack we might just exploit."

The Four Heavenly Kings’ scheming continues.

And what of the surviving Prince? And the true identity of the mysterious savior? What’s their fate?

Starting next chapter, we begin the new arc: “Lord of the New Domain” (tentative).