After the Storm, and Before the Storm (Premium)

by Sakon Kaidou

  One was the contraband supervisor.

  One was the slave trade supervisor.

  One was the intelligence supervisor.

  And finally, there was The Fang, the SJ working as the assassin supervisor.

  They were all part of Mirage, and they all had an extremely important role in the organization.

  At the end of the U-shaped table, there was a platform with a chair placed as high as a person.

  On it, there was a young girl who was looking down at the rest. She was clad in robes you’d expect to see on Huang He’s imperial family.

  The girl wasn’t there by mistake.

  “Excellent. Once the clan in question begins cooperating with us, Huang He will return to me — its rightful ruler,” she said.

  Her name was Hualong.

  She was the current head of Mirage, and had only risen to the role about a month ago.

  She was the only gulong ren besides the current imperial family.

  ◆

  Gulong ren — ancient dragon kin — were the descendants of half-breeds born between ancient dragons and mankind.

  They ruled Huang He as the imperial family, looking after its people as themselves, emperors, or the famed Draconic Emperors.

  However, there was one time when the gulong ren had fought amongst themselves.

  It was the civil war that had come after the Draconic Emperor before the previous one and the emperor had both died within a span of just a few years.

  The gulong ren had been split in two groups, fighting a battle which would only end when the child of the late emperor — which one side claimed had the right to the imperial throne — was born as the Draconic Emperor, who couldn’t simultaneously be both.

  However, there was one problem: the gulong ren faction that had supported the child then attempted to assassinate the emperor.

  The child they’d pushed had no right to the throne, but they believed their faction could still win if they got rid of the emperor.

  With that foolish thought, they tried to kill the new ruler.

  But their plot was exposed before it could happen.

  The one who revealed it wasn’t anyone from the new emperor’s faction, but someone who didn’t even belong to Huang He: it was The Lynx.

  No one knew what the rival of the late Draconic Emperor was thinking when he did this, but the result was clear — the assassination didn’t happen, and all those who were planning it were executed.

  However, there was one person who’d avoided death.

  It was a young girl — the person the assassins had wanted to make the empress.

  She was little, so people assumed that she’d known nothing of the plot, and thus she was the only one of the faction who avoided execution.

  Or perhaps the emperor simply hadn’t wanted to kill a child.

  Regardless, someone related to the assassination plot had no place in the imperial court. Because of that, the child was merely banished.

  Some worried that she could spread gulong ren blood to the outside and that killing her was the better option, while others believed that the optimal course of action was locking her up until she died, but the emperor rejected those ideas and simply banished her.

  Respecting a child’s life was obviously the kind choice, but it became a source of woe for Huang He.

  Over the years thereafter, the girl became a prominent figure in Huang He’s underground society.

  She was a gulong ren, after all. You couldn’t judge her capabilities by human standards.

  Thus, it was clear that she would become a skilled fighter. That might have even been the reason why the emperor had exiled her — he’d known she could make it on her own. Still, he probably hadn’t expected her to join the underground society.

  Anyway, by the time she was an adult, she had great wealth, many subordinates, and something you could call an organization.

  Its name was “Mirage.”

  Indeed, at the center of the infamous Huang Heian mafia, there was an exiled gulong ren.

  The name of the mafia was actually the name for her hideout, a reference to it being an illusion compared to the palace she rightfully belonged in.

  We won’t get there in my generation, she would think as she watched Mirage’s progress.

  “There” referred to the imperial throne.

  Indeed... she was living on while carrying on the will of the would-be assassins from her younger years.

  She planned to exterminate the current imperial family and rise to the top.

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t known anything — people had simply thought she hadn’t.

  And she was still thinking of killing the emperor and becoming the empress herself.

  “It will take us a few generations to grow large enough,” she murmured with dissatisfaction.

  No matter how quickly Mirage expanded, it would never be able to fight Huang He in her generation.

  Thus, she entrusted the plot to her descendants, essentially turning Mirage into a mafia.

  Several centuries had passed since then.

  ◆

  “Everyone, the time has come.” Seated in her throne-like chair, the current head of Mirage, Hualong, spoke to her people.

  Another thing of note about her was her name. The “long” in it, which meant dragon, was actually only allowed on men born into the imperial family, so her having it was just another show of defiance towards the current rulers. All the heads of Mirage had done this.

  “Recently, the inner treasury, which had been sealed for centuries, was opened, and one of the orbs ended up in our hands. With it, we were able to secure the strongest reinforcements. The heavens themselves are telling us that now is the time to act.”

  Many would consider that to be a mere coincidence, but the girl was certain that this was their greatest opportunity yet. Her family had been waiting to take the throne for centuries.

  “The battle to decide the true emperor draws near!” she declared. “That is when the Mirage will become the reality!”

  Thus, she was drawing a picture of the future she desired. The moment that her family would have their revenge for the pain they’d experienced... which was arguably well-deserved.

  They would start a coup d’état and take the imperial throne for themselves.

  It wouldn’t be legitimate, of course.

  The people had no issues with the current imperial family, and their chances of success were low.

  However, Hualong thought she could keep them under control if she simply had the power to do so.

  At the moment, half of Huang He’s Superiors were outside the country. Thus, if the clan she had in mind, which was said to be one of the best, came here and helped, they should be able to overthrow this country.

  At least, that was what Hualong believed.

  It was easy to call her idea foolish. In fact, one might even ask her how she’d come to that conclusion. However, she’d ascended to Mirage’s throne while she was still young. Her predecessor had died prematurely and left her without the knowledge necessary to lead this organization.

  She’d also been taught about her family’s history and the power of Mirage for as long as she could remember, so her conclusion was the only one she deemed possible.

  “Heh heh heh,” she snickered. “I can’t wait.”

  The responses of Mirage’s leadership were varied.

  “I guess we’ll soon be ministers.”

  “I would be fine with just handling money.”

  “So, who do I gotta kill?”

  Some were thinking the exact same thing as Hualong.

  Some were certain of her failure and were thinking about how to survive.

  Some were simply trying to do their roles regardless of Hualong’s ideals.

  With even her most trusted people being this divided, it was natural to expect infighting, too. However, compared to the chaos that would befall the people soon, any infighting was nothing. They were about to repeat the civil w
ar from three centuries ago — the greatest conflict in Huang He.

  As they pictured the upcoming battle, a voice that didn’t fit the scene reached their ears.

  “Hello and good evening to all of you, my dear fooools!”

  Hualong and her underlings looked at its source — the only entrance to this place.

  A woman was standing there.

  She was unbelievably beautiful.

  If human beauty was like a work of art, hers would be a treasure that would be talked about for centuries, if not millennia. It was the golden ratio of beauty, pushing the very limits of human attractiveness. Her voice, too, was as pleasant as a feather tickling the earlobes. While beauty was in the eye of the beholder, hers would surely be considered perfect by many.

  The people of Mirage were no strangers to beauty and pleasure, but even they were overwhelmed by her beauty.

  However, those who kept their sanity felt something completely different.

  “Fenghuang... Phoenix!”

  “Dancing Princess, Huili!”

  The experienced fighters on the scene shouted her name, bringing the ones bewitched by her beauty back to reality.

  That was just how big of a deal her identity was.

  “That’s meee!” the woman called. “I’m Huili, the leader of Huili’s Army of Fools!”

  Huili Yuminjun or Huili’s Army of Fools was the clan at the top of Huang He’s clan rankings, anomalous in that every member there was a devotee of Huili, the Superior at the top.

  No clan in Huang He matched their numbers or quality.

  Hualong raised her voice from atop her false throne. “What do you want, Superior?!”

  Huili wasn’t shaken by her demeanor at all. “Oh my. Are you Mirage’s young leader? Aren’t you just the cutest little cutie pie. You’re not as pretty as me, though.”

  “You wretch!” Hualong became angry at her behavior.

  “Hey, hey, hey, by the way, listen up. You aren’t gonna believe this, but...” Huili said, making Hualong even more angry. “The emperor requested that I come here and destroy Mirage!”

  Those words made Hualong’s anger instantly fade as she squeezed out a “Wh-What...?” “So yeah, here’s how it is. Until now, he thought that Mirage was such a big deal that destroying it would be even worse than just leaving it, but with the whole orb thing, them getting outside the country, and that little coup you’re planning, he decided that he couldn’t ignore you anymore. The bad from leaving you is worse than the bad from destroying you.”

  She spoke like a little girl with limited intelligence, but her words had endless importance to Mirage, for they implied that Huang He knew about them having an orb, using it in a trade, and their coup.

  All of these were top secret matters. The only ones who were supposed to know them were the high-ranking Mirage officials here. Not even the leader of the Caldinian branch had been told about it.

  In fact, he hadn’t even been told of the organization’s ultimate goal. He was far too normal — unfit to take part in their ambition.

  Regardless, the Mirage leaders present were now suspiciously eyeing each other. They wondered which one of them had leaked the information, but none of them seemed to have a clue.

  There was no lie there; none of them had told anyone about this. Even those who’d considered betraying Mirage hadn’t made a move yet.

  “By the way, we got this info from the DIN,” added Huili.

  “Those damn paper salesmen!”

  The DIN was an information organization with no borders. Mirage certainly hadn’t anticipated them having and selling info about the plot of Huang He’s most secretive group.

  “Aaanywayyy, His Majesty’s also giving us a good reward, so it’s bye bye to Mirage!” All smiles, Huili eyed Hualong and her people. Her smile bewitched some of them, while terrorizing the rest.

  They all understood that that smile meant nothing pleasant. It carried in it the will that could tear them apart.

  “Ah. I’m sure you fighting types probably realized it already, but...”

  Huili took out one of the two fans on her waist and used it to point at the ceiling.

  “...there’s no one alive upstairs.”

  Mirage had had a total of over two hundred fighters on the surface and on the path leading here, and Huili was saying that they had all been dealt with.

  One of the battle-focused Mirage officials and The Fang, who was in charge of security, already knew they were dead due to no one having come here to deal with Huili.

  “Just how many did you bring?” Hualong demanded.

  “No one. It’s just little darling me. You’d see me coming if I brought an army, and I made my Five Generals go crush all the other Mirage branches in Huang He.”

  “What?!”

  The Five Generals were the strongest members of Huili’s Army of Fools, which put them among the country’s strongest Masters, as evidenced by them taking ranks three to seven on Huang He’s duel rankings.

  There were two reasons why the leaders here were shocked.

  First was the fact that such powerful people had gone to crush the branches they were supposed to be in charge of, and the second was that Huili was capable of silently killing a whole two hundred of their fighters without her generals at her side.

  “And that’s why Mirage is over,” Huili went on as she equipped two fans.

  It was her Superior special reward of “Phoenix Wings, Suling Er.”

  At that moment, one of the officials made a move. It was The Fang, who had a Superior Job focused on dagger use.

  He had an AGI build, so he was able to move behind Huili at a supersonic speed and use the fang-like dagger in his hand to attack her neck...

  ...only to lose his head and both of his arms.

  “Don’t touch my hands, okaaay?” the woman sang.

  “...Eh?” Hualong voiced her confusion at The Fang’s vanished head and arms.

  She knew him very well. He was her bodyguard and an assassin who’d sent many of her enemies to their graves.

  She trusted him more than anyone else here, and he was now lying in a pool of his own blood, leaking from the places where his head and arms were supposed to start.

  “Oh dear, I’m gonna get blood all over me. Maybe the head was enough?” Huili said as she made a troubled face.

  In her hands, she held two bloody fans, making it obvious what happened — she’d killed The Fang using those as her weapon.

  “I-It can’t be...” Hualong panicked. “The Fang... He was our strongest...”

  Her subordinates were shocked, too.

  “N-No way... wait... but the Dancing Princess wasn’t a vanguard...”

  “She was this powerful? She wasn’t at the top just because of her looks...?”

  No one could blame them for being surprised.

  As famous as Huili was, she wasn’t known for her battle prowess.

  It was widely believed that she was at the top of her clan only due to her supreme beauty, and that she only had a Superior special reward because her clan had played a big part in the battle against the SUBM.

  That was the consensus among Huang He’s tians. The fact that Dancing Princess was neither a vanguard nor a rear guard job played a part in that perception, too.

  The belief about the Superior special reward was ridiculous, though, for the MVP had to be someone who’d contributed to the UBM battle directly, not through someone else.

  But even then, no one could blame them, for it was hard to believe that someone this beautiful could be such a monster.

  “The Fang, huh?” Huili muttered as she looked down at The Fang’s corpse. “Hmm... do we have anyone who could take that job among my fools? It’s a ‘The One’ job, though, so it’ll probably be hard. Will I free up any more Superior Jobs after I take care of you all?”

  She looked at the remaining officers as if evaluating them.

  ◆

  On this day, Huili’s Army of Fools and Huang He’s military
focused on completely destroying Mirage.

  The info provided by the DIN was very clear, so they were able to eliminate all the Mirage bases in Huang He and the people working there.

  They were all either killed or arrested.

  The same applied to those in the main branch.

  The two hundred fighters were either killed or captured, while out of the eight officials that’d gathered, three died, two committed suicide, and three gave themselves in.

  And most importantly, Hualong was arrested.

  After losing everything her family had worked for in but a blink of an eye, the girl looked as though all emotion had left her.

  Thus, centuries of a grudge that had almost sparked a new civil war was cleaned up like the most insignificant triviality.

  Then again, compared to what would eventually happen on this continent, it really was a triviality.

  ◆◆◆

  A certain clan’s info transmission

  Time: March 28th, 6:32AM (Global Standard Time)

  Notification: From Zeta to all I.F. members.

  Report: Failed to retrieve Treasurebeast Orb containing Thundershield Beast, Dangai.

  Reason: Destruction of the other party, Mirage.

  Details:

  The Caldinian branch was suppressed by The Ace and one other (no details available).

  The main branch in Huang He was destroyed by Dancing Princess.

  The other branches there were destroyed by Huili’s Army of Fools and the military.

  Addendum:

  Dancing Princess isn’t the only one making notable moves in Huang He. The emperor found out that other orbs had leaked to Caldina and ordered the Commander-in-Chief to go retrieve them.

  Powerful people from Legendaria and Tenchi are moving towards Caldina, too.

  It is unknown whether that is related to the current main subject, but the possibility cannot be ignored.

  It appears that Caldina will soon host battles over the orbs.

  It is unlikely that any faction will cooperate with any other.

  Conclusion:

  Just as planned. By giving six of the seven orbs I’d stolen to tian organizations which then took them from Huang He to Caldina, I successfully achieved the intended goal.

  The info reached many people, making widespread chaos inevitable.