28 CHAPTER 28-Tampered Memories

It was midnight.

Ray opened his eyes after looking through the memories of Claire, after they separated to till then.

Of course, the 'meeting' and 'communication' didn't escape him.

Ray seemed to be deep in thought.

In his second life, people had attacked him during his coronation ceremony, but it was just a minor force led by the corrupt nobles who wanted to blame it on other empires and wage a war, weakening the royals and obtaining greater benefits themselves.

The real reason that he died in the second life was because a few years after he became emperor, a lot of people close to him formed alliances and betrayed him, killing him, and vying to extinguish the royal bloodline, overthrowing the throne.

But now Ray was thinking differently…

'What if the attack during the coronation ceremony was not led by the corrupt nobles?'

He had long questioned how the nobles had convinced the people to be so brave and attack him, but found no reason other than money and slaves.

'But what if the nobles were somehow manipulated?'

'What if the betrayal that killed me wasn't unrelated to the first attack? What if the attack was just a ploy to get his attention while the people controlling the scenes planted people in his palace?'

Immediately as if everything fell into place, he suddenly sat up.

He seemed to understand everything that was going on, but at the same time something confused him.

Standing up, he began walking around the room theorizing his thoughts.

In his second life, someone had manipulated the nobles to hire slaves to attack him and blame it on other empires. While everyone loyal to the crown was busy defending him, the same people infiltrated the palace and somehow planted people in the palace.

And Ray knew how they did it.

Claire.

Yes, the same slave Ray was controlling now.

She possessed the SS rank disguise skill, and the existence devour skill.

The 'Existence Devour' skill worked in a special way. If the host killed someone, he or she could change memories related to the person however they wished. The restriction was that this skill had a one year cooldown.

Claire must have killed someone every year, and replaced them with someone from the outside who infiltrated the palace through the same way the attackers had arrived.

Then she must have warped their existence to believe that the new person was them all along, not drawing any suspicion.

While a new person was replaced every year, the people already in the palace began controlling the minds of the people close to him, in subtle ways without him realizing.

After enough time had passed, and almost everyone close to him were converted and led to go against him, and Claire had replaced high officials from organizations under him with people from the outside, they finally took action and killed him.

'So the two attacks were not related, but led by the same people huh…'

Then in his third life, when Ray went completely out of control and rained blood, almost killing everyone he didn't know well even before he became emperor, they must have retreated and cancelled their plan.

Now Ray had a few questions, but he thought he knew their answers. And they angered him quite a bit.

First, in this life, he had already taken care of the corrupt nobles beforehand, so how did that masked man still continue talking about the slave Claire and their 'plan' like nothing happened?

'The nobles were nothing but a distraction, the person who controlled them must still be within the palace…'

Second, how did they invade the palace? Of course through the teleportation circles hidden for emergencies, but how did they know the location of everything in the palace?

The only place where someone could get information about the defensive magic in the palace and the teleportation circles was in the conference that was held every evening.

His mother held the conference every evening with a few important people of the royal court to ensure the defense and preparation was alright and secure during his coronation.

What if there was a mole? But the palace was huge and one could not precisely remember the location of all the magic circles unless one had recorded it using a magic device…

'But I already taught the mana device detection technique to mom and make sure no one carried anything during any important meeting…'

Right then he remembered the confusion spell Isis was under.

'So someone used a confusion spell on her, sneaked a device into the conference room, recorded the magic circles and planned the invasion…'

Third, how would they manage to cause a distraction now that the nobles had been captured?

Of course, he remembered what Isis told him the night before.

Five children of nobles who were said to have died before miraculously survived a dungeon hunt, escaped from a wyvern and had their names suddenly added to the invitee list to his coronation.

'Hahaha, things keep getting interesting…'

But one question remained. Who were planning all this and why?

From what he saw through Claire's memories, the masked man was called 'Number 14' and she would become the new 'Number 15'.

'So there are at least fifteen people running around in masks and cloaks, doing this charade.'

He had seen how the person who retrieved Claire from the slave trading center was quite strong. Strong enough to fight quite a few high ranked imperial soldiers or even a few instructors. After all, five of them had fended off hundreds of adventurers.

And a few moments ago he had seen at least thirty such people kneeling to the one called 'Number 14', even getting scared the moment there was a hint of seriousness in his voice. It was evident this guy was much stronger than the others.

'And there are fifteen of them at least. Furthermore they have a vice-leader and a leader above them…'

Even Ray had to be extremely cautious of such an organization, especially since he didn't know how strong the top leader was.

But here's where Ray felt confused.

This organization was powerful. Extremely powerful.

It had completely overthrown the royal palace in his second life; they apparently had two SS rank slavers, and somehow even got hold of a one in a million slave like Claire.

Be that the case, how come Ray had never heard of this before?

In his third life, he had razed everything to the ground. He even remembered making a kill list and spending a few years hunting down everyone that had betrayed him.

Ray didn't consider himself above everyone. In his second life he was an utter fool, trusted everyone, believed whatever anyone said and died miserably.

But in his third life?

Ray could without a doubt say that he had the most information than anyone else in the empire.

However, now that Ray tried to remember what exactly he had done during the three years he spent killing the betrayers, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his head.

'….How?'

He couldn't remember anything.

The only thing he could remember was that he spent three years finding and killing people related to the incident, but couldn't remember a single detail.

And thus, Ray came to a conclusion that made his body shiver slightly.

'Someone tampered with my memories.'