While the threads of the conspiracy were being woven in the darkness of the night, Dex spent the passing daylight hours in total immersion within the turbulent fabric of Seiron. He was no longer that pampered young noble, he had transformed into a ghost disguised in the attire of a young mercenary, wearing battered leather armor and bearing sharp, restless eyes, pretending to search for scraps of work in the filthy taverns and narrow alleyways reeking of despair. He gathered information drop by drop, listening to the mercenaries' whispers about delayed wages, the merchants' grumbling about Sylvester's protection rackets, and the commoners' fear that had curdled into a silent hatred.
But during this time, Lumia was performing the mission that no human being could perform, the most dangerous mission, one that required transcending the limits of human senses. Using her supreme celestial ability "Deep Dimensional Vision," Lumia was taking up a position on the highest tower in the poor quarter, an abandoned tower whose walls had crumbled and which no one dared climb anymore, as her observation platform. She stood there, her silver robe billowing like a piece of cloud, extending her magical sight to pierce through the distances and the high stone walls of Williams Palace, transforming the impregnable fortress into a transparent glass structure before her unfailing eyes that read magical frequencies.
Lumia returned to the hideout on the night of the third day, her features pale in a way that inspired concern, as though what she had seen had drained part of her spiritual essence. Silence reigned for several moments as she tried to gather the scattered threads of her vision, then she looked at Dex with a seriousness he had never known from her before.
"Dex, Sylvester is not merely a cowardly traitor pursuing power. He is a mad man gambling with everyone's lives," she said in a voice carrying a sad metallic resonance. She leaned over the hideout's dusty floor and, using a piece of charcoal, began drawing a complex architectural plan in which structure intersected with magical circles. "I have finally discovered the secret of his strange calm, and why he feels absolute security in his den, despite knowing with certainty that everyone, from nobles to commoners, harbors hatred for him. He does not rely on the rusty swords of his guard or the blades of Shadow Organization mercenaries alone to protect his throne."
Lumia pointed with the charcoal to a central point in the palace plan, where Sylvester's private wing was located. "He wears a strange magical necklace made from rare Black Mana Crystal that never leaves his chest even while he sleeps. I have named it the 'Tyrant's Pulse.' This necklace is not merely an ornament or a personal protection talisman, it is a vital transmitter and receiver, sending continuous pulses of Sylvester's own mana to the heart of the city's Grand Defense Array."
Dex's eyes widened in astonishment, and he felt a cold shiver run down his spine. "You mean the Celestial Thunder Array? The magical cannons that my ancestors built centuries ago to protect Seiron from invading armies?"
"Yes, and specifically its modified version," Lumia confirmed with bitterness. "Sylvester has reprogrammed its magical architecture. The necklace is bound to his life and his heartbeat. If Sylvester senses a genuine threat, or if anyone attempts a military coup against him, he can with a single press, or even with the sudden stopping of his heartbeat, activate the heavy magical cannons mounted above the palace walls to bombard any district he chooses in the city and reduce it to ash within seconds. And there is something worse, I discovered the existence of a Self-Destruct Protocol linked to the massive mana reservoir beneath the palace's foundations. Sylvester possesses the ability to detonate the reservoir entirely, which would produce an explosion that erases half of Seiron from the map and kills hundreds of thousands, transforming the city into a volcanic crater."
A heavy and terrible silence descended over the small room, a silence in which heartbeats could be heard. Dex understood in that moment that the rules of the game had changed entirely. A direct confrontation now, or an attempt to storm the palace and assassinate Sylvester publicly in the middle of the Coronation ceremony, might trigger a suicidal response from the traitor, causing a mass massacre of the innocent city inhabitants whom his father and the duchy had sworn to protect for generations. Sylvester was not ruling through love or respect, and he was not ruling through conventional fear, he was holding an entire city hostage, with its women, its children, and its history, behind a shield of energetic madness.
"Sylvester is extremely cautious, and it is his cowardice that drives him to this level of fortification," Dex thought aloud, his mind analyzing the new data at lightning speed. "But like all cowards, he possesses one fatal weakness, his diseased arrogance and his frenzied need to be recognized as a legitimate and beloved ruler. He does not merely want power, he wants to wear the crown that was my father's, wants the crowds to applaud him, wants the senior nobles to bow before him trembling submissively to his will."
Dex straightened where he stood, his eyes blazing with a faint blue light. He understood that Sylvester sheltered behind weapons of mass destruction because he felt threatened by military force, but he might be oblivious to sleight of hand and cunning.
"Theft before assault, then," said Dex in a decisive tone that brooked no argument. "We must wrest the Tyrant's Pulse from him before he realizes the battle has begun. We must strip him of his safety valve at the moment he is at the peak of his distraction, the moment he believes he has finally triumphed and reached the pinnacle of his glory. At the Coronation ceremony, beneath the torchlight and the nobles' cries, when every ounce of his focus is concentrated on his magnificent image in the eyes of others and not on the necklace hanging from his neck, in that moment, we will be the ghosts who steal the detonator from him."