Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

The whole event came to an end much faster than anyone could expect.

Even Banjay, the mastermind behind this masterpiece of a counterintelligence operation, couldn't stop his awe from spilling over.

The disciples of his master entered the crowd of rioters like their fellows, only to start turning rioting nobles into rotting corpses with every step.

They went about it so casually and with a matter-of-fact attitude, that it took the crowd several moments to even realize they were actively under attack.

And by the time Salicious stepped out from behind the column with his legendary sword brandished and the highest of his disciples on his sides, even the most stubborn nobles had to realize just where their arrogance and focus on self-interest brought them to.

By the time Hyvar and Assa charged up from behind, the whole crowd of rioters already started to break apart. A force that when applied in a single direction could easily power through twice as many royal guards as there were ahead of them turned into a bunch of lambs, free for the wolves from the royal guard to slaughter.

As eager as Banjay was to join in the fray and release some of his pent-up stress and exhaustion upon those filthy former colleagues of his, rationality won his mind over.

In the end, Banjay didn't face Yvern in a fair combat. But considering how Yvern's first move was to surround himself with his bodyguards, this was never going to be a fair duel to begin with.

And mere minutes later, when Assa troopers started arriving near the front of the crowd, leaving nothing but corpses in their wake, Banjay simply smiled at his former colleague.

Suppressed by the hail of arrows from the guards on the upper part of the street, neither the man himself nor any of his soldiers could make a single step ahead.

Not without putting themselves at a risk of getting shot from every possible angle.

Understanding the range of the royal troops, Banjay kept himself just beyond the reach of Yvern, watching with glee how the man struggled to come up with a way to escape the slaughter.

'Show me what kind of man strategy you will come up with!'

Staring at the man… Banjay never got the satisfaction of having him struggle and refuse to give up.

From the instant first of Assa's troopers reached the front of the riot, only a mere minute passed before the entire place swarmed with Hyvar's men.

While the Assa won the race to the front, it was Hyvar's unit that came in with enough punch to shatter the last, makeshift defense of the nobles.

'To think their quirks will show even here, on a damn battlefield,' Banjay heaved a long, exhausted sigh, watching in silence as the royal soldiers somehow noticed the different air around Yvern and opted not to approach him directly.

Matters of supremes should be left to supremes, after all.

"Are you going to cover in the back in fear, or are you going to face me?!"

Seeing the opportunity present itself to his hands, Yvern was damn quick to try to grasp it.

He shook his bodyguards off with an angered wave before grasping the handle of a nearby sword and raising it up, training its point right on Banjay's head.

"That's funny," Banjay suddenly laughed, catching not only Yvern but all of the royal troops by surprise.

Even though he turned out not to be the traitor with aims for putting the patriarch's crown upon his own head…

He still pretty much admitted to orchestrating a staged uprising in order to cull nobles that people were sure to soon call his political enemies.

And regardless of how those people effectively either worked for a foreign power or outright wished for it to conquer their own kingdom, he still not only approved but also orchestrated a fake uprising all with the aim of killing them all.

Or, in much simpler words that the common folk would have a much easier time to understand and remember, for some unknown reason, Banjay just went ahead and slaughtered the flower of the capital's nobility, effectively raising against pretty much half of the kingdom's noble houses.

All those who lost their children, siblings, parents, and other family members in this vicious bloodshed were likely to rise up in an uprising once the news proliferated…

And yet, against all the accusations that would surely soon be levied upon him, Banjay laughed out upon hearing the call to a duel. A call that upon his victory, would mean the other side taking responsibility for the event and paying its price with their own life.

But again, when hearing the challenge, Banjay only laughed out!

"What's so funny?!" Yvern barked, gritting his teeth while trying not to let his emotions get the better of him.

Even without his bodyguards, he was still supreme while his arrogant and treacherous underling never advanced beyond the rank of a promoted ascender.

In other words, the implied promise of taking responsibility for all that happened was mere bait, a lure to have Banjay agree to the fight.

A way to, at the very least, take revenge on the treacherous bastard masked as a convenient way out for him to get out of the current trouble he so willingly put himself in.

So what was Banjay waiting for?

"Back at Basela, your men asked to have a duel first and then we crushed them. But here, we crushed your forces first only to have you beg for the duel now?"

Banjay shook his head as he laughed out right in Yvern's face.

"Yes, we've crushed them. The army besieging Basela is no more," he added as if he didn't make the message plain enough for everyone to understand already. "And with your death here, there will be no one left to pass the news to the empire."

Banjay locked his hands behind his back and stepped a single pace forward, still leaving too much ground between him and his former colleague for Yvern to risk crossing it without getting skewered by arrows from all sides.

"We've blocked the path through the northern crossing and then locked them out of their supplies. Three days later, we simply went in and finished the job. And that means…"

Banjay's smile only grew while murmurs started to move from soldier to soldier as they discussed the news.

The Basela fortress was the one and last reason why the patriarchate could hold back the imperial push. Sitting at the entrance of the one passage through the complex system of Haela mountains. And while it served as a gateway to the patriarchate lands, it sat at a vital crossing that one could use to circumvent a massive swamp to the north.

In simpler terms, whoever controlled Basela's fortress was in full charge of all the various paths that led through the Haela mountains. One of those paths was the main artery connecting the imperial heartlands with the imperial industrial colony, located at a highland plateau just a day's worth of match north from Basela.

And now, with the imperial greatest effort to date to conquer the fortress ending up in a disastrous loss, their industrial colony would find itself cut off from the empire and at the mercy of Banjay's forces that regained full control over the passage.

But the worst part about it all… was how Banjay managed to fully cut the imperials off, stopping the news from spreading which bought him more than enough time to first ransack the entire colony and then, if he only so desired, raze it to the ground.

"The Empire will never stand such an insult," Yvern protested when the royal soldiers finally got the message and rushed in, pressing down on his shoulders to pin the man to the ground. "It might take a year or two, but once they learn of this defeat, two, no, three more legions will come!"

Yvern grew so agitated, that he started to actively resist the guards who were trying to restrain him, as if he wasn't going to give in before saying all that he wanted out loud.

"You struggled with just one legion enough to make defeating it into such a grand victory, so think about what will happen when three, no four more legions will come!"

By the end, Yvern was yelling from the bottom of his lungs. And as his aura bloated, the soldiers had no other choice but to back up, unable to withstand the power of a supreme now that he grew desperate enough to actually use it.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

"But that's a problem for two years into the future," Banjay claimed, refusing to let go of his wide smile as he stood unbothered by Yvern's display of his mighty power. "Also, those idiots," he then pointed at the corpses behind the man, "those weren't the only weeds that we've pulled out today."

As if he couldn't be having more fun than he was having at the moment, Banjay pulled a small sack off his belt, loosening the cord that kept the small sack closed. Then, right as he started to pour high-class chai out of the bag, he called forth a small flame in his right hand, turning the small cloud of ground herb into mere fuel for his flame.

Quite noticeably, the flame's color changed, taking on a whitish hue as it started to consume the extremely small grains of the powdered chai.

"That's not…" Yvern muttered only to then bite down on his teeth.

"That's not the flame that chai would make," Banjay smiled as he confirmed the man's suspicion. "And I'm showing you this because today marks exactly two years since we started to groom new supremes who never tainted their cores with this drug."

Pouring down the rest of the fake chai into the flame of his hand, Banjay closed his fist and then shook it away, as if the mere thought of fake, burned-out chai touching his skin was repulsive.

"You've lost your spies, you've lost your muscles, you've lost the chai's influence, you've lost Basal fortress…" Banjay shook his head before finally bringing his sword down and giving his former compatriot a gaze that finally revealed the unfathomable depths of hate he had for him.

"Now you are going to lose your life, your beloved empire will lose its treasured colony and access to all of Haela's passes. Even further into the future, without access to the colony, your beloved empire will lose its war with the Ancients, and then…"

Banjay shook his head and took a moment to calm himself down before stepping forth and standing at attention before Yvern.

By now the royal soldiers have properly retreated, ready to bear witness to what was about to go down.

"What will happen after all of that… Who am I even to guess?" Banjay continued to reel at the moment, gleefully smiling as he moved even closer to his former companion. "Maybe we will conquer the southernmost provinces, with how hard it will be for your empire to free any legions with the ancients up north?"

Banjay made another step before finally coming to a stop, a mere three paces away from the supreme, well within the sphere of the man's influence.

"Or maybe we will continue our own efforts down south and find a way to cross the impenetrable?"

Banjay smiled at the man for one last time before presenting his sword up to salute his opponent.

"Once again, who am I to tell?" Banjay asked before getting into a proper, fighting stance. "Stand!"