In the throne room of Buckingham Palace, Queen Anne sat in a simple yet ostentatious manner, giving her the whole view of the throne hall. Outside the locked doors was a sound of gunfire ringing from the hallways.

"Your Majesty. We are under attack, we need to get you to the secret passage and evacuate you out of here," the senior officer in the royal guard, Max, urged carefully. Despite the seriousness and urgency of the throne room, the Queen was unfazed and unbothered.

"I will not go anywhere. I will stay here," Anne simply said.

"But Your Majesty..! Your life is in danger. If we don't evacuate you right now then there won't be anyone to succeed you. You have achieved your goal to become the Queen of the Britannia Empire and you are going to waste it here? What will happen to the ideals you wish to implement to the people of the Britannia Empire?" the officer asked, looking up expectantly to the Queen.

"It's true that I have fulfilled my goal and that was only it. The moment I was put into this position after overthrowing my sister, I fulfilled another obligation, which means, my job is done here."

"Your Majesty, with all due respect, you are not making sense to me right now. By staying here, you are asking the enemy to kill you."

"And who is the enemy? How many of them?" Anne replied with a question. "Last time I heard, the palace is well-protected with royal guards in three shifts. And there's not even a report saying that there is a large number of Ruthenian forces coming here as they are busy protecting their battleship. So who is our enemy?"

Before Max could answer that, the huge door of the throne hall opened, revealing five royal guards who stepped into the hall and kneeled.

"Your Majesty, a single person breached through our second defenses. The royal guards inside the palace are linking up to exterminate the threat as we speak."

"Single person? You're saying that one person got past the elite guards of Buckingham Palace?" Anne laughed scornfully. "Max, am I hearing this right? If it's only a single person then how come you have not exterminated it yet?"

"Your Majesty, the man is skilled. So far he had killed fifty Royal Guards, excluding the ones outside the palace grounds.""Oh…" Anne mused. "That skilled huh? Could it be one of the Ruthenian Special Forces? No, probably higher than that."

Anne scoffed softly. "There are 200 royal guards in Buckingham Palace. No matter how skilled a person is, he is still just a human. They wear out and become exhausted. And once that person reached his limits, the royal guards would simply overwhelm him. There's nothing to fret about. Just keep coming at him. Served your Queen well and protected me at all cost."

"Understood, Your Majesty," the royal guards acknowledged her order and left the throne hall.

"Max, I really find it funny that you asked me to leave the palace because of a single person."

"I apologize, Your Majesty. It's just that we don't have effective means of communication among the royal guards," Max explained, which is true. Unlike the Ruthenians, the Britannians don't have a portable radio yet. The only way for them to inform each other is to pass the message from one guard to another until it reaches Max.

The problem with that system is that it relied on a human being and that human being is being killed by an unknown person, which means the message won't get passed along.

The information they got just now must have probably come from one of the survivors. And the number of casualties can be calculated easily based on how far the unknown person has come. If there are fifty casualties inside Buckingham Palace, it means the man had penetrated the second line of defense.

It's a shocking feat from a single person. If he killed 50 elite royal guards then he is certainly a threat. It doesn't matter if the man is alone, the fact that the man did just that is enough justification to evacuate the Queen.

"Your Majesty, this is for safety precautions only."

"I'm telling you, I'm not going away," Anne declared and continued. "You don't have to worry. I can assure you that whoever the person is infiltrating the palace has not come here to kill me."

"How can you be so certain of that, Your Majesty? Do you have an idea of who it might be?" Max asked.

A smile spread across Anne's lips as she thought of one. "There is one…"

The gunshot hadn't yet receded for about ten minutes. And they can tell that the person who broke into Buckingham Palace is getting closer and closer due to the sound of the gunfire.

Max signaled the eight royal guards who were in the throne hall to guard the door outside.

They nodded in acknowledgment and headed outside the throne hall. Max wondered what kind of weapon the unknown person was using. Based on the sound his gun is producing, it must be an assault rifle. The Britannia Empire is still transitioning from bolt-action to assault rifle, and he had seen its capabilities during the demonstration and from the accounts of the war correspondents that documented the Rutho-Yamato War.

That assault rifle fired again, this time it was close as if it just came from outside. Max aimed his Webley revolver at the door and sauntered over to it.

"Unbelievable. Don't tell me he defeated all the royal guards outside," Anne commented calmly.

Max halted his steps when the door suddenly opened. Outside is a bloodied royal guard who collapsed as soon as the door was fully opened.

Max tightened his grip, his finger on the trigger, ready to pull it if a person revealed himself.

Seconds later, an egg-sized ball was thrown into the throne hall from behind the edge of the door. Max's gaze drifted into it, figuring what it was, but the moment he took his eye off the door, he realized his fatal mistake.

*Brrrttt…

Max fell down on his knee and looked down and saw blood gushing out of his body. He weakly examined the ball that was thrown. It turns out, it was a marble, meant to distract him.

He heard footsteps stepping into the floors of the throne hall. He gazed up and saw a man in black, tossing the rifle away and pulling out a pistol from its holster.

The man in black walked up to him and pressed the muzzle to his forehead.

"You fucking—" Max faintly uttered and the man pulled the trigger.

The man in black removed his mask and his ruined armored vest.

Upon removing his mask, Anne saw a good-looking blonde-haired man. She recognized his face. After all, she had seen him in the crown ceremony of her sister. It was the Chief-of-Staff of the Imperial Guard, Rolan Makarov.

"Don't move," Rolan said, aiming the pistol at her. "You are coming with me."