Editing Tytania:Volume 1 Chapter 8 (section)

=== III ===
Though Arses held resentment towards Idris, he was the only person he could turn to for help. He dispatched a communication to Idris. At first he had some reserves about doing so, but he could no longer afford to keep up appearances.

In the span of an hour, Arses sent three communications, requesting protection for his ship. This negated Arses’ own precautions of deploying four ships to distract the enemy.

“Arses, if you claim to be a member of the Tytania clan, then protect your own life. Do you think you are entitled to bear the name Tytania simply because of your bloodline?”

Idris’s thoughts were fierce. Both his pride as a member of the Four Dukes of Tytania, as well as his own personal ambitions, made him feel this way. His reply that he would promise to do his was devoid of any sincerity whatsoever.

However, in order to make his trap work, Idris needed to resort to some tricks of his own. He went against Arses’ request and moved his fleet further away and broadcast it subtly on public radio frequencies. It went without saying that he was hoping for the Avengers to intercept it.

However, Idris wasn’t omnipotent. He wasn’t the only one who used decoys.

A small fleet of 13 ships led by Doctor Lee attacked and hijacked a lone Tytanian frigate. He did so by employing a stratagem that was original with a straightforward approach. It could be described as a mixture of strategies. First, ship A, disguised as an innocent civilian vessel, would be pursued by ship B, and would seek out help from the Tytanian ship. Since Tytania’s income mainly came from collecting tolls by guaranteeing the security of civilian ships, the Tytanian ship naturally rushed to the rescue. It then ended up surrounded 13 to 1, with no chance of a fair fight; they had no choice but to surrender.

Thus, a Tytanian frigate was now in Doctor Lee’s hands, but if he was simply going to board this ship to attack Count Arses while disguised as an ally, he would be at most a cunning tactician. He was far more sinister than that. Employing multiple means, Doctor Lee leaked out the information. He informed Idris Tytania that the frigate had been seized by the “avengers”. There was no greater kindness on his part than telling the truth.

Upon receiving this report, Idris thought about the matter. It didn’t take a long time for him to reach a conclusion. The Avengers were likely planning to hijack the frigate, pretend they came as an escort, approach Count Arses’ ship, and attack it. That would mean that the ''Honest Old Man'' was a decoy, and the Avengers were actually on the hijacked frigate. That was Idris’ conclusion. But there might be another twist. Idris did not act rashly.

Idris was no fool. Outmanoeuvering him required multiple layers of psychological traps. Doctor Lee spared no effort in doing so. On the 1st of August, Idris finally mobilised his entire 300-ship fleet and rushed towards the sector where the stolen frigate was located. That was the moment the ''Honest Old Man'' had been waiting for.

On the 2nd of August, at 0:50 a.m., in a region of space 28.4 light-years away from the Celestial City, Count Arses’ ship, the ''Aurora'' came into range of the ''Honest Old Man''’s main guns. Fan Hyulick, to put it in the most extreme way, would have been of mind to blow up all four ships. But the hurried transmissions had given him certainty: this was the ship Count Arses was hiding on.

“Fire port main guns!”

Upon the command echoing, arrows of scorching energy exploded against the hull of the i. That was the first hit. While the ''Aurora'' was certainly armed, it was a spaceship for VIPs to begin with and was supposed to be accompanied by multiple dozens of escort ships. The reason it was alone was to deceive the “enemy”.

Arses’ strategy wasn’t wrong. It’s just that he didn’t have enough resolve to sustain it. If it were not for the excessive amount of communications he sent to Idris, Fan Hyulick would have had a hard time detecting his presence. Safe routes in space were limited to begin with, and the probability of two spaceships encountering each other should have been close to zero. Arses fell from his overly ornate bed with a scream and ordered him to mount a defence and counter-attack.

Spears of light rained down, turning space into a boiling soup of energy. Compared to a head-on confrontation between massive fleets, it was a fairly small soup bowl. But the sheer concentration was entirely different. Energy beams failed to penetrate the hulls and instead scattered and shimmered with iridescent light.

The ''Honest Old Man'' dodged the ''Aurora''’s gunfire, charged forward and closed in, firing energy beams at point-blank range. It relentlessly fired on a single spot. That had been Fan Hyulick’s meticulous command, who was a former artillery officer. The cannons of the ''Honest Old Man'' were few in number and low in power. There was no other method to destroy the enemy ship.

Normally, this wouldn’t have been an interesting battle for Fan Hyulick. A one-on-one duel was child’s play. For a military strategist, the challenge lay in how to deploy and move a fleet, and one-on-one duels were not something a general should involve himself in. However, this time, Fan Hyulick wasn’t fighting as a military strategist. He needed to kill Count Arses before Idris Tytania realised he had been duped and rapidly reversed course with his 300-ship fleet to attack him.

He concentrated his gunfire on a single point. Fan Hyulick gave his orders to the gunners, and Captain Casimir and Miranda, with expert skill, splendidly manoeuvred their ship in spite of the age of the ''Honest Old Man''.

Arses’ desire was to live and die beautifully. He longed for eternal youth and beauty but knew it was impossible. Therefore, he wished for a beautiful death that would leave no ugly corpse behind. But it was only because he had never witnessed death up close that he could have such an abstract fantasy aesthetic.

When asked, noticing on his monitor a soldier whose body had been blown in half by gunfire, his internal organs spilling out of his bloody wound, he vomited. Because Arses was still wearing his mask, the vomit accumulated inside, and, unable to bear the unpleasant smell and gross feeling, he tore it off with his own hands. He ordered a servant to wipe the vomit off his face.

But when the servant saw his master’s face, who once had prided himself on his good looks, he cried out in terror and disgust. Right as Arses, wounded and enraged, was about to shout, the world came ablaze with a white heat. An enemy bullet had struck the engine of the ''Aurora''.

Arses Tytania’s wish was fulfilled. He would have no hideous corpse to expose to the eyes of others. His body was torn apart, burnt, and incinerated by a wave of explosive energy. His young flesh was turned to ash and dust and became a part of the white sphere of energy that enveloped the ''Aurora''.