How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 418

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Let me think first.

 

Would it be alright to tell the Austrian-Hungarian police the answer? At this point?

 

First, my current situation is as follows. I cannot return to Germany and threaten them with ‘tell the Austrian government the truth immediately.’ There are two major reasons why I cannot do that.

 

First, the one who made this decision in Germany right now is none other than Adrian Ascanien. The orders given by all the government-military personnel I’ve seen, including the Commander, essentially came from the brain of the 89th Ascanien, and his decisions are the optimal conclusions in themselves—if someone other than Adrian Ascanien arbitrarily reinforces the orders, they will inevitably become worse than the original. Though the government officials would never admit it themselves, in the end, those ordinary people who are a dime a dozen merely received action guidelines from a simple and clear one-line judgment made in seconds by a strategist born with natural talent. Everything starts with knowing the level of myself and the enemy. I try to keep numerous possibilities in mind, but I have no choice but to assign an extremely low percentage to the possibility that Adrian Ascanien’s decision is wrong. As he has done all his life, he will once again achieve victory against the Empire’s political circles this time.

 

Second, it is always right to minimize the truthful information shared with the enemy. This is the most fundamental and natural reason why I do not object to Adrian Ascanien’s decision, and I touched on this earlier. Under the premise that the next matter is not bluffing or operational deception but a tearfully pure fact, to make the altruistic, extraordinary, seemingly unprecedented choice that will go down in modern history books in various senses of ‘we have decoded your cipher and are already tracking you,’ first the return we gain from disclosing information must be certain enough to offset the risks and more. Only then can we avoid opening a new chapter of foolish moves.

 

Regarding this, I asked myself earlier: ‘But the situation is different now. If we might be completely ruined, shouldn’t we borrow others’ help?’

 

However, the answer was clear. We must not forget the saying that too many cooks spoil the broth. The situation where collective decisions move away from the optimal choice point when the number of uncontrollable variables increases exponentially is ancient enough to be passed down as a proverb. We cannot control the dozens, hundreds, thousands of nodes that will extend from a single low-level civil servant in the information war, and that is precisely why the German Empire selected only two people to send to Austria.

 

To summarize:

 

First, considering the possibility that there might be a culprit somewhere among the Austrian-Hungarian government—Imperial Court—all subordinate agencies, we must refrain from sharing information.

 

Second, even if there are no culprits in the government and related agencies, we should refrain from sharing. The moment we cooperate with the Austrian government and tens of thousands of police under them, news of the Atropos cipher is bound to leak somewhere and will inevitably be disclosed to the outside in some way. If someone capable of keenly reading market trends belongs to the culprit’s side, the situation becomes even more difficult for us.

 

Then why should I give the answer to this ‘government investigator’ now?

 

First, I cannot run away with the stand. Taking it isn’t the problem, but what to do after taking it and how to handle the aftermath is the issue. Of course, we can physically return to Germany immediately and hand the stand over to the German Investigation Bureau (a). But if we do that, the Austrian Investigation Bureau will discover that the stand suddenly disappeared from the room, and rumors will spread that ‘since there was a clue on the stand, the culprit must have tried to destroy evidence’—a half-correct answer. We can sufficiently predict that even if we frame Markus, the same result will ultimately be produced. The culprit, who will be closely watching the case’s progress, will also learn this fact, and to put it another way, the culprit will be convinced that the encirclement is closing in on them through someone stealing the stand.

 

To visualize it, we are standing in a wide-open plain and the stand thief is in a dark forest that can observe that plain. Keeping this image in one corner of our thoughts and thinking from the Prime Minister’s killer’s perspective, we can clearly envision what choices the culprit might make going forward.

 

Therefore, I handed the stand over to the government investigator (b). The government investigator will collect fingerprints from here, share that record with superiors, and proceed with the investigation based on that. The stand might disappear during this process, but that’s not a concern at all—rather, it’s good news. There’s no need to think further about why it’s good news. Rather, if we’re going to worry, the problem would be if the culprit chooses to blow up the Austrian Imperial Court immediately instead of removing the stand, but this possibility existed equally before. Since we’re trying to move in a direction that increases the possibility of returns while accepting inevitable risks, it would be beneficial not to be frightened by risks at this point.

 

Now, let’s visualize (b). We are carrying luggage in a plain where our actions are clearly visible, and the culprit is in a highland forest. Although we’re narrowing the encirclement, the advantage still lies with the culprit since the subject suspecting the stand is just an investigator. Even if we frame the investigator in case (a), the stand ultimately doesn’t remain in the investigator’s hands, so the culprit realizes a third party has intervened in the case, but in case (b), that’s not the case.

 

To reduce it to a single thought, how I should handle the stand between (a) and (b) can be explained as the difference between ‘breaking through the wall from outside to go in and come out’ and ‘breaking through the wall from inside to go out.’

 

“Fingerprints? What do you mean? Surely not this glass…?”

 

Markus’s junior looked at the stand with a puzzled face. He found it strange that I suddenly pointed to the stand. This was an item that had been judged as having no investigative value, like the celadon porcelain or sachet, so it was inevitable.

 

“Yes. Right now if possible. Time is of the essence.”

 

“Huh? Ah, yes. I’ll collect them right away. But why…?”

 

Without answering, I passed by him, went outside, and stomped my foot to warp. Since I couldn’t look strange, I somehow put strength in my legs and stood. Arriving like that, I entered the hotel with urgency and for once inwardly criticized the slow elevator. The needle pointing to the numbers moved too slowly.

 

Ding—

 

As soon as the door opened with a clear bell sound, I hurriedly ran to room 6013. Standing there holding my breath, after a moment Narke’s voice pierced my mind.

 

—”Come in.”

 

Markus, the room’s owner, went to the bathroom again. I’m sorry for keep sending him to the bathroom, but it can’t be helped. I handed the investigation record to Narke, hung my jacket and robe back in their original positions, and plopped down in my seat. I didn’t forget to dispel the remaining mana either.

 

Like that, we conversed until Markus politely said with his own mouth ‘I should get some sleep now,’ then returned to our room.

 

“Hah…”

 

Perhaps having used too much mana for 10 minutes, Narke immediately released the illusion magic and collapsed face-down on the bed. We had indeed overdone it all day today. At the end, didn’t we even have to create a new person…? Since the ‘me’ manifested through divine power had to be included in the conversation with Markus, I can’t even fathom how much strength was exhausted. Without time to encourage him to rest, he suddenly got up, covered his nose, went into the bathroom, and soon returned to the room with a clean face.

 

“…Are you okay?”

 

“Of course~ I’ll recover quickly with a little rest.”

 

Narke took out the elixir Leo had given him, downed it in one gulp, and plopped down on the bed. He offered me an elixir too, but I already had some—I had put what I carried in my belt clutch into my suitcase—and since we couldn’t bring much due to security issues, I had to save it. No, actually I should give all of mine to Narke.

 

“Now then, Lucas.”

 

Narke looked at me with a face asking me to tell him what I had seen. I started the story with words he would understand.

 

“The Prime Minister was indeed poisoned.”

 

This is the problem. No one put poison in the Prime Minister’s food, tea, water, or alcohol, so how exactly did the Prime Minister rot away and disappear? Narke asked me with a serious face devoid of humor.

 

“Then how?”

 

“The stand.”

 

“…”

 

“The Prime Minister arrived at dawn, turned on the lights, was working, and died from poisoning that spread rapidly due to heat.”

 

“…The stand. That’s surprising. Why did you think that?”

 

“When you ask like this, I always wonder where to start…”

 

“From the beginning.”

 

“From the beginning. You can just use insight.”

 

Saying that, I looked at Narke’s red eyes with burst blood vessels and felt a bit sorry, so I opened my mouth.

 

“…Right, as soon as I entered the room, I found ugly porcelain. Really bad taste. And there was a sachet in the wardrobe, but that wasn’t my taste either.”

 

“Hahaha, that’s a unique investigation method.”

 

“There was nothing particularly strange about the window or desk, and when I stood in front of the desk and looked up, the light in the second quadrant of the chandelier was slightly dim. I thought maybe maintenance wasn’t done very well.”

 

“So, what happened next?”

 

“I checked mana while examining the fountain pen. There was no particular problem. So this time I checked the stand. The lever was turned to the on position, but no light was coming out.”

 

Narke stared at me without saying anything. I looked into his golden eyes the same way and said.

 

“I thought the mana lamp cartridge was depleted, so I first disassembled the cover, but the cartridge’s mana was sufficiently charged, and what was inside was no different from ordinary mana lamp cartridge mana. The color was also just as it was dyed when shipped.”

 

“At least as far as you could tell, it was just a cartridge with no special abilities.”

 

“Right. The culprit wouldn’t have touched the cartridge in the first place. The stand was broken.”

 

“…”

 

Despite me jumping directly from A to Z, Narke immediately understood my words and had sharp eyes.

 

Let me think more about the part I omitted telling him:

 

If Atropos had been put in the cartridge, the mage investigators would have felt the mana flowing out above the lampshade. Even if the drug was made so that mana couldn’t be felt, clear evidence called a cartridge would remain at the scene, creating unnecessary risk for the culprit.

 

P. Yes, don’t most criminals leave evidence at the scene like that? Crucially, consider that the Investigation Bureau also showed no interest in the stand. The culprit has sufficient reason to think ‘it’s a bit dangerous, but worth trying to swap the cartridge,’ and the Austrian Investigation Bureau’s inadequate thinking supports this.

 

S. I’m reasoning under the premise that the Prime Minister’s killer is at our level. I should also consider the possibility of overestimating his level, but we know the culprit had the ability to infiltrate the Prime Minister’s residence. If the culprit touched the cartridge, it’s reasonable to think he also touched the cartridge after the incident. Swapping the cartridge, that is.

 

If that’s the truth, I might be looking at a cartridge the culprit swapped and returning to confidently claim to Narke ‘there was no poison in the cartridge.’ There was even a 30-minute window between the Prime Minister’s death and the secretary entering the office.

 

There’s a blind spot here. If he had the ability and leisure to swap cartridges, the culprit has no reason to leave a broken stand at the scene.

 

We must note that the stand wasn’t originally broken but ‘became broken’ during the incident. Even someone who uses strange-looking celadon porcelain as interior decoration would naturally have someone fix a stand that’s not producing light when it’s currently in use.

 

We remember the positions of the window, table, and chair, and the size of the room. Even with indoor lighting, the office is large and the chandelier alone is insufficient. This causes no problem in daily life, but when sitting at a desk examining paper documents, it causes a different dimension of fatigue. The office chair is positioned to sit with one’s back to the window. Even at noon when light comes in well, the body blocks the documents, so desk lighting is essential, and the incident even occurred in the dark dawn. The stand had been on continuously since the Prime Minister came to work and was broken today ‘while being used in the incident.’

 

In other words, we can conclude that the culprit who brought Atropos to the residence could not access the scene after the incident. Returning to a more fundamental question, the culprit did not put Atropos in the cartridge.

 

It didn’t take long to think. Just as I was about to move on to the next topic, in those few seconds, Narke grabbed his forehead and closed his eyes.

 

“…Right, Lucas. I understand well that you didn’t touch the cartridge. So what’s next?”

 

“…I’ll tell you in words. But you didn’t need to do that with words just now.”

 

“Haha, that’s true, but it seems like more stories are flowing in your head.”

 

Narke rested his head deeply on the pillow and continued.

 

“I’m curious what you’re thinking~ So, keep explaining.”

 

“The cartridge was in normal condition, but the glass passage that sends mana from the cartridge to the light artifact was damaged. Whether it was mana residue or melted glass, it looked slightly blackish depending on the angle.”

 

“The glass passage was damaged…”

 

“That’s how it looked. But seeing that the stand’s protective glass wasn’t damaged at all, that glass tube probably wasn’t melted but blocked by mana residue. But here’s the problem.”

 

“Why would mana residue clump in the tube between the cartridge and light artifact?”

 

It wasn’t what I said. At Narke’s words, I snapped my fingers.

 

“Exactly. As you can tell just from hearing it, that’s not a structure someone can remove and block piece by piece. Why should mana residue get stuck in the glass tube? Cartridge mana is originally made not to clump. As you read through insight, there’s no way the culprit touched the mana lamp cartridge.”

 

I continued speaking almost muttering while resting my chin on my hand.

 

“Only this remains. The culprit applied poison to the glass surface of the desk lamp.”

 

“…”

 

“The poison’s mana on the glass surface spread to the Prime Minister and simultaneously spread into the mana lamp stand, and that external mana blocked the path for the compressed mana from the mana lamp in the cartridge to come out. There was one more thing that bothered me earlier. Why was only the light in the second quadrant of the chandelier dimmer than other lights?”

 

Entrance—chandelier—desk—chair—window. I know this was the structure when viewed from the side. Assuming sitting in the chair, look at the ceiling. The second quadrant is the left side, specifically the desk side, not the entrance side. For right-handed people, the stand should be on the left side of the desk, and it actually was.

 

The poison applied to the stand’s protective glass affected not only the stand and Prime Minister but also the room, albeit weakly, and the chandelier light at the closest distance was more hindered than other lights, like the cartridge glass tube being blocked.

 

“Good choice. Working people’s desks inevitably have stands… To apply poison in a place people wouldn’t greatly suspect.”

 

At those words, I briefly had 21st-century-like thoughts, then quickly set them aside and covered my thought circuits with other thoughts. Then I leaned against the headboard and said.

 

“It’s a newer method than putting poison in tea or wine. They really didn’t want to get caught.”

 

Good.

 

This was easier than the training I completed at headquarters. That was also troublesome not because it was complex but because I had to move around directly, and anyway, that required going around the city, but this was a problem that could be solved in one room. However, the problem was that it wasn’t actually finished in one room. Now I had to find out who applied Atropos to the Prime Minister’s stand, where that person hid the ‘100 barrels of Atropos,’ and how they were able to infiltrate the Prime Minister’s residence. As you know, everyone who set foot in the Prime Minister’s residence was interrogated, and no one was caught, right?

 

There were faint traces of something applied to the lamp, and soon the Investigation Bureau would collect fingerprints and compare them with fingerprints of civil servants and various people registered with the government. They might have worn gloves thoroughly, or perhaps their fingerprints aren’t registered. Unless someone who wears glasses grabs the lens with their fingers when putting on glasses, ordinary people don’t grab the bulb inside the lampshade to adjust the stand’s angle, so collecting fingerprints from the protective glass would only yield the culprit’s. So the possibility that they wore gloves when applying Atropos to the glass would be extremely high. Even using various methods, the culprit who killed the Prime Minister might not be revealed immediately, but…

 

From the moment I had them investigate the stand, the die was cast. Having thrown the bait, the opponent cannot escape from the battle of wits. Even without knowing fingerprints, all of the opponent’s choices become clues for us.

 

The culprit might think they’re ‘looking down at the Austrian investigators in the plain from the highland forest,’ but that’s not the case. They’re in the highland forest, and we’re also sitting in the forest in front, observing the forest beyond and the plain.

 

If there’s really no other way, we might have to spend precious points to turn time back to midnight today, then stubbornly cross over to Austria in a world where the Prime Minister hasn’t died yet, and directly observe the culprit with binoculars in front of the Prime Minister’s residence, but this method would be blocked by headquarters with 99% probability.

 

I happened to be thinking about it, so I asked Narke.

 

“I’m sorry to ask you to use your ability in this situation, but… if you look at that stand, could you tell who applied poison to it? Since it’s not too late, how about going to see it directly?”

 

“Hmm, we already told the investigators to examine the stand and came out.”

 

“You know well. While we’re on the topic, what do you think about that too?”

 

Narke smiled lightly and shook his head.

 

“That method is best. It’s much better than us just stealing the stand. Besides…”

 

Narke made a somewhat troubled expression and said.

 

“It’s not impossible, but even if I went directly, it would be very uncertain. I might know if I looked into someone’s eyes, but I don’t have abilities like Haike.”

 

Not impossible but difficult now. This probably means that reading memories of objects becomes theoretically possible when the insight ability level increases, but not now? Anyway, even if I looked into the eyes of people there now, what I could find out would be the same as what we discovered when we first came to Vienna and looked into the police’s eyes to know ‘we should go to the residence instead of the Prime Minister’s club’—just investigation details.

 

By the way, as I always feel, Haike’s ability is truly something Pleroma would covet. If properly cultivated and specialized in his unique ability, the benefits gained from that power would be enormous. Just like his uncle Heinrich Ainsiedel had been.

 

“….”

 

As my thoughts reached that point, I closed my eyes and let out a long breath.

 

After that, Narke quickly fell asleep. I heard that Markus would return to work at 3 AM. I closed my eyes while watching the clock hands approaching nearly 9 PM.

 

I don’t know how much time passed.

 

When I opened my eyes to rustling sounds, I saw Narke hurriedly putting on his outer clothes in the darkness. I fumbled around the side table for the lamp, barely managed to turn on the light, and asked.

 

“…Narke?”

 

“Lucas. Get ready. We need to go out.”

 

The moment I heard his humorless voice, I quickly got up from my spot, put on my outer clothes, and went outside. It was currently 2 AM. Narke cast an illusion spell to transform into Johanna and followed behind me. When we took the elevator down to the lobby, I encountered an unexpected face.

 

Markus’s ‘junior colleague’ I had met earlier, Katrin Behter, was walking into the hotel with her colleagues. Her face was pale and the muscles around her mouth and forehead were rigid. Unlike earlier, her stride was long with quick, unsteady steps, making it look like she was urgently searching for someone.

 

“….”

 

That person must have also checked the state of the mana lamp’s glass tube and reached the same conclusion as me. The deduction that someone had applied poison to the lamp. Now he would be here to report the fingerprint analysis results to his senior, and Narke had come out at this hour to find out from Behter who the ‘Prime Minister’s killer’ was.

 

I supported Narke’s arm and walked toward the main gate looking straight ahead with the face of an oblivious citizen. Behter’s pale face gradually approached, step by step. Soon he quickly passed by my side. The moment I turned my head to check if Narke had looked into Behter’s eyes, Narke’s mouth opened and closed repeatedly as if in disbelief, then a short sentence struck my mind.

 

―”It’s the Prime Minister. Only the Prime Minister’s fingerprints were found.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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