How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 420

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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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Narke’s face hardened.

 

―”Playing pranks with holy water on Catholics…”

 

―”How irreverent.”

 

―”That’s too much. That’s a kind of totem for some believers.”

 

―”…To…”

 

I thought of the many things that Catholicism rejects and became momentarily dizzy, deciding to stop speaking. Narke, with a bewildered expression for different reasons than mine, revealed disappointment about something unknowable and spoke in a low, sunken voice.

 

―”Holy water is special but not a special object. Do you understand what I mean?”

 

―”No.”

 

―”To them, it’s no different from a locket containing the face of a loved one. An object they carry in their bosom daily that brings them peace. People find peace of mind from the church. Water blessed by clergy, brief prayers, countless ceremonies conducted in the church’s name… Actually, is all of that truly God’s will?”

 

I said nothing.

 

The Narke I had observed until now would likely give an answer not much different from what I would say. Even if he was a cardinal of the Apostle Peter’s diocese—the Holy See—and a key figure in the Papacy, the headquarters of the worldwide Catholic Church. His values were distinct from the Papacy, uniquely his own. The two did not align.

 

Narke spoke with a sighing expression, reproaching those who went down the wrong path.

 

―”That’s human will. But nevertheless, believers find peace of mind from rituals and promises established over long periods. To me, holy water is church-sanctioned salt water, and if it occasionally carries divine power, it might truly become medicine, but fundamentally I don’t believe God’s traces exist there. But believers think differently.”

 

“…”

 

―”Holy water is the product of long-standing promises. You exploited that sentiment.”

 

Deep regret melted into his face. Narke always wanted essence instead of the church. If his teachers heard my assessment, they would say the two were the same and inseparable, but at least Narke was not like that. Even without trying to speculate about his past, I could vaguely guess why he didn’t evaluate the church positively.

 

However, at the same time, Narke said that even if he didn’t evaluate the church very positively, people certainly found peace through the church. I couldn’t help but feel kinship with his way of thinking.

 

Thinking this, I slowly surveyed the storage room’s objects by section and stored them in my mind. I wouldn’t forget a single thing. The remaining holy water bottles, those brought from other churches, would likely be on the 2nd-3rd floors of the residence.

 

Now then.

 

【From Italy to Austria-Hungary, Atropos 100 barrels】, the first three chunks here were solved.

 

The Austrian Prime Minister who visited Italy returned home carrying holy water bottles containing Atropos. The possibility of bringing them from Bosnia was low. The problem was 100 barrels.

 

‘…100 barrels, are they insane…’

 

It was staggering. A single bottle of holy water would be maybe 200ml at most—though it would vary depending on what container you put it in—but where would 100 barrels come from? Of course, there was hope from now on. I turned my head toward Narke and whispered.

 

―”Now we just need to know where they received the holy water from.”

 

―”Right, Lucas. But…”

 

Narke looked at his watch, then grabbed my hand and rushed out of the storage room.

 

―”We need to clean up first! Quickly!”

 

“Huh?!”

 

―”We just barged in~ Haha!”

 

Narke pushed me, flustered, and spoke to that investigator who had been outside the storage room.

 

“We’ve finished our inspection. Thank you.”

 

The price of convenience comes later. I thought this while avoiding Narke’s gentle yet uncharacteristic tone and his suddenly changed height and face. The investigator smiled and shook his head.

 

“Not at all. Thank you for coming from so far away.”

 

‘So the setting is that we came from far away.’

 

I was cleverly dragged by Narke toward the hallway, while the investigator who had been guarding the storage room was heading in the opposite direction.

 

―”Let’s go.”

 

“…?!”

 

Whoosh―

 

Narke grabbed my arm and flew down to the lower floor while casting a sound-dampening spell. At the same time, his height was decreasing slightly. The fingers gripping my arm became rougher. The sleeves of his robe frayed and a waist cord appeared. His hair, which had taken on a brownish tint when he transformed into ‘someone,’ became even lighter and shorter. Thus, when we went down to the lower floor and came back up the opposite staircase, Narke had become a completely different person.

 

‘…Just how many facial data sets does he have…’

 

Seeing him pull them out so instantly, this wasn’t his first or second time doing this. The storage room investigator we saw earlier was walking from far away. Narke, transformed into yet another person, cast concealment magic on me, pushed me against the wall, held some bundle of documents to his chest, and walked quickly forward. Then he brightly greeted the investigator.

 

“Hello.”

 

“Yes, hello.”

 

‘One person, multiple roles…’

 

This way, if someone happened to rifle through the investigator’s mind, they wouldn’t know who had used divine power. Inconvenient cleanup follows convenience… Now it was time to return the badge. I glanced at the badge hanging on my robe and asked.

 

“Where did you steal this from?”

 

“Outside.”

 

We exited the building, greeting the police standing guard at the door. This storehouse was also in Vienna, making it a place where things could easily go wrong.

 

‘He said 2 minutes left earlier… we must have exceeded that already.’

 

He probably meant excluding travel time, but I couldn’t help feeling a chill down my spine. I walked quickly following Narke. Narke entered a narrow alley close to the ghetto. All the beggars who would normally be sprawled on the streets had apparently been arrested by police, so while there were tin cans and planks in the alley, there were no people. We squeezed through the twisting, winding alleys within alleys, finally stopping in front of a shop with a small sign. Only one orange mana lamp cast an eerie light over this place.

 

“…A tavern?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“…So this is where you stole it from.”

 

Even without going inside, I could tell at a glance what had happened. These mindless fools went drinking after their shift change? And got their badges stolen in the process?

 

I shook my head and tried to remove the badge. Or rather, I tried to. Narke’s hand landed firmly on top of mine.

 

―”Lucas. Not yet.”

 

“What?”

 

Narke smiled gently and spoke softly.

 

―”We didn’t come to return it. We came to see whether it’s okay for us to keep it or not.”

 

“What?”

 

Before I could be further bewildered, Narke pushed open the tavern door and entered. He had somehow taken on the appearance of an ordinary middle-aged Human. Following him as he walked alertly into the dim tavern, I could see investigators in Investigation Bureau uniforms heavily drunk. Among the thousands of mobilized personnel, there was bound to be at least one like this, but seeing them directly was truly pathetic. They had clearly come to this secluded shop because going to a tavern in the city center would mean running into senior and junior colleagues.

 

‘…There were two badges but five people.’

 

So he only took two out of five. Right, if there were only two people and you took both badges, it would be more suspicious. Narke pretended to use the bathroom, cast concealment magic and came back out, circling around that table. How did I know? I don’t know. He appeared transparent to me too. But… I soon couldn’t help but understand how things were proceeding.

 

Crash―

 

The arm of an investigator who had been resting his chin on his hand slipped, and he struck his beer mug with his fist.

 

“…?!”

 

“…! Hey, wait!”

 

As beer spilled, the red-faced investigators hurriedly stood up from their seats. Meanwhile, another mug toppled over. That’s how drunk people move, but that was Narke’s doing. Narke had pulled the first investigator’s clothes, making his arm slip. I was certain. The investigators took off their beer-soaked robes and jackets, hung them on chairs, and called for staff. Meanwhile, I saw glinting badges and robe brooches fall to the floor. As if they had fallen when hastily removing robes with force. The round badges without sharp edges rolled across the floor and stopped under a table diagonally behind. Narke, still in his transparent state, put his hand into someone else’s pocket, briefly skimmed through a notebook inside, then dropped it on the floor. Someone’s cap that had been hung on a chair also fell to the floor. Only now did Narke enter the open bathroom, pretend to be Human, come out, and leisurely exit the tavern.

 

“…”

 

―”Good~ Now whatever gets lost, they’ll think it’s because of that commotion.”

 

―”Thorough.”

 

―”You always have to be thorough. I feel bad for the shop owner… but there shouldn’t be any major trouble. And it seems better for us to keep the badge.”

 

―”That’s true.”

 

Hadn’t we been at a slight disadvantage all this time without this? With just this, we could go anywhere. Unless the Austrian government changes the badge type and issues new passes—badges.

 

“Now then.”

 

I said as we emerged from the alley again.

 

―”It’s time to find the holy water. 100 barrels of Atropos have already been imported. The German intelligence agency should be able to obtain information about which church the Prime Minister visited. Let’s leave that to them…”

 

Now we needed to find out where the German embassy was located. I pulled out a map in my mind and continued speaking.

 

―”Let’s find the Atropos that entered this country.”

 

―”We should. 100 barrels… it’s overwhelming. Could the code decryption be wrong?”

 

―”Then we’ll have to hold Germany’s cryptographers responsible.”

 

We should keep it in mind but not get too absorbed in it. We should consider the possibility that the code decryption was wrong, but that was fundamentally far beyond our scope. Division of labor exists for a reason. Operation preparation should be done by the desk jockeys who put their heads together, and field operatives like us just need to run around well in the field and demonstrate immediate thinking ability. I hoped we wouldn’t end up doing their job too due to their inadequate thinking skills.

 

Stopping by the German embassy, we wrote a coded message and handed it to the Envoy. The Envoy put it in the warp mailbox along with other document bundles and gave us a look indicating it had been successfully transmitted. This German Envoy was our greatest collaborator in Vienna, Austria, and naturally so, but unfortunately he couldn’t exert much influence in areas outside diplomacy. Right now he was merely serving as our makeshift post office. So we had no choice but to move directly as we had been doing to grasp clues about Atropos.

 

And…

 

We finally received the communication artifact that couldn’t be brought in when entering the country. I made it transparent and hung it on my ear. From now on, all information we discovered would be passed to the Envoy here at the embassy. I spoke to Narke through divine power as we left the embassy.

 

―”Now, there’s something we need to think about, Narke.”

 

―”I’m excited~”

 

―”…Don’t get excited… You and I need to put our heads together.”

 

―”Haha.”

 

Narke literally sent laughter into my mind, then looked at me with clear eyes. He probably meant for me to hurry up and talk.

 

―”We extracted the common denominator of hypotheses 2-1 and 2-3 and concluded that ‘among the Prime Minister’s possessions, the object that doesn’t seem like poison at all is precisely Atropos.’ And we found the holy water.”

 

―”That’s right.”

 

―”I didn’t tell you what hypothesis 2-1 was…”

 

―”Hahaha! Cut me some slack~”

 

―”Anyway, finding the holy water isn’t the end. To examine the case more closely, we need to find out which of 2-1 and 2-3 is true.”

 

2-1 was mental manipulation magic.

 

2-3 was the Prime Minister himself applying medicine for specific purposes like spells or rituals—traditional brainwashing methods.

 

Which of these did the Antagonist use?

 

―”Narke. To answer why the Antagonist chose mana lamps, we thought like this: ‘Among the Prime Minister’s possessions, the object that doesn’t seem like poison at all’ is precisely the murder weapon. To transform that non-poison into true Atropos required a medium, and that medium was precisely the mana from the mana lamps. In other words, ‘holy water’ finally becomes Atropos through mana. Here…”

 

―”Here’s the problem.”

 

Narke cut off my words. A mischievous smile was melting across his face. I wasn’t in a situation to laugh right now—actually, the entire European population wasn’t in a situation to laugh—but I couldn’t help but chuckle at his impish expression. I cleared my throat and seriously spoke the words that Narke had probably already anticipated.

 

—”Right, there’s a problem. The Antagonist could have made the Prime Minister drink the holy water directly. A mage’s entire body is magical power, isn’t it? If he drank ‘holy water,’ he could transform it into Atropos inside his body. But why didn’t he do that? He could have killed him cleanly, so why did he bother going around in circles using the stand’s magical power in such a troublesome way? Of course, no human drinks holy water directly, but actually, choosing the type of water was something the Antagonist could have made possible from the start… wouldn’t that be a trivial matter?”

 

—”Hahaha, it seems like we’ve already reached a conclusion in our heads~?”

 

—”That’s right.”

 

I smiled and looked ahead again.

 

Now, it was time to address the four problems from earlier.

 

P1. Cases 2-1 and 2-3: Where exactly did they obtain the Atropos?

 

P2. Cases 2-1 and 2-3: Since poisoning clearly occurs from the moment it touches the finger, why did they need to apply Atropos to the stand?

 

P3. Cases 2-1 and 2-3: No dangerous chemicals were found in or around the Prime Minister’s quarters, so how did this happen?

 

P4. Case 2-1: Who cast the mind manipulation magic?

 

P1 and P3 were solved simultaneously, so I’ll cross them out. The holy water was Atropos, wasn’t it.

 

What we need to think about are P2 and P4, and Narke and I just found the answer. P2, what was the reason they had to apply Atropos to the magical lamp stand?

 

We had already established the hypothesis that ‘magical power would have been necessary to convert holy water into Atropos.’

 

However, the magical power of magical lamps is nothing special. It’s merely ‘artificial magical power’ with human magical characteristics removed, and since it has no particular effects other than producing light, it’s not very strong either. This was something I had already thought about during the Penthalon incident. So the real problem with P2 is this—drinking it would kill him faster due to the magical power in his body, so why didn’t they make him drink the holy water instead of applying it to the stand?

 

We can make this simple speculation: ‘holy water’ is an object that transforms differently depending on what kind of magical power touches it.

 

Even though it became clear that poison would seep into the body once holy water touched the hand, the Antagonist didn’t stop there and made the Prime Minister apply holy water to the stand. Therefore, from the fact that magical lamp power was used in this incident, we can understand that the magical power that manifests holy water as Atropos is ‘artificial magical power,’ not ‘human magical power.’

 

We must note that, excluding the Prime Minister, no particularly suspicious mass murder incidents have occurred yet. This is despite the fact that 100 barrels, about 16 tons of Atropos, have already been imported into Austria.

 

It became clear.

 

‘Holy water + artificial magical power = Atropos,’ meaning ‘if you don’t make holy water contact artificial magical power, you won’t die whether you drink or sprinkle the holy water’—this is the conclusion.

 

Then we need to solve the remaining P4. Why did the Prime Minister perform the abnormal action of carefully applying holy water to the stand? What kind of madman applies holy water to desk lamp glass? Was it 2-1 or 2-3?

 

Here we should rightfully have this question—if holy water can be converted into a deadly poison, couldn’t holy water be converted into other magical potions? Moreover, Pleroma had already developed mind manipulation drugs in an attempt to replicate the effects of mind manipulation magic.

 

From this, we can establish a new hypothesis to solve P4.

 

When holy water comes into contact with human magical power, it transforms into mind manipulation drugs, not Atropos.

 

After 9:45 AM, the Prime Minister took out and used holy water he had brought back from his recent business trip, and at that moment fell under Pleroma’s mind manipulation magic. Now the reason for the Prime Minister’s bizarre behavior of carefully applying holy water to the stand is explained.

 

All problems have been solved. Once the thread was unraveled, the case became crystal clear.

 

Therefore, we no longer needed to discuss the progression of the case. Just as I did, Narke would have assigned much higher probability to hypothesis 2-1, and separately from that, he would know exactly where I intended to go from now on to find the Atropos.

 

* * *

 

Where should we go to find Atropos?

 

First, the Italian cathedral that the Prime Minister had visited. They might have 100 barrels of Atropos there. But according to the code, about 16 tons of Atropos had already crossed over to Austria. The Prime Minister had only carried a single bottle of holy water. At most, would it be 200ml?

 

Of course, we could easily predict that the cathedral possessed more Atropos. Since we sent this information to Germany, they should handle this problem, and we need to find the 16 tons of Atropos imported into Austria.

 

But…

 

‘They said nothing special was found on the train from Italy to Austria.’

 

That was natural. Since Atropos isn’t a poison when it’s just sitting there, there was no reason for it to be caught in routine inspections conducted on freight trains. Then what should we do?

 

Tap—

 

The sound of boot heels echoes in the hallway with each step.

 

I’m alone inside the dark Trade and Economy Ministry building. Since it’s dawn, no one is in this building. Places related to the case investigation are working through the night, but trade and economy is completely unrelated, and since it’s not a particularly busy period, all employees are safely at home. That was good news. The problem was that the entire building was pitch black like a haunted house with only silence lingering—there were no emergency lights or anything—but that wasn’t even close to being a problem for a living person. I cast a sound-dampening spell and listened to my footsteps as I scanned the warehouse doors.

 

‘Hmm.’

 

Records room… Where would the records storage room be? Even a similar name would be fine. After wandering through the darkness for about 10 minutes, I found a really similar name.

 

In front of the document storage room, I tried turning the door handle. With a click, it stopped at the 1/3 point.

 

‘…Now the problem is getting in.’

 

Naturally, I didn’t have a key. Unfortunately and fortunately at the same time, they hadn’t put up a barrier around the room as people commonly do—though the building had a barrier—it was a place you could enter if you just had the key.

 

What had I done in front of Corviniano’s locked door? I rummaged through my robe pocket and pulled out Austria’s coordinate book. After calculating the scale and coordinate squares, I moved the detailed coordinates a couple of squares and flicked my finger.

 

Clunk—!

 

“…!”

 

I can see a window where moonlight is coming in. I leaned against a trolley inside the archive room and then stood up abruptly. Success. I turned my head, gathered light at the tip of my wand, and scanned the bookshelves. The densely packed handwritten documents overwhelmed me.

 

‘Import export ledgers.’

 

Where would they be? I slowly moved my steps and stopped at a section with related name tags attached to the book spines.

 

Starting from November 1896, the year numbers gradually increased. I ran my finger along the book spines and shifted my gaze to 1898, this year’s volume. Then I carefully pulled out a purple leather file and opened it. More items than expected were written in tiny handwriting—the fact that nothing was written by computer astounded me—along with countless numbers.

 

“…”

 

April 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 1898…

 

My gaze quickly moved downward. Yesterday’s import items hadn’t been transcribed yet. It didn’t matter. I scanned through all the lists a couple of times, memorized them, cast a sound-dampening spell again, and tapped the artifact at my ear. Soon I heard the Envoy’s voice.

 

[Received.]

 

“April 5th, bottled mineral water Acqua Panna from Tuscany, Italy to Alpenquelle Hans Gruber in Trieste, Austria, 16 tons.”

 

[…]

 

I could hear the sound of something being hastily scribbled down.

 

I closed my eyes and slowly caught my breath. Everything that had happened so far flashed through my mind. 4 AM. It hadn’t even been 24 hours since I came to This Location.

 

After a while, the Envoy’s voice came through.

 

[Thank you for your hard work.]

 

“…”

 

Our mission ends with this. In principle.

 

Of course nothing dangerous would be found on the train from Italy to Austria. Just like how Atropos was actually holy water. Then what about the remaining approximately 16 tons of Atropos excluding the 200ml of Atropos—would it be holy water? I couldn’t find the answer by approaching it that way, and I had to find the harmless liquid imported from Italy. Whether it was perfume, detergent, beverages, or anything else.

 

Now I’ve figured it out. The other ‘Atropos’ isn’t holy water but drinking water. Pleroma used a high-end Italian drinking water brand to import Atropos into Austria. Using a brand that would be placed in any restaurant that noble Espers would visit. What would happen to this country’s Espers the moment mages came into contact with that drinking water was obvious.

 

Now, though not in principle, there’s something I must inevitably do to survive on This Continent.

 

I need to go to the most problematic place where the Acqua Panna imported to Austria would head—Osterreicheste’s Imperial Palace.

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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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