How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 433

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

“….”

Silence flows. The eyes of the four friends sitting in their seats are round. I stood blankly in front of those eyes that were truly close to circles.

“Ah….”

Ulrike’s small voice leaked through the silence. From that moment, a scream that pierced eardrums suddenly burst out.

“Whaaaaat?!”

“Lucas, what is this…!”

“What kind of talk is this?”

“No, no, no?! Why? How?! Clearly on Haike’s cabinet handle…! And you did this…! Ah…?!”

My eardrums ache. I eventually let Ulrike snatch the note away as she tried to seize it by force. There was no particular reason to stop her. Ulrike unfolded the note and shouted.

“How, how, how could you have written this…! But…!”

How should I prove that I wrote it?

I thought that way and retraced my memories. This just fell from the Secretary’s files. It didn’t fall. I took it out of my pocket. Of course the Secretary would say it wasn’t his note, but that’s not my concern. The craftsmanship of whoever drew this isn’t very good, but this is definitely an alchemical symbol. I wondered what he was pointing out, but I quickly accepted it and admired the chairman’s astuteness. Yes, it was an alchemical symbol. I had to make the chairman notice the meaning and become interested. May I take this? I had to take it.

After that, I briefly stopped by the residence after dinner and then warped to the meeting room. As I recall, after waiting about 30 minutes, all my friends gathered in the meeting room. Why did I have to stop by the residence once after dinner instead of going straight to the meeting room? If I was planning to arrive at the meeting room before the other friends anyway, there would be no need to stop by the residence….

I answered seriously to Ulrike, who was holding her neck as if she would collapse if I didn’t give her an answer.

“Yes. I hung the note on Haike’s cabinet handle.”

“…! No, no, at that time…!”

“Hahaha! This is interesting.”

Cheringen crossed his arms and burst into hearty laughter. Leo was sitting with an absurd expression, whether he was laughing hollowly or what, and surprisingly even Elias had the same face.

Anyway, after seeing the note at that time, Narke called me and smiled with a subtle expression. He realized I had pulled a trick the moment he saw the note. Right, I never thought he would be fooled. Rather, I was grateful that at least one person noticed.

‘…I wish Narke were here.’

My head aches with guilt. Of course, I didn’t deceive them because I truly wanted to deceive them. Elias, who had exaggeratedly lowered his eyebrows, struck the desk and made a whining sound.

“Why! Luca! You should have told me! Doing this fun thing by yourself?!”

“…Sorry. You all had to think this was sent by someone you didn’t know.”

Even though I only said this much, Cheringen seemed to understand my purpose and nodded alone. I looked at the other friends who were still dazed and answered.

“There was a possibility that enemies would approach you. When they approached in civilian appearance, if you showed reactions like you knew something…. That would be the end.”

“The plan?”

To Cheringen’s question, asked while knowing the answer, I narrowed my brow slightly and answered.

“Your safety.”

Not everyone is as skilled at acting as I am. Minor eye movements and neck muscle stiffness, speech that wavers slightly or becomes overly exaggerated because of it—all of that was problematic. Could I guarantee that no problems would arise from this? Plans can be remade if they go awry. This time it was a game where that was possible. But life doesn’t return. Times don’t return. Everything possible in this situation was an unnecessary experience for them. If my friends don’t want it, I don’t want to move according to where my free heart wants to go.

“No matter how I think about it, you’re not strategist material.”

For a moment my gaze almost flew to Leo. I raised my head toward where the voice came from, toward Cheringen. He was staring intently at me with his fingers interlaced, without a smile. I also looked at him and remained silent.

“That you’re not the heir to a principality—I can’t understand it.”

“….”

Ulrike opened her mouth with a shocked face. This was rebellion against Adrian Ascanien. If not that, it should have been mocking me. However, his eyes held that same look I’d seen before—the look of anticipating the day we would meet as rulers of various nations in the future—so Ulrike couldn’t have missed that atmosphere. I stared into Cheringen’s eyes for a long time before answering.

“Thank you.”

Though not everything is expressed in words, I could guess the meaning contained in Cheringen’s way of speaking. He was praising me for not saying anything all this time. In Cheringen’s view, who thinks and acts as a monarch, my decision was not wrong at all. For the greater good, it’s proper to suppress the desire to speak—that would be his meaning.

This was praise heard as someone born with the fate of becoming a ruler. I naturally knew what that implied. Words I once heard from Leo came to mind simultaneously.

“….”

My mouth tastes bitter. Because my mouth was bitter, I couldn’t face my friends.

However, I still don’t know how to do better than this. Should I have moved according to emotions and confided many things to them? I couldn’t accept their deaths and suffering. I still remember what Leo’s expression was like in Brandenburg’s lost time.

I don’t have many opportunities left to turn back time.

Cheringen smiled faintly and pressed his temple.

“Right, somehow there was no mention of discovering a note with clues about 11:50 and Giesing, so I wondered. Also… so that’s why you said earlier that we need to find the ambushed enemy.”

“Mm, so that’s where I was caught.”

“Right. Since it would be a script using the enemy’s enemy, there’s no way our target would reveal themselves. Now my doubts are resolved.”

Cheringen also skipped several steps in his thought process. Leo pressed his eyes and forehead and spoke in a pained voice.

“11:50, as late as possible… that was the meaning….”

“Sorry I couldn’t tell you in advance.”

“It wasn’t that you received a new note somewhere, but that you would decide on your own….”

“You heard that?!”

Leo nodded at Ulrike’s question. Cheringen paid no attention to Leo’s words and looked at me with his chin resting on his interlaced hands.

“Well then, we need to know why Lucas brought up this story. Saying you wrote this means you had to lure the enemy to Munich Giesing before 11:50 PM.”

“Right, that’s correct.”

“Then you had to show this note to the enemy. And you think you actually did show it.”

The flow of thought is natural. I nodded. Cheringen asked with sharp eyes, raising only the corners of his mouth.

“Are they still watching us now?”

“….”

“If so, there would be no need to go to Munich Giesing, right? Between finding people ambushed at Giesing and finding people ambushed around headquarters, it’s obvious which is safer.”

So, just one more step?

I looked at him with a smile. Cheringen stared into my eyes with the same expression, then raised his eyebrows.

“…Aha.”

He burst into chuckling laughter and pressed his temple.

“In a way, it’s safer because you wrote the note. At least your target has absolutely no, not even if they died and came back to life, intention of ambushing.”

That’s right. My target can absolutely never ambush me. It’s an essentially impossible game. The possibility of other enemies besides my target ambushing is also relatively low compared to other operations. That doesn’t mean it’s completely safe, so I won’t let my guard down.

Cheringen understood perfectly even what I hadn’t said. I would explain everything one by one from now on anyway, but it was always amazing to hear. Ulrike thought deeply and asked.

“I don’t understand right now…. If you Lucas wrote this note and you had it, how did the enemy see it? Don’t tell me there’s a spy inside headquarters?”

“No, that’s not it. You can rest assured about that part.”

Here, there’s a problem worth thinking about once.

I showed one of these notes at the Hermetic Society. Why did I have to do that? Except for Leo, Narke, and Elias, no one knows that I went to see the chairman and discovered this note, but Leo and Elias might be curious. I shifted my gaze to them.

‘They’ll figure it out on their own.’

The structure of this case is very simple. Just the fact that ‘this incident happened’ alone makes it possible to immediately suspect the perpetrator, and I actually picked out the most likely suspect right after understanding the case. According to what I’ve verified going back and forth between extra chapters and reality, my initial reasoning wasn’t wrong. As if proving it’s not a difficult problem, my friends also immediately recognized the perpetrator when I threw out just a word or two. Not to mention Narke, Leo did as Elias did.

Those who easily accepted my reasoning so far will soon be able to find the reason why I said I brought the note from ‘the place I just visited,’ that is, ‘the Hermetic Society.’

Now one doubt emerges here.

I continued speaking while looking at my friends.

“This is the problem I was going to talk about. The enemy might not come to Giesing at 11:50 today.”

Now, let’s continue the thought from earlier. What has been our biggest problem so far?

Who is the perpetrator? No. I finished reasoning about who the perpetrator is before even entering Mecklenburg’s extra chapter. Unusually, we’re standing in a strategy game that proceeds with almost certainty about who the perpetrator is from the start. There has never been a game we played knowing exactly who the opponent was.

Right here was the real ‘problem’ we couldn’t handle. Why have we been dragging out a game where we know who the enemy is?

“I know who the perpetrator is, but I didn’t know where the perpetrator is located. Even now I don’t know where I should go to meet the perpetrator.”

Not knowing where the perpetrator is—that was the challenge given to us. Since returning from the extra chapter, I agonized over it for days. How should we find an opponent who has no intention of coming out? To call out the mouse, we had to throw bait into the trap.

That bait was the ‘top secret’ sent to the Papal States, the Papal States blockade order, and finally this blue note.

Now it’s over.

We know what kind of reaction came from the opponent’s side after we made the ‘top secret’ move. We must keep that mechanism in mind. In the same way, I made the next move. Also, the same type of move comes back. Sorry, but there’s no time. Since we can’t drag the game out sluggishly forever, we needed one final blow.

But no matter how much I thought about it, there was no way to checkmate. This board itself was designed to be extremely disadvantageous to us on the surface, so it couldn’t be helped. The opponent started with twice the pieces from the beginning, and our chessboard was already covered with white pieces. It couldn’t help but be too harsh a composition for beginners.

‘We can’t checkmate, but we can’t accept a draw either.’

I tried to create a structure that could avoid a draw while achieving our goal as much as possible. I picked up the note on the table and continued speaking.

“So I threw bait to lure out the enemy.”

Ulrike’s face looks grim as if she heard something shocking. She tilted her eyebrows and grabbed my arm.

“How is this bait…. They could just ignore it, Lucas…!”

“I tried to make sure the opponent wouldn’t ignore it, but yes. As you said Luise, we must consider the possibility of being ignored.”

“You were also the type to act first and think later….”

“I’m learning many new things.”

Because I wrote the note, we must consider the possibility that the opponent won’t come to the scene with this. I looked at Elias and Cheringen, who were listening with serious expressions, and Leo and Ulrike, who still looked incredulous, and continued speaking.

“As Luise said. Catching the perpetrator directly would be difficult, but what comes before that is more difficult for this reason. If the opponent considers this note worthless.”

“….”

“So if the opponent assigns only the weakest and most useless of their subordinate mages as a surveillance role, or has them watch us from outside Giesing, we’ll have no choice but to return empty-handed. I’m not sorry about that. Rather, if they come out that way, it means we have another opportunity.”

I picked up a pen and continued speaking.

“Then we’ll have to plan new bait to use next. I want to do that process together with you from now on.”

* * *

We had to clear all our time from 8 PM today until the next day, and we reported this matter truthfully to headquarters.

Leo and I are sitting in the Chief of Staff’s office—this time we properly made an appointment—. After brief greetings, Leo spoke first with courtesy.

“We wish to investigate the perpetrator who attacked Count Heike Einsiedel and Count Mikhail Ismailov.”

“….”

The Chief of Staff—more fundamentally, this high-ranking administrative official—began looking at me with an expression that said why are you involved in this problem again.

‘Leo spoke, so why are you looking at me.’

With his fingers interlocked and the muscles under his eyes tense while his mouth corners turned down, I could roughly guess what he was thinking. From rumors in political circles and the investigation bureau, they said the perpetrator of that incident hasn’t been caught at all and they don’t even have clues, so what are you planning to investigate—he’s probably thinking something like that. I quietly corrected him as he looked at me like some kind of case-generating machine.

“Your Excellency, it’s not me but the entire 101st unit investigating and leading this matter. I’m only here as Vice-Captain.”

As I spoke, I somehow felt like I was reinforcing the Chief of Staff’s prejudice, but it couldn’t be helped. As soon as I finished speaking, Leo calmly recited his lines.

“As a result of tracking using the kingdom’s classified materials, we concluded that the enemy’s base might be in Munich. If Your Excellency permits the deployment of the 101st unit, we will mobilize five of Bavaria’s special management grade arcane mages to investigate the remaining clues in Munich.”

“….”

He deliberately didn’t say they would conduct operations in Giesing. He didn’t say they would be lying in wait either. Since we need to negotiate with the perpetrator until we find a way to save Haike, we can’t tell them too much. The Prussian Intelligence Service might track us, but special management grade arcane mages are close to state secrets in their very existence. There are those like Nicolaus Ernst whose names are widely known, but most are not, and their residences, movements, and duties are all thoroughly protected. There are only 12 in Prussia and 12 in Bavaria total, so it would be stranger not to manage them that way. In other words, even if their movements are documented, that’s somewhere Prussia cannot know.

More than that… I still haven’t heard an answer.

‘Couldn’t you speak up quickly?’

I had somewhat impolite thoughts while looking at the elderly mage before me.

During World War I, the German army faced various problems, one of which was the issue of status. On the front lines, nobles and commoners were all equal, but the atmosphere behind the scenes wasn’t really like that. Though this side might be somewhat better, it’s not much different either. Just because we’re from ruling families doesn’t mean we receive any conveniences from that fact, but the moment someone brings up issues outside the Alliance, especially when a mage from a ruling family brings up topics related to their homeland’s politics, no matter how much of an Alliance senior they are, it becomes difficult to grant any permission. If they permit it, what will they know and take responsibility for, and if they refuse, who will take responsibility for the aftermath. The mage before me had so much he wanted to say that he remained silent instead, stroking his chin with an uncomfortable expression before opening his mouth.

“Do you have concrete evidence that you’ll come to Munich? Where in Munich? Show me the investigation records.”

“I apologize. It’s related to classified information, Your Excellency. We wanted to go through formal discussions with the Kingdom’s Magic Department regarding disclosure of classified information, but since the Prussian Investigation Bureau is handling the case itself, we came here to get verbal confirmation from Your Excellency regarding deployment beforehand.”

“Haha… What is this… There’s Atropos these days too, and suddenly you want to investigate…”

Perhaps due to the circulating permission issues, he let out an awkward laugh and shook his head with a face that didn’t know what to say. This person does have responsibility, but I don’t know why he has so much to say. When no words came out, Leo directly opened another envelope with a classified stamp and politely pushed it in front of him.

“Perhaps I should have mentioned this first. The Kingdom of Bavaria has sent a cooperation request. If permission is granted, the Prussian Kingdom’s Foreign Ministry will soon send Your Excellency a document through warp mail.”

“….”

The fatigue rapidly drained from the face of the mage sitting before me. Perhaps because the responsibility had shifted away from him, he returned to his usual calm expression, pushed up his glasses, and skimmed through the cooperation request. I began to wonder why this person held two positions to receive double salary, but now it was done.

All that remained was to stop by Bavaria’s National Medical Center and Magic Department, complete the protective treatment using divine power, then head to Giesing.

* * *

11 PM, Munich.

Giesing was an area that was incorporated into Munich late, and couldn’t be called a downtown district. North Giesing had a huge park cemetery, and South Giesing had Stadelheim Prison. With a cemetery and prison and undeveloped fields all around, foot traffic was light.

Green fields and sand-colored roads crossing those fields, with occasional two-story houses situated somewhere in the fields. Trees planted beside the streets for landscaping were cut into round shapes. Low shrubs and walnut trees reminiscent of monasteries swayed in the wind. All this scenery was dyed in the lightless night, appearing only dark.

I’m standing at Giesing Station wearing a mask. Every time I blink, the eyebrows moving in my vision are bright.

‘Hmm.’

It’s been a while since I wandered around the city center like this in Nicolaus Ernst’s state, so it feels fresh—usually I only went between the palace and government buildings—.

But to others, I would still appear to be Lucas Ascanien with black hair and red eyes. I changed my hair color with divine power and applied cognitive disruption magic, specifically illusion magic, then layered another illusion magic on top. I often do this normally, but this time applying it once more to my entire body, not just magic power and eyes, is putting some strain on my stamina. Just like when I was in Austria-Hungary.

I slowly turned to look behind me. The two-story wooden building with long windows that could open on both sides looked modest at first glance. Since railway traffic was blocked, no lights were on in the station, so we had to rely solely on streetlights.

[Luca~]

Elias’s voice comes through the artifact plugged into my ear. He’s waiting behind the station.

Elias and I are in North Giesing while the other two friends are in South Giesing. Everyone came equipped with divine power artifacts in preparation for Atropos contamination. Putting divine power into artifacts is nearly impossible without the Papal States’ technology, so they’re not easily obtainable items, but Bavaria readily provided the items they had in stock. But… we can probably use them maybe twice at most. They’re not entirely reliable. The fact that Pleroma has nothing to gain by killing German nobles is somewhat helpful to us, but even that could change at any time. As long as they ‘just don’t kill,’ as long as they’re not caught, wouldn’t that be fine? It means they can plunge us into the swamp of mind manipulation magic at any time.

Leo has now placed people in neighborhoods near Giesing, mostly sending them up to church bell towers. They’ll look down at the city center and send us reports immediately.

[My heart’s pounding. My palms are sweaty.]

“….”

[What did headquarters say earlier?]

“No time for idle chatter.”

I cast sound-blocking magic and replied. Elias is probably also casting sound-blocking magic while chatting.

Despite what I said, Elias kept chatting until 11:10. Since no one has signaled us yet, it should be safe, but… I chuckled softly while listening to the chatter coming to my ear.

[Shouldn’t we be walking back and forth~ like this? That way they can spot us easily too.]

No.

Giesing doesn’t have particularly notable buildings except for houses. Considering that most people go to the local square or train station when there’s just a place name, waiting at the train station is best. I slowly walked from one end of the train station to the other while adjusting my artifact.

Kwaaaaang—!!

“…?!”

[What?!]

What was that just now? I quickly turned my head toward where the sound came from. It was the sound of a building exploding. I was certain. Though it seemed to come from far away, the vibration reached here.

“…!”

Far away, the air in the southern sky glows eerily blue as if a wall had formed. Crack, a dark line cuts through the air and shoots upward. Fissures are spreading.

‘The barrier…!’

Whiiiiing—!

[Your Excellency Ernst!]

A loud wave sound pierces my ears from beyond the artifact. At the same time, someone’s urgent cry came through the artifact.

[Black liquid is exploding at Stadelheim Prison!]

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