How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 594

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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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How to Survive as the Second Son of a Magic Noble Family (594)

Easy.

From the beginning, I knew that Mr. Kruger wouldn’t return to the mansion until late, as I had told him all along, and in such circumstances, the two letters I received were obviously suspicious.

As you may remember, when I looked at the letters piled up in my room, I checked Mr. Kruger’s letter first, and upon seeing it, the first information I processed was ‘two letters with the same seal.’ The wax seal? When I mention seals, that includes the wax seal too. You don’t stamp the seal directly on the envelope. You stamp it on the wax seal. And I immediately noticed that the handwriting was the same. Since Mr. Kruger wouldn’t have returned home, it would be understandable if the servants at home had conveyed news, but it was strange to visually receive such uniformity that clearly indicated Mr. Kruger had sent them.

Mr. Kruger’s return time, the same seal, the same handwriting.

With just these three pieces of information, this case could be solved from start to finish. I only spoke at length out of concern for Mr. Kruger, but no additional information was needed. If I had to pick one more thing—the fact that the problem is solved so easily means this is also a smokescreen. There’s a real answer. If there isn’t, it would be disappointing.

So I pretend to fall for the smokescreen. I hope the questioner is disappointed.

I tilted the gold coin reflecting the chandelier light with my fingertips, then took Mr. Kruger’s hand and placed it inside. Mr. Kruger looks bewildered, as if asking how I figured that out from a coin toss.

The truth is this. I don’t know. But since I’ve decided to act, even if not now, they will be deceived, and if they’re foolish enough to be deceived from now on, I’d only be grateful.

“So what should we do? Since I’m supposedly believing that you’re a follower of Cain, on the surface Mr. Kruger and I must grow distant. However, they will continue to pursue me.”

“That would be so…”

I gently wrapped the hand I had held while giving him the coin and looked into Mr. Kruger’s eyes.

“Madam Kruger, if it’s not rude, please do as I say from now on.”

* * *

Tell them that since such a thing happened yesterday, you want to have a meal together to build morale.

“You finished work early today.”

Mr. Kruger’s servant speaks up. Mr. Kruger feels cold sweat flowing between his hair strands.

Because the culprit knows the address of the room where I’m staying and has been studying my patterns for several days. All the servants who manage Madam Kruger’s letters know the address of the room where I’m staying. The fact that they could prepare the letter envelope with a seal means that someone among the culprits in the household participated in the incident.

There’s a culprit somewhere in the house.

Mr. Kruger spoke with a stiffly hardened voice, sighing.

“With yesterday’s incident and all, I wrapped up work early.”

“You must be greatly distressed.”

“Our Kruger family members must not get involved in this matter.”

“Yes, of course.”

“They haven’t gone to sleep yet. Tell everyone to gather on the first floor. Though it’s late, I should have tea with them while giving some advice.”

“Everyone? Do you mean the servants?”

Mr. Kruger nodded.

The servants hurriedly prepared a place in the first-floor dining room and waited according to Mr. Kruger’s instructions. Mr. Kruger came down last and surveyed the servants. When he took his seat, someone brought a teacup and poured black tea. Mr. Kruger didn’t want to put it to his lips. He truly had no confidence in swallowing that. With colleagues of those who did that to Miss Mathilde in the house, how could he drink tea? A person accused of being a follower of Cain cannot proudly boast about what they heard. Naturally, pretend to hide it, pretend to hide it but let anxiety show on your face. Only then can you conceal the fact that you and I are cooperating to find the spy.

Mr. Kruger lifted the trembling teacup and took a sip. When he gestured for them to drink quickly, the servants hurriedly drank their tea. While scanning the seated servants, Mr. Kruger’s eyes met with one servant who worked in the kitchen. The one who had been standing politely near the wall averted his eyes.

Among the servants, there will be one who particularly observes you. It will be difficult to distinguish.

Mr. Kruger’s gaze turns to the other servants. The servants are waiting for Mr. Kruger to speak. Mr. Kruger spoke for five minutes to identify the real culprit. The servants’ tension eases. They smile, worry, lower their gazes, and look at their teacups. Mr. Kruger’s gaze once again turns to the servant who glances at him.

That alone will be difficult to determine. The next day, give all servants a day off.

“…So take a good rest tomorrow. You don’t need to work. There’s nothing as unsettling as working hard on such troubled days.”

Mr. Kruger thinks the opposite. The more troubled times are, the harder you should work to forget anxiety. And the servants don’t care much about that. The servants’ faces brighten all at once.

It must be only one day. In a situation where demons have descended into the city center, anyone who wants to go outside the mansion is worth watching.

That’s right. Even with demons appearing, there can’t be many who would want to go out. Let’s focus on the intersection of these two nets. Mr. Kruger spreads the net a bit more to get them talking.

“If you only go as far as Munich, I’ll also permit outings. However, as you know, these are ominous times, so please tell my secretary what time you’ll be out tomorrow and the purpose.”

* * *

The next day, Munich Residenz.

In a corner room on the second floor, someone knocked on the bathroom door. Feeling bored, I looked at the door with interest. The servant spoke from outside.

“There’s a letter for Lord Laplace. I’ll leave the letter in front and go.”

“No, please give it to me now.”

I had just asked to be told immediately if any letters came. The servant opened the door, entered, and placed the tray containing the letter beside the shower curtain. As he turned to leave, I dried my hands and opened the letter. This time too, it’s a letter with a seal.

[Fish food]

Seeing the code written, I let my gaze slide downward. Unusually, I see content written in red ink. As agreed.

[There’s someone named Patrick Faeber who works in the kitchen. He’s someone who makes livestock feed, and Mr. Faeber also takes care of the carrier pigeon feed. That person went out today since we gave him free time. Also, unlike usual, he stared at me intently.

As you instructed, I asked the servant in charge of postal duties where the letters that came the day before yesterday went. I made up a story saying a lady I know had sent a letter that evening. Normally, he should have said there was nothing that came in, but he couldn’t. When I pressed further, he said he had actually fallen asleep from exhaustion that evening and forgot.

What’s more outrageous is that when I secretly checked at dawn, I found that some of the necromancy salon documents and books I had recorded so far had been copied. He took them with him now. He said he’d be out eating from 5 PM to 10 PM for five hours. That person came up from Regensburg and doesn’t know anyone in Munich. I was worried he might write letters about the mansion’s affairs, but looking at the time, that’s probably not it. It’s not even far from here to the post office, but to spend five whole hours, it doesn’t seem like he’s going to the post office.

I’ll stop here.]

[P.S. But what if he’s not the culprit?]

That’s unnecessary anxiety. First, Patrick Faeber is not the real culprit. The fact that a series of incidents were created by Abel’s appearance points to someone outside, not Patrick Faeber, as the culprit. Going back, in such schemes, those who move as outsourced contractors are not very skilled. It’s not a newly deployed person but likely using someone who was already there. If investigating him yields nothing, then we can go after those with second and third possibilities.

If the postal servant is the culprit, asking who came to the postal room on the evening of the exorcism ritual would be no different from confessing that I know the truth. It would be giving the culprit an opportunity. He answered that he fell asleep and forgot… If Mr. Patrick Faeber from the kitchen had put sleeping pills in brunch and brought it to the postal servant, things would have flowed very smoothly.

Now, I ordered an outing. In a situation where demons recently visited the city center, there wouldn’t be many who want to spend a one-day vacation outside. If there are ten people, maybe two would go out. But this doesn’t immediately mean they’re the culprit, does it?

Right. We can’t consider everyone who goes out as suspects. What’s needed to find the answer is both the carrier pigeon area and the postal room. Whether it’s servants working there or those with access. We just need to filter out those showing abnormal reactions. If that’s insufficient, we conduct leading interrogation.

Then why did we need to know who goes out? It wasn’t that we needed to know who goes out. We needed to know if the suspect ‘goes out.’ That is, what kind of relationship does he have with the real culprit? How far does the real culprit plan to entrust him? This way, we can infer what strategy the real culprit used to win him over.

If he goes out, then he didn’t make a one-time contract with the person who gave him orders. He was assigned the task of continuously watching the mansion’s affairs and receiving news about Prophet Abel from close by. And based on the outing time and Mr. Kruger’s testimony, the inference extends to the next node—he doesn’t send by mail but meets directly with the person who gave him orders to talk. He plans to have dinner and even tea together before returning.

In an era when people are desperate to get jobs at mansions, the bold betrayal of a stable job was possible due to two major possibilities. First, he received a large sum of money. Second, he is participating. That is, a sense of efficacy. Or his will was exploited. The two can go together, and after receiving Mr. Kruger’s letter, we can know at least which of the two was essentially used. He is participating. The person who gave orders created his confidant in the Kruger family. Of course, we don’t know how much the person who gave orders told the servant in this process…

Creating your own confidant. Quite a topic worth thinking about, isn’t it? Let’s think from their perspective. They came looking for Prophet Abel. Then they tested whether Prophet Abel was real or not. Why? If Prophet Abel was real, they probably thought they could gain something from him. Again, why did they think so?

It’s simple. If Prophet Abel was fake, why would they bother creating a confidant at Mr. Kruger’s mansion?

First, there’s personal resentment. Going down this node, thoughts would never end. And why, for heaven’s sake, if there was resentment, did they only appear after Prophet Abel came? That coincidence is amazing. Such disappointing possibilities are clearly beneficial to never even think about.

Second, even if not, it’s because they can obtain materials from Mr. Kruger’s salon. Mr. Kruger’s salon is quite famous in Munich. It’s famous among people in this field, but famous is famous.

Conclusion, the person who gave orders is basically very interested in the occult. Not just ordinarily interested, but probably belongs to a systematic organization or is someone who will soon expand that way. Like Pleroma or Terminus Yukairya. If we include the first possibility in the second possibility to draw a set, it could be someone from a competing salon to Mr. Kruger’s.

Good.

I rang the bell placed in the bathtub to call the servant. He entered.

“Please deliver this letter to His Highness the Prince.”

The servant obediently said he understood and left. Now the Prince will investigate that person.

I placed the silver coin I had put on the bathtub frame on my finger and struck it hard with my finger. After catching it, I opened my hand. Heads. I pressed my back to the bottom and slid into the water. The heart that had been beating as if it would burst from the moment I decided to enter the water pushed against my skin as my face touched the water, then settled quietly as I continued to stay underwater. The sensation of winning. Smooth progress with nothing to be bothered by spread through the water to my extremities.

After that, I wrote to Madam Kruger asking to borrow the notes she had recorded at the necromancy salon. The next day, he stopped by the Lorenz family and had a Lorenz family servant deliver the packaged notes to the post office.

I brought the notes and briefly skimmed through them. Various topics are organized, such as how to revive people—how to put one’s soul into one’s body, how to put ancestral souls into corpses, etc. Such topics are common. It’s just that those who actually accomplished this were Pleroma; this was part of the occult. It would deeply connect with alchemy too. Indeed, I found significantly fewer alchemy pages than others. They probably didn’t often discuss alchemy at the necromancy salon. Thinking so, I closed the notes.

And that night, I received a letter from the servant. A letter with Bavaria’s seal. It’s clear who sent it. One day’s investigation… Muttering so, I unfolded it to find only an empty single-page document. Now if there’s anything important, it’s that Patrick Faeber is not important. The person connected to him is important. Who hired Patrick Faeber? Or lured him? Interrogation would suffice. However, with someone we don’t know watching from blind spots, if we can handle it quietly, that’s the best path, and Bavaria fortunately played that role. Though they only spent exactly one day on it, where is this? I’m confident in decoding it, so no problem.

I lit a candle and held the paper over it.

[Loan Records]

—Ignatz Groff. Modern Chronicles of Würzburg, or Systematic Description of Notable Events from 1495 to 1724

—Carl Christoph Schmider. History of Alchemy

—Rudolf Koff. “Thirty Years’ War Reconstruction Project: Bishop Peter Philipp von Dernbach”

Loan records.

This is the list of books Patrick Faeber borrowed from the workers’ library the day before the demon incident. I raised my eyebrows and whistled. With this, the hypothesis I established earlier became more solid.

* * *

I have my usual black hair, wear comfortable formal clothes, and have my eyes closed. The dawn air is the same whether in Würzburg or Munich. I’ve finally returned to Würzburg, but there’s nothing special yet. Würzburg, that damn Würzburg… Strangely, I encounter it often. That means I need to think more deeply. With such thoughts, I leaned against the church chair and counted.

The sound of old metal clanking.

The moment I open my eyes, the thread-like light drawn in the center of the crucifix widens to the side. A priest in black vestments is looking at me, holding a Bible and keys.

The church bell rang belatedly.

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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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