Chapter 171
Chapter 171
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 171
Chapter Title: How to Survive as the Second Son of a Magical Noble House
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“…!”
Adelbert’s face crumpled.
He must have been shocked to see the professors’ faces drain of all color.
Leo, on the other hand, remained unfazed—he’d seen it a few times already and had grown accustomed.
‘Nearly thirty people all caught by a single spell. That’s the surprising part.’
What the hell was up with those Pleroma bishops?
Even the professors who’d been appointed to their positions fell for it in one go. At this rate, we had no hope.
More importantly…
‘…This is unexpected. To think it’d be blocked right here.’
There was no response from them at all.
I pressed my lips together tightly and swept the end of my mask.
I hadn’t deliberately asked if they’d been in contact with Pleroma. I didn’t think it’d be that straightforward.
But there was a chance I was overcomplicating it, so I figured I should try the textbook approach.
“Then let me rephrase the question. Have any of you ever met or communicated with Pleroma, even once?”
[…….]
“Did any of you visit the Magic Department dormitory Building 1 last night?”
[…….]
“Did any of you visit Lucas Ascanien’s room last night?”
[…….]
All no.
‘This can’t be right.’
Detailed warp coordinates access rights for sneaking into my room, a warp spell neatly installed on the floor.
Putting it together, the culprit had to be one of the professors.
And yet none of them were admitting it?
Not just me—Leo and Adelbert looked a bit thrown off too.
After waiting a long time with no answer, I withdrew my staff.
“It’s no use after all.”
[…Hm?]
[Just now….]
The professors snapped their heads up and looked around.
The first to grasp the situation protested.
[Your Excellency, even with an imperial order, shouldn’t you give us time to prepare?]
“There’s nothing for you to prepare, but I apologize for not giving you sufficient leeway. My consideration was lacking.”
I replied as mildly as possible, mimicking Nicolaus’s tone.
“But I’d appreciate it if you could understand that in an interrogation, we don’t disclose the exact timing of spell use. So, to conclude: based on the results of the spell, there are no individuals here in contact with Pleroma, nor any who claim to have gone to the dormitory last night.”
[Then that means there’s no suspect here? Just as I initially guessed.]
Professor Winter asked.
“Yes. That possibility has grown stronger. There truly may be no culprit among you.”
Leo and Adelbert’s gazes turned to me.
Adelbert in particular looked utterly stunned. It was only natural—I’d confidently insisted with all sorts of evidence that the culprit was here, only to back off like this.
“May I ask one question of the professors here?”
[Go ahead.]
“I understand that detailed warp coordinates are accessible to all professors. What procedure is required to obtain those coordinates?”
[Procedure? Well… you need a valid reason. For example, if a student is in their room and seems involved in a magical crime inside, or if the door is magically locked, something like that—then the operations team provides the coordinates. But these kinds of dangerous incidents are rare, so we usually don’t need to know them.]
“I see. Do the professors contact them directly?”
[Yes. Warp coordinates are strictly managed for safety reasons, so they don’t provide them to teaching assistants or students upon request.]
“Thorough. Then who are the individuals who check and provide those coordinates to professors?”
[The dormitory operations team.]
There was a curfew, sure, but you could warp out anytime anyway, so it seemed a bit lax at first glance. But they had their systems in place. Of course, outsiders couldn’t warp in here even if they knew the coordinates.
“Thank you for the answer. As the professor said, students could figure out detailed coordinates by experimentally shifting them one by one, and operations team staff could find them out if they tried… So perhaps I’ve set the wrong premise.”
[Exactly. So there’s no reason to hold just us professors and interrogate us like this. I feel a weight lifted now that Your Excellency understands our side.]
Professor Winter smiled as he replied.
No matter how I thought about it, there was no reason my prediction could be wrong.
This wasn’t baseless confidence. I was doing this precisely because there were still factors to consider.
‘Then I just need to start from smaller hypotheses and build back up step by step.’
I smiled back and said something to the president standing at the end of the platform.
The president relayed my words to them.
“Excellency Ernst will return in one hour. You must be tired, but please remain here.”
As we exited, the president’s attendants waiting by the door fell in step beside us. I addressed one of them.
“Please gather the dormitory operations team staff in one place.”
“The dormitory? Understood. I’ll prepare a room in this building—please wait.”
One attendant warped away somewhere.
Leo asked quietly.
“What’s your plan?”
“…….”
The reason for asking was obvious.
What now that there’s no answer?
“I’m curious too, Your Excellency. Didn’t you say there was definitely a culprit in there?”
Adelbert chimed in, his face still clouded with confusion.
“It’s nothing much. It seems pointless to grill just the professors, so I thought I’d conduct interrogations elsewhere too.”
“We already know it’s not that simple or leisurely a reason.”
Leo said without so much as blinking.
Damn…
You know me too well.
Leo opened his mouth.
“Let’s say, as per the investigation, that revelation—which is no different from telepathy—can control people. If a revelation came saying ‘fall from a high place,’ Your Excellency thought the victim wouldn’t remember anything up to the fall. I’ve pieced together what you said—am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Then, right at the moment when they’ve fallen and are on the brink of death, if the one who gave the revelation says, ‘This is actually the result of you feeling despair about life for the past ten minutes and agonizing over falling—that’s the truth,’ wouldn’t they perfectly believe it?”
In other words, they manipulated their thoughts once more through a revelation akin to brainwashing.
That’s why none of the professors affirmed my questions. That’s what it meant.
“Exactly. It’s like you’ve been inside my head, Your Highness.”
“…….”
For a moment, I saw Leo suppress a smile that threatened to form.
Leo cleared his throat and spoke.
“…Ahem. Then why didn’t you consider that right there and re-ask? Even if staff have coordinate access, the one who installed the spell isn’t staff.”
“Really? And why do you think that, Your Highness?”
It was fun listening to him wring this out of me after so long.
It was good to have him review it through someone else’s mouth.
“That warp spell wasn’t installed by an ordinary talent. Half the staff are old humans, half new. Among the new human staff handling simple admin, there’s no one skilled enough for that level of magic. …Though an outsider like Your Excellency wouldn’t know.”
He’d figured out it wasn’t ordinary skill just from seeing the warp spell in front of my room.
I’d called him during my baptism to uncover exactly this.
“But what more should I have asked? I asked four times already, and not a single one matched.”
“Then you came all the way here to figure out what to ask next.”
Spot on. He knows too damn much now.
I just smiled in reply.
At that moment, Adelbert—who’d been listening intently to our conversation—spoke up seriously.
“Your Excellency, I have a question. May I ask?”
“Of course.”
“You asked if they’d visited Magic Department dormitory Building 1, and if they’d visited Lucas Ascanien’s room. Why ask essentially the same question twice? I’d like to know.”
“…….”
Sharp.
It wasn’t for nothing that Adelbert always got good reviews compared to the crown prince.
“I’ll explain later. It’s still just a hypothesis on my end, so it’d be better to tell you once it’s confirmed.”
“I see…. But why interrogate the staff really? As Senior Leo said, if the magic installed for the crime was that sophisticated, there’s no culprit among the staff. Do you disagree, Your Excellency?”
Just then, the attendant who’d left earlier warped back from the end of the corridor.
I turned back to Adelbert.
“Let’s watch and see right now.”
* * *
There were about twenty dormitory operations staff.
I’d thought maybe five or six at most, but there were far more than expected.
Still, they’d be much easier opponents than the faculty.
“Lord Nicolaus?”
“Huh?”
Their faces filled with confusion as an unfamiliar man entered.
I looked at their bewildered expressions and recited the standard line I’d said hundreds of times at the police bureau.
“We’re short on time, so I’d appreciate your immediate cooperation.”
“Yes?”
“Uh, what….”
―Enter through the narrow gate.
This time, like when I interrogated that senior old human from Primrose Pass, I needed concrete answers. To get them, I had to bluff a bit—like when I’d said five minutes left until support became five hours.
I snapped my fingers to lightly rouse their consciousness, then urgently spoke as I watched their eyes glaze over.
“I need your help.”
“…?”
Adelbert glanced at me at the sudden remark.
“I’m a second-year Class 1-B professor in the Magic Department. There’s a problem in a student’s room, and I need the warp coordinates right now. Do any of you know Lucas Ascanien’s detailed room warp coordinates?”
“…!”
“Ah.”
Leo let out a short sigh.
‘Come on out.’
If nothing surfaced here, I’d have to rethink my hypothesis.
Fortunately, the wait wasn’t long.
Twitch—
Someone standing at the end of one wall twitched their fingertips.
As if trying to signal me, they raised their hand.
But with their consciousness impaired, the motion was painfully slow. I urged them on in a panicked tone.
“Are you the one who knows? As quickly as possible—I need the exact coordinates.”
“233.3….”
“…….”
“…808.3:000.1. What exactly is going on?”
“…….”
I smiled beneath my mask.
I saw Leo’s face harden. He played along to verify.
“It’s correct.”
“Do you know Leonard Wittelsbach’s warp coordinates?”
At my words, their unfocused eyes wandered, then they muttered slowly in a limp voice, just like before.
“No. I’d have to check. But didn’t you say it was urgent?”
“Perfect. How would you know the internal warp coordinates for some random student’s room, without ledgers here or anything?”
And just my room at that.
It meant they’d checked it so often they had it memorized.
Plus, they’d just confirmed the info yesterday and handed it over, so it was fresh in their memory, right?
I checked their status window.
[Gloria Klein]
‘Good.’
I snapped my fingers again to fully erase their consciousness.
―Enter through the narrow gate.
“Did you warp to those coordinates and install the warp spell?”
“…….”
“Or did you ever pass Lucas Ascanien’s warp coordinates to someone along with orders?”
“…….”
They kept shaking their head.
No ‘orders’ given.
Just an informant.
“Very well. Then have you ever checked the room coordinates for Adelbert Hohenzollern and Elias Hohenzollern?”
A different reaction this time.
They nodded.
Bang—!
I slammed the desk, dispelling the spell.
Of course, I’d have to wipe the entire conversation from their memories.
I mentally recited the keywords to erase while implanting new memories.
“It’s done. You may go.”
I nodded to the imperial mage who’d been standing behind me the whole time.
As the mage approached Gloria Klein with a puzzled look, I stepped out into the corridor.
Adelbert asked urgently.
“Your Excellency! What was that just now… I mean! Did you catch them?!”
“No. The one who warped in, installed the spell, and sprinkled the drug in your room is someone else. As I said earlier, it requires someone skilled enough to handle magic cleanly.”
Only then did Adelbert seem to recall what I’d said before.
“Ah… right. Since Lord Nicolaus—no, Excellency Ernst is solving the case, and it’s my first time seeing the process… I got a bit excited. So that person just passed on information?”
“Yes. That means we’ve caught one of the two culprits now.”
Now it was time to use this info to find the ‘skilled’ culprit.
It was only a matter of time.
I said what I hadn’t earlier.
“Your Highness, you asked why I asked the same question twice.”
“Yes? Yes.”
“Memories depend not on facts, but on what the person perceives. Say I ate an apple. If I mistake an apple for a grape, I’d nod to ‘Did you eat a grape?’ not ‘Did you eat an apple?’”
“Hm… Even with magic, it’s hard to get accurate info in that case.”
“Exactly. And if the ‘revelation’ is a command strong enough to override the subject’s will, they might not properly perceive their own actions. Think of it as a living corpse with only one goal in their head.”
“…Similar to brainwashing.”
“It’s remote-use, so not a divine power mental magic, but close enough.”
I took a breath and continued.
“Suppose they received coordinates injected into their head in that corpse state, along with an order to go there. Then they’d think they never set foot in Magic Department dormitory Building 1, or Lucas Ascanien’s room.”
“Ah, I get it now. You asked the same question twice because you didn’t know how they’d perceive it.”
Adelbert said, eyes gleaming.
You catch on quick.
I’d explained at length on purpose—next time I could be vague.
“But, Your Excellency. Isn’t there a problem?”
“What?”
“As Senior Leonard said, if the command dominates the brain and creates gaps in the actor’s memory, then implanting ‘I was only in the lab tonight’ would fill those blank memories with post-hoc rationalization, right?”
“Yes.”
Adelbert asked cautiously.
“…So even if we find the informant, it’s the same as before—we can’t find the actor. And if the informant and actor aren’t directly connected, but someone else gave the revelation, questioning with the informant’s identity won’t help—they wouldn’t know.”
He’d been lobbing these tantalizing questions from earlier.
Turning a guy like this into a villain would be a huge waste.
We reentered the auditorium.
The moment they saw us, a few professors asked tiredly.
[Didn’t you say there’s no suspect? What more are you going to do?]
“This is the last. If nothing comes up this time, I’ll report to His Majesty that the Imperial Academy faculty are completely cleared of suspicion.”
I soothed them, cast a soundproof spell, and said to Adelbert.
“Even if they cover memories via revelation, there’s a problem here. Say they give the order ‘Warp to coordinates A and install the spell.’ Then afterward, they could say ‘You did nothing tonight’ or ‘You never warped to A and installed a spell’ to overwrite it.”
“Yes.”
“Here’s the biggest issue. No matter what follow-up order they give to cover it—even if it’s already been issued—the prior one leaves a record.”
Adelbert, lost in thought staring into space, slowly opened his mouth.
“…Ah.”
“Unless they erase it like with an eraser via mental manipulation magic, the brain has already processed that info. So now, one question should suffice.”
I counted on my fingers and opened my mouth.
―Enter through the narrow gate.
“From 8:30 last night until midnight, did the coordinates ‘233.3:808.3:000.1’ ever cross your mind even once? If so, answer.”
Leo and Adelbert held their breath, staring straight ahead without a sound.
A long silence followed.
[…—.]
A faint voice leaked from somewhere.
It wasn’t intelligible words, but it was unmistakably an answer.
The moment we identified whose voice it was, Leo’s brow furrowed.