Proof of Innocence (1)
“I heard they’re going to summon a few cadets because of the demons. And it looks like we’re among the ones being called.”
The cadet-only dining hall inside LutrA.
That was where I often ate with Cartesia, trading idle talk between bites.
The reason we were talking about it now, instead of at any other time, was simple: lately, both of us had been impossibly busy. Cartesia had been vanishing the moment class ended, off doing gods-knew-what, while I had been throwing myself into every lecture I could, desperate to claw back the reputation that my sisters had dragged into the mud.
Even with all that relentless effort, though, my name—buried deep beneath the academy’s lowest pit—showed no sign of recovering anytime soon. In the end, Cartesia was still the only person I could honestly call a friend.
Not that she was the only girl who wanted to get close to me.
But there’s something about that girl that puts me off.
It wasn’t that I disliked her as a person. It was just that she always seemed to close the distance at moments I never expected, and that made her feel strangely hard to deal with. So, up until now, I’d made every effort to avoid her.
Besides, she wasn’t one of LutrA’s cadets, so there was no reason we had to cross paths in class. If I wanted to avoid her, I could.
In the end, that meant I was a man with no friends, and that even the kind of information everyone else in LutrA knew—whether they were dogs or pigs or anything in between—would never make it into my ears.
Unless Cartesia told me about it, that is.
Which was why this talk of “demons” was something I’d never heard before in my life.
“Demons? Here in LutrA?”
I blinked and asked again, and Cartesia lazily spun the fork in her hand.
“They’ve been keeping it quiet so it doesn’t spread outside, but there’ve been a few disappearances inside LutrA lately. That’s why everyone’s making such a fuss.”
“...Disappearances?”
I stared at her, dumbfounded.
Disappearances? Here? In LutrA?
No way.
By its very nature, LutrA was the cradle of the Empire and an educational institution at the same time, and the overwhelming majority of the people inside were cadets from noble families of the highest birth.
That was why knights and mages dispatched from the imperial household were always stationed here, and why dense barriers covered the academy grounds. Sneaking in from the outside was practically impossible.
Most importantly of all, LutrA’s chairman was one of the strongest men on the entire continent.
To abduct someone here while evading the chairman’s eyes, and the scrutiny of countless other experts, was nothing short of suicide.
“Right, normally it would be. But the culprit must be pretty skilled, because they haven’t left a single trace. And it’d be pretty ridiculous for the chairman to get personally involved over something of this scale, too.”
Cartesia shrugged as she said it.
“Anyway, because they couldn’t find the culprit at all, they probably just decided it had to be the work of demons. If they call it a demon’s doing, then they don’t have to go tearing the place apart looking for some invisible criminal, do they?”
“...I see.”
“But you don’t need to worry. If some idiot who doesn’t know his place ever comes near you... I’ll kill him on the spot.”
She said it with a smile so cold it could freeze blood.
“Well, if we’re done eating, shall we go? It’s been a while since the two of us had time alone, and I’m curious to see the face of the bastard who dared call us out here.”
****
By the time Cartesia and I arrived at the assembly point, quite a number of people had already gathered.
Ricardo, the crown prince, certainly couldn’t have been unaware of what was going on, so his presence made sense. But what caught my eye were my sisters as well—Eli and Lobelia were standing there too.
Judging by the timing, we were obviously the last ones to arrive, yet no one said a word to us once we got there.
The mood was strange enough that I decided to try the easiest-looking bastard in the crowd first.
“...Why were we called here? Don’t tell me you’re the one who summoned us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I had no desire whatsoever to come somewhere you were already standing.”
Ricardo frowned ever so slightly as he answered, which told me he’d been dragged here without knowing anything either.
Still, this feels off.
I shifted my gaze and glanced toward where my sisters were standing, and I caught sight of Letitia and Lobelia wearing faintly amused expressions.
That look. It’s the same as before.
Their faces looked too much like they had back when they gave me that sword as a gift, just before my duel with Eli.
Like they’d set the whole situation on the palm of their hands and were quietly watching me dance across it.
I couldn’t put it into words, but I knew better than anyone that feelings like this—those vague, indefinable sensations—were exactly the kind of thing I could never afford to ignore.
I need to be careful.
Just as I was keeping my guard at its highest and surveying the scene, a man with a friendly-looking face slowly stepped into the center of the gathering.
“I’m sorry for calling everyone out here when you’re all so busy. Ah, and to introduce myself first, I’m Rual Onstein, the student council president of LutrA.”
“...Onstein?”
I frowned as I listened to him.
Onstein. Onstein... I knew that surname from somewhere. Where the hell had I heard it before?
“I’m sure everyone here already understands the situation, so I’ll get straight to the point. The board has ordered the cadets to investigate that incident everyone’s talking about. So I gathered the people I personally thought were among the strongest cadets and brought them here.”
“Do you mean you’ll be sharing the investigative authority with everyone here, senior?”
“If it’s necessary, then of course.”
The student council president nodded with a smile at Cartesia’s question.
“But before we start the investigation in earnest, I’d like to take some time to think about the culprit’s identity and purpose. There are so many people here, after all. I figured there ought to be at least one useful clue among us...”
Even with the president’s subtle encouragement, however, not a single person stepped forward to voice an opinion.
That was only natural. If you stuck your neck out in a place like this and your guess turned out to be wrong, you wouldn’t just look foolish—you’d end up with nothing to show for it.
Then, at last—
“Uh... this isn’t just my personal opinion, but speaking as a mage, from an objective standpoint, I don’t think this disappearance case was the result of any personal grudge.”
It was Letitia.
“There was no personal connection or common thread among the missing people. In other words, for the culprit, wouldn’t anyone have been fine as long as they could be abducted cleanly, without any fuss?”
“Hmm... so you’re saying this wasn’t something planned in advance, but rather the result of impulsively abducting people?”
“If the goal were simply murder, there’d be no reason to kidnap people inside LutrA. I think the culprit must have a personal purpose. For example, maybe they needed human sacrifices for some kind of ritual or spell...”
It was a fairly plausible deduction. Because I had been thinking the same thing.
“Hm. Then what kinds of rituals or spells actually use human sacrifices?”
“There are truly countless rituals and spells like that... but the most representative would be something that forcibly amplifies one’s own power. After all, if you forcibly extract mana or life force from a person’s body and absorb it into yourself, you can become stronger very easily.”
“...Then the culprit is most likely someone whose power has suddenly increased recently?”
“Probably. Even if they didn’t directly absorb life force, if they definitely sacrificed people, then they must have become stronger in some way.”
Like a perfectly rehearsed play, everything flowed smoothly from deduction to conclusion.
I had a bad feeling about this. Worse than before.
“B-brother! No, President! I know someone like that! Someone who, until recently, was obviously a pathetic piece of trash, but who seems to have gotten much stronger all of a sudden lately!”
At that moment, one of the cadets standing next to Ricardo raised his hand high and shouted excitedly.
And unfortunately, I knew that bastard too.
“...Verdel Onstein?”
Back when my sisters had been spreading those dogshit rumors about me and my reputation was buried in the dirt, he was one of the miserable bastards who’d looked happier than anyone in the world while joining in and repeating them.
At least after I trampled Ricardo in that duel, he’d kept his mouth shut, so I’d stopped paying attention to some useless cretin like him. I never imagined he’d show up at a moment like this.
Wait. Come to think of it, wasn’t the student council president’s surname Onstein too...?
The whole situation was undeniably wrong.
I was about to cut in before that idiot could spew any more nonsense, but unfortunately, he was one step faster than me.
“Sian! Sian, sir! That guy, until not too long ago, he was a worthless piece of garbage, but suddenly his skill shot up like crazy! To think someone’s ability could grow that much in less than a month—there’s no doubt in my mind he must have used some kind of sorcery!”
At Verdel’s loud declaration, every gaze in the room turned toward me.
But rather than blaming Verdel, I quietly looked at the true instigator who had steered the situation this far.
Letitia.
And Letitia, rather than turning away from my stare, only smiled back.
Looking at her face, I bit down hard on my lip.
It’s a trap.
A vicious trap. A sly, carefully prepared trap meant for no one but me.