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An Otherworldly Scholar - 102
🕑 Added 2024-02-23 06:23:34 +0000 UTCA hand closed around my wrist, preventing me from raising the cup to my lips. The ballroom seemed to freeze in time. Raudhan’s cup slipped through his fingers, shattering against the table. His skin took a gray, sickly hue. He opened his mouth, trying to say something, but the only thing that came out was a repulsive yellow foam. Someone screamed. Then, Raudhan’s eyes rolled back and started convulsing.
Before anyone could react, Elincia jumped onto her feet, violently knocking the chair, and leaped over Raudhan’s convulsing body. She pulled a potion from her pouch and shoved the contents into Raudhan’s mouth. Nobody dared to move a muscle. The seconds became hours, and after what seemed to be an eternity, Raudhan became motionless.
“Don’t touch your glasses!” Prince Adrien yelled.
Then, chaos ensued. Nobles and commoners knocked back chairs and trays as they moved away from the dinner table. I froze. Whoever was grabbing my wrist remained by my side. I raised my head to find a Zealot dressed in the white and gold uniform of the church. A golden mask hid their face, but I recognized the wolf ears protruding from the top of its headpiece and the tail peeking under the robe; the same beast-folk had protected me during my fight with the royal soldiers.
“Be careful,” the Zealot said, their voice muffled under the mask.
I put down the cup. Only Prince Adrien, Sir Janus, and I were still sitting at the table. The other guests had grouped with the members of their houses in tight defensive formations. Whatever attack they were waiting for never arrived.
“He’ll live,” Elincia’s voice broke the tension.
Raudhan was pale as a ghost, but his chest slowly rose.
My brain took a moment to process the scene. At the other end of the table, Lord Vedras knelt by Sir Enric’s lifeless body, holding an empty potion vial in his hand. Sir Enric’s skin had become gray as ash, and his muscles dried to the point he looked like an old mummy.
“Sir Enric is dead,” Lord Vedras announced.
A shiver ran down my spine as I examined the room. Nobody else showed signs of poisoning. Sir Janus slowly set down his cup over the table and retreated beside the Marquis. Captain Kiln looked at Raudhan’s body worriedly but remained by the Marquis’s side, sword in hand.
“Everyone, to the safe rooms,” Prince Adrien said, his voice echoing on the walls. The guests exited through an ornate double door by the back of the ballroom. “Robert, stay.”
Despite Prince Adrien’s orders, several nobles stayed behind. Lord Victor Osgiria, Lord Herran, and Lord Gairon, the heavy hitters of the kingdom, plus lord Vedras, who remained by Sir Enric’s corpse.
Prince Adrien was livid. “What happened here,” he asked.
“Ashthorn Poison, your majesty. The speed of the reaction and the effects are unmistakable,” Lord Vedra’s jaw clenched as he pointed at Sir Enric’s withered body. “If I had reacted a few seconds earlier, I could’ve saved him.”
Sir Enric’s warped expression was gruesome. I couldn’t imagine what he had felt in his last seconds for his face to turn so distorted. Luckily, Lord Vedras put a napkin over his face.
“What about this one?” Prince Adrien asked.
“Raudhan Kiln will survive with proper care. I used a high-grade Antidote just in time. A high-grade Health Potion should be enough to heal any damage the poison managed to cause,” Elincia replied.
Prince Adrien cursed and kicked a chair. I didn’t expect the chair to cross the whole ballroom just to crash against the wall and turn into splinters. The Great Hall’s furniture was made of rugged, sturdy wood capable of withstanding the frustrations of high-level combatants. I doubted Sir Enric was close friends with Prince Adrien.
“Can someone explain to me how the killer managed to smuggle poison under the noses of five different Sniffers?” Prince Adrien grunted.
The room fell silent.
“That’s impossible. There are no precedents of Sniffers being deceived,” Lord Victor Osgiria muttered as he covered his mouth with a hand and closed his eyes in a pained expression.
“What about the perpetrator smuggling the poison in advance?” I asked.
Lord Herran shook his head. “I ensured our Sniffer went over every square inch of the ballroom before the barrier closed. There’s no way someone poisoned the wine or the cups before arriving. The room was supposed to be safe.”
Prince Adrien cursed yet again. “My Sniffers also examined the area to the last corner. I supervised it myself. There’s no way the perpetrator hid anything inside the room.”
“That means the perpetrator brought the poison. The killer must’ve figured out how to bypass the Sniffer’s detection,” the words automatically came out of my mouth. [Awareness] was working at full speed. In a world of magic, it was easier to conceal an object with a skill than hide it under a tile.
The lords turned around to look at me, and a smile was drawn on Prince Adrien’s face.
“If the culprit figured out how to bypass the Sniffers ‘perfect’ detection skills, then he is inside the barrier right now,” the Prince said.
The faces of the nobles became pale as the realization set in. Someone figuring out how to bypass the Sniffers meant nobody was safe anymore. If the technique became known, the trust between nobles would plummet, and the kingdom would plunge into chaos.
“We need to figure out who the culprit is, how they did it, and if someone else knows how to evade the Sniffer’s detection,” Lord Victor Osgiria said.
“We can’t bring anyone from the outside to perform the investigation. Not even a Sniffer. If the barrier falls, the culprit might seize the moment to escape,” Lord Gairon pointed out, turning around and looking at the feast table. “I’m frankly out of my element here. I’m a farmer, not a detective.”
I felt the snare shutting around my neck before Prince Adrien opened his mouth.
“We might have someone who could play the role of a detective,” Prince Adrien turned around to face me. “A Scholar with the [Identify] skill. There’s no one more qualified.”
None of the nobles seemed thrilled by the idea of an outsider being put in charge of the investigation.
“Do you think you can do it?” Lord Gairon asked.
“There’s no perfect crime, My Lord. The culprit must’ve left a trail we can follow,” I replied with a deep bow. It wasn’t the moment to tell them I wasn’t a detective or anything similar, nor the state of my [Identify] skill. It was time to perform my part, even if it was beyond my abilities. This was the perfect setting to gain the nobles’ support.
Prince Adrien smiled.
“Then it’s my will. Robert Clarke, you are in charge of the investigation. Until the barrier falls, your word will be my word,” Prince Adrien said. “ If you need anything, just ask.”
I looked around, quickly reviewing the situation.
“I need Elincia and Lord Vedras’ help to study the poison. I’d like to request Lady Lyra Jorn’s assistance. She is also a Scholar with the [Identify] skill,” I said, realizing that a team would be better than dealing with the investigation alone. “And please ask anyone else if they drink the wine. We need to know if it was a global attack or a directed assassination.”
Prince Adrien nodded before turning around and walking towards the back door. “Do not let us down, Robert.”
I nodded. Of all the possible troubles I could get into, I didn’t expect to be put in charge of a murder investigation. Sir Enric Osgiria was one of the most important members of the anti-royalist faction, the general of the Osgirian Army nonetheless. I wondered if the culprit wasn’t the Prince and if I just was a smoke curtain to clean up his name.
“Are you alright?” I asked Elincia as I crouched by her side.
“Yeah, didn’t get to drink from the cup,” she replied as she checked Raudhan’s pulse. “What about you?”
“A Zealot grabbed my wrist, so I guess I have to thank my guardian angel somewhere,” I said. “Let’s wait for Lyra to arrive. I want the insight of someone used to court life.”
“Good call. A lot is happening here,” Lord Vedras said, looking at the body of Sir Enric with a horrified expression.
Our first task was to seize the crime scene. I looked at the table. The number of cups, cutlery, and plates correlated with the seats safe from the two that lay broken on the table. No one had added or taken anything. The wine stain from Sir Enric’s cup slowly extended through the tablecloth. There was no visual sign it was poisoned.
I poured a bit of mana into my [Identify] and felt the tug of Corruption in my chest. With the titles I had gained over the last weeks, the Corruption had been reduced to a speck in the center of my chest. Even if I abused the skill now, I was confident the Tournament would grant me enough titles to eliminate it completely.
I made a mental note not to tell Elincia for now.
[Identify] came back to life, and I focused the skill on the wine stain.
Wine-stained cloth. [Identify] An expensive piece of cloth stained with what seems to be Ashthorn-poisoned wine.
How was a skill so helpful yet useless at the same time?
I approached Raudhan’s shattered cup and tried again.
Shattered glass. [Identify] A glass cup with the Farcrest Family Crest. It contains poisoned wine leftovers.
How curious. Raudhan’s glass didn’t mention Ashthorn poison, just poison. The limits of the [Identify] skill weren’t well defined, but that was expected from the System. Titles, levels, skills; everything seemed to be a bit whimsical. I was better off relying on my own logic.
Elincia and Lord Vedras tended to Raudhan in silence. Why would anyone want to target Raudhan? The question lingered only a second before I stumbled into the answer. It was obvious. Raudhan and Captain Kiln had swapped places. The actual target wasn’t Raudhan but the Captain. I massaged my temples. That opened a whole new line of reasoning.
This wasn’t an attack on Ebros’ nobility but a targeted attack toward particular individuals. It made sense. The order of the seats was predictable: Prince Adrien at the center, with the host to the right and Lord Victor Osgiria, the most important duke, to its left. Then, their respective honor guards. Sir Enric by Lord Victor Osgiria’s side and Captain Kiln by the Marquis’.
I had to verify my suspicion about the seating order with Lord Vedras and Lady Jorn.
My theory still had a massive hole in the middle. Why target Sir Enric and Captain Kiln in particular? What did those two have in common? The two managed the armies of their respective houses, but that was all. House Osgiria was leagues away from House Farcrest. House Osgiria controlled most of the kingdom's commerce, while House Farcrest dealt with a remote choke point at the border. Moreover, House Osgiria and House Farcrest were in opposite Factions. The Marquis was a royalist, while Lord Victor Osgiria was an anti-royalist.
Maybe the perpetrator fucked up and messed up the order? Perhaps the targets were the Marquis and Lord Osgiria. That theory raised the same problems as the previous ones. The Marquis and Lord Osgiria were in opposite factions. The culprit had no reason to target them.
Was this even a political assassination attempt? A smoke screen to divert the attention from what was important? The targets didn’t make sense unless they weren’t the only cups poisoned.
I looked around. Lyra was taking her sweet time, so I focused back on the table, trying to see what I was missing.
“Ashthorn Poison is a magical poison, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes, it’s called Ashthorn Poison because of its main ingredient,” Lord Vedras replied.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, easing my mind and leaving all my concerns behind. My eyes, even [Identify], wouldn’t be enough to see what was happening before me. The sensation came slowly. The colors faded away until only mana currents were visible. Blue, green, and golden streams of mana flowed from the light stones encapsulated by the Fortifier’s barrier.
I examined the banquet table. A stain, a disturbance among the mana currents, caught my attention like a rancid odor assaulting my nose. Noxious mana flowed and swirled within the traces of wine stuck to the shards of glass, the floor, and the stain on the tablecloth. The presence of the harmful mana was expected. Now that I knew what to look for, I examined the rest of the table, looking for any other missed targets.
Prince Adrien's cup was clean. The high-rank dukes’ were clean. The Marquis’ cup was clean. There wasn’t a hint of noxious mana anywhere else but in Raudhan’s and Sir Enric’s glasses. And it didn’t make any sense.
“I’m sorry for the delay, Master Clarke.”
Lady Jorn’s voice interrupted my train of thought. I was brought back to the world of color, maybe for the best. My line of investigation was going nowhere. Observation alone wouldn’t push the investigation any further unless Lyra had any theory of her own. I turned around, ready to bombard her with questions about alliances, friendships, and rivalries, when I noticed the man walking in front of the girl.
Long black hair pulled in a ponytail, tanned skin, and aquiline features. I instantly recognized the man from the day the royal army arrived at the Great Hall. Darius Holst.
Comments
I Dare Korval
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the key is that the sniffers use magic to detect all things on your person, but a certain someone brought a hand axe made of anti-magic metal. The axe blade couldn't hold the poison, but if the handle was big enough, it could be partially hollow and could hold a small vial with poison. With the handle closed up the poison would be surrounded by anti-magic metal and so be undetectable (the sniffers would just assume the handle was solid). The axe could also be used to cut through the barrier and allow the killer to escape.
David Ellis
I am so looking forward to Robert stealing lines from Holmes and Poirot and passing them off as his own to further aggrandize his reputation when he's really just trying to get himself into the correct mindset. But *someone* is going to see the factional divide here and put the blame on him, I'm sure of it.
CF Sapper
If I was to try and spark a civil war I woud do exactly what the assassin has done target one member of both sides, maybe a different poison for each, chances are someone is gonna recognize the poison and have the correct antidote for one but not have enough time to rescue both. The likely hood of both people getting rescued is slim due to the shock of guests being in a "safe" space only the paranoid or prepared people are actually gonna be able to react in time and never to two people with different poison. That's gonna have one side cast doubt on the other regardless. The assassin can either wait for the barrier to drop OR cause more chaos while the investigation is the focus. Powerful Nobles trapped inside with honour and pride on the line.no small measure of fear, Not use to being hunted/harmed people looking to capitalize on the situation, settle scores, all trapped in the safe space are gonna be volitial. Its a damn powder keg for a civil war.
Gingiberry
as that one funny little guy once said, and here.... we... go.
Chrystal 1776
Ok clearly there's something going on here that we can't see... The only thing I can think of is a potential family connection but that still doesn't make sense unless one or the other attempts were to throw off the resulting investigation. There's the potential of a third party looking to throw off both sides by targeting someone connected to either side of the internal conflict but that seems a bit out of left field. What is a perfect detection skill? Can it search something like a spatial storage item if something like that exists? Perhaps it's a ranged magical skill? Gods this mystery is gonna be knowing at me till I see the next chapter. Well done.
