Chapter 90
Chapter 90
‘Chapter 9. Slander’
‘How can I not remember anything at all?’
[That’s why I told you to write things down early.]
[What did Irina say back then?]
[‘I’ll remember forever and ever with the awesome system~’]
[You said you’d remember forever.]
‘….’
Well, I thought I could remember.
I turned my head sharply and waited quietly for the owner in front of the half-collapsed gate of the Hellis mansion.
Soon after, Duke Hellis, hearing of our arrival, rushed out.
He was dressed much more casually than yesterday.
However, his expression wasn’t good at all.
He greeted us with thanks and briefly explained the current situation.
“The damage is quite extensive.”
“Yes. But the bigger problem is that we still can’t determine the cause.”
Following him inside, the Hellis mansion no longer showed the beautiful and splendid appearance from yesterday’s party.
The great central hall of the mansion was half-collapsed.
Though there were no more traces of Demonic Beasts, debris that hadn’t been cleaned up yet was scattered across the floor.
For instance, unwiped liquor, broken wine glasses, and fruit spilled on the floor.
The ice cream, which had been one of the main dishes at yesterday’s party, was the same.
“We’re fortunate that the building isn’t in danger of completely collapsing.”
“What happened to the Demonic Beasts?”
“We couldn’t capture any alive. We collected the corpses, but… the Imperial Family took them this morning.”
It makes sense for the Imperial Family to step in when unidentified creatures appear.
After all, this happened in the capital.
But something felt oddly unsettling.
Is it because of my deep dislike towards the Imperial Family?
[It could be that, or it might not be.]
‘Wasn’t the Imperial Family unrelated to the destruction in the original story?’
After all, the hidden imperial princess was the key figure who defeated the destruction.
This could be an opportunity for the female protagonist, the princess, to make her official debut in society.
That should be a good thing… so why do I feel so anxious?
I first asked Duke Hellis about the Demonic Beasts.
“Is there anything known about the Demonic Beasts?”
“No. They’re all unidentified life forms whose nature we can’t determine.”
He added:
“Some of the Demonic Beast remains sent to the Imperial Family have been forwarded to the Academy and Magic Tower, so we might get more detailed results from there.”
“I remember there were quite a few Demonic Beasts. Did the Imperial Family take all of them?”
Hellis fell silent at my question.
As I hesitated, wondering if I’d asked something wrong, he let out a big sigh and answered.
“…The Imperial Family requested that, but of course not.”
That’s a relief.
It would be difficult to request to see the Demonic Beasts in such a public place right now, given people’s attention.
‘I’ll have to look at the Demonic Beasts later.’
Whether it would help or not, it would have been nice to have Sian Terezia here.
Hellis soon hurried away with an aide who came running to him.
After he left, I slowly examined the mansion’s central hall with everyone.
Only traces remained where the space had been torn and the Demonic Beasts had appeared yesterday.
Near the ceiling of the tall hall, there were slightly distorted spaces, all similar but slightly different.
“You really can’t feel any holy power?”
“No. Rather, it’s like holy power doesn’t gather well here. Or maybe something’s blocking it.”
Seiren tilted her head as she gathered and dispersed holy power in her hand repeatedly.
And she came to the same conclusion as before.
“It’s not that holy power won’t gather, but there’s a strangely irritating sensation.”
“Hmm.”
Isiel answered that he didn’t feel anything like that at all.
“It doesn’t seem related to magic. Though we’ll need to investigate more thoroughly.”
He said this while stepping around the sticky, melted ice cream remains on the floor.
“So this is what ice cream looks like when it melts.”
“Indeed.”
The ice cream prepared yesterday had been like a massive tower.
I know the Hellis family had applied all sorts of temperature control magic to keep it from melting.
Thanks to that, they had managed to imprint the ‘ice cream snow’ in almost everyone’s minds at the party.
Though I suppose that’s all been forgotten now in light of this tragic scene.
“Was that black stuff there originally?”
Cassis asked me while examining the scene in his own way.
He was pointing to where my ice cream had completely melted and stuck to the surface.
“Where?”
“There seems to be something strange.”
Looking again after his words, I saw something blackish scattered over the traces of melted vanilla ice cream.
I had thought it was just pieces of Demonic Beasts or black dust that had fallen during yesterday’s intense scene.
But looking closely, it was a bit different.
“No…”
Ignoring the ice cream getting on my shoes, I slowly approached where the black traces were thickly gathered.
What is this?
Just as I leaned closer to the black marks, I heard a sound I hadn’t heard in a while.
Ding.
[SYSTEM | Quest ‘Marquis Cloi’s Slander’ has arrived.]
It’s been a while since I received a quest.
However, I couldn’t help but pause at that name.
‘Marquis Cloi’s Slander…?’
At that moment, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that something had gone terribly wrong.
Ah.
Ah…
[Sorry.]
[Really sorry.]
[It couldn’t be helped.]
As I sighed quietly, the systems all began apologizing at once.
[We thought it would be good to give a quest around now, so we looked at the quests and pop!]
[And suddenly Marquis Cloi appeared.]
“Ah…”
I finally couldn’t help but sigh out loud.
“Is there a problem?”
“What is it, sis?”
Cassis and Seiren peered at me from the side.
I didn’t even have the strength to respond to them, and just looked at Cassis once with sad eyes.
[But in exchange! We brought some support quests to make it easier to handle.]
[Support quests are really expensive, you don’t know.]
[It wasn’t supposed to be opened yet, but we paid extra to get it.]
Apparently, you can buy quests with money too.
Well, let’s think positively.
It seems these situations had to happen anyway.
And if we can get help through quests like this, it might actually be beneficial.
[SYSTEM | Sub-quest ‘Situation Assessment – Marquis Cloi Edition’ for ‘Marquis Cloi’s Slander’ quest has arrived.]
[‘Situation Assessment – Marquis Cloi Edition’
Marquis Cloi intends to point to ‘Irina Seike’ and her employer ‘Cassis Luwin’ as the masterminds behind this incident.
Let’s find out what reasons he plans to use to target player ‘Irina Seike’.]
Through the sub-quest, I could confirm my ominous prediction was correct.
Sobbing internally, I had no choice but to ask Cassis first.
“C-Cassis, sir. By any chance, does Marquis Cloi have any connections with the Magic Tower or Academy?”
Marquis Cloi wouldn’t point to us as masterminds without reason.
Since they said the Demonic Beasts were sent to the Academy and Magic Tower, maybe it’s better to start looking there.
“Uncle is a major donor to the Academy. He was on the board of directors, though I’m not sure if he still is.”
“Is that so?”
If we need to investigate, we should probably start there.
I pushed back my fallen hair and checked the black traces floating on the ice cream again.
“I thought it was dust or contamination, but it’s not.”
“Yes, it seems closer to smoke actually.”
Smoke?
I took off my gloves to check more carefully.
When I touched the black traces with my fingers, small particles flowed between them.
“This… I think I saw this yesterday.”
“Yes, it’s similar to the smoke that humanoid Demonic Beast used.”
“But why… is it flowing from the ice cream?”
“…”
“…”
Cassis and I fell silent simultaneously.
I called out to Seiren who was farther away.
“What is it, sis?”
“Is this the same as what you felt from that Demonic Beast yesterday?”
Seiren rushed to my side and, after checking, nodded vigorously.
“Yes! Why is this flowing here?”
I looked around the central hall with a feeling of impending doom.
Ice cream was flowing in various places throughout the central hall, and surprisingly, traces of the Demonic Beast remained only above it.
Though such traces should have been present elsewhere too, everything was clean as if someone had deliberately cleaned up.
“Cassis, sir, what do you think?”
“If this is indeed that Demonic Beast’s smoke, people will question why traces remain only above this ice cream.”
“…”
“And they will be suspicious.”
I buried my face in my hands.
Cassis watched me calmly and continued speaking.
“Because both the ice cream and the Demonic Beasts are things that didn’t exist before.”
I have no idea where to start dealing with this.
***
The first thing we did was inform Isiel, our biggest investor who had been permanently hooked thanks to Seiren, about the situation.
“…”
“That’s how it is.”
“Oh. No, then.”
Isiel couldn’t properly string words together, only uttering something close to exclamations.
He finally ran his hands through his hair.
“Let’s talk about the details after we return to the mansion.”
This isn’t really a conversation to have in someone else’s mansion.
For now, I put some of the ice cream and Demonic Beast smoke in my inventory for analysis.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. My sister has returned.”
“Hello, Sister Irina.”
Just then, Duke Hellis and Jane returned.
It seems Jane, who they said had fled far away, had returned to the mansion today.
She looked much better than yesterday, wearing the long pointed hat of the Lemiere ducal family on her head.
“Thanks to you, Jane could be safe. Though late, I sincerely thank you, Lady Seike.”
Hellis extended his hand to me for a handshake.
I grasped it.
‘Ha, I hope Duke Hellis takes my side.’
