Chapter 259 : Chapter 259
Chapter 259. The “Murderer”
It turned out that Sylvia’s choice had been the correct one.
If they had merely blocked the divination today, then once Moros returned, he would certainly have spoken in vague and evasive terms, and the Minister of Finance’s faction would never have let the matter rest.
But now?
A perfect alibi was enough to shut every mouth.
Logaris let out a soft laugh and pressed a hand to the body’s brow. A cryptic ripple of spatial fluctuation passed through the air, and that precious shell—indistinguishable from a real human body—turned into a streak of light and was stored inside his Spatial Ring.
A substitute this perfect was naturally not some disposable, one-use consumable.
Once everything had been dealt with, he walked to the window and looked at the Magitech Airship rising into the distance.
“Goodbye, Mr. Moros.”
Logaris pushed up his glasses. The bleak sunlight outside the window reflected off the lenses, concealing the cold glint that flashed through his eyes.
“Thank you for your testimony. I am now an officially certified good man.”
Now that the diviner had already cleared him as unquestionably innocent, the next step was naturally to digest the enormous military legacy Carlisle had left behind with a completely clear conscience—and to investigate that unknown Sixth-Tier magical beast as well.
...
Several hours later.
Inside Scream Fortress’s temporary laboratory, the air was thick with a nauseatingly sweet, fishy stench.
It was the unmistakable smell of high-tier magical beast organs.
Wearing protective goggles, Logaris held a mithril dissection knife as steadily as though he were slicing a premium steak. On the worktable before him, the dismembered “Devourer” lay there without a shred of dignity, its internal structure fully exposed.
“Interesting.”
Logaris picked out a purple-black gland that was still twitching faintly and casually tossed it into the beaker beside him.
The muscle density of this thing was no different from that of an ordinary Sixth-Tier magical beast. The bizarre part was that its stomach lining was covered in naturally formed spatial runes. They were crude, but they were undeniably a low-grade form of spatial patterning.
It did not look like the product of natural evolution.
It looked more like some brutally engineered Bio-Alchemical weapon.
“Hell’s level of technology is wilder than I imagined.”
Logaris removed his gloves and had just been about to record the data when a violent surge of mana suddenly erupted from the corridor outside.
Boom—!
Then came a shrill alarm, followed by Moros’s furious scream.
“Stop him! Don’t let him get away! He’s the traitor!”
Logaris’s heart jolted. He shoved open the laboratory door just in time to see, at the far end of the corridor, a figure in a major’s uniform sprinting madly for the exit.
Wind-attribute acceleration spellwork coiled around the man’s body, making him so fast that he left behind afterimages. Two guards who tried to stop him were sent flying by wind blades casually flung from his hand, smashing into the wall with their life or death unknown.
“Damn it! My Divination Compass!”
Moros came staggering out of another room in a cloud of dust and soot, with singe marks still visible in his beard. He had obviously just suffered a loss.
The major was just about to charge out through the fortress gate, and his face had already twisted into ecstatic relief at the prospect of escape.
Once he got out of the fortress and plunged into the Great Rift, even the gods would have trouble finding him.
Unfortunately for him, the one he had run into was Logaris.
Standing by the second-floor railing, Logaris did not even bother to use a grimoire. He simply raised his right hand and made a light grasping motion at empty space.
【Spatial Imprisonment】
The major, who had been sprinting at full speed, crashed into something like an invisible wall.
Bang!
The immense momentum brought his entire body to an abrupt halt in midair, as though someone had pressed pause. Then he slammed heavily onto the floor. Before he could scramble back up, the surrounding space instantly solidified, like a transparent coffin pinning him flat against the ground so completely that he could not move even a finger.
“Done.”
Logaris dusted off his hands and turned to head downstairs.
Several heavily armed Northern Territory military policemen immediately rushed forward and brutally clamped Anti-Magic Shackles onto the major.
Panting heavily, Moros ran over and looked down at the man on the ground, his eyes filled with both fury and excitement.
“We got him... We finally got him!” Moros wiped the grime from his face and glared viciously at the officer. “You hid yourself well enough, Major Gerard.”
Gerard, the head of the fortress communications office, was usually an honest, unassuming middle-aged man. No one had expected him to suddenly lash out and injure people while undergoing divination.
“I’m not a traitor! I didn’t betray the Kingdom!” Gerard was still struggling, his face red as he roared, “I just... I just wanted to live! Don’t think I don’t know what you nobles are doing—you want a scapegoat!”
“You wanted to live? Then why were you running?” Logaris walked up to him and looked down at him from above. “Lord Moros’s divination may not be especially accurate, but it is hardly so bad that it would wrongly accuse an innocent man.”
Moros’s cheek twitched at the remark, but he had no time to argue. He directly took out a fresh handful of crystal powder and scattered it over Gerard.
Right now, he desperately needed a “real culprit” to fill the gaping hole left by the Second Prince’s disappearance.
“Enough nonsense. Whether you’re a traitor or not, let magic speak!”
【Forced Memory Retrocognition】
As Moros swung the staff inlaid with the Eye of Heaven, Gerard’s eyes instantly turned vacant and his pupils dilated. Above his head, the air twisted with light and shadow, unfurling into a flowing screen that looked like the projection of an old film reel.
At first, the images were nothing but trivial scenes from daily life: Gerard expressionlessly chewing hard, dry bread in the mess hall; saluting his superiors in the corridor; letting out a weary sigh inside a toilet stall...
“Tch. Who has time to watch your little chronicle of eating, drinking, and relieving yourself?”
Moros clicked his tongue impatiently and jabbed his staff sharply forward. Mana surged from it in a violent pulse.
“Fast-forward! Skip this useless garbage!”
The image in the air instantly accelerated, turning into a blur of indistinct colored streaks. Accompanied by the sizzling hum of mana turbulence, the timeline sped rapidly backward.
A few seconds later, Moros’s gaze sharpened, and he abruptly pulled back his staff.
“Stop! Go back a little... right there!”
The image froze all at once, then resumed at its normal speed.
The scene was no longer a noisy public area, but a dim secret room. Gerard was speaking in a low voice to a silver mirror no bigger than a palm, his expression tense, as though waiting expectantly for something.
“...Yes. It has now been confirmed that Prince Carlisle has disappeared. The command headquarters is in total chaos because of it, and for the moment no one has the attention to spare for anything else...”
There was no reflection in the mirror.
There was only a profound darkness inside it, thick and viscous as tar.
Something seemed to be writhing within that darkness. Then a hoarse voice emerged, like two rusted iron plates grinding against each other—brief and cold.
“The Purple Mist will soon rise. Wait quietly.”
The image came to an abrupt end.
Silence.
The Northern Territory soldiers and fortress officers around them stared at one another, their eyes full of shock and rage.
Although the process had looked like some absurd silent farce, the ending was ironclad proof.
During wartime, as the fortress’s communications chief, he had leaked the highest military secret—the prince’s disappearance—to an unknown evil force.
Such collusion between enemies within and without, under the military law of any nation, was enough to warrant the death penalty.
The sort that did not even require a trial.