Chapter 271 : Chapter 271
Chapter 271. Mental Suggestion
Logaris stared at that line of text, and his pupils contracted sharply. A suffocating sense of oppression seized his heart in an instant.
“Damn it…”
If not for this sudden White Dragon Dream and the Book of Prophecy forcibly breaking through his logical blind spot, he would have almost completely “ignored” the fact that this so-called royal banquet was very likely a trap aimed at him, or even at the entire Northern Territory.
Given his vile relationship with the Holy Church, one in which both sides wished they could grind each other’s bones to dust, how could he possibly have been so utterly unguarded about a banquet where the Pope himself would descend?
This was too bizarre. It made no sense at all.
Logaris’s mind began operating at an extremely high speed.
Combining Conrad’s earlier behavior, the old king’s strange pressure at the funeral, and the many abnormalities during the Privy Council, the answer was ready to emerge—Prime Minister Moran.
This royal banquet, held under the banner of “discussing resistance against demons,” had been initiated by Moran, and Moran was also the hidden driving force behind it.
The royal decree carrying a mental suggestion had originated from Moran’s hands.
“Heh. What a fine civil-official prime minister with no strength to bind a chicken.” A cold smile tugged at the corner of Logaris’s mouth.
Avoiding the banquet was impossible. Since the other side dared to have the Pope descend at such a critical juncture, they had very likely already grasped some substantial evidence that he carried the bloodline of a hell demon. Simply running away would only delay the eruption of the crisis, and it would easily bury an even deadlier hidden danger. He had to find a way to confront this situation head-on and break it.
Logaris drew a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. He sat back in his chair, pulled a sheet of specially made parchment from the drawer, and dipped the tip of his pen in mana ink.
In an extremely formal and solemn tone, he wrote:
【Teacher Barnabas: Irrefutable evidence of high-level hell demon infiltration has appeared in the Royal Capital. This matter concerns the survival of the kingdom. At the royal banquet three days from now, the upper ranks of the Holy Church will attend the feast. Your student humbly requests that you come personally to the Royal Capital in the name of the Dean of Saint Arcadia Academy, so that we may discuss the grand plan to resist the demons together.】
Logaris’s pen paused at the end of the parchment. Then, immediately afterward, he added one more sentence that felt extremely out of place, yet also carried a certain tacit understanding:
【Additionally: This banquet will be hosted by the royal family at the highest standard. The Inner Court has specially invited several dessert masters. I hear that many high-end desserts and candied fruits rarely seen on the market will be served then. I imagine they should suit Teacher’s tastes.】
The signature was an extremely intricate mana mark.
Logaris formed seals rapidly with both hands. Pale-blue streams of mana danced at his fingertips, and the parchment instantly turned into blue points of light, shooting straight toward Saint Arcadia Academy.
Since the other side wanted to use the Pope’s influence to pressure him, then he would muddy the waters completely. Inviting a seventh-tier mage, another pinnacle of humanity, to the table was the confidence he needed to clash with them head-on.
After dealing with that royal decree carrying a concealed spellwork, Logaris had just leaned back against his chair with a gloomy expression. Before he could even take a deep breath, the heavy door released a dull impact.
BANG!
The door was shoved open by an immense force and slammed heavily against the inner wall panel.
Logaris’s fingers, which were pressed against the edge of the desk, suddenly tightened. A faint, dark-blue glimmer of shattered space had already begun to emerge at his fingertips, but the instant he clearly saw who had come, he forcefully suppressed that destructive fluctuation.
It was Sylvia.
She had not even put on an outer robe. Her thin inner garment looked somewhat disheveled in the night wind that swept through the hall. Her long silver-gray hair clung messily to cheeks as pale as paper.
Her breathing was extremely rapid. She slammed the door shut behind her, and the metallic clash of the lock sounded especially jarring in the dead-silent room. She did not even give Logaris a chance to speak or ask questions. Instead, she stated an astonishing piece of news directly.
“Logaris, I’ve been placed under a mental suggestion!”
Logaris shot up from his chair. Behind his rimless glasses, his eyes flashed with extreme shock.
What shocked him was not that Sylvia had also been placed under a suggestion, but that she had actually noticed it on her own!
One had to know that, as a top sixth-tier mage whose mental power far surpassed others of the same tier, even Logaris himself had failed to independently discover this subtle, imperceptible alteration of cognition.
“You discovered it?” Logaris asked in a low voice. “And you also realized there’s something wrong with the royal banquet?”
“It isn’t only the royal banquet that has a problem. The mastermind behind this trap is very likely Prime Minister Moran. Our judgments during the Privy Council and at the funeral were all silently guided by some kind of power.” Sylvia voiced her own conjecture, and it was almost identical to Logaris’s analysis just now.
“How did you notice the mental suggestion?” Logaris stared fixedly at her.
Sylvia took a deep breath. Her expression was grave, as though she was still calming the lingering tremor left inside her. “It was a dream. Just now, I fell into an extremely strange dream. In the dream, an aged and sonorous voice, one that carried some kind of ancient majesty, whispered beside my ear. It seemed to be warning me of something…”
“The moment I woke from that dream, the fog in my mind that had been obscuring my cognition was forcibly torn apart. Only then did I realize that my subconscious reactions toward the prime minister and the royal banquet had all been tampered with!”
…
At the same time, in Golden Rose Palace.
The Inner Court corridors appeared sinister and endlessly long beneath the moonlight.
Esmeralda clung tightly to the shadows along the vaulted ceiling, her entire body like a weightless gecko. Her breathing rate had already been adjusted to three breaths per minute, and her heartbeat was so faint it could almost be ignored.
The mission Sylvia had given her was to uncover the Inner Court’s true defensive deployment. If possible, she was also to confirm the old king’s true condition.
But what puzzled Esmeralda was that the atmosphere here was far too “normal.”
In the corridor below, the Royal Guards in gorgeous armor stood perfectly straight. Esmeralda’s sharp gaze swept across every detail of them: the faint sound of chain mail rubbing, the steady rise and fall of their breathing, and even the ruddy skin exposed through the gaps in their armor. As one of the best among the Shadow Guards, she had an almost instinctive intuition for the signs of life.
These soldiers were not puppets, nor were they corpses. They were even conversing in low voices, their tones carrying the particular exhaustion of a long night watch, while vigilance toward their surroundings flickered in their eyes.
“There’s absolutely nothing abnormal?”
Esmeralda frowned slightly. She tried to sense the mana fluctuations around her, but on those guards, apart from the faint fluctuations of the kingdom’s standard-issue enchanted armor, she could not detect any trace of magical interference.
Just as she was preparing to move deeper toward the bedchamber, a sense of danger like needles pricking her back suddenly exploded through her!
Without the slightest hesitation, Esmeralda made an uncanny reversal in midair, forcing her body to twist within an extremely narrow space.
CLANG!
A pitch-black dagger brushed past her throat, then disappeared into the shadows.
Esmeralda landed lightly, drew the short blade at her waist with her backhand, and fixed her gaze firmly on the shadows at the end of the corridor.
“Who is it?!”