Chapter 60
Chapter 60: Testimony and Suspicion
A side hall of the Crystal Palace had been temporarily requisitioned as an interrogation room.
Although August had vouched for her, sparing Lina from having to wear anti-magic restraints for the time being, as the primary suspect she was still required to remain in the observation seats and was not allowed to leave even a single step away.
Lina did not resist.
On the contrary, she had even asked a staff member for a booklet and was taking notes while listening.
She needed to reconstruct exactly what had happened during those thirty seconds of darkness from the witnesses’ accounts and use that to remove the blame that had been pinned on her.
The first witness to step forward was the chairman of the ‘Sibyl Industrial Group Company’, Derek Sibyl.
His expression was grim. Holding a freshly printed magical fluctuation graph in his hand, he spoke with evident confusion.
“To address Ms. Lin's doubts, as the contractor responsible for this building's power system, I must clarify that this was not a conventional assassination.”
Pointing at the sharply plunging curve on the graph, Derek said in a deep voice, “At the exact same second the explosion occurred—9:03:15 PM—the Crystal Palace's magical power core was neither physically damaged nor disconnected.”
“Not disconnected? Then how did the lights go out?” the sheriff asked in confusion.
“They were ‘eaten’.” Derek used a disturbing choice of words. “At that instant, a massive magical black hole appeared near the main guest seating area. It instantly drained all magical reserves from the lighting circuits, causing an overload shutdown. This is not something an ordinary human mage could accomplish, unless there was an adult Void Dragon lying on the roof.”
After a pause, he pulled out another thermal imaging record.
“Furthermore, during those thirty seconds of darkness, although our thermal imagers lost their primary power source, their backup power remained operational. The records show that the area where the mayor was located was a zone of absolute ‘deep blue’.”
“Deep blue?”
“It means temperatures below freezing. There were no living body heat signatures there. Whether it was the assassin, the bodyguards, or even the mayor himself, all thermal traces disappeared in that instant. It was as if... something had taken him into another space, or turned him into a dead object.”
The tip of Lina's pen paused briefly.
Instantly draining magical power? Absolute low temperature?
That sounded like some sort of high-level necromancy or a curse eruption.
The second witness was the esteemed Duchess of Volgania, Maria Petrovna.
The silver-haired elderly woman sat before the interrogation table, both hands folded atop a sapphire walking stick.
Her testimony was not as smooth as Derek's, but it sent an even greater chill down everyone's spine.
“When one grows old, one becomes especially sensitive to certain... ‘unclean’ things.” The duchess's voice was slow and low. “I was seated not far from Jean Pierre.”
“Before the explosion happened, I already smelled something.”
“What kind of smell? Was it the smell of blood?”
“No.” The duchess shook her head, her gaze becoming somewhat vacant. “It was the scent of... decaying wood, mixed with old preservation spices. A smell that can only be found in abandoned manor houses left deserted for a century.”
“Then the lights went out. In that darkness, I heard no footsteps, nor the sound of clothing brushing together. The entire space was terrifyingly quiet. Even the screams from moments earlier seemed to have been isolated away.”
The duchess took a deep breath and lowered her voice.
“Then I heard a ‘click, click’ sound. Very faint. Very rhythmic. Like... the sound from the puppet shows we played with as children, the sound of joints colliding against a wooden frame. Immediately afterward came a crisp crack—that was the sound of a bone breaking.”
“Are you certain you didn't hear the killer breathing?”
“I already said it. That thing did not breathe,” the duchess stated firmly. “At that moment, the one standing beside the mayor was definitely not human.”
The third witness was Roland Hepburn.
As the person who had been closest to the deceased at the time, Hepburn appeared to be in terrible condition.
Wrapped in a thick blanket, her face pale, she held a cup of hot cocoa in both hands, seemingly not yet recovered from the shock.
“At the time... Mr. Jean Pierre had just finished speaking with me.” Hepburn's voice trembled, carrying a hint of sobbing. “He wanted to invite me to see his... collection. He had only just turned around...”
“And then?”
“And then the lights went out.” Hepburn closed her eyes as if recalling that horrifying moment. “His hand suddenly stiffened. I felt a stream of icy air pass between us. Then I heard him laughing.”
“Laughing?” The interrogator and Lina froze simultaneously.
“Yes. Not the kind of laugh someone makes when they're happy.” Hepburn described it with a shudder. “It was more like... something was stuck in his throat. He wanted to scream but couldn't make a sound, and could only force out a series of ‘keh-keh-keh’ wheezing noises. It sounded like someone desperately suppressing insane laughter, yet also like... like someone had seized his throat and forcibly pulled the corners of his mouth upward.”
“It seemed he was trying to say something in the darkness...” Hepburn struggled to remember. “I couldn't hear clearly. It sounded like... ‘eyes’? Or maybe ‘glasses’? Then there came a series of violent convulsions, as though something was forcibly manipulating his limbs.”
“When the lights came back on...” Tears rolled down Hepburn's cheeks. “I saw that doll sitting on his chest, and he... had become like that.”
However, when the fourth witness, Euphemia, took the stand, the atmosphere of the interrogation became somewhat strange.
This mysterious author, famous in literary circles for her “unpredictable prose and keen insight into human nature,” was curled up in the interrogation chair like a hamster that had just been dragged out of its nest.
She tightly clutched the cup of tomato juice meant to calm her nerves, while the oversized bow atop her head bobbed up and down with her trembling body.
“Name?”
“Scar... Scarlet Dream Beneath the Moon.” Euphemia's voice was as faint as a mosquito's buzz. “This is the name by which I walk among mortals—”
“Real name.” The interrogator did not even raise his head.
“...Euphemia.” The vampire girl instantly wilted. “My full name is too long. I forgot it...”
“Please describe your location and everything you saw and heard at the time of the incident.”
Euphemia swallowed hard and cast a frightened glance toward Lina in the observation seats.
When she discovered that the “terrifying Outer God” was staring at her thoughtfully, she shuddered in fright, quickly withdrew her gaze, and stammered,
“I... I was sitting in a corner at the time, thinking about the plot of my next chapter.”
“When the explosion happened, I was terrified.” Euphemia shrank her neck. “The lights went out, and everything around me was pitch black. I heard... that horrible laughter, and the sound of bones breaking.”
“What were you doing at the time?” the interrogator asked.
“I... I didn't do anything!” Euphemia hurriedly defended herself, seemingly afraid of becoming a suspect. “The moment the lights went out, I was so scared that I instinctively covered my eyes with the hand holding my fan... so I didn't see anything at all!”
She deliberately emphasized the movement of her hand, as though trying to prove that her dominant hand had been occupied the entire time and that she could not possibly have had a free hand to cast magic.
After all, everyone knew that precise magical operations normally required one's dominant hand for guidance.
“So during the incident, your right hand was holding the fan over your eyes the entire time?”
“That's right! Exactly!” Euphemia nodded vigorously. “I... I was shaking so badly from fear that I didn't dare move at all. Look, the fingerprints on the fan's handle clearly show it was held with my right hand.”
The interrogator nodded and wrote in his notebook:
“The witness obscured her vision due to fear, and her casting hand was occupied. Did not witness the culprit.”
“Please sign here to confirm.”
The interrogator pushed the statement toward her.
Euphemia let out a relieved sigh. She extended her right hand, picked up the quill, and quickly signed the elegant script of “Euphemia” on the paper.
After signing, perhaps because nervousness had left her mouth dry, she subconsciously set down the pen, picked up the tomato juice on the table with her right hand, and took a large gulp.
Lina, seated in the observation section, suddenly raised an eyebrow.
Hm?
Her gaze moved back and forth between Euphemia's left and right hands.
Back when they had eaten together at Qingqiu Pavilion, Euphemia had said she was left-handed. When Lina taught her how to use chopsticks, she had used her left hand as well. Yet she had just signed with her right hand.
And in her testimony, she had specifically emphasized that she had been holding the fan with her right hand in order to prove that she had lacked the ability to commit the crime.
She was lying.
Narrowing her golden eyes, Lina looked at the still-trembling vampire girl.
During that moment of darkness, her left hand definitely had not been holding the fan. The fingerprints clearly showed it had been in her right hand.
So what had her left hand been doing?
Lina recalled the look of disgust Euphemia had shown when she saw the mayor earlier, along with her current state of excessive nervousness.
Could she have secretly flipped the mayor off in the darkness?
Or perhaps thrown something at him to vent her dissatisfaction?
Or maybe...
She had been so frightened that she threw away her fan, and now she was too embarrassed to admit she had lost her composure.
Although Lina had noticed a clear logical flaw in Euphemia's testimony, she never considered the possibility that she was the murderer.
After all, in Lina's eyes, this chuunibyou girl who started stammering every time she saw her simply did not look like someone with the courage to assassinate the ruler of a city.
Most likely, this coward had done something embarrassing in the dark, or had simply been so frightened that she remembered things incorrectly.
In her mind, Lina labeled Euphemia an “unreliable witness” and shook her head helplessly.
The testimony might have been false, but it held little investigative value.
Looks like she'll have to figure this case out herself.
Up next would be Lin Qingwan's testimony. Perhaps there would finally be some important clues.
With the appearance of the fifth witness, Lin Qingwan, the situation finally took a turn.
Completely different from the trembling Euphemia, the moment this woman from the East entered the interrogation area, the aura surrounding her made it feel as though she was the one conducting the trial.
Elegantly brushing a speck of dust from her suit sleeve, she sat down, crossed her legs, and swept a cool gaze across the security personnel before her.
“Miss Lin, regarding the attack you suffered...” The sheriff's tone was respectful. “Based on the residual magical fluctuations at the scene, our preliminary judgment is that it was a high-level ‘Explosive Fireball’. Among the guests present, the only person possessing fire-attributed magic is Miss Lina.”
Hearing this, Lina, who had been listening intently the whole time, felt her heart skip a beat.
As expected, the blame was still being pinned on her.
However, Lin Qingwan merely let out a disdainful snort.
“Explosive Fireball?” She raised an eyebrow slightly, her tone carrying a trace of mockery. “It seems the security personnel here are not only slow to react, but their basic identification skills are equally worrying.”
“W-What do you mean by that?” the sheriff asked, stunned.
“If that had truly been a high-level fire spell, then when my defensive array absorbed the impact, the feedback I received should have consisted of pure magical turbulence and fire-element corrosion.” Lin Qingwan raised a hand and displayed the slightly charred cuff of her sleeve. “But in reality, it did not.”
She extended a slender finger and lightly rubbed the scorch mark before showing everyone the layer of black, greasy residue that had come away on her fingertip.
“Do you smell it?” Lin Qingwan said coldly.
The sheriff leaned in and sniffed. His expression immediately changed.
“This is... tar? And sulfur?”
“That's right. These are the combustion byproducts of low-grade black powder mixed with some kind of accelerant.” Lin Qingwan took out a handkerchief and wiped her fingers. “The so-called ‘fireball’ was nothing more than an alchemical bomb disguised as a magical effect. Its shockwave was physical in nature and carried none of the penetrating properties of high-level magic.”
The entire room erupted in an uproar.
“An alchemical bomb?!”
Someone had actually attempted to attack Lin Qingwan using such an extremely crude alchemical product?
Lina suddenly recalled the faint sulfurous smell of gunpowder she had noticed when the incident occurred.
“I know what you're thinking, but I don't believe the attacker's objective was to kill me,” Lin Qingwan continued. “That explosion looked impressive, but its destructive power was extremely limited. It couldn't even shake the outermost layer of my shield. It had only one purpose—to create noise, incite panic, and...”
She turned her head, her gaze sweeping vaguely across Lina before finally settling in the direction of the late mayor's corpse.
“A feint.”
“Using a fake explosion to draw everyone's attention while concealing the real killing intent. When everyone was focused on me, the real ‘hunt’ could be completed silently in the darkness on the other side.”
“Th-This...” The sheriff wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. “But what purpose would that serve? Why not use something more eye-catching, like lightning magic or flash magic?”
“Use your brain.” Lin Qingwan looked at him as though he were an idiot. “Don't you think everything that happened tonight feels a little too ‘deliberate’? Among all the people present, it just so happened that only Miss Lina could use fire-element magic.”
Her gaze finally settled on Lina.
“It is as though someone specifically designed a script and cast Miss Lina as the protagonist.”
Before the sheriff could say anything else, Lin Qingwan stood up and walked out of the interrogation room on her own, leaving behind nothing but a graceful silhouette.
Lina's mouth hung slightly open.
The clues provided by Ms. Lin were extremely important. They could very well be the key to breaking the case...
But now that she thought about it, it really was strange.
Who on earth wanted to frame her so badly?
She was just a little witch from the countryside. Which of these important figures could possibly have such a deep grudge against her?
The sixth witness was the general manager of Arcana Group Company, August von Heinrich.
The elderly gentleman adjusted his monocle and sat solemnly before the interrogation table.
“Mr. August,” the sheriff said respectfully while wiping sweat from his forehead, “my apologies for taking up your time. May I ask what you saw at the time of the incident?”
“At the time, I was discussing business matters with Miss Lin Qingwan.” August's voice was steady. “When the explosion occurred, my first reaction was to confirm... to confirm the safety of our personnel.”
As he spoke, his gaze discreetly swept over Annie, who was currently napping with her head resting on Lina's lap in the observation section.
“At the instant the lights went out,” August continued, “although my vision was obstructed, I sensed an extremely high-density magical turbulence.”
“Magical turbulence?”
“Yes. The sensation was quite unusual.” August lightly tapped the table with a gloved finger. “Normally, when magic is cast, there is obvious elemental concentration. But at that moment, the magical power within the Crystal Palace seemed more like it was... ‘escaping.’”
“It was as though a gigantic vortex had formed at the location of the main guest seating area, forcibly sucking in all surrounding light, heat, and free-floating magical elements. The pull was so strong that even the mithril pocket watch I carry with me developed resonance fractures.”
As he spoke, he removed the mithril pocket watch from his pocket.
The crystal cover was covered in spiderweb-like cracks.
The security personnel collectively sucked in a breath of cold air.
To crack the crystal of a mithril pocket watch, just how terrifying must that instantaneous burst of power have been?
“Therefore, I am also inclined to believe this was... a supernatural event.” August offered his conclusion, though he deliberately left room for interpretation. “Or perhaps some kind of extraordinarily advanced alchemical technique that we have yet to understand.”
“As for Miss Lina...” August turned toward her with a gentle gaze. “I can guarantee on behalf of Arcana Group Company that at that moment, I did not sense any signs of large-scale magical output from her direction.”
The security captain closed his notebook, his expression grim.
After questioning everyone, the only thing they had conclusively established was that Lina was not the attacker.
Other than that, the investigation had made no progress at all.
Every testimony seemed to indicate that this was some kind of evil spirit curse incident.
“Very well. Thank you all for your cooperation.” The sheriff sighed. “Since there is no conclusive evidence, everyone may return to their residences and rest for the time being. However, please do not leave Gaul City and remain available for further investigation.”
“In that case...” The sheriff rubbed his temples, preparing to announce the temporary removal of Lina's status as a primary suspect.
Just then—
*Bang!*
The side hall's doors were violently thrown open.
A messenger covered in soot and gasping for breath stumbled inside. Without even taking the time to salute the distinguished figures present, he shouted at the top of his lungs:
“C-Captain! Something terrible has happened!!”
“What are you panicking for?!” The security captain, currently serving as acting sheriff and already looking for somewhere to vent his frustration, barked angrily. “Can't you see all our honored guests are here? What could possibly be more important than the mayor's assassination?!”
“Th-The mayor's residence!” The messenger pointed out the window, his finger trembling violently. “Just now, a massive fire broke out at the mayor's residence! The blaze is extremely fierce, and... and according to reports from the scene, it started in the basement and may have detonated some kind of high-energy alchemical fuel! Half of Gaul City can see the flames now!”
“What?!”