Silent Witch

"A self-poisoning, huh?" muttered Louis in a low voice, prompting the head warden sitting across from him to nod once with a pale face.

What awaited Louis Miller when he returned home after leaving the mansion of the [Star Oracle Witch] was a report of the fake Pittman, the assassin who broke into Serendia Academy, which had killed himself with a hidden poison. Thus, even after having just returned home in the middle of the night, he flew with his flight spell to the prison and summoned the person in charge, after a bit of choking up of the guard who was speaking nonsense telling Louis to come back again in the morning since it's night now.

The middle-aged man who served as the chief warden of this prison trembled pathetically the moment he heard the Seven Sages had called him, which couldn't help but prompted him to answer Louis' question honestly.

"When did you find the body?"

"Earlier this afternoon… a patrol guard found him."

"You said it was a self-poisoning, but did you find any eyewitness who saw him took the poison?"

"N-No, sir. The cell across from it just happened to be empty…"

"Have any of the other prisoners noticed anything unusual?"

"There's no sign of it either…"

Nodding his head with a "hmm," Louis recalled in his mind the structure of the prison he had checked before coming here. Instead of facing each other, the cells in this prison were built to be next to each other, making it difficult for prisoners to check on each other's cell conditions.

"When you imprisoned that man, did you not check his belongings?"

The warden's face turned beet red at Louis' question, causing him to refute in a desperate manner with his spits flying over.

"W-We did! We have checked it very carefully! That man certainly didn't bring any poison with him…"

"But in reality, he was dead."

"W-Well… I…"

Louis considered a few cases in his mind before reaching two major possibilities. Either the imprisoned man was carrying poison by some means and committed suicide, or someone killed him to keep his mouth shut. Thinking that the latter seemed more likely, he asked the chief warden to show him the man's body.

The chief warden was getting nervous, but he still led Louis to the basement. Apparently, they were using one of the rooms in the basement as a morgue for the body.

The body lying on the floor was that of a man in his mid-twenties. He was told that his appearance, which resembled that of Minerva's teacher, Eugene Pittman, was not the result of any makeup or disguise. That was confirmed when he was captured.

Looking at the way he dressed in his prison uniform was pretty crude. It bothered Louis.

"Chief Warden. Did you take off his clothes right after he died?"

"N-no, not particularly, but I believe it remains exactly as it was when it was first discovered…"

Then it's strange, thought Louis, furrowing his brow. The way the prisoner's clothes were worn was a little too crude. The front and back of his pants were reversed, and it didn't reach all the way up to his waist.

… it looks as if someone put it on him after he died.

Suddenly, a possibility crossed his mind, and Louis thoroughly examined the condition of the body. He had some knowledge of autopsy, but admittedly, with the level of medicine in this country, it was difficult to determine the exact time of death.

——Still, distinguishing between someone who has been dead for half a day and someone who has been dead for a few days was something he could do.

"Chief Warden, how was the real Eugene Pittman murdered?"

"According to his statement, he took advantage of the fact that Eugene Pittman was on his way to Serendia Academy to participate in the chess tournament, and killed him by drowning him with water magic. He then stripped him and dumped him in the river…"

"So, you still haven't found the body of the real Eugene Pittman?"

After seeing the Chief Warden nod, Louis was convinced.

The real Pittman was killed by drowning—that's the only information available to them from the killer's statement.

What if Pittman had really been killed in a different way? …such as poisoning.

Louis looked down at the body in front of him with a bitter look on his face.

"I am pretty sure that the cause of death of this body is poisoning. However, this is not a body that has been dead for half a day… this is the actual Eugene Pittman."

"…what?"

"I presume they were using ice magic to prevent the body from decomposing."

Turning his gleaming, razor-sharp eyes on the uncomprehending warden, Louis posed a single question.

"Have there been any outsiders in or out of the building today?"

"N-now, that you mention it… there's a trader who delivers food to prisoners…"

"That trader must be his accomplice. He/she probably carried the real Pittman's body into the cell, faked the fake Pittman's suicide, before letting him out."

＊ ＊ ＊

A covered wagon was moving down the street, despite the fact that it was late at night. A young girl with short black hair was seated in the driver's seat wearing a hooded cloak. Under the cloak was a fresh face with no makeup and eyebrows set in a dignified expression.

Just then, a young man emerged from the wagon behind her. He gave the impression of calm, unreliable, and gentle—it was Eugene Pittman, Minerva's teacher… nay, it was the man who stole his face.

Keeping her gaze forward, the woman opened her mouth.

"Yuan, please remain inside. There may be people who are already aware of your escape."

"Come on, Heidi, don't be so uptight. How about this, then?"

The man called Yuan laughed in a sweet voice like burnt honey and covered his face with his hand. Then, as his fingers dug into the skin, the face that resembled Eugene Pittman contorted like squishy clay.

It might look like some clay was pasted onto the skin and then kneaded. However, if you look closely, you can see that this was not the case—the skin itself has been transformed into a clay-like substance. Despite the nauseating and horrifying scene that was unfolding nearby, Heidi did not change her expression. To her, this scene was nothing to be surprised about.

"Here, how about this?"

When Yuan put his hand off, his face looked exactly like Felix Ark Ridill, the second prince of the Ridill Kingdom, only with different colored hair and eyes.

Heidi shifted her focus to stare at Yuan's face with one eye, then returned her gaze to the front.

"Yuan, please stop joking around."

"Okay, okay. Heidi, for someone so cute, you can't take a joke."

"… I'm sorry."

Heidi lowered her dignified eyebrows with a slight shrug and lowered her head. She has an earnest personality that makes her blame herself for even the most trivial of things.

Yuan gave an exasperated, "goodness," and hugged Heidi from behind.

"I'm not angry with you, okay? I do feel so lucky to have such a good ally like you. It's all thanks to you that I was able to escape from prison like this. Thank you."

Yuan then kissed the back of Heidi's head with a smooch sound.

Yuan was an excellent assassin who could infiltrate various places by manipulating his face at will, but all this was possible only with the support of Heidi.

They poisoned the real Eugene Pittman and preserved his body with ice magic to prevent it from decomposing. Then, after Yuan had safely completed his mission at Serendia Academy, he would fake his own suicide at a suitable place and have the preserved body found… That was the original plan.

However, the boy, Barney or whoever he was, saw through him and caused Yuan to be apprehended. So he changed his plan and asked Heidi to sneak into the prison to replace Yuan's body with Pittman's.

"I was so close this time… oh, dear, all that stress could ruin my skin."

"Shall we return to the Empire after a short break in the hideout?"

Yuan shook his head as he stayed in the position of hugging Heidi from behind.

"No, my work is not done yet. I plan to infiltrate at the Serendia Academy's school festival one more time."

With that said, Yuan squinted his eyes like a snake and licked his lips with a thin tongue.

"Still… there's something that's bothering me."

"You mean the ‘invisible magicians' who defeated you?"

"Right."

Yuan closed his eyes and recalled the moment when he was knocked down.

Another female student arrived when he tried to silence Barney Jones, Minerva's student who discovered his true identity. Since it would be troublesome if that she screamed, he trapped her in a water ball barrier…

For some reason, the water ball barrier was broken. And somehow, he was crushed by wind magic and was stunned by lightning magic afterward.

But he didn't see anyone in the room who was reciting any spell. At that time, he had assumed that there were magicians hiding somewhere and were using remote spells to attack Yuan.

…But what if it was not the case?

The water ball barrier that Yuan had set up felt as if it had been destroyed from the inside. What's more, the girl who looked so weak couldn't possibly destroy the barrier with her bare hands. If she wanted to destroy it from the inside, it would be appropriate to interfere with it with some spell.

Since inside the water ball barrier was filled with water, she shouldn't able to recite a spell but… Was she carrying some kind of magic tool? Hmm, she never showed any signs of using any tools.

With a face that resembled Felix's, Yuan squinted his eyes and examined the situation over and over again. The more he examined it, the more he came to one conclusion.

In other words—there's something about that girl, Monica Norton.

If he were going to infiltrate Serendia Academy's school festival, that girl would probably be his biggest obstacle. In response to this premonition, Yuan's body trembled and his lips lifted into a crescent moon smile. With a throaty, sweet voice, he seemed to be enjoying himself from the bottom of his heart.

"Uhuhu, ahahahaha!"

"You look so happy, Yuan."

"Of course I'm so happy. I'm so thrilled to look forward to this… I mean, I can smell stimulating secrets from it."

Yuan hugged Heidi from behind and nuzzled his face into her dark hair, letting out a chuckle. Then, like a cat approaching its prey, he licked his lips with a smile.

"My job is to expose people's secrets. Whether it's Felix Ark Ridill's secrets or Monica Norton's secrets…I'll expose them all."

"Yuan, there's a hard object hitting my waist."

"I love the look on their face when their secret is revealed. How wonderfully arousing. Especially when their face is beautifully twisted into a crumpled mess, it's like a virgin girl crying and begging "please don't expose me, please don't expose me" with her clothes ripped off!"

"Yuan, there's a hard object hitting my waist."

"When we get to the hideout, will you keep me company?"

"Sure, if that's what you want, Yuan."