It had been a long time since Azura felt he may be out of his depth, unfortunately that was a statement he wouldn’t be able to make again for a long while. He was doing his best to follow the dead spy’s history, but he had yet to find anything that would give him a hint to where the organization the spy worked for was hidden. Worse, it was almost like they knew about his magic and its limitations. He couldn’t actually just follow the spy as the man hadn’t lived long enough for Azura to truly grasp his magic signature. So he had to create magic circle after magic circle to track the man even just through the castle, out in public was much worse.

He sighed as the thousandth time viewing spell fizzled out as the target left its range entering the castle again. The beautiful garden he stood in was not enough to soothe his mounting frustration. An explosion inside the castle nearly knocked him off his feet as the shockwave tore into the colorful flowers. He sighed, there went any hope that the extra protection for all of the royals would be unwarranted now that the spy was caught. That was the 3rd explosion to happen in the last week.

No doubt the goal had shifted from being subtle to attracting as much attention as possible, this was just a distraction after all. Unfortunately for them he had already set up enchantments to prevent any civilians from noticing anything strange going on near the castle. That would keep panic from spreading rapidly, and buy them some time to figure this mess out. Unfortunately, he had yet to figure out just where these explosives were coming from. He had checked everyone in the castle, and everyone who entered the castle no matter how brief, but it was clear none of them were the spy. He had even checked for dormant hypnosis, and no one seemed to be under anything like that.

He was just thinking in circles again, that meant it was probably time to report his lack of progress to the prince again. He hoped 1 of the royal investigators was doing better than him, but he doubted it.

***

“So to sum things up, all we’ve learned is that there is definitively no other spies in the castle and that now their assassination attempts are done off outdated information?” Xander’s disappointment was palpable, not that Azura could blame the man. They only even confirmed the last bit because the latest explosion was in the Atrium, where the princess would have been, if he hadn’t advised them all to change their schedules. Thankfully they kept the staff away from where they were supposed to be, otherwise casualties would have started racking up.

“I may have 1 additional piece of information, but it’s more of a maybe than anything definitive.” Xander nodded at him to continue. “I think whoever is doing this knows me, and worse knew I’d get involved in this. I'm only guessing here, but there are just too many coincidences, every action taken seems like it was taken with my magic in mind. If they were trying to cover their tracks from standard investigative magic there are much easier ways than what they’ve been doing.” The question was, what did that really mean?

“I think he’s right.” One of the other investigators currently working on the case stepped forward. The man's face was shrouded in shadow, and he wore a black cloak. The black boots, gloves, and a fedora to finish the mysterious investigator look. “To be honest it seemed like most of what the spy did when out and about was nonsensical, completely pointless, it accomplished nothing, and didn’t really throw me off the trail at all. So It would make sense if they were focusing on a specific spell that they were concerned about.”

He hummed, so he was right then. That was… not ideal if he was honest. “That helps narrow it down significantly though doesn’t it? If it has to be someone who knows Azura’s abilities well enough to counter them like that.” He sighed, Xander was always a little optimistic with things like this.

“In a sense, but it only helps narrow it down if we know who knows. I’m hardly the only student from the academy hanging around the capital, and it would be arrogant to assume none of them have figured out at least the general idea behind a lot of my magic, and any one of them could have told any number of other people as just general conversation. That’s not even counting all of the nobles keeping tabs on my abilities as the heir of house Silver.” Honestly it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume most people in the city have at least heard of him, and if whoever was behind this was wary of his interference, then it was a simple matter to do some digging into his achievements.

“Surely there aren’t many that know of this particular skill set enough to counter it, and even fewer who would then share it with civilians right?” He wasn’t so sure. It was true that his time viewing magic wasn’t something he necessarily showed off. Most other students probably wouldn’t even know about it, but it was also true that the students in Grandforge were all exceptional, and any number of them could have figured it out if they put the effort into it. Sure most probably didn’t, but it was likely that at least some had, and he had no way of guessing who did and didn’t know, so the result was the same.

“It doesn’t matter how many actually know if I don’t know which ones they are. It’s an avenue to look through, but like I said plenty of nobles have been keeping tabs on me for various reasons, so there are just too many spots that info could have come from. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to trace the group through this, just that it’s not likely to succeed.” The only abilities he really kept under wraps were his more dangerous ones, like his grimoire. It was best to assume everything else was public knowledge at this point. Or might as well be anyway.

Xander growled. “Then what are we supposed to do? It’s been over a week, and we’re still at complete standstill.” On that they were in agreement. They needed to change things up, because their current strategy wasn’t working.

“Well where is the one place we know for sure they’ll be? Perhaps it’s time to let them come to us instead of looking all over for them.” The idea forming in his head brought a smirk to his face. It didn’t matter how they avoided his time viewing magic, If they couldn’t leave the castle, then they could catch the criminal redhanded. They wanted to play with traps? Well there was no one better at traps than him.

“You want us to catch them in the castle? How?” He was so glad to be working with Xander instead of Alice, being allowed to explain yourself was such a small thing, but he couldn’t describe how annoying it was whenever she’d take over the explanation as soon as she figured it out. Given she was an analyst that was usually right at the beginning.

“Well I’ll probably need to take the next few hours marking everyone so they don’t set off the traps, so the traps themselves probably won’t be ready for the next attempt, but tomorrow everything will be ready.” Everyone in the group was familiar enough with his skillset to fill in the gaps.

“Couldn’t we speed that up if you just mark people that are likely to be in the area you’re setting traps for?” That would have worked when they knew where the enemies were going to set up the traps, but the enemy would have no doubt realized their info is outdated now, so they were more likely to target hallways or common rooms.

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“If we were going room by room, sure, but they aren’t likely to attack specific locations anymore, so most likely I’ll have to set these traps everywhere, and breaking it down will make that process significantly longer, even if you ignore the fact that anyone could be in any hallway.” He definitely didn’t want to risk civvies getting caught in his traps though, This group had been causing him a lot of trouble, and he intended to return that 10 fold.

“Ok, I trust your judgment. Shade, continue the standard investigation, I don’t want to give any hints that we’re changing up our strategy.” The other investigator tipped his fedora and then vanished into his shadow. He should see if the now named Shade would teach Katy that spell, he imagined she could make devastating use of it.

“That’s a good call, but it probably would have been better if I could mark him first so my traps wouldn’t affect him.” Well it would be fine so long as Shade reported back before he finished marking everyone else who was supposed to be in the castle.

***

Katy had been training non-stop since break started. She’d have to really put the effort in if she wanted to keep up with Azura, and she doubted her other friends were slacking either. She was more or less keeping track of events in the castle, but she was content to leave it to Azura while she focused on getting stronger, or faster in this case. That was her answer to what she was lacking. She needed a decisive attack. Her explosive daggers were a decent start, but were far too situational, and she wasn’t strong enough to make the decisive blow on her own through brute force. So the answer she had come to was a full speed strike. The speed would make up for a lack of size to create a powerful impact. All of that force focused on the point of her dagger should be enough to break most guards.

She bet if she could get fast enough, then this strike could even pierce dragon scales. So she ran and ran, working on using her mana to increase her speed in a variety of different ways looking for the most efficient. The ‘homework’ she had been assigned had proven to be very helpful for her current goal. She couldn’t break apart her body into pure mana like Azura could, but with a high enough affinity she could turn her body temporarily into shadows. Shadows moved at the speed of light, so if she could perfect her timing it was possible to do a single strike at a speed far surpassing what even the greatest mages could manage. Or at least the greatest mages not using shadow or light magic to accomplish the same thing.

Unfortunately it was proving difficult to react properly at those speeds, and had become very familiar with the walls of the training room having slammed into them both in her shadow form which was harmless, and in her physical form, which was significantly less so. Serena had done an excellent job fixing all of her broken bones though, she was honestly surprised the younger girl hadn’t complained about having to heal her so often, but she supposed Serena had been the biggest softy she had ever met.

She took a deep breath preparing to tray again as she squatted down coiling like a spring to push forward with all the force she could muster. Magic swirled around her preparing to enhance her leap and help her body shift into shadows. She gathered as much magic as she could control, all of her focus on the task at hand. “Hey Katy sorry to bother your training, but I need to mark you…” Her concentration shattered causing the mana she had been building to explode. She was promptly sent flying slamming her face into the floor as she flipped over ungracefully until she slammed into the wall. “real quick… Uhhh are you ok?”

She didn’t try to stand as her face burned red. The pain was bad enough, but it had nothing on the sheer mortification. She hadn’t spoken to Azura in weeks to dedicate all her time to training, and the first thing he sees is her blowing herself up. Could it get any more humiliating than that? “I’m fine, just going to sit for a bit.” She tried to let the embarrassment turn to anger like it normally would, but she was too relieved to see her friend again to get properly angry at him. “So my abject humiliation aside, what were you saying?”

If she had learned anything from Azura, it is that the best way to get over an embarrassing situation was to joke about it, well and act like it didn’t bother you, but she didn’t have Azura’s poker face so she’d have to settle for 1 out of 2. Azura laughed gently. “Don’t worry about it too much, Accidents happen in training all the time. As for what I was saying, I just need to mark you so you aren’t affected by the traps I’m going to be setting up.”

Traps? Why would he be setting traps? “And you’re setting traps because?” It wasn’t for anything unimportant, or Azura would have just left her to her training, but what could possibly warrant him setting up traps in the palace.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You haven’t heard?” She rolled her eyes and considered making a snarky comment about being locked away in the training room, but it would just make her wait longer for the answer so she just shook her head instead. “Assassins have been trying to kill the royal family.” Her jaw dropped in shock. What?! How had she not heard of this?! Surely Serena would have told her something that important.

“And you didn’t think to tell me?!” He was only even telling her now so she wouldn’t get caught in the trap he had in mind for the assassins. She wasn’t offended really, she knew he had probably just assumed 1 of the people she had kept closer contact with would tell her, but still.

“I figured you’d know. There have been explosions in the castle for the last couple of days, so I figured even if nobody told you, that you would have asked by now.” She winced, of course she had felt the shaking, but she honestly hadn’t thought much of it. She just figured Azura had developed a new attack that was too much for the defenses in the training rooms.

She groaned, perhaps she had gone a little bit too far with her idea of shutting out the outside world to train. She’d do better after this mess was sorted out. “I guess I didn’t really think about it.” She sighed, releasing all her embarrassment and calming herself. “Alright well go ahead and mark me, and if you need any help with the assassins let me know. I’d be a pretty bad guest if I couldn’t put aside my training to protect the lives of my host.” She owed them anyway. The royals had been very kind about providing whatever she needed for her training.

“I may have to take you up on that, but for right now it’s fine.” He walked over to her, and placed his hand on her shoulder. A magic circle appeared over her shoulder, and started spinning. The circle began shrinking as it got closer to her shoulder until it disappeared under her shirt. “Ok, you’re all set. Only 300 people left to go.” She chuckled as Azura grumbled to himself about overworking. Too bad his copies were all doing important stuff, she bet Azura would kill to have some help marking all the inhabitants of the castle.

“Why doesn’t the prince just make an announcement to gather all the staff in one place?” For most people she would be asking that question as a way to give her advice on a situation, for Azura she was confident he’d have an answer. It wasn’t like he never missed an obvious solution, but it was extremely rare.

“I’m giving different reasons to different people. Just in case there is still a leak I figured I’d use this opportunity to narrow the pool of possible suspects.” She nodded in understanding. That sounded like Azura, always so pragmatic. Even in situations where many lives were at stake. To him every setback was an opportunity. Even more than his copies she was jealous of how fast he adapted. It felt like it took him less than a second to assess any new situation, and find a way to take advantage of it.

“How many different reasons did you give?” She knew he’d want to split the groups so it was easier to keep track of, but too many would surely get caught out. Especially because the biggest risk was if there were multiple leaks, if people with different information were leaks then the assassins would figure out something was up.

“10, but I chose who got what information based on who talks with who most often. That way people who interact with each other will most likely have the same info. As for multiple leaks to the outside, well it honestly doesn’t matter much. None of the given reasons were correct so If they assume it’s a lie that’s totally fine. As long as they don’t know what they are actually for.” As expected. Azura was playing 3d chess, while almost everyone else was playing checkers. Still that the assassins had pushed him to this extent was nothing short of incredible. She bet the next few days were going to be very interesting.