“You're talking nonsense!”
“Raising your voice does not make you right, Mr. Bishory. Take your seat.”
Maron firmly silenced the shouting Salery. At a board meeting convened at his suggestion, Salery was accused of helping his son Sony steal the Phoenix Blessing.
Salery had already been accused by other board members, but Maron was the first to formally accuse him and raise the issue. The other board members immediately backed Maron and Sony's confessions strengthened their hand.
Sony admitted that he had used his father to gain access to the Phoenix Blessing, but added that his father had not intentionally helped him. Still, it didn't matter because Salery's responsibility was to ensure the safety of the Blessing.
“We entrust the headmaster of the academy with the most valuable work in the history of the academy and he can't take care of it. As a result, we are losing what many of us have been working on for many years. Will you take responsibility and do something to make amends?”
Professor Kayusha had put his finger on what everyone here wanted to talk about. The Phoenix Blessing, aka Project Nana, was so valuable that it could usher in a new era, and those who had been here for many years, like Kayusha, had been working on it since their student days.
Salery, who had risen feverishly to his feet, sat in silence, unable to offer any reparation.
“If you are not going to do anything to compensate for Project Nana, I want to vote for your removal from the headmastership,” Maron said.
Under normal circumstances, the headmaster elected by the board would remain in office for five years, but in special circumstances, the board could convene and demand a vote, and if three-quarters of the votes were in favor of removing the director, the current director would be dismissed.
In the history of the Academy, such votes were rare. Only twice has the board exercised this right to strip immunity from criminal headmasters.
If there was enough evidence on the Rie affair, Maron would have used it to get the directorate instead of waiting for Sony and using the Phoenix Blessing as an excuse.
Maron's ambition, the purpose of what he was doing, was to become the new headmaster after Salery's dismissal and to gain access to the small library, which could only be accessed with the headmaster's permission. Then he could realize his goal.
According to the executive order, if there is no objection, after the dismissal of the current headmaster, the second headmaster would become director until the next elections, without the need for a vote.
“Then I call for a vote. All those in favor of removing Professor Salery von Bishory as headmaster... Those not in favor... It is unanimously decided to remove Professor Bishory.”
Professor Domini's open vote was swift and unanimous. After the vote was over, Salery's shoulders slumped and he stared, not knowing what to do.
“If there are no objections, the executive order requires me to take over as headmaster until the next elections.”
No one on the board objected to this. Maron's first act as headmaster was to explain the Rie affair to the board and to throw Salery into the dungeon opposite his son, saying that he had been involved in the death of a member of the academy. Thus he began to keep his promises to Yu Valarfin.
***
“Yes, I wasn't there, but I heard that's how the meeting went this morning.”
Yurine hadn't eaten for a day, she was so hungry that she couldn't even focus on listening while she ate.
But at the mention of Rie's name, her ears perked up and she made Lylphia repeat what she had told her.
“Did you hear that? If you want, we can go and question Salery after breakfast.”
“Yes, Yu. Let's do that.”
She had a wonderful smile on her face that Yu saw for the first time. Her innocent and sweet smile, her rosy cheeks and eyes shining with hope were the best expression for a girl.
As she ate her breakfast, she wagged her tail cheerfully from side to side. When Yurine realized that Lylphia's friend sitting next to her was watching her tail, she sped it up even faster, making the girl who was following her tail dizzy.
Then she chuckled and moved her chair a little closer to Yu.
“Yu! Look! This is the best, I like this the best, you eat this!”
After she had fed herself, it was Yu's turn. She dipped her fork into the cheese on the plate and brought it to Yu's mouth.
“I already...”
As Yurine wagged her tail and looked at him with big eyes and a big smile, he couldn't refuse her, he opened his mouth and took the cheese.
The cheese was soft, melting easily in Yu's mouth, but most importantly...
“Yes, it tastes very good...”
Yu could taste now. Everything he ate tasted so good that the first time he realized it, he cried again and surprised both Lylphia and his sweet friend sitting next to him.
“It's hard to believe that you are the people who killed the Redchapel killer, you look more like cute siblings,” said the girl sitting next to Lylphia. She wasn't with them at first, but when she saw Yu, she came and sat next to them.
“These things are easy for me because I have a superior intellect, but Sivina was the one who killed him.”
He had to give Sivina the credit she deserved, while not forgetting to praise himself. He was not going to steal her success.
“Yu! Come on, eat some of this! They all taste so good! Yu!”
She dipped her fork in the olives and brought them to Yu's mouth again. Yu, who had nothing to do, ate them too.
“These too, Yu! These too!”
Tomatoes, honey, eggs, bread... Whatever was left on the table went down into Yu's stomach. They all tasted much better than anything he had eaten in the first world, but this was the first time he had eaten such a heavy breakfast. This breakfast would probably keep him full until the evening.
Yurine had linked her chair with Yu's chair and was holding his hand when breakfast was over. In the relationship between Yu and Yurine that Lylphia saw, all Yu's efforts were met with coldness.
Now Yurine was glued to Yu and was showing an abnormally intense interest. No one could have predicted that they would become like this.
“I'm on vacation right now, so I have nothing to do. If you like, I can stay with you while you interrogate Salery in case anything goes wrong.”
“Are you saying this to hit on Yu?”
Lylphia's face suddenly flushed as her companion put her hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. Yurine narrowed her eyes and studied Lylphia.
“W-what makes you think that? I just wanted to help.”
Lylphia crossed her arms under her chest and averted her eyes. Yu had a stupid smile on his face again.
“Try to understand her. It's normal for her to be jealous of a smart, charismatic, hardworking, successful and talented person like me.”
“I didn't say I was jealous, think of it as protection.”
First and foremost, Lylphia was completely unsuitable for Yu. According to Yurine, Yu deserved someone much more beautiful and elegant, nothing less.
After all, Yurine had already planned his future and it was her job to hunt down the little snakes that were trying to tempt Yu's mind.
She had a great idea to make sure Yu would always stay with her after they saved her mom, and after she sent Sharley away, they would live happily ever after.
“I don't think they'll let us interrogate alone anyway, but you can come.”
“Hmm-hmm... What are you going to do?”
She turned to her friend and they started talking about things that didn't concern Yu. Yurine touched Yu's face while Yu calmly waited for Lylphia to finish the conversation.
***
Just like going upstairs, going downstairs was just as tiring. The dungeons located under the West Tower went so deep that Yu did not believe it was possible to reach such depths by human hands.
But because it was in a fantasy world, there were no excavation machines and the probable reason why they could reach such a depth was readily available, magic.
There were knights standing guard along the stairs they descended. They were lined up one after the other, a few steps apart. They had much more serious faces than their colleagues in other parts of the Academy.
“There are some really dangerous things down there, so please don't judge them for standing so hard.”
According to Lylphia's briefing before descending into the dungeons, the danger level of the ‘things’ encountered increased the further down you went.
Yu shuddered when he realized how dangerous things were under the building where he slept last night. Almost all the academy members slept here and there were monsters under their beds. From now on, whenever he fell asleep here, his mind would drift to this place.
Fortunately, they didn't need to go down to the deeper levels where the dangerous things were kept. Salery and Sony were on the first level because they were less dangerous criminals than the other things kept here.
Father and son were placed in opposite cells. There were knights waiting both inside and outside the two cells. These knights were not in the cells of the other prisoners, they had been brought specially for these two.
Such a measure was taken because Sony had repeatedly tried to commit suicide and it was thought that Salery would try to do the same. Sony would be sent to the capital in a few days and Salery could be sent to the capital after his own trial, depending on his confessions.
Yu looked at Sony, who had caused them so much trouble. He was tied to a red marble cross and his head was bowed down. A piece of cloth had been stuffed into his mouth to prevent him from committing suicide by biting his tongue.
“It's a tragic story...” he thought to himself. He had learned Sony's story yesterday.
Everything Sony did was because of love. One day he somehow stumbled upon the Nana Project and found a way to talk to Nana. Over time, Sony grew attached to Nana and whenever he would sneak up on her, they managed to develop strong feelings for each other, despite the insurmountable difference between them.
As Sony learned more about her, he also discovered why Nana was created and the fate that awaited her. Nana was made to be torn apart.
“A terrible fate...”
Nana's power was even superior to Rie's Virgo Blessing. The Virgo Blessing had a single use, allowing the user to start again, to undo death, for themselves or someone else.
The Phoenix Blessing created by the Nana Project was planned to have the same properties, but there were differences compared to the Virgo Blessing. It was not clear whether the person revived by the Phoenix Blessing was the deceased person or not, because the Virgo Blessing regenerated the body and put the same soul back into the body, while the Phoenix Blessing put a new soul into the body it found.
So there was a different soul with the same body, the same memories and the same emotions.
The reason for this difference was the principle of the Phoenix Blessing. Instead of trying to recapture the old soul, the Blessing created a new one. A puppet, statue, plush toy or any other object that the Phoenix Blessing deemed appropriate could be given a soul.
Those working on the project wanted to multiply this power and use it for themselves. What they planned to do was to combine the Phoenix Blessing with the puppet they called Nana, and once Nana was fully adapted to the Phoenix Blessing, they would dismantle it. Then each part of the puppet would serve as the Phoenix Blessing.
When Sony learned of the fate that awaited the puppet he had fallen in love with, he wasted no time in kidnapping Nana and together they fled to Rechapel.
There were two reasons why she chose the Redchapel as their escape destination. First, Nana's life core was in the Wizarding Academy and they couldn't get very far from there, the furthest they could go was the Redchapel forests.
The second was that William Berry, the so-called Redchapel Killer, and Sony von Bishory were childhood friends. They had been close friends for a long time.
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Sony somehow found William, whom no one else could find, and hoped he could help him because he was living the life of a fugitive. When William agreed to help his friend Sony, they began to live in the forests on the run from society.
Sony helped William and took care of his food problems by going shopping where he could not go. Sony was also the one who told William about Sivina's presence on the day they arrived in Redchapel.
William would help them hide and if anyone came looking for them, he would secretly finish them off and dump their bodies in remote parts of the forest.
According to this testimony, William Berry had committed more murders than is known, and Sony was the instigator of those murders.
If the story told through Sony's eyes was true, Yu could empathize with him and felt sorry for him because of what had happened, but he had helped a murderer, so he was not going to defend his innocence.
He wanted Sony and Nana to have a good life, but that was not possible. So without looking at Sony, he turned his head to the knight standing guard outside the dungeon where Salery was.
“We are guests of Maron Martin, he gave us permission to interrogate Salery.”
Besides Lylphia, there were two other people who came with Yu and Yurine, sent by Maron Martin.
One of them was the executioner, who wore a mask that hid his face and accompanied them to ensure Salery's honesty, and the other was the healer who was with them to close the wounds inflicted by the executioner.
The knight opened the dungeon door. In fact, tasks such as guarding the cells were not for knights, but the knights of the Wizarding Academy were different from other knights, they were multi-purpose employees.
The knight who had been waiting inside the cell to prevent Salery from committing suicide moved a little away from Salery as Yu and Yurine entered the cell, Yu and Yurine in front and the others behind him. Salery was tied to a cross like his son.
The way they chose to keep those two prisoners was to prevent them from casting spells. The crosses here had enchantments that made it difficult to cast spells. That's why all prisoners who could use magic were tied to such crosses.
Salery looked up when he realized what was coming.
“Did you plan all this?”
Before Yu could answer Salery, the executioner stepped forward and punched Salery in the face. The punch was so hard that Salery broke a few tooth.
“Prisoners are not allowed to ask questions here.”
At first Yu wondered if such a harsh reaction was necessary, but then he remembered that the he had sent Rie to his death.
Salery hadn't confessed yet, but the evidence was against him and Yu felt he couldn't be wrong. So he saw no need to be kind to someone who had caused someone's death.
As the executioner stepped back, Yu asked his first question.
“Do you admit your part in Rie's death?”
Salery looked at the executioner out of the corner of his eye before answering. The executioner was taking out instruments of torture from the bag he had brought with him.
The first tools he produced were small in size and would be used to damage the fingers or sensitive areas of the head.
Small tools were followed by bigger ones. Saws to cut bone, pincers to shred meat, thick skewers and a specially crafted trapezoidal scissors for castration.
Salery bit her lip, swallowed and looked into Yu's eyes, trying to make sure if he would let him be tortured. When they locked eyes, Yu knew he was scared.
“N-no.”
“LIAR!” Yurine shouted. “You gave her the map!”
“Ask it again after that,” said the executioner. He took a knife with a curved blade in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other and moved in front of Yu, aiming for the fingers of Salery's left hand.
“Lylphia, take Yurine and go outside,” Yu said when he realized the torture was about to begin. He didn't want Yurine to be subjected to it.
Yurine at first refused to come out, holding Yu's hand, but when she locked eyes with Yu, she agreed to come out and she and Lylphia left the cell and went to the ground floor of the West Tower.
When they left, there was no reason for the executioner to not torture him.
Salery let out his first scream as blood began to drip on the floor. Yu tried to watch the torture without averting his eyes, at the same time trying to hide the horror on his face. He turned his head to Sony, curious about her reaction.
Sony was oblivious, not even bothering to look up as his father was tortured in front of him.
“Do you admit you had a part in Rie's death?”
“No!”
Hearing the negative answer, the executioner continued the torture and ten minutes later the index finger of Salery's left hand fell to the ground, shattered.
The healer picked up the pieces of the severed finger, cleaned it with water from the bottle he had brought with him, and put it back on using a healing spell.
“Do you admit that you had a part in Rie's death?” Yu asked again.
“No...”
His last answer was still a refusal, even if his voice was weak. The executioner continued his torture.
Yu didn't like what he saw and watching someone being tortured made his blood run cold, but the look of horror on his face gradually gave way to disgust and hatred.
“And there were maniacs in the world who enjoyed it...”
If the internet legends Yu had heard were true, there were people in remote corners of the internet who paid to watch torture videos. Right now he felt like one of them.
“It is not unexpected to find lies in interrogations. In such situations you sometimes have to apply pressure to weed out the lies and get to the pure truth. Through this pressure we reach the breaking point, and behind the breaking point there is only the truth.”
While the executioner was busy torturing Salery, the healer started a conversation with Yu.
“What if he makes a false confession to end the torture?”
“It's not uncommon, but we have no other way of getting at the facts.”
“What if he's not lying?”
“Well... We'll figure it out eventually.”
Yu continued to watch the torture, even though he believed that this method was not the right one. If there was another way to get the truth, they would have used it. To get anything out of Salery, either his son or he would have to be tortured.
Whenever Salery's fingers were severed, the doctor put them back on and the torture continued. After the fingers, it was the ears, nose and teeth. Salery kept crying and screaming throughout the torture and Yu just kept repeating the same question.
“Do you admit your part in Rie's death?”
“Do you admit your part in Rie's death?”
“Do you admit your part in Rie's death?”
After two hours of asking the same question, the only answer he got was no, but when it finally came to the castration device, they reached Salery's breaking point.
“YES! YES! I HAD A PART IN RIE'S DEATH!”
---
As the executioner cleaned up the blood on the floor, Yu could start asking his questions. He asked his first question.
“Did you plan the murder?”
“I just...”
When the executioner looked up from his work, Salery gasped and tears welled up in his eyes. Yu intervened when he was unable to speak because of the executioner and began to stammer.
“Go on.”
“I... I swear I only did what I was told, I didn't plan the murder. Really! Really!”
When the executioner took another look to make sure the words were true, Salery began to sob as if he were a small child and not a forty-year-old man.
“Who told you what?”
“The House of Vermilia, they made the plan! I swear they did it! I was just trying to protect my own family!”
And what Yu had been waiting for had come, it was dragging on.
“What is this House Vermilia?” Yu asked. It was not Salery who answered his question, but the healer next to them.
“Vermilia is a family from the dri title. They were relatives of the king from the Huo branch in Mora. They fell out of favor when the kingdom passed from the Huo branch to the Zao branch. They are now on the side of the Zodianists who want to put a king from the Huo branch in power. The House of Bishory is the vassals of House of Vermilia.”
In most countries in the center of the map of this world, separate suffixes were used to distinguish the nobility. Those at the top - kings, emperors and religious leaders - were given the title "el" to distinguish them.
Princes and princesses were addressed as ‘zi,’ royal relatives as ‘dri,’ and all other nobles outside the knightly families as ‘von.’
The only exception was the Rolder family, which ruled Rolderhelm. Rolderhelm was referred to in the constitution as a principality and its ruler was called a prince or princess. The suffix ‘el’ was used for the princess and her husband, who now ruled the country.
“The whole family got together and planned how to kill one person? There must have been one person in charge.”
“Cecilus dri Vermilia gave the order to my relatives who ruled the Bishory lands in the Mora, and if I had not obeyed, my family would have been exiled...”
Salery had already made a life for himself in Rolderhelm, but he still worried about the family he had left behind in Mora. Yu didn't want to let this soften him, so he kept talking without thinking too much about it.
“Who's him?”
“The duke's second child and heir.”
When the healer saw that Yu was uninformed, he interjected again. He didn't have to do this, but he gave his information in good faith.
“The head of the family is very old and everyone expects him to die. The heir is Cecilus because he is a boy, but people don't want Cecilus to take over.”
“Why?”
“There are unpleasant rumors about him... that he is mentally unstable, prone to violence... Many of Vermilia's loyalists want to make Cornelia, Cecilus' sister, duchess. Of course, I'm only telling you what I've heard. I've heard that Cornelia is a much better choice than Cecilus.”
Yu wondered if Cornelia and the head of the family were also involved in the murder. Cecilus was said to be mentally unstable, had he planned the whole thing on his own?
“Isn't inheritance passed down from father to son?”
“Yes, that's how it normally works. It seems that in the future there will be a land dispute within the House of Vermilia. It's none of us Rolderhelm citizens' business, but I want what's best for the people.”
“I see, thank you.”
It was now certain that they would go to the Mora for this job. There he would meet the House of Vermilia and do what was necessary.
“When did Cecilus contact your relatives in the Mora?”
“It passed at the end of last January, and Rie came at the beginning of spring.”
Salery's testimony matched what Yurine had told him earlier. Rie and Yurine had come to Rolderhelm in early spring.
“But why? Rie died at the end of August. Did they devise a six-month plan to kill her? Why didn't they kill her when she was in the Mora or in the last six months?”
“I don't know... I SWEAR I DON'T KNOW! I REALLY DON'T KNOW! I'M TELLING THE TRUTH!”
When the executioner waved the castration scissors in his hand to check his honesty, Salery started crying and screaming again. Yu signaled the executioner to stop with his hand.
“Why did Cecilus want to kill her?”
“I don't know, I just did what I was told, I did it so my family wouldn't be exiled, that's all I did!”
Salery was crying with fear. Yu could not blame him for crying because he had seen the torture, Salery had withstood it well.
“I'll tell you what I understand so far: Cecilus dri Vermilia contacted your relatives at the end of January and I assume they referred Rie to you? Did I understand this part correctly?”
“Yes,” Salery nodded.
“And you didn't come up with the plan to kill Rie.”
“Yes,” Salery nodded again, his head shaking like it was going to fall off.
“Who gave you the plan?”
“Cecilus himself... We met him in the capital a week before Rie went to that tower, and that's when he told me his plan.”
“Why did Rie go to that tower?”
“She believed the Quasar Blessing was kept there.”
“What about the Quasar Blessing?”
“One of the Three Great Blessings, the others being Andromeda and Soe.”
Although he and Yurine had a conversation about the Blessings, which was not detailed, he had not heard about them. New ones were added to the Blessings he knew.
“Why did Rie want to take it? Or let me put it this way, what was Rie's goal? Your family guided her here, but you probably didn't bring her here saying, ‘Rolderhelm is very good, hang out there for a while.’”
Even the slightest scrap of information about why Rie had come would have quenched his thirst for knowledge.
“I want you to tell me everything from the beginning.”
Salery immediately began to tell what he knew.
"When she came here I knew she was being manipulated by my family, but I didn't know about her plans. As far as I know, she wanted to protect herself or something like that. I don't know who she wanted to protect herself from, but she wanted to kill whoever was after her without getting hurt, that's what I understood from what she said. My relatives told her about this place and that I was its headmaster, so she came here to get more information and get stronger."
After explaining, he stopped and looked at Yu, who nodded for him to continue.
“When she came here, I told her about the little library, that there was a possibility that she could find information there on any subject she was curious about, but I added that she needed special permission to go in there, and that I couldn't give it to someone who just appeared out of nowhere, that she had to work her way up through the academy.”
“Wait a minute... You were planning to let Rie go? Why didn't you let Maron go?”
Maron Martin was the second headmaster of the Wizarding Academy and even he couldn't get into the little library. He said he did all these things to get in there.
Salery was silent at first, but when the executioner shouted at him, he immediately squealed.
“I... I was jealous of his wife...”
Yu was just disgusted after those three words. He didn't want to hear it, he went back to his own topic.
“Keep telling me.”
“She accepted and moved to the Wizarding Academy, even though she had a position as Cardinal of Virgo. Here I apprenticed my own nephew to her, not out of malice, but because she came through my relatives and I wanted to do her a favor.”
“What kind of a favor it is to give your nephew...”
Yu wishes he had given Rie a pretty girl as an apprentice and not Sharley. Then this adventure would have been a little more beautiful.
“Of course, she could have had the same scars as Sharley, couldn't she? Maybe it was Sharley for the best.”
He would rather see Sharley hurt than any ordinary human being. He didn't even like him the first time he saw him.
“At the end of the summer Cecilus came here with my brother. The two of them told me that Rie was looking for the Quasar Blessing and included me in their plan, saying that my family would be harmed if I didn't cooperate. I forged records that the Sigma Tower had the Blessing Rie was looking for and showed them to Rie. Then I found a map of Rolderhelm's sewer system, gave it to Rie and sent her to the tower. Everything that happened there was prepared in advance, the killers were there waiting for her.”
They had literally gone to the Sigma Tower for nothing.
Yu clenched his fist and smashed it into Salery's face. This move surprised even the executioner, but no one made a sound.
“I'm sorry, I'm just angry that I put my life in danger for nothing.”
Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he was more resentful than angry, so he took one more shot to take his anger out. His own hand hurt because he was not used to this kind of thing.
He still wanted to hit him, but he had to stop somewhere.
“But Rie said she took what she was looking for when she was in the tower. If the recordings were faked, what did Rie take?”
If that was the case, Rie didn't even know she had been tricked.
“Is there any particular reason why the hunter gorilla and those killers were chosen?”
“Hunter gorilla?” repeated Salery. “I don't know anything about that.”
“What about those killers? They must have been chosen for a special reason, Rie knew them.” He wondered how far this story would go, everything was connected somehow. “I don't understand. Sorrow managed to kill Rie, but even I was able to kill Sorrow. How come I succeeded and Rie didn't? Isn’t she stronger than me?”
Salery was surprised, blinking his eyes as he looked Yu up and down, trying to understand how he had managed it.
“Hey, are you serious? You said you killed Sorrow?” It was the healer who asked the question. He grabbed Yu by the shoulder and turned him towards him. Yu was uncomfortable with such contact, but he didn't make a sound. “Are you telling the truth?”
“Yes. Rie killed Joy and Sorrow killed Rie and I killed Grief.”
Healer’s eyes widened and, like Salery, he looked Yu up and down.
“They have been the most popular killers in the underworld for the last fifteen years. Because they have the Gemini Blessing, they can lock the cores of people within a certain distance and prevent them from using magic. They also cause various effects on people, such as fatigue, headaches and confusion. As far we know, effects of their Blessing gets stronger as this distance decreases. At a distance of a few kilometers, the most obvious effect is fatigue, but when the distance is reduced to a few meters, people cannot use magic at all. It is said that they never fail.”
“Uh... Yeah, they didn't technically fail at that either, but I understand...”
Yu used a simple logic. Sorrow and Joy had negative effects on others' bodies and prevented them from casting spells. This was why Rie and Yurine couldn't use magic and why Rie lost in close combat.
But their power was useless on Yu because Yu did not belong to this world. He was born in a different world and crossed over to this world. As such, his body, which was formed according to the standards of the other world, did not have the core that every living thing in this world has.
And because he didn't have a core, the Gemini Blessing that Sorrow and Joy had didn't work on him. Now that he thought about it, maybe if he had sword training he could have killed them both.
He was going to fall for it. He had disarmed Sorrow without a weapon and managed to kill him with his own weapon. But could he kill Joy?
“Then Sorrow and Joy were weak people by this world's standards.”
He felt as if Joy was stronger than Sorrow. In any case, they would meet again when they turned back time. So he had to prepare.
“If that's true, you deserve a prize.”
“Keep it,” Yu said. He had learned what he wanted to know and headed for the dungeon door. “It's better to keep this quiet, I don't want my name out there, at least not about something like this.”