Witch, Fireball and Steam Evil God

Chapter 204 Puppet
The scholar's body was taken out of the observatory by the magicians, and the rotten food in the antechamber was also cleaned up.

Ethan could see that Mr. Silver Fox had been feeling uneasy ever since he had named him. If it were Kogoro Mouri, he would have been able to make a judgment by now - the murderer was the guilty Silver Fox!

This may eliminate a wrong answer for the reasoning.

He motioned for Silver Fox to sit opposite him. The front hall of the scholar became a temporary detective agency. It would remain vacant until the next scholar took over the mess of the Mage Tower.

Ethan asked the person opposite again, "Mr. Silver Fox, when was the last time you saw the scholar?"

"...Last night."

This time, Silver Fox finally uttered a word hesitantly.

"Location?"

"Right here in the stargazing room, I have a report to submit to the Loremaster."

Silver Fox had a gloomy face, and his hands folded on his knees moved nervously. He knew that this would make him the number one suspect, but after he returned to the Mage Tower injured, the scholar, perhaps for the sake of their family's face, gave him the job of the promotion exam. This was an important job that did not require him to be in the spotlight.

Compiling the list of names, drawing up the exam questions, organizing the invigilators and the review team, these are all real powers, and by then a group of people will come to curry favor with him.

Of course, all of this is based on the premise that the scholar is not killed and everything in the Mage Tower maintains its daily operation.

He met a lot of people when he submitted his report, which was during the break after dinner.

"Can you describe the situation?"

"The scholar asked me to come in and put the materials for the advancement exam on the table."

Silver Fox averted his eyes as he spoke.

This was a man whose face almost had "suspect" written all over his face. Ethan found the written materials mentioned by Silver Fox on the table. It was a thick stack with no signs of having been flipped through.

"That is to say, you came into this room last night."

"Ah."

"Then you should have seen the rotten pumpkin pie on the table. Don't you think it's unusual for someone who just talked to you to have rotten food in his laboratory?"

Hearing this, Silver Fox tensed up and opened his mouth, but couldn't utter a word.

Not long ago, he found the vice president and called all the great magicians, hoping to take advantage of the vice president's hatred for Rowena and put the blame on Rowena.

However, this was not a well-thought-out plan at all. Before today, he had no idea that Ethan and Rowena would visit the Mage Tower.

Silver Fox felt that he must have drunk too much potion, which damaged his brain. His thinking and reactions became slow, and from time to time he could hear echoes coming from nowhere. Sometimes those echoes would make decisions for him, and when he came to his senses, his body had already started moving.

It's especially serious these days.

His memory was interrupted many times. Sometimes he was in the laboratory one second and appeared somewhere else the next. He had no idea who he met or what he did during this period of time jump. He had to roughly infer his path of action through conversations with other people.

His mind told him that he should not take the concentration potion anymore, but his body and mind were like an addiction.

So, can these facts convince Ethan?
The moment he thought of this question, Silver Fox became more anxious.

He and Ethan had a feud. Although he thought that Ethan, as the victorious party, might not regard him as a thorn in his side, he would definitely not have any good feelings towards him. Coupled with his and the vice president's behavior, Ethan might put the blame directly on him - just like him!
However, at this moment, Silver Fox hoped that Ethan was a man who could see through everything and would not blindly pin the blame on someone like the vice president did.

In the Astrological Guild, there is no greater crime than murdering a learned man.

Before death comes, those who commit this crime will be severely tortured.

"Answer me, Mr. Silver Fox, what do you think of the rotten pumpkin pie on the table?"

Ethan's question again brought Silver Fox back to reality.

"I...it wasn't me, I didn't do it!"

Silver Fox suddenly became excited. At the last moment, he heard the familiar echo again. That mysterious voice reminded him in a joking tone not to have any more unrealistic fantasies.

Ethan will definitely use this incident to kill him!

Escape, this is his only chance.

Silver Fox suddenly attacked. He clenched the magic wand hidden in his sleeve and swung it above his head. A blue lightning emerged from the magic wand and hit the bookshelf behind Ethan. The books and collections on it immediately fell towards Ethan. Almost at the same time, Silver Fox's body changed into a stream of black smoke and floated towards the door of the observatory.

All this happened in a flash. The magicians who were waiting outside the door to be "interrogated" were stunned. The only one who reacted was Rowena, who had been observing the Silver Fox.

The red lightning that was chasing after it hit the silver fox, and the Disapparation Spell was interrupted again in the middle of casting. The silver fox's body was blown several meters away in the air by the lightning and fell heavily against the wall.

Silver Fox didn't have time to use his protective wand. As a weak magician, this blow was enough to make him unable to move.

However, as Ethan's temporary assistant, the detective did not give any orders, and she did not kill him, otherwise Silver Fox would not have been knocked away so easily. He would have found himself cut into two pieces during the flight.

The silver fox, who was lying on the ground, was brought back by the magicians with great effort. He opened his mouth and gasped rapidly.

He also saw that the vice president's face was extremely gloomy.

"It seems that the truth has come out."

The vice president stared at him coldly, veins popping out on his face, and his features twisted together when he spoke, "I'm sorry, Miss Rowena, I misunderstood you."

These words were all squeezed out from between his teeth. This was the most humiliating and reluctant moment in his life.

However, it was a fact witnessed by everyone that Silver Fox attacked Ethan during the interrogation and fled for fear of crime. If you think about it carefully, although he was the one who started this aggressive interrogation, it was Silver Fox who brought them all together.

It was Silver Fox who made them believe that Rowena might be harmful to the Scholar.

That way, everything would make sense.

"Mr. Ethan, leave the rest to us."

The vice president poured all his anger on Silver Fox, "I will make him pay the price he deserves. His family can't protect him."

Silver Fox must die.

But death was too easy for him, so he had to use a spell to leave some marks on the silver fox.

The angry voice echoed.

Silver Fox seemed to have lost the ability to speak, his eyes were cloudy, and he seemed to have accepted his fate.

Ethan didn't comment.

The magicians looked at the silver fox being carried away with complicated expressions. Until now, they still had a feeling of unreality and had not fully accepted the fact that the scholar had been killed.

After the magicians left and silence returned to the observatory, Rowena asked, "Did he do it?"

She always felt something was weird.

Silver Fox looked frightened, and every judgment he made revealed a weird aura - did this guy really think he could escape in front of Ethan and so many great magicians?

Rowena found it hard to believe that a murderer who dared to murder a scholar could have such poor psychological endurance.

Although she had always been at odds with Erudite, she had to admit that Erudite was one of the greatest magicians of this era. It was hard to imagine that such a great magician would die at the hands of a coward like Silver Fox.

"Not necessarily, but at least he knew last night that the scholar was dead."

This is why Silver Fox had a guilty conscience. He couldn't explain why he turned a blind eye to the rotten pumpkin pie. Maybe he was scared away, or he saw the scholar's body with his own eyes.

This caused Silver Fox's mind to fall into a state of confusion, and coupled with the black potion, he made many rash judgments in a trance.

Ethan suddenly looked to the left, and a book that had fallen on the ground disappeared right under his nose.

"Teacher, help me keep an eye on the detention room. If the real murderer is in the Mage Tower, he will definitely find a way to make Silver Fox confess."

Rowena was startled by the noise made by the cat jumping onto the desk, but then she thought that this was in line with Winter's character of liking to join in the fun - after all, there was probably no news in the world more explosive than the murder of a scholar. If this matter were to spread to the imperial capital, it would immediately become a hot topic of discussion among everyone.

"I know, Detective."

The invisible cat said lazily.

"...I didn't expect you to be so good at this. Have you ever been a detective before?"

After a while, Rowena said.

Ethan once again proved that he could do everything. If it were her, she would not bother to use her brain and waste her breath talking to those people in the Mage Tower.

Being a detective is one of the most dangerous professions these days. The closer you get to the truth, the closer you are to danger.

She had seen many missions to assassinate detectives with excessive curiosity and sense of justice in the bounty notices of Dream Eclipse.

"This is the basic quality of a shelter investigator."

Ethan was not in a relaxed mood. He always felt that things would not develop in such a simple direction. Perhaps until the end there would not be a real "murderer" to force Silver Fox to confess.

"Let's go to the cafeteria."

"The cafeteria? Are you hungry?"

Rowena rubbed her stomach. After what Ethan said, she was also a little hungry. However, eating dinner in the Mage Tower was not a good idea. Given her bad reputation in the Mage Tower, it was normal for someone to poison the food.

Despite this, she followed Ethan.

There are no ordinary people in the Mage Tower. Even the cleaning servants and the cooks in the kitchen are at least third-level magicians. In addition to spells used for fighting and killing, many magicians have used their creativity in daily life in recent years - automatic sweeping and mopping spells, peeling and cutting vegetables do not require the noble magicians to do it themselves, they only need to hold a recipe book and give orders through spells, and the ingredients will be combined in the most precise way.

It was almost dinner time, and the aroma from the restaurant intensified Rowena's hunger.

"Sorry, she is not allowed to dine here." The magician in the kitchen recognized Rowena, the heinous person, and said with a cold face.

This is the drawback of the academic clique system.

Rowena did not take the young magician's attitude to heart. Most of those who could enter the Mage Tower were descendants of a pure-blood family. They had been learning from a mentor since childhood. In addition to magic skills, many of the mentor's attitudes towards things would be passed on to them.

"We're not here to eat."

Ethan said, "A few days ago, the scholar ordered a pumpkin pie to be delivered to her research room."

The young magician nodded, "That's true."

"I want to know the exact time."

"Five nights ago."

It has been nearly five days since the scholar died.

Ethan came to a tentative conclusion, imagining that the scholar ordered a pumpkin pie that night, but before enjoying the meal, she decided to meditate for a moment.

The investigation finally made substantial progress. The reason why no one noticed this was that five days after his death, the scholar appeared in front of the magicians in different ways. According to his observation, the magicians in the Mage Tower did not seem to like socializing. Except for public meal times, they would stay in their respective laboratories.

For them, it’s normal to not see someone for a few days.

"Yeah, you're leaving just like that?"

Seeing Ethan walking out of the cafeteria without looking back, Rowena quickly said, "Don't worry about me. I won't eat here. They won't dare to harm you."

"I'm not hungry. If you are hungry, you can eat while walking."

With a "bang", an object that looked very hard appeared in Ethan's hand. Before Rowena could come to her senses, this cold, dry and hard object was handed to her.

This thing should be called "magic bread".

Rowena looked at the bread in her hand, then looked at Ethan, who said seriously, "If you're hungry, use this to fill your stomach."

She hesitated and tried to put the magic bread to her mouth.

"Crack."

There was a strange sound when biting the bread.

She failed. The surface of the bread was intact, as hard as the oath and sword of victory on the other side. The drool on the "blade" seemed to mock her for overestimating her own abilities.

Only Miss Chloe can chew this thing.

But no matter what, this was Ethan's intention. Rowena put away the ebony wand and held the magic bread in her hands like a sword. She felt that this thing should be very effective when used on people. With the fragile body of a magician, a hit from the bread would make them lose their way.

Now it's Knight Rowena, a magician who excels at using powerful physical attacks.

"Great Detective, what should we do next?"

"Find the murderer's motive."

"Motivation? Perhaps it's a matter of Erudite heritage."

Rowena said subconsciously, "Each successor is personally appointed by the scholar, and no one else has the right to interfere. I heard that there have been assassination attempts against scholars during the transfer of power in the past, but they basically all failed."

If a scholar dies before designating a clear successor, the question of the successor will be resolved by voting, and the pure-blood families with deep roots in the Mage Tower will have the final say.

"We can't rule out this possibility. You will be responsible for investigating this."

"Huh? Me?"

Rowena was stunned for a moment before she said hesitantly, "Okay, I'll try."

She was brewing a preliminary plan - if anyone didn't cooperate with her investigation, she would treat him to magic bread!

Without Rowena around, the magicians they met on the road became much more talkative.

They generally believed that the scholar was killed last night. During this period, they saw the scholar in more than one place in the Mage Tower. Sometimes he was sorting spellcasting materials, and sometimes he went to the cafeteria to eat.

When Ethan asked whether magic could achieve the effect of sleight of hand, the magicians fell into deep thought.

No, this is not a trick.

The attitudes of most of the magicians became a little agitated, as if their authority was being questioned.

They would first explain to Ethan that there were indeed many spells in the "Transformation" series that could cause hallucinations, but they were all the best magicians in the world, and even the teaching materials for the "Transformation" series of spells were compiled by them together.

No one could trick them with hallucinations, yet they were fooled for five days straight!

Ethan did not refute, which at least showed that the caster's method was extremely sophisticated, to the point of being flawless, and even these long-established great magicians could not find any flaws.

Coupled with the silk thread faintly hanging on Silver Fox and the vice president, he became more certain of his guess.

However, Rowena said that no saint had been born among the followers of the God of Trickery for hundreds of years.

Even the current scholar, who was highly expected, has failed.

With her death, all this was settled.

However, Ethan learned an unexpected and important piece of information from the magicians - they mentioned that since the scholar returned to the Mage Tower, he locked himself in the observatory for meditation almost every day. Before that, the scholar had not been so keen on meditation for more than ten years.

As he grew older, the scholar himself seemed to have given up his unrealistic fantasies and began to work on the expansion and development of the guild.

Ethan returned to the stargazing room once again.

The scholar's books and collections were scattered everywhere, most of which were manuscripts left by the scholar, written in an incomprehensible language. Rowena mentioned that this was the encryption method used by the magicians, especially the pure-blood families. They did not like to share their research results with others, so they created such a spell.

Only the author can understand the feelings behind it.

Ethan found the scholar's recent manuscript from the messy pile of books. The densely packed symbols on it confirmed the magicians' statements.

After the turmoil in the imperial capital, for some reason, hope was rekindled in the heart of the scholar.

However, her soul had completely dissipated, burned to ashes in the backlash of meditation. Before Silver Fox and the vice president brought their people, Rowena tried to use a spell to communicate with the dead to make the dead scholar reveal some key information to them, but the spell did not work.

Those who murdered the scholar hoped that she would shut her mouth forever, and that these manuscripts filled with unknown symbols would become a secret book.

Ethan spread the manuscript flat on the desk and studied it carefully for a long time.

Unfortunately, he is not a master of linguistic semiotics, and he has no way of inferring the meaning from the strokes of the symbols.

He felt that the truth behind the scholar's death was hidden in these symbols.

Perhaps there was even something more than the truth, something that had encompassed the purpose of his and Rowena's original visit to the Mage's Tower.

Ethan closed his eyes and thought about his last meeting with the scholar.

She was an old lady in good spirits.

Seemingly unaffected by the turmoil in the imperial capital and the dissolution of the Council of Seven, the old lady gave up all her power very gracefully after he accompanied the queen to inform the remaining members of the Council of Seven that the council was about to be dissolved. She looked very excited that day, and after the meeting she couldn't wait to pull him aside and invite him to visit the guild.

Yes, the scholar was very interested in the three questions he raised.

The first one was the news that the right-position gods and middle-position gods were very likely to have fallen, and Ethan gave her a positive answer.

The second one is about Saint Mary. As the leader of the believers of the God of Trickery, she showed a strong interest in the Saint of the Church of Life. After communication, Ethan learned that what the scholar was really interested in was the title of "God's Chosen One". She consciously distinguished the relationship between them and the saints.

The learned scholars tried their best to understand what higher powers the chosen ones, who were more noble than saints and were recognized by the right gods and middle gods themselves, possessed.

This topic ultimately did not receive a definite answer.

At that time, Ethan had never been to Ophira, nor did he know about the feud between Empolis and the Lord of Tide, so the scholar invited him to come to the Mage Tower again to discuss this issue.

If she were still alive, she would be very happy to see Empolis.

The third one was a new question that arose from the two people's discussion of the first two topics. When the scholar heard that Ethan had taken advantage of the rules set by the Lord Knight, he almost immediately stood up from his chair excitedly.

The ruins, the trials and the one who obtains the holy sword, this is the path to advancement left by the Knight Lord.

As long as she finds the rules left by the God of Trickery, she might be able to break the situation where no one has been promoted to a saint for hundreds of years.

The old lady wrote down all the theories Ethan mentioned, and she needed to return to the Mage Tower to look up more information.

If she were still alive...

Before leaving, Ethan was ready to further discuss these three issues with the scholar. The trip to Ophira had brought him a lot of gains. He believed that after returning to the Mage Tower, the scholar must have searched for a lot of information left by the God of Trickery.

Ethan had a certain liking for this old man who was full of curiosity.

But now it seems that perhaps these three topics killed her.

"…'The Fall of the God of Trickery and Thoughts on Komori's Theory of Rules'."

The voice coming from across the desk made Ethan open his eyes in surprise. It was a very weak voice.

Ethan looked in the direction of the voice and saw the blue-haired girl appeared in front of him without him noticing, her bangs covering her beautiful golden eyes.

The literary girl avoided his gaze and explained in a lower voice, "That's what it says in the manuscript."

(End of this chapter)