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After we settled on our plans from now on, I decided to talk to Maxwell about the other day’s events. First I decided to ask about Count Tarkashire who we managed to capture.

“Reminds me, what happened to that s̲h̲i̲t̲h̲e̲a̲d̲ noble?”
“Well…”

Maxwell started unusually hesitantly. And no wonder, as it turned out that someone had assassinated him on the same night of the capture.

“He was supposed to be under perfect security. I hadn’t put up any magical surveillance network there, but the guards were strictly watching over him.”
“Then, how did he get killed? Or when exactly? And what about the culprit?”

I barraged him with questions. It seemed that he was assassinated at nightfall, taking advantage of the gap between the monitoring shifts. Since there were people guarding the place, the assassin must have been quite skilled to pull it off.

“At present, the most suspicious of all would be… You.”
“How come!?”
“Setting aside the objective, the first one to pop my mind when I heard about someone that could slip through the defenses was you.”
“I had no motive, though. Besides, during that time I was in the bath with Finia.”
“Oh? Looks like you are getting along as always. So, how did it feel to the touch?”
“Don’t ask that!!!”

That was a blunder on my part. No, well, he was already aware that I was getting into the bath together with Cortina and Finia. Finia’s weren’t that big but they were quite sof-… No, nevermind.

Returning to the topic, since this would derail from it too much.

“I was the one that caught him, in the first place. If I wanted to kill him, I’d have done it then and there.”
“Indeed. Hence we aren’t aware of the culprit’s objective.”
“That’s so unreliable of you.”

I gave a brief comment about his unusual blunder and went to rummage through his office. It was the usual thing so he didn’t try to stop me. After doing my search I properly tidied after myself, so there would be no need to clean up.

Rather, it would end up being more put in order after I was done, given how crude he was at dealing with his things.

I discovered rare biscuits behind the thick encyclopedia on the bookshelf. They were products from a famous shop, full of fragrance, baked after mixing sesame into the dough.

This old man had a nature to hide food here, like a squirrel preparing for winter. He said he gained this habit of stocking up tasty things back when he was still royalty and could only eat poison-tested food.

He said that without looking me in the eye, so I had some suspicions about how honest he was being.

“Stop hogging everything, old man.”
“You have some nerve to say that after laying waste to this place. Good grief…”

I placed the lunchbox I brought with me on his desk and these biscuits next to them as a dessert. After pouring me some tea, Maxwell continued.

“I cannot deny that the monitoring eyes were a bit lax during the shift switch. I was busy attending to Elliot and Priscilla, and it would be a little unreasonable to evaluate the prison guards with the same criteria as in our time.”
“Well… True.”

Since the security system underwent sudden changes, it was actually natural for there to appear gaps in defenses.

Still, there were enough of them mobilized to make up for those gaps, yet someone managed to slip through them. I couldn’t blame Maxwell that I was the first one to pop up in his mind after thinking about the possible candidates.

After all, he had seen me slip through the enemies and monsters many times back in our active days.

“In other words, it should be someone with the same level of Stealth skills as I.”
“That limits the number of individuals quite a bit. I am currently trying to gather information from people connected to the underworld. I judged that they did the best they could at defending as ordinary people. The assassin was probably simply one step above them.”
“That means, the identity of the masked man from before is also…”
“Still undiscovered, yes.”

Judging by the fact that they managed to assassinate him on the same day, it might have been someone trained from childhood. Having such networks should have taken a long time.

“Then, the masked man would have to be someone knowledgeable about this town.”
“Indeed. And a noble. Tarkashire is the very personification of authoritarianism. He wouldn’t allow commoners near him.”
“Someone who lives here considerably long and is of quite a high social standing, huh. But we can’t narrow it down with just that.”
“Well, I will slowly tighten the encircling net. I will not let them go.”
“I hope so.”

Maxwell shrugged his shoulders. In the end, the masked man managed to make a good escape.