***
The Imperial Palace, Valen’s office.
His aide quietly held out a stack of documents.
Valen covered his face with both hands and let out a deep breath.
“This is the report on House Gloria that you requested.”
It seemed the report he had asked his aide for after the Imperial banquet had only now been prepared.
For Valen, everything happening right now felt like an unbroken chain of confusion.
‘This isn’t because of Liselotte. It’s because Diana has been acting suspiciously.’
Ever since he became convinced of Diana’s lies, Liselotte had continued to weigh on his mind.
Because he hadn’t completely forgotten his younger sister’s eccentric personality, his thoughts only grew more tangled.
As a result, he had been keeping his distance from Diana since the banquet.
Seeing the thickness of the report, along with the aide’s stiff reaction, Valen’s expression grew serious as well.
“Is it that serious?”
“No.”
At the sharp reply, Valen paused for a moment.
“Then why are you making that expression and confusing people when it is not like you?”
Feeling awkward, he scrunched his nose slightly and skimmed through the report.
This habit closely resembled Liselotte, but he himself didn’t really realize it.
Watching him read the report with focus, the aide thought,
‘For some reason, Her Highness the Princess seems to resemble him even more after her marriage.’
As far as he remembered, Liselotte didn’t have the habit of scrunching her nose.
Yet recently, the Liselotte he had seen at the banquet clearly showed a similar habit to Valen more than once.
Even her expressions were strikingly alike, as if to prove they were blood relatives.
While reading through the meticulously investigated contents, Valen quietly asked again,
“Is this all there is regarding Diana?”
“Yes. There is also the fact that she was born physically weak, so she had almost no contact with the outside world from a young age.”
As the aide said, the investigation into Diana was spotless.
Born between the second daughter of an Eastern Marquis and Duke Gloria, she manifested divine authority at an early age.
Compared to most royalty, who enter the temple around the age when they would undergo their debut, Diana was nine years old.
At a rather early age, she suddenly gained divine authority with no connection to the temple at all.
Until then, she had never once appeared outside.
Since divine authority, which should originally be bestowed by the temple, had arisen naturally, even the temple at the time couldn’t hide its bewilderment.
In the end, when the High Priest confirmed the divine authority, it was treated as a miracle.
What followed after that was something Valen knew all too well.
Yet a strange sense of incongruity lingered.
“There is nothing here.”
“Yes, there is nothing.”
As Valen muttered, the aide immediately responded.
“It is too clean. As if someone deliberately arranged it.”
“Is there no one who remembers the time when Duchess Gloria was still alive?”
“No. That includes the wet nurse as well. A considerable number of the servants of House Gloria are said to have been killed by someone who lost their mind due to injuries sustained during subjugation.”
Across the Empire, regardless of region, there were members who lost their sanity due to aftereffects following subjugations, so it wasn’t an unusual occurrence, yet it felt unsettling somehow.
The next section was about Anix Gloria.
Valen flipped through it roughly and asked,
“These are all things we already know, like how there was no child to inherit the Ducal House, so they took someone from the collateral line as an adopted son.”
Since the Four Great Houses were required to lead subjugation forces, subjugation ability became the foremost condition for the next Head of the House.
It was very common for a second son more capable than the eldest, a youngest daughter more capable than the second son, or even someone from a collateral line more capable than the direct line to inherit the House.
“The collateral line in question is House Diconu, the Count’s family.”
“And why does that matter? Was that not a House that already fell?”
Since it was a House that had fallen before Valen was even born, even he had only learned about it from history books.
The aide explained calmly.
“At the time, Count Diconu aggressively pulled in funds and purchased mining monopoly rights and large amounts of useless land.”
Those useless lands had been purchased with investments gathered from various places.
In the end, without showing any prospect at all, the monopoly rights became nothing more than scraps of paper.
The Count and Countess were attacked by assailants over the matter and died violent deaths.
At the time, there were too many nobles involved, and even merchants and wealthy commoners were implicated in large numbers, so the culprit was never found.
Thus, having lost his foundation, Anix Diconu was taken in as an adopted son by the previous Duke Gloria and was made his heir.
As he was turning the pages, Valen’s hand came to an abrupt halt.
He focused on that section and muttered,
“It is similar.”
The conduct of the now-ruined House Diconu closely resembled the recent actions of House Gloria, as if deliberately matched.
House Diconu as well had sued those who demanded the return of their investments on the grounds of defaming the House’s honor, and had bound merchants who requested contract termination due to delayed payments by using the contract itself as leverage.
“To this extent, identical?”
At the time, Anix would have been far too young to know such minor incidents in detail.
It seemed Valen wasn’t the only one who felt a strange sense of deja vu.
“Kadan. Look into House Diconu a bit more.”
Valen’s pale eyes settled coldly.
***
“What on earth did you go there and do?!”
Duke Gloria’s office. Anix slammed a stack of letters down onto the table.
They were things that had arrived from all over the place since the tea time held at House Keilos.
Diana, seated on the sofa, replied softly, her complexion pale.
“Then what was I supposed to do? I could not even enter because of magic tools, some young lady from an unknown Western House started nitpicking things I did not even know about, and on top of that, monsters appeared at the most unbelievable timing.”
“Even so, you should have done something. I did not send you there just to drink tea!”
As she took the brunt of his one-sided venting, Diana’s gaze sharpened in an instant.
“Then why do you not try handling things properly on your own, without me?”
No sooner had those words left her mouth than Anix’s anger subsided abruptly, as if he had been doused with cold water. Instead, the target of his brooding thoughts naturally shifted to Liselotte.
“That sly girl must have played a trick. How could monsters appear with such perfect timing, right during tea time?”
Miro, who had been quietly observing the situation, tilted his head.
“Is it possible for a person to control monsters?”
“Doesn’t the Grand Duke use the Word of Command?!”
“I thought the Word of Command only worked on people. Can it control monsters as well?”
“You didn’t even know that?”
“There is not much commonly known about that power. Now I understand why the North has had so few casualties among its subjugation force.”
As Miro rubbed his chin with an intrigued air, Anix cleared his throat and turned his head away.
Just then, knock knock, and Mirkena entered trembling.
“Your Grace, a notice has arrived from the Central Security Department.”
“Oh, has the result finally come out?”
Anix brightened as he tore open the notice, but—
[Investigation Result Notice
Recipient: House Gloria, Anix Gloria
Charge: Defamation of the House’s Honor
Decision Type: No referral (no charges)
Summary: Due to insufficient evidence or because the charge does not stand under the law, punishment is not possible.]
There were no fewer than three identical sheets.
Hedmilton, Jar, Taebon. Not a single one of them had defamation charges upheld.
Anix crumpled the identical notices as if they had been stamped out from the same mold and hurled them away, biting his lip.
“Those who couldn’t even squeak before and had to watch their step dare come to a conclusion like this?!”
Unable to suppress his anger, he shouted, and Mirkena handed him yet another notice.
“What now?!”
Anix roughly tore it open.
[Recipient: Anix Gloria
This is to inform you that a criminal complaint has been filed against you by Liselotte Keilos, the representative of the plaintiff Hedmilton Rovans, on charges of defamation against Hedmilton Rovans.]
What he had sent out came back to him in exactly the same way.
***
The courtroom, unlike before, was sparsely filled with people.
Not only nobles, but merchant guild heads could also be seen here and there.
No sooner had the trial begun than the presiding official looked at the spectators and showed his displeasure.
“So, hearing it is a lawsuit involving the Magic Tower, everyone came flocking in, did they?”
Flipping through the additional documents curtly, he frowned when he saw Miro’s supplementary evidence.
“…Defendant’s side. At the previous trial, I clearly instructed you to add evidence showing that higher-grade magic tools can be produced with lower-grade magic tools.”
“And so we have attached a list of higher-grade magic tools produced using the lower-grade byproducts supplied by the plaintiff up to this point.”
Since the Magic Tower wouldn’t have provided evidence, it seemed they had prepared a list as an alternative.
“…I see.”
As the presiding official smacked his lips with an unsatisfied air, Liselotte rose from her seat.
“Esteemed Presiding Official. We submit as additional evidence the amount of mana required, the probability involved, and the losses incurred through disposal depending on that probability when producing higher-grade magic tools from lower-grade byproducts using magical theory.”
Hedmilton hurried up to the dais and handed over evidence composed solely of magical theory.
“Oh…?”
For a moment, curiosity flickered across the presiding official’s face.
