Chapter 52 Confessions Without Physical Evidence

The Ancestral Elven Imperial Capital and the Tower to the Heavens at its center were both built upon Mount Saint-Somar in the northern part of the city.

Near the northwest foot of the mountain sat a time-honored royal icehouse. Historically, designated elven mages were assigned to manufacture ice within it, exclusively supplying the elven royal family to beat the summer heat.

Humans lacked the innate bloodline affinity for magic possessed by elves, so hiring a mage purely to produce ice for the nobility would have been rather extravagant.

Instead, royal servants would collect ice during the winter and store it in the ice cellars beneath the imperial city, retrieving it during the sweltering summer months for His Majesty’s enjoyment.

As for the abandoned royal icehouse at the foot of the mountain, it had since been taken over by the Imperial Capital Garrison and repurposed as a warehouse for reserve armaments and armor.

The scenery here was splendid, and not far away lay the private garden estates of the capital's grand nobility. Consequently, very few passersby ever lingered in the vicinity, making it a naturally secluded location ideal for hiding prisoners, incarceration, and interrogation, with no need to worry about prying eyes or ears.

The responsibility of interrogating and torturing these assassins naturally fell to Betharia, who excelled at such dark arts.

Dark elves genuinely possessed a formidable racial talent when it came to inflicting exquisite torment without accidentally killing their subjects. True to form, in less than an hour, Betharia emerged with the interrogation results.

"The mastermind is Duke Dacross," she stated concisely. "The Duke had a beloved lion-cat that died half a year ago, and he has been grief-stricken ever since."

"The heretics seized the opportunity to approach the Duke, claiming they could resurrect his cherished pet at the cost of sacrificing seventy-seven women to the demons. The Duke agreed, providing them with a massive sum of money and instructing them to commission the capital's Serpent's Nest for the assassinations."

"The vipers initially targeted stray courtesans, women frequently embroiled in fatal crimes of passion with their patrons, making their deaths less likely to arouse suspicion. Later on, as the situation escalated and courtesans dared not venture out after nightfall, the killers were forced to resort to breaking into homes."

"The inquisitors and witch hunters knew nothing of this; they were dispatched by their superiors simply to obstruct the Imperial Capital Garrison's thorough investigation. Your arrest and interrogation of those men made Duke Dacross extremely nervous, prompting him to pay another exorbitant sum to have the heretics and vipers orchestrate a rescue mission to prevent himself from being implicated."

"What a tedious story," Rena said with a derisive chuckle after listening to Betharia's report. "A two-month-old lion-cat is worth at most ten silver crown coins on the market, yet it somehow managed to entangle dozens of human lives."

"You don't understand. That wasn't just an ordinary cat; the Duke raised it like his own child," Betharia remarked with a light laugh. "If it were your child who died, wouldn't you go to any lengths to resurrect them?"

"Nonsense. Resurrecting someone takes me mere seconds; why would I ever need to make such a fuss?" Rena retorted dismissively.

Betharia offered an awkward, speechless smile, momentarily forgetting that this fellow was a seasoned necromancer.

"So, what do you plan to do?" she continued. "Although Duke Dacross holds no substantive power at court, his grandfather once served as the Empire's Prime Minister. Any attack against him will provoke universal vigilance among the capital's nobility..."

"...and be viewed as the presumptuous overreach and insult of a backwater provincial noble favored by the royal family, directed against the capital's aristocracy," Rena finished the rest of her sentence, pondering thoughtfully. "Which means I can only hand these investigation results over to Her Majesty the Queen."

"True," Betharia conceded. "After all, we lack concrete, ironclad evidence, and the confessions of a few criminals alone are clearly insufficient to bring down Duke Dacross."

"Why would I want to bring down Duke Dacross?" Rena asked, bewildered.

Betharia was stunned on the spot. A moment later, she burst into loud laughter.

"Ah, my mistake," she said, slinging an arm around Rena's neck and laughing heartily. "I subconsciously mistook you for someone like Elrina, overflowing with a blinding sense of justice. If it were her, she would never show mercy to corrupt nobles who slaughter the innocent."

"Are you mocking me for having no moral baseline?" Rena asked, his face darkening.

"Not at all. I admire the fact that you possess rational and decisive judgment, completely unhindered by rigid, dogmatic moral codes," Betharia smoothed over smoothly.

"Hmph!" Rena ignored her honeyed words.

Duke Dacross had sent men to incite the crowds outside the military camp, attempting to smear Rena's reputation. Naturally, he intended to repay this favor in full.

The reason he had said, "I have no need to bring down Duke Dacross," was because the rift between the imperial family and the lords of the four frontiers was already approaching the point of superficial harmony masking deep division.

Why bother charging into the fray myself? Simply handing the blade to Their Majesties would undoubtedly force the Lord Duke to pay a heavy price.

——————————

Inside the private garden beside the Amazon Memorial, Queen Margelina leafed through the written records of the assassins and heretics, reading every single detail with meticulous care.

"There is no solid proof," she murmured softly. "Relying solely on these confessions is still far from enough to convict a Duke."

"If Your Majesty requires it," Rena said in a deep, resolute voice, "I am willing to serve as your vanguard. Even if it means performing a covert assassination, I shall take this man's head myself!"

"There is no rush." Margelina had no immediate desire to kill Duke Dacross, given his intricate and deeply entrenched web of relations with the rest of the capital's nobility. Brashly attempting to topple him would trigger a chain reaction of consequences from which even the royal family might not escape unscathed. Nonetheless, she was quite satisfied with the loyalty Rena was currently displaying. "I will take these confession records with me for now."

"Continue your investigation along this direction, and ideally, secure ironclad evidence that leaves them no room for denial. Rena, I look forward to your performance."

"It is my honor to serve you, Your Majesty," Rena bowed.

After seeing Queen Margelina off, Rena began to feel the situation was growing rather tricky.

From the perspective of the Imperial Capital Garrison Commander, the South District serial murder case had to be solved to provide a satisfactory account to both the populace and the royal family; otherwise, he risked becoming a scapegoat targeted by political detractors at any moment.

However, from the standpoint of the royal faction, attempting to forcefully destroy a prestigious imperial duke without ironclad evidence would inevitably result in a mutually destructive scenario for both the royal family and the aristocracy.

Therefore, in Rena's original estimation, the Queen should have dispatched operatives to pressure Duke Dacross, forcing him to pay a certain price, withdraw, and cease his wrongdoing.

Following that, she would command Rena to find some convenient scapegoat and officially announce the closure of the case to the public. As long as no new victims surfaced subsequently, the populace naturally would find no fault to pick.

Yet the Queen clearly had no such intention; otherwise, she would not have instructed him to "continue the investigation."

This was a deeply ominous signal, implying that the Queen harbored some other agenda regarding this case. Judging by her intellect, the probability of her efforts backfiring spectacularly was quite high.

Rena had no intention of being discarded as a disposable tool by the Queen.

He needed to make preparations as swiftly as possible to ensure that once the "city gates caught fire," the flames would "conveniently and precisely" spread to Duke Dacross.

As for whether the Lord Duke would conclude this was a royal conspiracy—that was entirely none of Rena's concern.

After all, who would ever suspect that a mere commander of the Imperial Capital Garrison would presumptuously attempt to instigate a conflict between the royal family and the capital's nobility?

Not long after Rena returned to his command office, his family knight, Meiser, suddenly arrived with news: servants from the Dacross family had visited the inn where the family forces were stationed and respectfully delivered an invitation, requesting the honor of Rena Fahel's company for dinner.