Chapter 747
"There's only one truth! The murderer is… you, Death God Roland! You're the living harbinger of misfortune! You bring death and misfortune to everyone around you! You're the legendary Death God elementary school student detective who brings death to families all across Japan! Just admit it, you're the one who murdered Akama!"
"…Harloys, if I really did have such an ability, then you'd probably be the first to die . I don't mind if you joke with me, but you really should hold back . If others believe what you say, causing new strange rumors to spread about me tomorrow, then I'm going to make you eat nothing but cat food for an entire month . "
The place we were currently at wasn't very suitable for jokes, as we were currently in the VIP guest section of the Bardi royal palace . Royal guards with tense expressions were entering and exiting a certain room on the 3rd floor, where the elderly archmage Akama's corpse was lying on the redwood floor .
Prophecy archmage Akama's eyes had been closed by someone already, but his expression was quite calm .
There was no sign of a struggle at all . Akama had only one fatal injury located right on the chest .
"The assassin killed him instantly with one strike to the heart . The assassin must be a veteran . "
I pulled off the white cloth covering Akama's corpse . When I saw the large hole in his chest and how there was very little blood around despite it, and that the attack had been quite clean and quick, I knew that this had to be done by a professional assassin .
Normally, it would be quite reasonable that a veteran assassin ambushing an unprepared archmage would succeed in killing the latter, no matter how powerful the archmage was .
However, something was rather unusual in this situation .
Although it was common sense that prophets were unable to prophesize anything regarding themselves, prophecy magic was a type of investigation magic, which would be the natural counter to all assassins . Akama was a veteran archmage who had long reached Level 4 already . It would be inconceivable for him not to have 10 or 20 investigation spells cast on himself .
Detect Invisibility, Sense Hostility, Heat Detection, True Luck, Noise Alarm (a spell which would loudly alert all others in the area that the user was being attacked), and Ward of Protection (a shield spell that would automatically activate when the user was in danger) . These were all standard investigation magic spells . It would be incredibly difficult to successfully ambush any prophecy magic archmage . It would be impossible to ambush a prophecy magic archmage even for me .
If I truly wanted to kill a prophecy magic archmage, I would far prefer to use a direct attack as that would be much easier .
Just how amazing of a grandmaster would one have to be at concealing their own presence in order to successfully assassinate Akama, who obviously hadn't been on his guard at all, when Akama was the most famous prophecy magic archmage in the world?
I touched Akama's corpse which was becoming cold, gathering dark magic upon him .
I didn't have the deductive reasoning abilities like Death God Conan did, but I did some Death God-like abilities of my own . Eich was a magical world where having the dead talk wasn't that difficult, after all .
Yet, my attempt to summon Akama's soul met with obstruction .
"Holy water to put his soul to rest after death? This is truly an experienced assassin . "
Akama's face was still slightly wet, likely from holy water . Either an idiot priest had already come to cleanse the soul, or the assassin had intentionally poured holy water on the corpse .
I asked the royal guards and found that no priest had come here .
This meant two things . One was that the assassin was tremendously experienced because the fact that holy water could obstruct soul summoning was a secret that even the majority of undead mages didn't know . The second thing made me contemplate even more…
"The assassin knew that someone would soon attempt to summon Akama's soul, meaning that the assassin knew that an undead mage would come to check the corpse . "
Drawing out a living or dead person's soul actually had many limitations . A corpse that had died too long ago would lose its connection to its own soul . While it would be possible to reanimate such a corpse as a skeleton or zombie, summoning its soul would no longer be possible .
Under normal circumstances, souls would soon return to the Cycle of Reincarnation . After just one or two hours, even an undead magic grandmaster's soul summoning spell would likely fail . Additionally, soul summoning was a spell that could only be attempted once per corpse . Failing once would mean that it was completely impossible to try again afterwards .
Soul summoning was about trying to withdraw memories from the dead individual's soul fragments . Failing at soul summoning would cause the soul fragments to completely shatter, which was why it was impossible to try more than once .
That was why more than 90% of the time, undead mages would actually use soul summoning magic against the living . Usually, it was to interrogate someone living for the information they knew . This was highly effective and would require a very low cost . The only side effect was that after using soul summoning magic on someone living, that person would die afterwards .
Bardi was the home location of the Southern Sect . Although undead mages weren't directly outlawed here, Bardi wasn't exactly friendly towards undead mages due to the high number of dragons and Holy Light job class members here . Undead mages were quite few in Bardi .
Yet, the assassin had been certain that an undead mage would soon arrive here, which was why the assassin had prepared for this with holy water .
The assassin knew of my arrival .
In a way, this clue might actually be more valuable than having the dead Akama speak . Information learned from soul summoning would be fragmented and scattered . It was possible to learn something, but it would be equally likely to learn nothing from soul summoning .
"A traitor?"
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