The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 168 Suspect Isaac (12) - Dracrois Cough, cough. A cough mixed with blood echoed through the office. Julien cried out desperately. "Hey, snap out of it! You're being deceived by that woman right now! She's pretending to be a decent detective on the surface, but she's a woman with a shady background!!" Isadora's eyebrows twitched. But before she could say anything, Isaac responded to Julien's words first. "I know. At least that the detective is harboring some kind of secret." But, Isaac continued. "But you haven't exactly told the truth either, have you? If both sides are suspicious anyway, it would be rational to trust the side I have personal goodwill toward." "Deceiving, what on earth do you mean...!" "From the beginning, things fit together too perfectly." Just as Isaac confessed to Isadora about this case, journalist Eduard's house, where evidence remained, went up in flames. The police pointed to Isaac as the culprit and threw him in prison, while Isadora, who should have proven his innocence, simply disappeared. Anyone would find Isadora suspicious. "—That is, if it had stopped right there." Anti-Augustin alliance? Well, it could exist. They were monitoring the office so they could respond immediately? It's not impossible. "But being able to respond and actually responding are separate matters. Why are you helping me in the first place? What benefit is there for you?" "Benefit? We simply moved as fellow victims to prevent another unfortunate incident from happening because of Augustin!!" "How can you assert that I'm a pure victim?" "What?" Julien's expression went blank for a moment. Isaac spoke in a calm voice as if teaching a slow-witted student. "If you recognized the detective as Augustin's collaborator, you should naturally suspect me, who she took as her assistant. But you pulled me into your side without any proper verification." "That's because we already investigated and understood you beforehand!" "Ah, so you're saying you immediately trusted a man whose whereabouts and activities before entering this city are completely unknown, and even put a gun in his hands?" Julien's face became terribly distorted. As Isaac himself was now pointing out, there were plenty of unnatural aspects to this case if one thought about it coldly. Conversely, if you 'prevent someone from analyzing the situation coldly,' such things become no problem at all. Do all the scams in this world necessarily proceed elaborately and perfectly? While such cases aren't entirely nonexistent, most scams are neither that elaborate nor perfect. No, they're rather crude. When you hear the victims' stories from a third party's perspective, they're crude enough to make you inwardly scoff, wondering how anyone could fall for that. But even those who scoffed like that often fall for absurd methods when they become the parties involved. 'Your parents are in critical condition' 'Your identity has been stolen' 'You've won a special support program.' Once you shock someone with strong and provocative topics, then urgently command them to do this and that, people end up believing things they would never normally believe and committing actions they would never normally do. And then they testify. That it felt like they were bewitched by something. That they don't understand why they acted that way. In the same context, what Isaac went through was enough to rob him of his calm rationality. He suddenly heard that a person he had conversed with had burned to death along with their house, and was even imprisoned as a suspect in that case. He witnessed firsthand the enormous power that could even manipulate the police at will, and just when it seemed he would become a permanent prisoner without even receiving a proper trial, a lifeline was thrown down at the perfect moment. Then it would be normal to immediately grab that lifeline and cling to it, not to suspect it thinking 'Hmm, a lifeline suddenly dropping at this timing is too convenient.' Wouldn't that make you crazy? "By the way, you seem quite composed for someone with a bullet in their chest. Your tongue still works well, I see?" "This bastard...!" Realizing that further conversation was meaningless, Julien bared his teeth at Isaac. That was not a metaphorical expression. His canine teeth became obviously longer, and his blue eyes turned red. The muscles throughout his body swelled as if inflated by wind, and his clothing became so taut it seemed ready to tear at any moment. "────!!" Letting out a beast-like roar, Julien charged toward Isaac. Isaac quickly rolled backward to dodge the attack, but the wooden cabinet hit by Julien's fist was torn apart like paper. It was monstrous strength that far exceeded that of an ordinary human. Isaac blinked and said. "Hmm, it seems the genre has changed somewhat?" "Is this really the time for such remarks!? Move aside!" With a sharp observation befitting a detective, Isadora quickly threw something that was near the desk. When the ashtray that cut through the air struck him directly in the face, Julien's body staggered for a moment. And without missing that opening, Isadora rushed into Julien's embrace. Julien tried to swing his arms to check her even from his unstable position, but this was rather a bad move. Because Isadora, who had grabbed his arm, used the momentum of his attack against him. Using Isadora's small frame as the center, Julien's large body rotated. Thud! "Wow." Isaac inadvertently exclaimed in admiration. It was a throw of truly artistic level. He was slammed not onto a soft mat but onto hard stone flooring, with such force that the entire office shook for a moment, so there was no way a human body could remain intact. With his neck bent at a grotesque angle, Julien, who had been twitching like a fly directly hit by bug spray, soon went limp. Isaac carefully examined his condition. His right arm seemed to have been scraped and crushed in the process of destroying furniture, leaving few intact fingers, and blood continued to flow from the gunshot wound in his chest. 'He seems to have somewhat higher life force, but otherwise he's at the level of a drug-enhanced human? Seems to be around the middle of 2nd rank, maybe barely 3rd rank.' While he wanted to investigate further, Isaac suppressed that urge. Because there was something more urgent right now. "Then, would you please explain the situation now?" "...Haah." Isadora let out a deep sigh. It was a sigh that strangely seemed to contain resignation. "Let's go upstairs first. No matter what, I don't want to talk next to a corpse." *** This building was entirely Isadora's property, but among them, the third floor held especially special meaning. While the second floor was her workplace and the first floor and basement were rental spaces, the third floor was purely her personal space and home. However, the actual appearance of the third floor that Isaac observed was not such a fresh and lively place. Herbs. Glass tubes. Distillers. And countless other unidentified materials and experimental tools. Most of the third floor was a space reminiscent of a laboratory, and the ordinary living space with beds and wardrobes didn't even amount to half of half the total area. After hearing about what Isaac had experienced, Isadora took a deep puff of her pipe tobacco and calmly began her story. "—First, you don't need to worry about Mrs. More. I found your story quite disturbing, so I had her moved away in advance." It was quite a shocking statement right from the first sentence. Even Isaac, who had intended to listen to the entire story without interruption for smooth conversation, couldn't help but inadvertently interject. "Then what about the corpse that was found with the estate?" "It must have been prepared by Augustin's side. If the lady just disappeared, there could be search operations and gossip, so they made sure there was no room for that." "People who would even think of breaking someone out of prison to use them are surprisingly timid in that regard." "It's the opposite. By repeatedly burying things, whether people or objects, like this time, their actions gradually become more extreme and they lose hesitation in causing major incidents." "You know quite a lot about this." "I have to know." Whoosh. With deep smoke, Isadora exhaled. "—Because Augustin was my patron." There was no major change in Isaac's expression. At that fact, Isadora smiled bitterly. "I suppose you predicted it to some extent?" "Even if Julien's claim that everything was orchestrated from the beginning was an exaggeration, I guessed there was some kind of relationship. Otherwise, I couldn't explain why you were waiting on the second floor, or why you gave up arguing as if you had resigned yourself to something when you saw me." "You're quite perceptive. You know it's not very fun for a detective when their assistant is too smart?" "Are you saying they should be a bit dull and absent-minded so the detective can show off better? I won't comment on people's personal preferences." "It seems like you're already doing that enough." Tsk, she clicked her tongue and continued. "The Dracrois family and the Darnoua family have had deep ties since long ago. The Dracrois family had a certain problem that had been passed down from generation to generation since their ancestors, and the Darnoua family volunteered to be the solver of that problem." "A problem?" "Dracrois is...a blood-obsessed family." Isadora's tone was calm, but Isaac sensed the disgust and self-mockery buried deep within. "If they can't see human blood, they feel withdrawal symptoms, and conversely, the more blood they see, the more satisfaction and ecstasy they feel. This is the basic symptom, and when it progresses to the advanced stage, it becomes even more vicious." Drinking blood, bathing in blood, painting with blood, or storing it in special containers—acts that could only be called eccentricities. "It's exactly the kind of tendency that would make them perfect targets for being pointed at as a family possessed by demons if it were revealed. What's even funnier is that because they were 'actually possessed by a demon,' they ironically didn't hear such accusations from those around them." If they had simply been a family fallen into madness, the Dracrois would have been exterminated long ago. But they also possessed the ability to hide their abnormality. Because it was such a 'contract.' "Your descendants will be born with exceptional abilities. Beautiful appearance, leadership that can bend people to your will, brilliant minds and superior physical abilities." "But the more excellent those abilities are, the more intoxicated by blood you shall become. And those who reach the extreme will finally cease to be even human." "Dracrois prospered through a contract with a demon, but because of that very contract, they became those who could never be righteous." "Someone became a murderer, someone waged endless wars, and someone appointed themselves as an executioner." "In the midst of this, the Darnoua family, famous for pharmaceuticals and alchemy, approached the Dracrois." "Saying they would cure our 'disease.'"