"Daddy has no idea what that thing is" replied Daren as he was confused by his daughter's brazen attitude. "Where did you learn that?" Where in the world would Chloe learn something from his world?
"It's from you daddy. You used to do this gesture to anyone you pissed you off." Chloe blinks her eyes at Daren and sneers.
"Oh really. Looks like I taught you well. Hehehehe." Daren laughs at his past self for teaching his daughter this way. She may look sweet but her tongue spits out poison.
Dark lines appeared on the magistrate's face while the mages behind him stared scowl in anger. An insult to their chief is an insult to them.
Even though they were told to respect Daren's group, they could not stand the arrogant words that were hurled at them. They were all holding it in, ready to explode out with curses towards the child.
Magistrate Alexander saw this and was not surprised as he himself was only holding himself back from attacking them because of the request made by his dear nephew and how vital they could be to the nation.
"My daughter has given you the answer herself. We also don't know anything about that crystal of yours." Daren put on a look of arrogance on his face as he raised his chest.
His prudence alarmed the magistrate.
'I was pretty sure that the secret of the wishing altar has not been revealed yet. Why does this man show so much arrogance in front of a royal-like me and even straight-up disrespect? It is quite odd. I may be overthinking this but from the research, we have done, this man has only shown himself to be quite the shrewd individual. There's is no way someone like him would have such arrogance.'
The magistrate was not an idiot. He could see that the actions of Chloe and Daren have been quite deliberate. When Chloe called him ugly, the magistrate sensed no disgust in her voice as if she did not mean it.
He also could see that Daren was faking his pride and was just playing around with his facial expression. He realized that they were just trying to rile him up and poke information on him. They were trying to see exactly how much tolerance someone as high up a the magistrate has for a somewhat insignificant group of people invited by the emperor.
"Are you sure about that?" The magistrate also wanted to see how far he could go in this investigation. The nephew told him to keep up his usual investigation practices so he will do exactly that.
"I have no idea what this 'blah blah dragon crystal' is. Neither do any of my family." Daren still has fake arrogance and a prideful look on his face. He also had hints of aloofness as he looked around as if busy admiring nature.
"Can you explain the reason for Head Maid Asteros was found to have fainted when my mages arrived? " asked Alexander as he gestured towards the two young men in cyan robes.
Dominic and Jonathon, the mages that were sent here earlier to extinguish a supposed fire, stepped forward with blank faces. They were very perplexed as to how they should behave in situations like these as they were still new to investigations.
"Don't ask me. How am I supposed to know what was going on in her head? If I were to give a guess though, it would be that she probably got scared of the daughter's flames."
"Oh. So you admit to burning down the doors then. Then how come you didn't see the very large and bright red crystal that was in that room?"
"Heh. Well, my daughter and I felt some strange energy fluctuations inside the door and felt like it was a hostile threat. We decided to burn the door down to take the initiative towards a possible enemy. By the time we got there, the room was empty. All that remained was a pillow next to a stone altar."
Daren gave a very simple yet undeniable excuse. He also gave as many details as possible as it would make him appear more innocent. Usually, those who are guilty would try to provide the shortest and vaguest statements.
After processing this information and looking for possible holes in the story and ways to continue prying the young man in front of him, the magistrate was somewhat surprised at how the young man in front of him was able to keep such a calm demeanor.
The magistrate had been speaking while letting a quick burst of elemental energy from his body. He created an environment that was hard for feeble-minded or physically weak to think straight in.
He looked around the room and noticed that all the legs of the maids were shaking as beads of sweat rolled down from their foreheads. High-level mages and cultivators could purposefully leak large amounts of concentrated force in their surroundings to cause those in their vicinity to slowly faint.
By confirming that there was nothing wrong with his force energy, the magistrate looked at the stunning sight of those seated on the red couch.
He had expected that cold-blooded killers like Daren would be able to handle pressure like this without much trouble since people like that tend to have very resilient minds. Adding on his cultivation base, Daren should not have much of a hard time keeping focus.
What baffled him more was the expression of the ladies on the couch. Even if a miracle child-like Chloe, had physical cultivation, she should not have a strong mind.
Adding on to the fact that normal people like Celina and Chanela, who he figured out had no cultivation base, had not changed their calming and uncaring expressions since the moment he had stepped into the manor and let out his energy.
'What kind of background must these people have for them to have trained their minds to be unshakable under such tense energy. All regular humans would become numb after just a couple of seconds. Either they all must have gone through hell or they might have high-grade techniques for mental fortification. Either option is too scary to think about.'
The speed at which the magistrate made all these observations and conclusions was so unfathomable that it only took 5 seconds. Being a high-rank mage makes his thinking speed too abnormal.
Being the cunning person he had to be to survive for so long in the imperial palace, Alexander decided to play it safe from here. He may have been doubtful about the potential and background of these 'guests' but now he was sure that there had to be something profound behind it.
Whether it will turn out to be a blessing for Gigantus or their downfall, he would just have to wait and see. Plus, it would not hurt to be cautious.
"I see. I will ask her myself when she regains consciousness. I do have one final query though."
"Go ahead." Daren gave out a bored look as he already knew what question was going to be next.
"Jonathon and Dominic indicated to me that they saw what seemed to be a fragment of the Dragon Feeding Crystal in your daughter's hand."
Alexander once again gestured to the two rookie mages. This time though, his words did not have much of a majestic sense as he was speaking with a more respectable tone. He had also retracted his suffocating aura.
This let the maids in the background sigh in relief and take deep breaths as they very subtly adjusted their once trembling legs.
"Hahaha. Your mages must have mistaken my daughter's candy. You should teach them to pay attention to their surroundings with greater detail." Daren then looks over to the two mages whose veins on their forehead had started inflated from anger. "Who knows when a thief might just walk past them while blatantly displaying their precious treasures."
'Candy?! You think that someone smart enough to be a mage would not be able to tell the difference between candy and a gem?' Thought the magistrate and all the mages behind him.
With these words, Daren was sure to have sent the group's tolerance towards his antics to the very edge. Only a couple more insults and he would be able to make sure one of them burst out in anger with either words or their fists.
The magistrate knew that what Daren was trying to do. He was looking for vulnerabilities at this point and seeing truly how far he could go. By taking a glance at his subordinates, the old man knew that Daren had accomplished his goal.
He could see the veins of his employees pop and was sure that a tiny push could cause a chaotic scene. He realized that he had to deescalate the situation if he wanted to get rid of any possible mishaps that may lead to someone getting hurt.
"I see. I will do my best to look into this further. I apologize for wasting the time of rest for you and your family. Seeing that you have gone through a grueling journey, I recommend you have look at the hot spring in the basement. It should serve as relaxation while we do our investigation of the room in which the incident took place."
Alexander had given up trying to make the man say something. He was pretty sure that Daren had something to do with the missing crystal but for now, the priority of him being much more valuable than that crystal took over.
He would of course still investigate the missing gem but he wanted to get this mysterious and wretched group out of sight. He could only calm the tension within his underlings once Daren and his unruly daughter were gone from their sight.
Daren knew that Alexander was trying to calm the situation. His way of doing so was something he kind of admired.
'A hot spring! If it's what I think it is. Hehehehe. ' Daren was tired of taking showers by filling up a bucket of water and then pouring it on top of him with scoops from a bowl. It was a very unsatisfying way of cleaning his body.
He looked over to his companions and say that they had excitement and impatience written all over their faces. 'It looks like they can't wait to take a dip in that luxuriously warm water.'
"You girls wanna hit up the hot spring?" asked Daren. He didn't hide the excitement in his voice as there was no reason to. His past selves have definitely gone hot spring baths often.
It allowed him to relax very well as the planet he was born on had a deep-rooted culture related to the use of hot spring baths. It was called "onsen" in their language.
"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssss!!!" Chloe was the first to respond as she leaped off the couch and ran out of the room.
"Can we eat in the bath?" asked Celina. This is expected from the glutton. As long as she can eat delicious foods, she would not care about where she was.
"Sure." Chanela was as monotone as always showing almost no emotions on her cold yet pretty face.
"No. No eating in the bath. It's bad for digestion." replies Daren.
"Aww. No way. I eat whenever I want."
"Really? Then why did you even ask?!"
"Hmm. Just to see if anyone was going to steal my food. If you said that I could eat, I would mean everyone else would eat as well. That would mean sharing. I'm not sharing."
Celina's mind has been attached two only two things recently. First is obviously food. The second would be Chanela. The sister pair had spent 90% percent of their time awake talking to each other.
Chloe was so annoyed at their constant storytelling and inquiries that she left her room on the 2nd day. She spent most of that educating Daren and telling him stories whenever she was awake. She slept most of the day though.
The system said this was natural as her soul would take time to recover from her entrapment and it is also a trait of Demonic Dragons. The children of that species sleep much more than humans.
Even though Daren had spent tons of time bonding with and getting to understand himself, Celina, Chloe, and Chanela, he felt that there was something amiss about Chanela.
He hadn't pinpointed where this feeling came from but it probably had something with the memories in his soul. Even though Celina spent a lot of time with Chanela, she also felt something was wrong with her despite learning so much about her.
Both Celina and Daren had not directly brought this up to each other yet. They did, however, know that the other person was feeling the same sort of inexplicable awkwardness around Chanela. They had subconsciously agreed to discuss it when the environment around them was much more exclusive.
Daren even thought that he should ask Chloe if she felt anything but he noticed that Chloe liked her aunt dearly and did not feel strange around her at all. She was super comfortable with Chanela, maybe even more than she was with her parents.
"Alright, let's have a go at it then. Can one of you show us the way?" Daren asked as he looked towards the rows of maids.
The maids looked at each other and after 10 seconds, one of the girls nodded silently and stepped out of the lines. She approached the group and went in front of them.
"This way." The pretty, short brown hair girl walked towards a certain door that was wide open. she kept her head down and had indicated that she would be their lead to the bath. The group followed her and went past the door.
It led to a narrow, stone stairway that went downwards and was lit up by torches on either side of the walls. Daren knew that this door wasn't open earlier. he was sure that Chloe had burst through here when she left a couple of seconds ago. He wasn't sure how she found this place with such ease but he would just ask her.
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"Ahhhhh. They're finally gone." said one of the middle-aged, white-robed men.
"I was this close to engulfing them in a barrage of spells." said the other white-robed mage man.
"Shut your dumb mouths, you muscle-headed idiots." said the white-robed woman as he hit the two middle-aged men with her fists.
"Ow! What was that for?!" cried out the two men in unison. If one looked carefully, one could see that the two men had similar facial features with slight differences like thin scars here and there. These two men are twins.
"Hmph. That's exactly what that young man wanted. he was trying to see how welcoming and tolerant we are of him. The more respect we show them, the more he realizes that their value is high or the words of the emperor are like an iron fist. If it isn't for the fact you two are mages, I would think you two are muscle-headed warriors."
The woman sounded very and disappointed at the two men next to her. They had failed to see how the man was faking his arrogance and sensing out the situation. They basically carried their emotion on the sleeves.
'In a place as cruel as the palace, the only reason they are alive is because of their own strength. Actually, it's mainly due to the magistrate's strength but those two are too dumb to realize that.' The thoughts of this woman were very clear.
She had a sharp aura around her that exuded calmness and nobility. Her mind is the complete opposite of that her appearance. It was filled with shrewd calculations and cruelty for anyone who crosses her path.
"Diana, I believe that those two are starting to go senile. At least the younger generation has not disappointed me yet." Magistrate Alexander looks towards the herd of youngsters that is the majority of Investigation Team 7 consists of.
He had seen that many of them had somehow maintained an uncaring and emotionless face. 9 of them had not fallen to the man's tricks. The ones that did falter are all the youngest of the group. This made sense to the magistrate since they were still new to the palace and had not adjusted to its scheming nature. They did not let his expectations down and everything was in control.
"You are right your highness. As they say, the young will always surpass the old. I should start planning my retirement early. Hehehe." Even though Diana was laughing with a wide smile on her beautiful, mature face, the other mages knew that it was far from her real feelings.
The once calm mages had now had beads of sweat dripping from their forehead as their expressions turned gloomy. Anyone would see this cheerful and beautiful woman and thin she was joking around. The mages, however, knew it was far from the truth.
Diana Umbert. Also known as "The Psychotic Witch of Lunacy" or just "The Crazed Witch". She is one of the Vice Chiefs of the Royal Investigation Ministry. Her main responsibility is to train all the newbies in the ministry and get them up to shape.
All the young mages in the ministry had all been through her training at least once. All of them came out either became lunatics or psychotic, cold-blooded killers.
Many had complained about her methods to the emperor but he always ignored them. Most people assumed that this is due to her teaching the emperor for a short while when he was just a young prince.
Even though the ministry is supposed to train people with talents for investigation and keen eyes, she just made them into unfeeling slaughterers.
In recent years, no one has said anything about it ever since it had been proven that anyone that finished her training had developed a very good eye for clues and better talent in detective work than most students in the thousand-year-old history of the ministry.
In actuality, the reason for the emperor not scolding her and no one else bringing up her strange methods in court is because she was now a 7th Circle Mage.
The Human Realm's Mage CAlsisifation System was different from the very rigid system of Body Cultivators( Will be called Warriors sometimes for simplicity).
The warrior's system consisted of 7 main thresholds with the Body Strengthening stage being the weakest and Divine Aura being the strongest. Each of those main parts has 9 smaller levels within them. Level 1 being the weakest and Level 9 being the strongest. Then within those levels, where the lower middle, upper, and peak stages.
The mage system was much more simple as it went from 1st Circle mage to 9th Circle mage. 1st Circle Mages are the weakest of the bunch with 9th Circle being the pinnacle. Within each rank, there are smaller barriers called the initial, middle, upper, and peak stages.
It is known that there are only 7, 9th circle mages in the entirety of the human realm.
There are only about 900, 8th circle mages and that goes to show that there is a large gap between the two ranks. There are only about 5 thousand 7th Circle mages. Out of the millions of mages in the human realm, Diana Umbridge stands not too far from the peak.
Of course, Royal Magistrate Alexander is at 8th Circle Mage. How else is he supposed to be the chief?
(Guys, I promise to really flesh out the power system of mages and warriors within the next four chapters. I have been holding this off for a while since I really wanted to know where to take this system in the future. Sorry about not doing so earlier.)
"Okay, enough talk. Diana, you take the rest of the fledglings and investigate the altar room. There have to be some clues. Freddy and Joss will come with me to talk to the head maid. Let's finish before the banquet."
"Yes, your highness." The group split up according to Alexander's orders. He took the twins with him as one of the maids guided them to where the unconscious Penelope was being treated while the other went upstairs to scour the crime scene.
'There's no way that there are no clues right? As I have learned over the years, there is no perfect crime.'
This thought of Alexander could not be any wronger as this would bite him really hard, right in the ass.
(I'm saying this here since I have asked for this in the author's thought many times. Can you guys please leave a review? I want to know what you all are thinking. I need to know where I can improve this story's aspects. Thank you for reading always and have a blessed day. š)