As the sun started to set, Anise came up to me and gently woke me up with a kiss. I smiled at her before sitting up and asking:
"How is it? Any changes while I was asleep?"
"Not really. The guards are still patrolling as usual but are carrying magic torches to illuminate their surroundings."
I nodded and walked up to the door to take a look. After observing their movement for a good period of time, I turned around towards Anise and said: "All right, I'm going now. I'll try and look for any one of them and come back after I find out some reliable information. Please be careful and teleport back to the Cloven Academy if anything were to happen."
Seeing Anise nod, I cast my invisibility spell, gently opened the door and headed towards the emperor's courtyard. I was careful to stay away from the guards even if my spell makes me completely invisible since I wasn't sure if those torches had any other function, so it took almost an entire hour for me to reach the courtyard.
After sneaking inside, I noticed that the number of guards there was at least triple compared to around the city. There were guards patrolling back and forth, two guards placed by each door and the mansion the emperor lived in was surrounded by guards on all sides.
After checking the garden and all the small buildings inside the courtyard and not finding anyone I could speak to, I knew that if I wanted to have a chance of meeting Lysa and the others I had to enter the emperor's mansion.
Looking at the circle formed by the guards surrounding the mansion, I asked Ai:
'Do you think I can sneak past them using invisibility?'
[No chance. Even if you manage to make it past them, there is no way for you to open any of the doors or windows and get in without them noticing.]
'That's what I figured as well. Any idea?'
[You should try entering through the roof. You can probably create a hole in the roof and step inside unnoticed.]
Nodding, I started to float slowly and carefully approached the roof. As I got closer and closer, I kept getting the feeling that something was wrong, a feeling that made me stop in my tracks.
'Ai, do you notice anything unusual? Something doesn't feel right.'
[No. If I did I would have already let you know.]
As I kept staring at the dark rooftop, the feeling that something was not right only kept getting stronger. Taking a deep breath, I decided to see what would happen if I cause a small commotion. Channeling my mana, I created a small fireball on the other side of the rooftop using space magic wanting to use it to make a hole.
Not even a moment after my fireball, a dozen or so shadows appeared around that place and stabbed their daggers into empty air. Seeing that they hit nothing, they immediately blended back into the darkness and disappeared completely. No matter how hard I looked, I was not able to spot their position anymore.
'Damn, what was that? They looked like ghosts.'
[Probably assassins recruited to protect the emperor.]
'Some kind of shadow guards?'
[Yes. You won't be able to make it past them.]
I pulled a bit back so they won't discover me and, now that I couldn't get inside through the roof, I was left with only one choice. To try to teleport inside, but this plan was also quite dangerous and there were a lot of things that could go wrong.
After careful consideration and talking things through with Ai, I decided to teleport just under the roof's tiles and keep my invisibility active. This way I reduced the risk of getting discovered if there was someone also keeping guard inside.
'Well, worst case scenario I'll just have to fight them and escape. I should be able to do it.' I thought to myself as I checked for any spatial lock and, not finding one, I finally teleported inside.
Appearing in the building's attic, I quickly took a look around and let out a sigh of relief when I noticed that there was no one inside.
I floated gently towards the door when an idea came to me: 'Ai, is it possible for me to use my mana to feel if there's someone on the other side of the door?'
[Yes, but if your intelligence is not at least 30 points higher than the enemy on the other side, they will be able to feel your mana and you'll get discovered.]
'Those are pretty good odds.' I said to Ai and started extending my mana outwards, covering the room on the other side of the door with it. With over 100 points in intelligence, there were not that many people who could discover me.
'Only one person. Doesn't feel like he has a lot of mana. Probably some guard that specializes in strength or dexterity.'
Since I had a somewhat clear vision of the room behind the door, I was at least not walking around blindly anymore. The only problem was how to open the door without the guard noticing. After thinking for a while, I decided to make the guard come to me. It was risky, but I couldn't think of any other way. Taking a deep breath, I moved a bit further away from the door and hit the wooden floor using my foot, thus creating a loud noise.
The guard on the other side heard it and, pulling his sword from it's sheath, he started to slowly walk towards the door. Opening the door with his other hand, he said without moving a single inch inside: "Whoever's right there. Come out."
After yelling a couple more times and getting no answer, noticing that he was about to turn around and leave, I used my mana to create a small sphere of ice on the other side of the room before dropping it to the ground and dispelling the spell right after to not leave any trace of it.
The guard immediately dashed in the direction of the sound and I used this chance to sneak by and walk out of the room. In the next room, I noticed a stairway going down and quickly used it to leave towards the floor right under.
As I was now on the second floor of the mansion, I could finally start looking for either Lysa, Velor, Oliver or maybe even Iris.
I started to carefully approach every room at this floor before extending my mana inside and checking the out. I was lucky since I didn't stumble upon any high level wizard for the first seven rooms. In those room there appeared to be mostly guards or servants of the mansion.
At the eighth one, as soon as my mana reached inside, the door opened and a golden sword appeared at my neck. Following the sword to it's hilt with my eyes, a wry smile appeared on my lips as I said: "Long time no see, Velor."
Velor looked surprised to see me before frowning and asking with his sword still pointed at my neck: "Ethan, why are you sneaking around here?"
Just as I was about to answer, Lysa came from behind him and, placing a hand on his shoulder, said: "It's fine Velor. He probably came to the Capital and wanted to check up on us. Come inside Ethan, quickly before any of the guards spot you."
Velor also reluctantly lowered his sword and I walked inside. The room looked quite grand, with a huge bed and on that bed, the Emperor was laying down with a pale look. Velor walked to his father's side and grabbed his hand as Lysa walked with me to a table nearby.
After motioning for me to sit down, she poured me a cup of tea and said: "Was I right?"
I nodded and replied: "Yeah. We were gone to Cloven City for a while and, when we come back, we were informed about the whole situation by a guard at the gate. Since we were worried about you two, we decided to sneak inside and check our the situation for ourselves."
"I see. Where is Anise? It's dangerous to be walking through our courtyard right now."
"It's fine. She remained at the restaurant Iris was working at. How is your father?"
Lysa turned to look at her father and her expression turned into a pained one as she said: "He was poisoned by one of the assassin's blades and none of the doctors we invited to check on him knows what that poison is and how it works. If we don't find an antidote soon…"
"So that's why everyone is so desperately searching for the assassins… You hope they would also carry an antidote to the poison. What about Isabella? What happened with her?"
Lysa shook her head before replying: "She's locked in the dungeon. Since my father has fallen ill, uncle has taken over control of the Empire and declared that only she could have facilitated the assassination before locking her up."
"But if she did it and the assassins managed to escape, why didn't she leave as well? I don't think you had the means of locking down a wizard that specializes in spatial magic so easily."
"I think so as well, but there's nothing I can do. Uncle doesn't let anyone inside the prison, not even me or Velor. We can only hope they catch the assassins before… before it's too late and father succumbs to the poison. All I can do is to stay by his side and make sure that nothing else happens during this time. By the way, how did you get inside? The space is locked around the mansion."
"Huh? I teleported inside. There is no spatial lock."
Lysa frowned at my words before quickly sitting up and rushing towards a small desk inside the room. After grabbing a small glowing wooden cube form one of the drawers, she brought it to me and asked: "Can you check it? This is the device that locks the space around the mansion. Since we can't have Isabella always guarding father while he's inside the courtyard, we had her make this artifact to lock the space down around the entire courtyard."
"I'm not an artificer, but I can take a look." I said before picking the small cube up from the table. Inserting mana inside it, I noticed that some of the mana connections appear to have been severed. After checking carefully a few more times, I put it back on the table before saying: "Some of the mana circuits inside have been cut. The device still glows like it's working, but without some of it's mana circuits it can't safely lock down the space around. It's mostly just for show now."
Lysa fell stumped on one of the chairs before saying: "But that's not possible. Only my family and Isabella knows about this device. Did she really betray us?"
I frowned, but a completely different opinion started forming inside my head. I already knew about some of the Grand Duke's plans and figured that the possibility of him being behind this was quite high. Looking at the dispirited Lysa, a sigh escaped my lips as I said: "I still don't believe Isabella did it. It's possible that even the rebellion doesn't have anything to do with it."
"Huh?" looked Lysa at me with an confused expression before asking: "Then who else would want to do this? The demons?"
I shook my head before taking a small ring of my finger and placing it on the table: "I don't think the demons did it either. Let's check out what the rebellion has to say before I tell you my opinion as well."
Lysa looked even more confused, but I ignored her look and started channeling mana inside the ring. The ring glowed slightly and the voice of a woman sounded from within not long after: "Ethan, you contacted me because you finally agreed to join us?"
"No. The reason I contacted you was to ask you something. Will you be willing to answer a question for me?"
Lysa looked at me with a suspicious look but didn't say anything.
"Ask away. It depends on the question, tho."
"Were you guys responsible for the recent assassination attempt on the Emperor?"
Both Lysa and I held our breaths as we waited for the woman's answer.
"I can answer you question, but what will I get in return? You should know that the information I can give you is quite precious."
"What do you want?"
"A meeting between you and our leader. Only the two of you. What do you say?"
"Fine. Deal. Now tell me what you know."
"All right. As much as we would have loved to, we had no part in that assassination attempt. It appears that the Grand Duke was the one who ordered it. That's why we didn't make a single move all this time and waited to see how things will play out. I hate to say it, but it appears you were right. The more we investigate, the dirtier that Grand Duke appears to be and we found more plots he seems to be involved in."
"That's what I thought as well. Thank you for the information."
"No problem. I'll contact you tomorrow with the meeting details."
"Sure." I replied and stopped supplying mana to the ring. After placing it back on my finger, I looked at Lysa and saw that she was rooted on the chair with a shocked expression on her face.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
My words startled her as she frowned and seem to be pondering about something deeply. I let her sort out her thoughts in peace. Eventually, she looked at me and said: "You said that you also thought uncle was the one behind this. Why? Do you know something else?"
I sighed and started telling her all I knew about the Grand Duke. His circle in Bastion that I personally destroyed, his assassination of the Aranna family and a couple other families, the information I read in Anna's office in the north and so on. By the end of my story, a resigned expression appeared on Lysa's face as she said:
"I never imagined uncle would be responsible for so many… sigh. Father trusted him so much… Ethan, what do we do now? If uncle is really responsible, he won't let father recover no matter what and we can't do anything against him."
I stayed silent since I didn't have a way out of this either. Lysa thought in silence while staring at her father. I looked at the emperor as well and asked Ai:
'Do you think we can help him?'
[If Lysa lets you examine his body we can take a look, but the chances are not high since I don't have access to a large database with poisons from this world.]
"Lysa, do you mind if I take a look at your father's condition? I probably can't help, but I can at least try."
"Sure." She then turned towards Velor and said: "Velor, let Ethan have a look at father to see if he can help and come here so I can speak about something with you."
Velor slowly stood up from his father side and took my place at the table while I walked close to the unconscious emperor. Grabbing one of his hands, I started circulating my mana though his body.
Not finding anything out of order, I asked Ai: 'How is it? I can't find anything.'
[Indeed, his body appears completely healthy.]
'Then what's wrong with him?'
[It might be an issue with his soul.]
'Can we check that as well?'
[I'm on it. I'll use a portion of your spirit.]
'All right.' I replied and waited for Ai to finish checking the emperor's soul. A few moments later, Ai said to me.
[Ethan, the condition of his soul matches that of the Protector bride. Whatever the assassins used, it seems to have polluted his soul using other soul fragments. If I had to guess, I'll say they used soul crystals to forge the blades the assassins used.]
'Can we cure him?'
[For a tier two soul it should be possible, but I don't know how to do it.]
'If only Senna was here…'
"Sigh…"