Chapter 150 - I'll Owe You One!

Martin looked at Zion with a confused gaze. He had heard that her highness and this servant had fallen into a dangerous situation where they were blamed for the crime that they didn't even commit. Of course, killing so many children was a serious crime in itself, but he still didn't understand why even others would blame her highness. Was she too easy of a target for the criminals that they blamed it all on her shoulders?

When he thought about it, he got furious. He wanted to find that criminal and glare at him with all his might, but since those killers already got their punishment, he relaxed a bit. But then again, why did the elf queen lock up her highness like this when it was proven that Lia Vanne hadn't done anything? Even a rumor was spreading across the elf kingdom that her highness had left the kingdom with great rewards.

Then he looked at the human servant in front of him and frowned. This human was also strange. He was able to follow that powerful queen without being noticed. Now that he thought about it carefully, this human did seem to have certain skills. Otherwise, how would he be able to follow Odina like that?

So he looked at Zion and asked, "You did something to help her highness, didn't you?"

Zion looked at the sky and said in a low voice, "I typically helped her solve the case. If it were her highness alone, she would have been doomed with how her personality is!"

Martin wanted to retort when Zion said something like this about her highness, but he couldn't find anything wrong with those words. This human was right. The princess was someone who wouldn't think before having a fistfight with anyone who dared to touch her bottom line. With how flicker her mood was, even Martin was sure that she wouldn't have been even a little bit keen on solving this case. She would have instead had a fight with Odina in anger since her highness hated that elf queen.

With how much Lia hated the elves, how could she even think about solving this case and finding the criminals for them? There had to be someone else who could lend her a helping hand. After thinking until this point, he glanced at Zion with squinted eyes and didn't doubt the words that the human just said. If it were any other human, he would have doubted them since in his mind, the image of humans being useless had been stuck deep inside. It was probably that the entire world was now seeing the humans as slaves and servants that they couldn't help but think that humans couldn't do anything other than that. Such an image of humans was deeply ingrained in everyone's minds.

So Martin shouldn't be blamed for pondering too much about how Zion had helped the princess in solving this case.

After thinking about this, Martin's shoulders relaxed, and then he said to the human in front of him. "Then help me solve this case. I'll owe you one."

Zion nodded. Even though he knew that he would have solved this case without being asked, this situation was still better since he could make use of Martin later. So he pretended to hesitate before nodding as he said, "Okay, I'll help you for sure since we both want to save her highness, we will have to solve things here to save her as soon as possible."

Martin's shoulders relaxed, even more, when he heard this. Although he was still tense, he looked a lot better than a while ago when he was wailing in depression. It seemed as if he was finally motivated to solve this case, but he still didn't trust Zion that much yet despite coming to the conclusion himself that Zion could be trusted. Perhaps this was because the image of humans being useless was deeply ingrained in everyone's brains these days.

After a while of silence, Martin got on his feet and said, "We should start the investigation."

Zion nodded and thought for a while before suggesting. "Let's get the list of all the people available among the audience."

Martin also agreed with the same. So the two of them got to their work. First, they reached the theatre. The theatre was also similar to an auditorium that Zion had seen most of the time on Earth. There were multiple seats on the stairs and the stage was down. If the audience would sit on those seats, they could clearly see the stage just by looking a bit down from that height. This kind of arrangement worked best with the dwarfs who were naturally smaller than normal people from other races.

Zion looked around the auditorium as he tried to remember what exactly had happened that day. The curtain was down, and people had crowded in here. Everyone was either sitting or standing, and Zion happened to be one of the people who came late with Martin. So they and other dwarfs were also standing way back at the auditorium. That father and son duo from back then were also the ones who stood among the crowd back then.

He frowned when he thought of this. He could clearly remember that none of the people had come and stood among the common citizens. Even though he looked like he was just getting bored while hearing useless conservation about the actors, he was also very attentive. Being a detective, he had learned that he should be cautious and look through his surroundings carefully in any kind of situation. And since his memory was very good, he knew that no extra person had come out and joined the audience.

So it might be that the killer probably wasn't hiding among the audience. And he could tell that the person who had stuck the sword on the actor's chest also didn't have any intention of killing the poor dwarf. That person had fainted after seeing this scene and was locked up in the prison later by the king without verifying anything.

But Zion knew that in situations like this, the person who accidentally killed a person only because a prop turned out to be real, the real murderer would always hide among the staff. His brows furrowed when he thought about it, and he turned toward Martin. "Let's get a list of the staff members too."

Although Martin didn't know how Zion ended up coming to this kind of conclusion where he decided to get the list of staff members here, he was quite pleased by Zion's behavior. After that, the two of them walked toward the office area that was in the backstage area and knocked on the door. This was the room of the manager who was working under this branch of East-West Entertainment.

The door soon opened to reveal a middle-aged dwarf. One terrible thing about this Potentia kingdom was that the houses were small, and if they had to enter someone's door, they would have to crouch a little while walking. That meant Zion's back was bent at a forty-five-degree angle as he stood awkwardly there inside the office. Thankfully, the dwarf was careful enough to offer them a chair.

As soon as Zion sat on the chair, he sighed in relief and stretched his neck for a little while before glancing at Martin as if indicating through his eyes that the man needed to fulfill his promise.

Martin nodded and greeted the manager. "How have you been? I think you know very well why we're here."

Of course, the manager knew about it. He was also here when the argument between the king and this dhampir man had occurred. He knew well that these people were here to investigate this case, and he felt that he should be cooperative enough since he too wanted to find the killer. So before Martin could say anything else, he offered help from his side. "If you want anything from us, we will be cooperative." Then a bitter smile formed on his lips as he said, "To be honest, I prefer trusting a stranger than believing that his majesty would do something about this case. It has been a few years since this person took the throne after the previous king died of sickness, and since then, this strange king didn't take any case seriously. None of the cases from the previous years are solved, and because of this, the crime has also increased in our city."

Zion frowned at this. He had been hearing constantly that crime had increased in almost every kingdom nowadays. It almost seemed like someone was doing a puppet show here to deliberately increase crime across the world….

His frown deepened at this thought, but he didn't want to share it with others. So he kept quiet.

Martin didn't notice this and smiled when he heard those words.. "Then you can help us by giving us the list of staff members in this branch, and the names of the audience that had entered this place back then."