Chapter 88: Guilty Verdict

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After splitting up with Lily, I ran up the mansion’s wall to the second floor. Lily gave me the magic tool that has “Bind”, but I honestly don’t think ‌this one would be enough. With that in mind, I got the magic tool we have in our room on the second floor.

「Move…!」

As I kicked the window open and entered the second floor, there were two servants in my field of vision. I couldn’t judge which they were with just a quick glance, so I hit both of them with the magic tool and restrained them for now. The two squirming in their bound limbs have cloudy dark eyes, so they must be on the enemy side.

Lily said something about black magic power, but I can’t really tell. I can’t check everyone’s sanity one by one, anyway. In the meantime, as long as I restrain everyone I see, there shouldn’t be a problem.1 Since it doesn’t look like it takes the life of the people attacked, if I just bind them, Lily should be able to do something about it…… I think.

「Out of the way!」

As I ran through the corridor leading to our room, there were two servants and an unfamiliar man. They’re definitely enemies no matter how I look at it, but stopping every time just to deal with them is annoying.

「Grimoire! “Wind”!」

Activating the magic tool grimoire that Lily gave me, I cast magic. I was told that I seem to have an affinity with the earth attribute and that I can use a bit from the wind attribute. Now, after trying out magic, I honestly wonder how Lily and Adan can use all the attributes. Wouldn’t they get it all confused?

Anyway, from my small arsenal of wind attribute magic, I used “Wind”. It’s a simple magic that only makes wind blow, a magic that even I could use on my first try. I used the wind for propulsion.

I sped up and jumped from a wall to the ceiling.2 While I know that I’m considerably nimble, running on the ceiling is definitely impossible for me under normal circumstances. However, if I make wind that blows upwards from below me, it’s possible to do so for just a short amount of time.

Humans and animals can handle enemies ‌that are on their eye level, but as soon as their opponent quickly moves around vertically, they lose sight of them. Because of that, attacks from above or below are awfully effective, but since Lily warned that getting close might be dangerous this time, I went for the ceiling where the enemies can’t reach.

The moment I dashed over to them, I hurled the magic tool and immediately headed to our room. Checking if I hit them? Unnecessary. If I can miss hitting an enemy that sluggish, I wouldn’t have lived this long as an adventurer.3

After successfully recovering the magic tools in our room, I run around the mansion. While it isn’t ‌much trouble since they’re sluggish and I can easily locate them by scent, the mansion itself is ‌large, so I ended up spending a lot of time dealing with the second floor.

「Barricade?」

Since I know that Lily is handling the first floor, I headed to the upper floor when I saw a barricade set up at the stairs. Barricade constructed with tables and chairs turned over and on their sides definitely would be effective against these intruders. After all, they don’t think at all. I don’t know if it’s by scent or sight, but while they can sense people that aren’t like them, they don’t seem to perceive the obstacles put between them and the other people.

On the second floor, there were two safe servants that locked themselves in the linen room. Since a lot of them were gathered in front of that room, I got curious and opened the door. Since the servants misunderstood and were about to attack me, I ended up restraining them both, but it’s definitely not my fault.

「Whoop!」

Obviously, this is only effective against them because they march onwards while ignoring the barricade’s existence, so since I can jump over it, it’s irrelevant to me. The way they increase and how to deal with them are like the zombies in tales and legends. The undead, undying walking corpses. The now unseen monsters of legend. Maybe their true nature is ‌something similar to this.4

The third floor barely had any human presence. I tried examining their scent, but there’s maybe 10 people here? Adan’s scent is… in her own room. She doesn’t have an intense scent, she’s in a relaxed state. Wait? Is she asleep?

「… Miss Urania.」 「Reina, are you alright?」 「From the looks of it, you don’t seem to be infected. Yes, quite alright.」

Approaching Adan’s room, I see Reina there boldly standing before the door. According to her, she was guarding Adan’s room, which had the noise-insulating spell “Silent” cast on it.

「Protecting the peace of their master’s sleep is the duty of an attendant.」

Hearing her confidently assert so, she honestly sounded cool. Adan slept earlier than usual and is still sleeping with no awareness of the abnormal happenings occurring in the mansion. Come to think of it, she was also asleep during the last intruder incident.

「I have not permitted the intrusion of any trespassers on this floor. Miss Urania, please pacify the other floors instead.」 「The second floor is already under control. Lily’s handling the first floor.」 「…… Is that so? Then this should be the end.」 「Nn. I’ll be going then.」 「Right, we’ll leave things to your care.」

Adan is like a princess. Even though there’s a big uproar, she’s just asleep knowing nothing about it. I’m ‌envious of that.5 Still, it’s better that she doesn’t know that she’s being targeted. Even Lily said that 「It’s still too early for her to learn about the messy adult world.」 sometime before. I also agree with that, so I have no complaints.

Jumping over the barricade, I land directly on the first floor. “Wind” is ‌convenient. It can even mitigate the landing impact. Examining the surrounding scents, there are a lot of unfamiliar ones. As expected, finding a particular scent among ‌them is difficult. In the meantime, I started running around in search of Lily.

「Strange.」

What exactly is strange? It’s the fact that even though Lily went here, there are a considerable number of them on this first floor. There are only a few of them restrained on the floor too, did something happen to Lily?

Feeling restless, I hurled the magic tool at everyone I encountered as I continued searching for Lily. As I passed through about half of the mansion’s first floor, I found an old man sprawling over a winged girl.

「Guilty!!」

I kicked that old man, Sir Kent, flying with all my might.6 Whether Sir Kent was infected absolutely didn’t come to my mind. After all, that winged girl… is Lily in succubus form. ———————————————————

In his defense, Old man Kent was just trying to examine the unknown monster with Lily’s face.