Chapter 4 – Suspicion (Part 6)

Back at the office, Aaron began his report to the Duke.

“According to the tutor Dolores, Miss Serenze was not only very intelligent but also enthusiastically engaged in her studies until she was 11. However, around the age of 12, her attitude changed as if she lost interest in everything. Although the tutoring continued for about two more years, she showed no desire to enter the academy.”

“Did she suffer from a serious illness, why did she change so suddenly?”

“I heard something that might be related. Even after losing interest, she answered everything asked to confirm her knowledge well, and she even answered things she hadn’t been taught. But strangely, it seemed she was reluctant to reveal her abilities.”

To others, Elysia might have seemed odd. She couldn’t suddenly start proclaiming that she remembered the hardships of her past life, altered the direction of her life, and set a goal to live lazily and idly in this life.

“I don’t understand. She has no rivals, and her family would fully support her, so why would she hide her abilities?”

“That might be related to what I’m about to say. Around the age of 12, Miss Serenze started reducing her participation in gatherings with other noble offspring, but she consistently attended the tea gatherings of the Earl Kumaran’s daughter. Despite rumors that she avoided gatherings, she attended that one regularly.”

“And the Earl Kumaran buys luxury goods and necessities through the Serenze family. I thought the Serenze family, being of lower status, had no great ambitions and took a neutral political stance, but it seems I was completely wrong.”

Judging from the letter sent by Sera van Kumaran, the daughters of Kumaran and Serenze seemed close regardless of their families’ interactions. If Aaron’s report was accurate, Elysia had likely been concealing her abilities outwardly while befriending the Earl’s daughter to carry out some task related to the Earl’s family from around age 12.

Age 12 might seem young, but it wasn’t too early for a child from an ambitious noble family to start plotting. Since noble children typically began their education to succeed their families around age 3, 12 was not too early to start preparing to be used as a pawn by the Earl’s family.

In hindsight, it was suspicious that the Serenze family initially refused the marriage proposal and then suddenly accepted it. They might have refused, knowing Sera van Kumaran was intended to be engaged to the Grendel family, and when that seemed hopeless, they accepted the proposal after discussing it with the Earl.

However, all this was merely Cassius’s speculation. How could the royal Brunchia secret intelligence organization he managed, as well as the Haas Trading Company’s information network, have been completely unaware that Serenze was quietly moving as a backer for the Earl’s family

To accurately determine whether they were truly so deeply connected and what the fiancée’s real intentions were, a ‘method’ was needed. The Duke stood up from his chair to retrieve that ‘method.’

***

Professor Emiliano of Alchemy at the Royal Academy of Advanced Studies had been sleeping on the laboratory sofa for several days after staying up all night. Around him, several researchers were curled up, pitifully sleeping on makeshift beds with just a blanket.

The door slammed open, startling the researchers awake from their light sleep. Upon seeing the Duke, they hastily gathered their blankets and left the lab. Cassius closed the door after the last researcher exited and approached Emiliano, who remained in deep sleep.

“Emil, wake up. I need something.”

Even after shaking him, Emiliano didn’t budge, so Cassius, with familiarity, grabbed Emiliano’s long silver-blue hair in one hand and lifted it upward.

“Ahhh! My hair, my hair! You’re pulling out all my hair!”

“Are you awake?”

“Why do you always wake me up by pulling my hair?!”

“Weren’t you pretending to sleep because it was bothersome, even though you were awake?”

Emiliano pushed his hair back with difficulty and sat up on the sofa.

“You were quiet for a while, and now you’re ordering something strange again?”

“You mentioned before that there was a drug used for interrogating spies from other countries.”

“Which one? The one that makes you feel like your insides are burning, or the one that makes your heart feel frozen? Or just a regular truth serum?”

Cassius looked at his friend for a moment before responding.

“I’m not trying to torture. I want to know what the other person is thinking. I think you mentioned developing something similar to a truth serum for that purpose.”

“Hmm? …Oh! That one? You weren’t interested when I explained it before?”

Emiliano approached a bookshelf in the corner of the room. The heavy wooden bookshelf had metal-reinforced doors. Emiliano placed his hand on the strangely glowing mineral plate on the front to unlock it and recited a pre-set password. The lock recognized the password correctly and opened.

Contrary to the securely locked exterior that not just anyone could open, the inside of the bookshelf was as messy as Emiliano’s lab. Various drugs, ores, half-failed small machines, and tools were haphazardly stuffed inside, and various documents and file folders were precariously stacked, ready to spill.

Watching Emiliano rummage through the mess, Cassius asked.

“Is it complete?”

Emiliano turned sharply toward the Duke and shouted.

“How could it be complete when the research funding was cut off!”

Cassius tapped his fingers on his crossed arms, prompting Emiliano to continue his explanation.

“During the court meeting, you mentioned that the research results were unimpressive, so His Majesty told me to stop. The related budget was allocated to other research. Really… You said you weren’t interested when the research was in full swing, and now you’re looking for it so late.”

“If you really thought it was promising, you would have persuaded His Majesty somehow.”

Emiliano winced.

“Yeah… To conclude, it wasn’t promising. Well, depending on the perspective, you could say it was half-successful, but it wasn’t valuable for interrogation. It was much more efficient to just use regular torture or another truth serum. Let’s see, what’s left… Found it!”

Emiliano pulled out a small wooden box and opened it, exclaiming.

It was a rectangular wooden box the size of an adult male’s open palms put together. Inside, it was lined with soft fabric, and there were five pairs of yellow and blue pills.

Cassius looked at the pills inside the box and asked Emiliano.

“The effect needs to be unnoticeable to the other party; how do you use it?”

“You give the yellow pill to the person you want information from and the blue pill to the person who wants to learn the information.”

“Any side effects? Is the duration long?”

“There are no side effects. These pills temporarily enhance mental resonance between two people. Think of it as opening a channel. The yellow pill amplifies the mental waves of the person who takes it, sending them out, and the blue pill allows the other person to sense those specific waves more sensitively.”

From the explanation, it seemed quite useful, so why did Emiliano consider it a failure?

“Theoretically, the person who takes the blue pill should be able to hear all the inner thoughts of the person who took the yellow pill. But the human mind’s defenses are stronger than expected. No matter how much the drug’s effects were enhanced, it was impossible to hear all thoughts. You can only hear a very small portion of thoughts that meet specific conditions.”

Emiliano explained that even with the drug, you could only hear thoughts that have a clear intent to communicate or convey something, like ‘thoughts you want to say but can’t voice out loud.’

Thoughts that are more like personal reflections or monologues can’t be heard at all.

“For example, let’s say one of my research students takes the yellow pill, and I take the blue pill. Even if the student thinks, ‘I really hate Professor Emiliano, I wish he’d just die,’ I can’t hear that. It’s a thought meant only for themselves, not directed at anyone.”

Emiliano chuckled, fully aware of his poor reputation among his students.

“But if they silently plead, ‘Please give us less homework,’ directed at me, that would be audible. Of course, no student would actually have the nerve to say that out loud. And if they mentally request you to ‘take our professor somewhere else,’ I’d hear that too.”

“So, you can only hear when someone is mentally addressing another person? If you can’t hear all thoughts, it’s not very useful.”

“Exactly. That’s why I stopped the research. The duration after taking it is also inconsistent, ranging from three to six hours. Even after giving five pills at once, it never lasted beyond eight hours.”

Emiliano mentioned that the pills could be dissolved in tea or mixed with food. Theoretically, there might be a very faint sour scent from the extract, but none of the research students had noticed any subtle taste difference yet.