ALL NOVEL Chapter 251: The Detective’s Deduction (4)
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The evaluation of those of the warrior class concluded, and the only suspects remaining were spellcasters.
「I’ve brought it, and they taught me how to use it too.」
Julius came out from a room of the Union building, holding what looked like some sort of experimental equipment. That was a device used by the Union to determine someone’s affinities as a spellcaster, which would identify what type of spellcaster the remaining adventurers were.
「Let’s get right to it then.」 Saying that, he lined up the spellcasters, who were all eager to prove their innocence.
The process was rather simple, and soon two of them had already come out as innocent. But neither of them could use Forbidden Arts or were summoners, which lowered Mira’s enthusiasm.
「Oh, you’re mainly a mage but you can also use Onmyoji Arts.」
A man who claimed he was a mage was next, and Julius quickly reported the results. Hearing that, the adventurer replied with surprise. He had never taken an affinity test, so he never knew he had the possibility of learning something beside Magic.
Somehow, he had known he was a spellcaster and had an affinity for Magic without a test. That made Mira wonder how he had ended up in that position, and her questions were answered promptly.
Spellcaster affinities were often passed down in families, so that could make it easy to know without needing a test. There were many spellcasters who had continued their family’s lineage like that, unaware that they had other affinities. That was the detective’s swift explanation.And surely enough, the current adventurer being tested mentioned that his father had been an excellent mage too.
The next adventurer to undergo testing was a Monk who also possessed various affinities, including Forbidden Arts. These could be utilized through Innate Sense.1 However, using Innate Sense required the division of one’s mana resources.
The adventurer used a high level Monk Skill as demonstration, which meant that if Innate Sense had been used, the resources allocated to Forbidden Arts would be too small. In other words, the type of Forbidden Arts Fuzzy Dice used would be impossible to perform. And the reverse was true if the Monk Skills had been acquired through Innate Sense, so the detective also cleared that spellcaster of suspicion.
The detective added, with a hint of pride, that Fuzzy Dice’s Forbidden Arts were some of the best in the world, and he had experienced them first hand to know that.
「And you have an affinity for Exorcism, and Summoning.」
The next adventurer to be tested claimed she was an Exorcist.
「Oh right, I forgot about that.」
Hearing that, she muttered to herself. It was rare for people to have multiple affinities, and those three adventurers looked like they came from good families too. But Mira’s attention was drawn the most to the fact that one of the affinities was for Summoning.
「I wonder. Would I have been swept up by this whole fad if I had chosen to become a summoner back when I took the test?」
She added that out of nowhere. Even she was aware of how much the demand for summoners had skyrocketed in Haxthausen thanks to Mira’s announcement some days prior.
And those words only made the instigator of it all, Mira, to burst with emotion.
「It’s not too late yet. Maybe you were meant to come here to be reminded of it. Why don’t you try to use Innate Sense and learn some summoning? I could help you out.」
Mira felt like this was her best chance to convince someone to become a summoner. Innate Sense would limit the adventurer’s summons to lower level ones, but even those could come in handy in plenty of situations. Especially Armor Spirits were very versatile, capable of being used as decoys, shields, or additional soldiers depending on how much the summoner trained. So Mira did her best to highlight those points.
「Hmm, well, I guess I’ll have to think about it.」
While Mira was filled with excitement, the lady just gave a vague response, as she had said her comment mostly as a joke. Then, unable to bear Mira’s bright grin at having found a potential fellow, she stepped back away from Mira.
(This reminds me, there have to be other spellcasters who opted out of their affinity to become a summoner. If they all use Innate Sense to reactivate that, there will be a lot more summoners…)
Even though she was in the middle of trying to unmask Fuzzy Dice, her mind was completely overtaken by her goal to resurrect summoners, making her pace around with excitement as she planned her next move.
So far, she had only searched for spellcasters who were mainly summoners, and she had forgotten about the option of Innate Sense.
But if she searched for other spellcasters with a dormant affinity, she could probably convince a good number of them to use Innate Sense and gain plenty of use out of Summoning Arts.
If those spellcasters became well known, then there was a higher chance that future spellcasters would also start choosing to become mainly summoners after that.
(This is something worth looking into!)
She decided she had to plan out the way to use Innate Sense for Summoning, seeing a bright future ahead of her.
「Well now, this is unexpected.」
While Mira was daydreaming about summoners, the tests continued, and the detective and Julius were currently puzzled as they looked at the results of the last remaining spellcaster.
They were certain that Fuzzy Dice was hiding amongst the adventurers, and they were performing the various tests to determine who it could be. But now that they had gone through everyone, not a single one matched Fuzzy Dice’s profile.
「Detective…what do you make out of this?」
「Do you think that maybe he didn’t use Forbidden Arts after all?」
None of the spellcasters there used Forbidden Arts, even if they had an affinity for it. Some of the adventurers even began to wonder if the assumption that Fuzzy Dice used Forbidden Arts had been wrong to begin with.
「No, everything points to him definitely using Forbidden Arts.」
The idea of Fuzzy Dice’s abilities being Forbidden Arts was purely the detective’s hypothesis, which came purely out of his own analysis and personal experience, with no concrete proof. But he spoke of it like it was a fact, and so he was convinced that there had to be some trick behind it all.
「Hmm, well, if you insist, then I guess it must be so, Detective Wolf.」
Usually one would expect adventurers to get fed up after being forced to go through all of that without any results, but no one seemed upset. They all knew about the detective, and how much of a superior adventurer he had been in the past, so they respected him quite a lot.
「I asked the employees, and they say that there’s no way to tamper with the results of the test.」 Julius also went to verify that with the Union workers, and came back with their reply.
Somehow altering or disguising the results of the test seemed like the obvious way to get to this situation, but that had just been ruled out.
The tests had also been conducted one after another, with everyone’s eyes locked onto the adventurer being tested, so they would have noticed if they tried to disguise themselves or tried altering the results somehow.
「Well, how should we proceed?」
There had been thirteen adventurers suspected of being Fuzzy Dice, but none of them met his profile, making it seem like he had already left somehow. But the detective was convinced he was still there, so he looked intently at the adventurers again.
That made them also start to look at each other, and soon they noticed something.
「Wait… where did he go?」
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- Silva: To recap (since I had forgotten this myself). Innate Sense is something oddly similar to Mira’s Second Class, though different in essence.