Emperor's Shadow (2)

"Hm... Something isn't adding up," I exclaimed.

"Pardon? What isn't adding up?" Sylvia asked, confused by my sudden statement. For a moment I had forgotten that she has better senses than a human and spoke up my thoughts.

"Nothing... I don't know if it's an instinctual feeling but... I think something bad is about to happen. That may just be a gut feeling, don't mind it," I replied, turning this mistake into an opportunity.

"What-"

BOOM

All of a sudden, a loud explosion went off near the Ceremony Hall. The explosion was so loud that it shook up the hall and knocked out a few kids through its sound alone.

"And there it is... I hate my instincts," I said calmly, unbothered by the tension around me as I was the one who caused the explosion. To be exact, it was Moriarty since I had to maintain the purity of my soul.

A few moments ago, Moriarty had sent some invisible explosive nanobots with the waiter who tried to poison us, and after that guy went outside the hall to meet up with his partners, he set them off.

Now, for the current part of the plan, we need to investigate the crime that we committed.

Those nanobots don't have my fingerprints as they were self-created, but they shared a connection with Wally. So, I need to collect the signal part or make sure it is properly destroyed.

The only person who wouldn't care about the citizens in here and check out the explosion site was Nolan, but since he left after his announcement I had nothing to worry about.

Is investigating the crime that you committed, considered legal? Moriarty asked and I was about to slip away in the crowd enveloped in madness.

I guess we are about to find out. I replied, sneakily running away from the hall as Uncle was busy controlling the crowd with everyone else.

The lifts were shaken from the impact, so we made our way through the emergency exit, emerging at the back of the hall. From there, we stepped into the alleyway, which should have been dark at this hour but was now burning intensely. Flames clawed at the walls, their glow turning the night into a flickering inferno, while the heat pressed against me, thick and suffocating.

"Right... Now how do you plan to destroy the bodies in these flames?" Ryuk asked, staring at a certain place.

What gave you the idea that we were going to destroy the bodies? I asked.

We just have to make sure they can't find any evidence that it was us. Moriarty continued.

And then act like we were trying to investigate it in excitement. I explained.

"You are going to be injured to remove suspicion from yourself completely aren't you?" Ryuk asked as if he already figured out my plan, to which I just smiled before covering my face with my right arm and slowly walking inside the fire carefully.

There wasn't any real danger here as the fire had started to spread, and my suit had a basic mana shield feature which meant I had enough time to explore the area before stepping back inside the hall.

The air was thick with a foul stench of burned flesh and smoke, a sickly sweet scent clung to the surroundings. There was a faint stench of scorched fabric and something metallic on the way I was heading, but the overwhelming smell of fire drowned the other scents, which made it hard for me to locate the direction of the bodies.

There were three bodies on the floor; they were barely recognizable, their flesh blackened and split where the flames had been the most intense. The butler's clothes fused with his flesh, but the other two with him had red hoods made of fabric, which were still good pieces of evidence.

I bent down and patted the fire a bit before tearing off a piece of fabric from the clothes of the assassins.

"Wally keep this safe," I asked, standing up and dropping the fabric in the small compartment in my cane that Wally had opened up without transforming.

Fortunately, Wally couldn't detect any connections with the nanobots anymore, which meant that no one could gather any evidence against me from here.

After gathering a few more scraps from the surroundings, I tried to head back inside but found my uncle standing in front of the emergency exit gate.

"Who died?" Uncle asked, trying to maintain a calm voice.

"One seems like a waiter and the two others seem like members of the Assassin's Syndicate. Their corpses are destroyed to the point that I couldn't get proper DNA samples, I guess we have to work with the cloth fragments," I answered, walking towards the gate.

"You could have asked me before coming down here by yourself," Uncle reprimanded me.

"I got bored, and moreover, Alfred taught me how to safely collect evidence from dangerous crime scenes like this; if I had waited for you to come with me, there wouldn't be any more evidence left," I tried to argue.

"But why would you risk yourself for something so meaningless-" Thomas wanted to shout, remembering something he didn't want to. He clenched his fist tightly and continued in an angry tone. "We are leaving, say your goodbyes to your new friends."

"Can I at least visit the forensic where they will take the bodies?" I asked, trying to convince him that I was really curious about this incident.

"... We will make a quick stop there," Thomas agreed to my request, heaving a sigh of worry. Brother was right... The Wisdom path is affecting him negatively; if he continues to grow more curious, he won't be himself anymore. We need to suppress it somehow before anything happens.

Numerous thoughts clouded Thomas's mind, the sudden alliance proposed by the Emperor after he woke up, the accident that happened today, the sudden explosion that was caused by the Assassin's Syndicate and my curiosity rising at a rapid rate. He couldn't decide what to think about anymore, and the fact that all these concerns took place in a single day certainly didn't help with his situation.

As I thought, Thomas is easier to mislead than my father; if he was here, I would have been caught by now. I exclaimed in my mind.