Adlet proceeded to reveal his theory.
First he went over the things he’d talked about with Hans and Fremy. Specifically, that the method to activate the barrier they heard from Private First Class Rowen had been a lie, and that the seventh had activated the barrier after Adlet had opened the temple doors. Several times during his explanation, Adlet had to stop due to the pain since Fremy was treating his wounds without any anesthesia.
The only people listening intently to him were Nashetania and Goldof. Mora and Chamo seemed to be aware of his theory already, so perhaps Hans had told them.
When he’d finished with the first half of his idea, a long painful exhale slipped out of his mouth.
“Meow. We don’t mind if we do this after you’ve been fixed up. Or would you like someone to take your place instead?” Hans asked.
“Don’t joke around. You seem like you want to steal the highlights of my story for yourself,” Adlet said as he showed a calm smile.
“Mora can you let him continue?” Fremy asked.
Cold sweat was visible on her forehead and neck. “Wha, what are you saying?”
“If you are the seventh then I think it will be time for you to surrender soon.”
“Don’t say stupid things.” Mora then turned her attention to Adlet. “Adlet. Your theory doesn’t hold water. There isn’t a way to produce the fog. It was a powerful barrier that made the fog here.”
Adlet waved his hand towards Mora to get her to stop talking. He already knew what she wanted to say.
“But there is someone. There is only one Saint in the world who can create mist, right?”
“…You’re an idiot,” Mora groaned.
Looking at her, Adlet heaved a massive sigh. He then looked over to Hans and tried to look tough, but even talking was quite painful. [1]
“Mora. Before you said that I didn’t know the power of the Saints, right? But I say this back to you. All of you Saints don’t know the power of science. That’s because the power of the Saints surpasses that of science. However, even though for all of you it may be nothing more than a crude and inferior thing, science is indeed incredible.”
“…Science?” Mora craned her neck to the side. It seemed like she didn’t really even understand what the word meant.
“First of all do you know what fog is? The water vapor in the air solidifies and makes fine particles. The air you breathe out in winter that turns white and the clouds floating in the sky follow the same principle.”
As Adlet explained he recalled what his teacher Atro Spyker had said. In order to make secret weapons Adlet learned the leading scientific knowledge from Atro. He learned the principles behind the burning of fire, the principles of the effects of poisons, all the way to the laws of motion governing gases and liquids. If he didn’t learn those things then he would never have managed to reach an answer.
Yet at the time he had wondered what use learning that kind of stuff could have.
“As for the air, the higher the atmospheric temperature, the more water vapor the air could contain. And if the temperature suddenly dropped, the water vapor in the air would return to a liquid and become fine particles floating in the air. Is that clear so far?”
“Not at all,” Chamo said.
Adlet made a bitter smile. “For now just understand that when the temperature is warmish and it suddenly becomes cool, fog will form.”
“Got it.” Unexpectedly, Chamo agreed without protest.
“The humidity in this forest is always quite high, due to being right next to the ocean and the moisture that the ocean winds carry over. So if the temperature in this forest were to suddenly drop, fog would form in an instant.”
“Wait,” Mora said. She’s always interrupting. “How would the temperature suddenly drop? Also it’s impossible for the Saint of Ice and the Saint of Snow to extend a large-scale barrier.”
“You’re close-minded, Mora. The temperature didn’t drop. It increased.”
Mora went silent for a moment. Then as if she’d noticed something, she lifted her head.
“In reality, this was their grand plan and the scope of it had been extraordinary. Indeed in order to trick me into initiating their trap they used nature itself.”
“…The Saint of the Sun, Leura,” Fremy murmured. That’s exactly right.
Around the time he embarked on his trip, he’d heard about the Six Flower Killer. The expert archer Matola, the Knight Foudelka, the Saint of Ice Asley, and the Saint of the Sun Leura. All of those names belonged to well-known warriors who had been assassinated one by one.
But when he’d heard that information, he felt the one regarding The Saint of the Sun Leura was out of place. Though she was a Saint who possessed massive power, she shouldn’t be able to fight at her advanced age. So as a result he had wondered why the Six Flower Killer would kill her.
Afterwards, Adlet met up with Fremy and when he learned that she was the Six Flower killer, Adlet had asked, “Leura too…Did you also kill the Saint of the Sun?”
At the time Fremy answered, “The Saint of the Sun? Leura?…I don’t know anything about that.“
Of course Fremy had been betrayed by her Kyoma companions half a year prior. And she hadn’t killed any Six Flower candidates after that. Since Leura had only gone missing a little over a month ago, that meant Fremy had not taken part in the killing of the Saint of the Sun.
And if that were so, then who did?
“I will ask you one thing, Mora. With the Saint of the Sun’s power is it possible for the temperature in the vicinity to increase all at once? It’s probably possible. She’s famed to have the power to incinerate castles.”
“…It’s…possible.”
“Would it be possible even as she got older?”
“Leura’s legs have become weak and she can’t move from her easy chair. However, the power of the God of the Sun has no connection to the deterioration of the body.” Instead of Mora who was hesitating, Fremy spoke.
Adlet nodded, and then he entered the core of his theory. “I will now tell you about the trap the seventh used. First the seventh abducted Leura and forced her to cooperate. Probably they took one of her family members hostage or something like that. Under duress, Leura raised the temperature in this entire area. Perhaps the change took close to one month.” Adlet looked over his companions.
“You should all remember what it was like when we first came here. We thought it was strangely warm right? That was Leura’s power.”
Each of the companions recalled the events from yesterday, then they nodded.
“Next, companions of the seventh attacked the fortress and decided to kill everyone inside. Then those companions pretended to be soldiers. Or perhaps the soldiers in the fortress may have originally been the seventh’s companions. I don’t know which is the case. Next, the soldiers told us about the existence of the Illusion Fog Barrier, but lied about how to activate it.”
“What if someone among us had known the real method to activate the barrier?” Mora asked.
“Then their plan would have stopped at that time. However, the chance of that was low. The king that made the fortress was secretive and didn’t even tell the existence of the barrier to anyone but to a limited group of people.”
“…So?”
“The seventh used the Kyoma to lure us to the temple. Then when I opened the door they sent a signal. After that sign, the companion Kyoma near the seventh killed Leura. The sent signal was the shape-shifting Kyoma near the temple. Their laughter probably indicated that it was time to eliminate the Saint of the Sun. And if Leura died, the powers of the sun that she had used would be extinguished. Then the temperature would suddenly drop and fog would be created. And so we were thoroughly mistaken about the fact that the barrier had been activated.”
When Adlet had entered the temple he had felt a chill run down his back. That wasn’t a hallucination; the temperature had really been dropping. However, he had never expected that the change in temperature was a part of the enemy’s trap.
“After that the seventh nonchalantly approached the altar. And taking advantage of our confusion, they actually activated the barrier. I don’t need to explain what happened after that. I was suspected and the real seventh thought it was good to wait patiently for it to be decided that I was the imposter.”
“Wait! What proof do you have?! This is all nothing more than supposition!”
“I’m still in the middle of my explanation.”
Fremy had already finished treating him, so Adlet tried to stand. However, Hans stopped him.
“Leave it to me. It’s alright if you just explain.”
Adlet squatted down with his back against the trunk of the tree. As for Hans, he went to search each of the Kyoma’s corpses laid on the ground.
“Well then, that brings us to the final problem. Where did the seventh’s companions hide Leura’s corpse? Leura wasn’t killed that far from the temple because she and her killer had to have been at a distance where the Kyoma’s voice, acting as a signal, could reach them.
“They wouldn’t have wandered around carrying the corpse because there was a possibility they would run into Mora, Hans, or Chamo. And even if they buried it, there would be fear that it would be discovered after all because Chamo is here.”
Using the Kyoma within her stomach was one of Chamo’s abilities. And with it she would have used worm or lizard Kyoma to search the ground and they may have located the corpse.
“There aren’t many places to hide, even in a vast forest. No, rather none exist except for one.”
“Meow, I found it,” Hans said as he pointed to one of the Kyoma corpses.
It was about five meters long and resembled the form of a crocodile. One wouldn’t know if they didn’t look closely, but the Kyoma’s stomach was faintly swollen.
“Hans, cut it for me.”
Adlet gulped. The fated time had come. The only proof that could prove Adlet’s innocence might reside there. And so whether or not his deduction