Chương 214: 33. Investigation in the Pleasure Quarter 1

If I ever actually die someday, I'm putting one clause in my will for certain: My tombstone is absolutely forbidden from bearing anything like "Fell Gloriously in the Line of Duty" or "Loyalty Eternal." Just carve the plain, honest truth— This man died of overwork. By the time I finally extracted myself from Ignicia's clutches, dawn was already threatening to arrive whether I wanted it to or not.

That fire-breathing woman operated like she had two hearts, three sets of lungs, and a small volcano somewhere in her gut running on permanent rotation. Everyone else investigates a case by following leads; she investigates one like she's dismantling a city wall. Everyone else pulls an all-nighter through sheer willpower; she pulls one the way a normal person stretches after a good dinner.

If I didn't know for a fact she was a dragon princess and not some military-grade siege engine wearing human skin, I would have seriously started wondering whether she replenished her mana by draining other people's lifespans. And the unlucky battery being drained, obviously, was me. When I finally stumbled back to the temporary lodgings the harbor had arranged for us, I couldn't even be bothered to take my boots off properly.

I went face-first into the mattress and was fully prepared to hand my soul over to the pillow for safekeeping. This wasn't the "ah, a bit tired today" kind of tired. This was the kind where even your own bones tell you: shut up and sleep right now, or tomorrow I'm coming apart first, just to make a point. Naturally, I'd only been lying there a short while when I felt movement at the door. Very light. Not the innkeeper. Not a drunk who'd wandered into the wrong room.

A moment later, a faint forest scent drifted in—clean, like morning dew caught on a leaf's edge, or freshly exposed sapwood, layered under something distinctly elven, that trace you can never quite place as either herb or residual magic. I didn't even bother opening my eyes all the way. I buried my face deeper into the blanket and let out the groan of a dying animal.

"Spare me, Alvira… I only just escaped Ignicia…" The room went quiet for half a second. Then I heard her voice.

"…How did you know it was me?" I forced one eyelid open a crack and squinted toward the door. Sure enough. Alvira von Rosenberg. She stood there, holding that wand of hers that had never once in its existence been designed for comfort, wearing her default expression of universal impatience—like the entire world owed her a substantial debt, and my name happened to be written largest on the invoice. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Where's Jessi?" I asked, dodging the question entirely.

"Still asleep."

"Then why didn't you wake her first?"

"You're harder to wake." She said it completely flat. As flat as reciting common harbor weather trivia. I rolled over, half my face still in the pillow, feeling deeply, personally insulted.

"That sentence makes me sound less like a person and more like some large magical beast in seasonal hibernation." Alvira ignored the protest and simply repeated herself.

"So. How did you know it was me?" This time I actually lifted my head and tapped my own nose.

"smell." She froze. I elaborated, lazily.

"You were standing right at the door, and I caught this—hey, wait, we agreed no hitting, hey! Hey! HEY—AAAAAAAUGH—" Too late. Her elven rapier was already out, sheath and all, coming down on my shoulder and arm in a rapid, focused barrage. And it hurt. This wasn't the romantic-comedy version of a bashful maiden lightly swatting the protagonist. This was genuine, committed vengeance—the physical manifestation of "learn to keep that mouth shut" poured straight into a scabbard and hammered into my bones.

"Disgusting!" she snapped, the tips of her ears flushing an outraged red.

"Sniffing a girl's scent!" I curled toward the inner side of the bed, arms over my head, still protesting.

"Come on, given your age, can we leave a little room in the definition of 'girl'? I only said your scent is easy to recognize—there was nothing indecent about it! And don't elves love smelling like forests? That's literally a racial trait, you can't get mad about—" Smack! That one landed square on my leg.

"OW OW OW OW! Alvira, this is assault on a foreign envoy!"

"I'm performing garbage disposal on behalf of the kingdom."

"Why does that sound so convincing coming from you specifically?!" I fended her off with one hand while waving the other.

"Okay, okay, fine—go wake Jessi. Goodnight, Grandma." The air in the room crystallized. I watched Alvira's expression upgrade in real time—from "I want to hit him" to "only one of us leaves this room alive today." She ground my name out through her teeth.

"Ce—dric—Ro—sa—" Oh good. Now the wand was in play too. The tip crackled, and a spray of sparks landed directly on the corner of my blanket. I shot upright, slapping frantically at the smoldering patch.

"IT'S ON FIRE! Alvira! Are you trying to murder your own husband?!" She went completely rigid.

"Who's your wife?!" The words came out on pure reflex, half a second before she registered exactly what she'd just answered. I sat there, hair a complete disaster, one hand still pressed over the nearly-scorched blanket corner, and looked up at her with the smuggest, most punchable grin in harbor history. Her already-pale face flushed an entirely new shade of red. Not the soft, endearing kind. The kind that precedes detonation.

"You—!" Embarrassment and fury collided; sparks began crackling along her wand again, and at that rate, the inn and I were about two seconds from a joint introduction to whatever god handles architecture. At that precise, critical juncture, a voice floated in from the doorway—one so familiar it had practically become an environmental hazard, and dripping, as always, with the tone of someone who'd bought front-row tickets.

"Which act of the play are we performing now?" Alvira and I turned in unison. Jessi stood in the doorway, half a bread roll in one hand, a bag of breakfast acquired through means best left unexamined in the other. She swept her gaze across the room—the wrecked bed, the smoking blanket, the on-the-verge-of-detonating Alvira, and my own picture of perfect innocence—and settled into an expression that could only be read as "ah, this again." I raised a hand immediately.

"I just said she had a nice smell and she got mad." Jessi was quiet for two seconds. Then she reached over, pulled the critically-primed Alvira back a step, patted my shoulder with the gravity of someone delivering life counsel, and said:"Young master. Your approach to women genuinely has an enormous amount of room for improvement."

"…" I opened my mouth, then swallowed the whole rebuttal. Because I knew perfectly well that in situations like this, the more you explain, the more you look like the criminal caught red-handed at the scene. And Alvira was still glaring at me from the side. That look had already pre-booked me seventeen distinct methods of death.