Ch.10Obsessed Like This #6

The morning after Jion received treatment.

Helena had stayed by Jion’s side as he fell into a deep sleep throughout the night. As soon as the sun rose, she headed toward the knights’ campsite. Her once gentle expression was gone, replaced by dark, moist eyes.

“Everyone out.”

The moment she set foot in the campsite, she summoned all personnel without exception.

It was proof that the considerate and gracious person she had been was completely dead, but no one dared to mention it.

They were afraid.

Feeling that even the slightest objection to Helena now might cost them their heads, everyone gathered there kept their mouths tightly shut as if by agreement.

“I don’t know who poisoned Jion yesterday. If anyone saw someone suspicious, report it immediately.”

It was questionable whether anyone would be bold enough to infiltrate the knights’ training camp, but suspicion was necessary.

Since Jion had been poisoned, someone must have put it in the dough.

That person could be an outsider, or one of the people who had been in the camp yesterday.

So Helena gathered all personnel to try to find even the smallest clue.

“Lady Helena. In the confusion, I didn’t get to tell you… but a body was discovered at dawn today.”

“…A body?”

The clue came from an unexpected source. It was the testimony of Randall, the vice-captain of the knights.

Upon hearing this, Helena immediately dismissed all the gathered people and, accompanied only by Randall, made her way to where the body was said to be.

The body hadn’t been dead long, and since the weather was chilly enough to warrant heating, there was no stench.

However, the current Helena would have touched it without hesitation even if the body had been crawling with maggots.

To find traces of the person who had tried to kill Jion—or more precisely, tried to kill Helena herself.

“Though it was dawn, we urgently called someone to preserve the body and summoned an undertaker to prepare it.”

To prevent the body from decomposing, they had called a low-circle mage for preservation and a professional undertaker to clean the body.

The undertaker was specifically called to minimize damage during the process of preparing the body.

“Good work. It must have been difficult.”

She responded coldly without even glancing at Randall.

With all her attention focused on the body, her attitude was somewhat rude, but Randall seemed to understand and accept it.

He had no choice but to accept it, as Helena’s attitude until now had been excessively humble.

Despite being the daughter of a duke and a swordswoman approaching Master level—positions that would excuse arrogance—she had never been so.

In other words, Randall thought that her current attitude better matched her status and skill.

“Hmph.”

He was an ordinary adult man, the kind you might see anywhere.

Nevertheless, the fact that he had been murdered suggested that someone had hired him, and the culprit might be someone of considerable status who needed to urgently silence him.

Looking at the wound on his stomach, it was clearly made by a dagger.

If a long sword had been used, there would be a wound of the same size on his back.

The absence of such a wound meant either the blade was short, or the knife was thrust in halfway and pulled out.

However, the latter hypothesis was meaningless.

In this camp crawling with knights, it would be conspicuous to slightly push in and pull out a long sword during an assassination, and even carrying a normal-length sword would attract attention.

Decisively, the thickness of the wound matched exactly that of a typical dagger wound.

Considering the assassination scenario, using a dagger that could be concealed would be wise.

However, Helena’s smile at seeing the dagger wound was for a different reason.

She was grateful for this blatant clue that someone had hired the man.

The person probably intended to use and discard this man, but that opened up the possibility of catching them.

Thank you, you incompetent bastard.

“Randall. I’m sorry, but we’ll have to stop the training. Please tell the knights who’ve stayed here to return.”

“Yes, understood.”

Having already anticipated this, Randall saluted without further comment and left the empty tent.

The Krauser side would handle the dismantling, so all he needed to do was leave immediately with the knights.

“Haaah—”

Left alone, Helena took a deep breath as she touched the wound on the man’s stomach.

It was to prevent herself from becoming too excited and to calmly assess the situation.

“Assassination, assassination…”

It could be the work of an Assassin Guild branch said to be hidden everywhere, or it could be the work of a soldier of the high-status “culprit.”

Knowing this, Helena fell into contemplation about which direction to probe first and how to do it.

She muttered to herself as she examined the wound again in detail.

The weapon was a dagger, and the wound was clean. If an ordinary person had killed another ordinary person, such a clean wound would not be possible.

A trembling hand would leave jagged, scratch-like marks along the wound.

In other words, the person who left this wound was not an ordinary person but a professional assassin.

It was a subtle difference that Helena could recognize because she had seen many wounds while wielding a sword, and because she was blessed with the sword.

“That helps.”

There weren’t many people with a motive to kill her. Some faces immediately came to mind.

But without evidence, Helena had no intention of confronting him despite clenching her fist so hard it might crumble.

She planned to find solid evidence to cut off his escape route and then corner him mercilessly.

For that very reason, now was the time to act quietly.

“Let’s go back first.”

Helena’s prime suspect was her brother, Cain Krauser.

While a few others came to mind, if she had to name the person with the strongest motive, it would undoubtedly be Cain.

He still looked at Helena with disdain.

So, Helena returned to the Krauser mansion and sighed as if she hadn’t discovered anything.

It was to somewhat lower the guard against her searching for the culprit, and to avoid showing any signs of conducting a background investigation.

Outwardly, she suggested wrapping up the case since the culprit was dead, while inwardly, she quietly gathered information and prepared to take action.

The location of the Assassin Guild, which she had designated as her top search target, was precisely that information.

“Jion… I’ll be back.”

Helena stayed by Jion’s side as if all that remained was to care for him, now that the case was seemingly resolved, albeit unsatisfactorily.

She nursed him quite devotedly, waiting for him to wake up.

However, a few days later.

“Right behind the market alley, is that right…? Good work. You may go.”

“Yes. Excuse me.”

Late at night, when everyone should be asleep. The moment she obtained the information she wanted through a duke’s agent, the vengeful woman’s eyes gleamed dangerously.

Her gaze was so sharp that it seemed she might cause trouble at any moment.

No, she actually gripped her sword and secretly slipped out of the duke’s mansion to cause trouble.

To give the impression that she was quietly sleeping in her room, she committed the eccentric act of jumping out the window rather than using the corridor.

However, there was no loud thud.

Only a light, faint sound of scraping the ground, as gentle as a feather landing on the floor.

It was the result of completely killing her falling speed by kicking off the wall and lightly spinning in the air just before landing.

It was truly an exquisite combination of force distribution and movement, but Helena had no time to feel proud as she leaped over the duke’s wall and dashed toward her target.

Her speed was comparable to that of a wild beast.

This is it.

As soon as Helena arrived at the quiet market alley, she went to a corner and examined the door of a building.

The building, shaped like a square tower, was known as a warehouse for fruits frequently brought into the territory.

She reached out to try opening the door, but it was, of course, locked.

It made sense that it would normally be closed, as each member of the Assassin Guild was said to carry a key to open this warehouse.

There was also the perfectly reasonable pretext of maintaining warehouse security.

However, hidden behind this perfectly reasonable pretext was the guild headquarters Helena was looking for.

“Tsk.”

Helena drew the sword from her waist and immediately infused it with mana.

While any Sword Expert could use Aura Blade, Helena’s was somewhat different in form.

Normally, an Aura Blade would manifest as a covering around the edge of the blade, but Helena’s took the curious form of a blue line drawn along the center of the blade’s back.

In other words, it was like a core made of aura.

From the outside, it appeared as a line of aura crossing the center of the sword, neither covering the edge nor thick enough to seem powerful.

However, those who had directly experienced Helena’s Aura Blade all tell a different story.

Her Aura Blade was not weak; rather, it was the result of aura being compressed more strongly than anything else.

“Hah!”

She gathered strength through a momentary breath and swung her sword.

It was a strike so sharp that it made no sound cutting through the air, and the large, sturdy wooden door was cleanly cut into pieces.

Helena caught the falling wooden door with her body and carefully leaned it against the wall.

If she had let the door fall and crash to the floor, all her efforts to silence her approach would have been in vain.

The scent of fruit.

After briefly savoring the faint fruit aroma rising from the warehouse,

she carefully began moving the boxes stacked in the right corner. Then a door with a handle came into her view. It was a wooden door covering the floor.

Fortunately, this door was not locked, saving her the trouble of swinging her sword.

Helena grabbed the floor handle and flung it open, then headed down the stone stairs hidden behind the door.

Blood dripped from her hand as she gripped the sword handle so tightly it might crush, but the coldness in her sharp gaze did not diminish.

“Wait for me.”

Helena let her wildly beating heart continue its pace as she advanced one step at a time. Despite the pitch-black passage, she could see as clearly as daylight thanks to her heightened senses.

The stairs were quite long, but they definitely had an end. The door faintly revealing its outline in the darkness was proof of that.

As she approached the door, she stepped more carefully. While there was no risk of tumbling down the stairs, the reason for her unusual caution was simple.

At the end of these stairs would be the news she had been longing for.