When Corundum told Ruri and the others that he’d arrived in time to save the third prince, everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Ruri and Jade had gone back to speak with the doctor, and when the doctor gave up Prince Orio’s name, they’d found it hard to believe. They wanted to think that it was all just a big coincidence; after all, this implied that a child had killed their parent. However, the more the spirits investigated Orio, the more they found proof of his guilt.
The doctor had kept the blood sample taken from the deceased insect researcher in his locked cabinet. He’d said that he kept it more secure than anything else because his research showed how dangerous it was, but upon closer examination, he noticed a very tiny amount missing.
The doctor hadn’t even realized it until Ruri’s group pointed out the possibility of it being stolen. A harsh reprimand from Corundum was in his future for sure. That aside, the question remained: who stole the blood? The prime suspect was Orio given that he’d supported the doctor and had the key to the storage cabinet. The poison didn’t spread through the air, but once even the slightest bit entered the body, it could exert its full, terrifying force.
Jade had collected the blood on the spot. There was no way that he was going to leave a deadly poison in the hands of someone who didn’t even notice a change in the amount. He’d also told the doctor that he would be severely scolded, but whether that would be punishment enough was all up to Corundum. Even if the doctor had been unaware while it happened, someone—the emperor, no less—had still died due to his improper management.
The animals that had been given the blood for research purposes had also been dug up out of the yard and promptly burned. Jade had been outraged and had asked the doctor what he was thinking by burying them in the yard when he knew the infected blood was basically poison. Jade’s aura had been so frightening that even Ruri had shrunk in fear.
The doctor had taken the full brunt of it, turning deathly pale. He probably hadn’t expected this to turn into such a serious matter. It did seem as though he had the best of intentions, researching the infected blood with the hopes that it would aid people one day, but he’d dropped the ball on cleaning up after himself and judging the prince’s character.
For quite some time, Orio had been passionately asking about rare illnesses, their causes, poisons with no antidote, and diseases contagious to humans. The doctor had said that he would proudly share his findings with Orio, and since Orio was a supporter and a young man in search of knowledge, it had never crossed his mind that he shouldn’t tutor the young prince. It was likely that Orio had had designs to assassinate the emperor for quite some time, which was why he’d supported the doctor in the first place.
Orio’s artfulness and cunning had sent shivers rolling down Ruri’s spine. She’d been shocked that he had wanted to kill Adularia that badly.
After Ruri’s group pinned Orio as the culprit, Ruri had asked Kotaro to keep an eye on him. At the same time, they’d told the whole story to Corundum, who had been blindsided by the news. No one could blame him either. It was one thing to be suspicious of his sons’ involvement, but it was another to actually hear that one of them was the culprit. Corundum had figured that if any of them were involved, it would be the third prince, Samadan.
Although Jade had told Corundum that the Reaper contract might be a fake and Samadan himself had denied any involvement, suspicion inevitably fell on him because he was in a power struggle with his biggest adversary, the first prince. In contrast, the fourth prince, Orio, was so timid he barely stood out despite his royal bloodline, so he hadn’t even been on Corundum’s radar.
The news had been a bolt from the blue. At first, Corundum had refused to believe it despite Jade’s explanation, a testament to how upstanding Orio appeared on the surface. They also had no clear-cut evidence as of yet. At the time, they’d only known that there was a tie to the tachyotoxians and that Orio knew about the dangers. It wasn’t like they’d found the poison in Orio’s quarters. That was why Corundum had refused to accept it: he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Also, they didn’t know what Orio’s objectives were, so they needed conclusive proof.
Orio had apparently served Adularia tea quite often in the past, so he had numerous opportunities to poison her. It would have been great if a spirit or someone had seen him poisoning the tea, but there weren’t many spirits in the Beloved-less palace, much less a spirit who conveniently caught the moment. After the first prince fell ill, the soldiers swept the entire palace, but they hadn’t found any suspicious items in Orio’s room.
Although they were blood brothers, the first prince couldn’t manipulate mana, while Orio could, so Orio had his own pocket space. There was a chance that some proof was stored inside there, but that also meant that no one else could touch it.
While everyone pondered how they could retrieve the evidence, Ruri realized something everyone else hadn’t. “Why don’t I enter the pocket space and check the fourth prince’s room?”
“Oh!” gasped the group. They had just remembered that Ruri could access other people’s pocket spaces.
“If that’s what we’re going with, then I’ll be right back!” Ruri said.
“Ruri, even if you find it, all you have to do is confirm that it’s there. You can leave it just where it is. If you take it, then he’ll have a means to weasel out,” Jade asserted.
“Wait,” Pearl interjected. “Ruri, you wouldn’t know what the tachyotoxian-infected blood even looked like, would you?”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t,” Ruri answered, possessing neither medical knowledge nor tachyotoxian knowledge.
“Hey, you, lizard. Give me my dropper and a vial.”
“Yes, ma’am. Right away, ma’am,” Quartz replied with a wry smile as he pulled out a vial and eyedropper from his pocket space and handed it to Pearl. It seemed that Quartz was Pearl’s personal luggage carrier now.
Pearl then handed the equipment to Ruri and said, “Get a sample of the blood into this vial—any little drop will do—and make sure he doesn’t notice you. But do not touch it with your bare hands. Make sure to use the dropper.”
“Roger that!” Ruri said with a salute before jumping into the pocket space.
As usual, Ruri’s space was cluttered with an assortment of different items. The majority of them she’d inherited from Lydia’s previous contract-bearer, Weidt, the first Dragon King, but there were quite a few things that Lydia had brought over from other people’s rooms. Ruri had thought of organizing the piles, but she always left them as is since she had room to spare. Also, the number of things was ever increasing, so it was difficult to figure out where to even start.
Ruri figured that she would follow in Weidt’s footsteps and dump—no, bestow—these items on Lydia’s next contract-bearer after she died. Her idea was definitely not influenced by the fact that it was a pain in the butt to properly sort through everything—not according to what Ruri told herself to make herself feel better, at least.
“Lydia, are you here~?” Ruri called, and Lydia immediately appeared. “Lydia, I hate to be so abrupt, but I need a little favor.”
“Yes, Water and Wind filled me in on all of the details. You want to see the fourth prince’s space.”
“Wow, that spirit communication ability really comes in handy. I’m glad I can cut straight to the chase. Do you know which pocket space it is?” There were as many spaces as the number of people who’d created them, and Ruri couldn’t pinpoint a specific person’s space among them on her own.
“Tee hee hee, who do you think I am?”