Chapter 78 - Culprit

"Should I continue?"

Faced with the silent pressure from all those who were listening to Arthur's story, the boy nodded and said yes.

Arthur laughed at this and finished his drink before continuing.

"So, the son of the man's object of hatred, went on and studied alchemy, showing great talent, becoming a leading alchemist in society.

A lot of devices used by people were created by him."

The number of people in the lounge had doubled, many eyes were on Arthur because of his declaration yesterday. Seeing him suddenly start telling a story, they believed it was related to the incident.

Some people who had done a lot of background checks had already started to connect the dots.

"Since the first and second sons were defeated multiple times, the man turned his attention to his silk pants third son who was a lot younger than the first two. 

He used his influence as a high rank noble to cover up most of his sons scandals and began pressuring him to train in various martial and mystical arts with the Hopes of making him into a weapon to defeat the other man's child.

However that third son was too weak, so the man looked for a means to make him stronger faster. And that was when someone came to him.

It was a timely intervention, like a demon's whisper."

Arthur paused and looked around before saying.

"No offense to any demons but there are a lot of fictional stories that depict you guys as fiends who whisper sweet nothings in the ears of humans to tempt them."

"None Taken!"

"Its cool, we get the reference!"

The few students of the demon race who where present waved him off and urged him to continue the story. At this point some had even begun to stream the event online.

For some reason, connections to outside of Kreiz were down but there were still blogs forums and social media unique to Kreiz that they could stream on.

"I was at the part where he got tempted right?"

"Yup!"

"Yeah"

"Good. So he got tempted by this strange person's proposal. A way to make his son stronger faster and eventually, himself.

However the method mentioned was forbidden, as such he hesitated at first, but eventually gave into the temptation.

And so the experiments to utilize the forbidden method began. The strange person who tempted the man took advantage of his greed for power and glory to make him force his son to go through with the experiments.

Various materials and artifacts were required and the man got all of them ready. 

However, the method was forbidden for a reason in the first place. One of the adverse effects was that his son's bloodlust increased exponentially and he was on the verge or loosing his sanity.

To prevent this, the man began acquiring a certain type of artifacts at the strange person's request. When it was remaining only one left, man noticed something.

There were so many eyes on him, his action of purchasing multiple artifacts of the same type in bulk had caught the attention of many. If he bought one more, some might give into their curiosity and attempt to find out the reason for these artifacts.

The man didn't want to leave any chances of being found out so he decided to use his son to acquire the last artifact that was in the possession of a lower ranked noble.

However, that artifact was one that only the head or the lower noble's house could access so he had his son attempt to woo that noble's daughter. 

Unfortunately he was unsuccessful, the son got more unwanted attention to himself, his plans failed, the strange person abandoned them and lastly his son could not control his increasing bloodlust.

He eventually attacked a certain group of nobles and royalties and summoned a lot of monsters to attack many more but was killed in the end."

Arthur rested his head on the table while staring at the boy in front of him and continued speaking.

"The man's name was Marquis Ald Pearce, the object of his hatred was Margrave Boffin. The son who defeated the Marquis' sons was none other than Werinbert Boffin, the genius alchemist and magi-tech engineer.

As for the unfortunate third son, that was none other than the Late Zach Pearce."

The boy in front of him flinched when he said this but not many noticed it.

Many had expected this ending to the story, for those who did not know what went on behind the scenes, they could not help but pity Zach after hearing this.

Arthur's next words shocked them all. He looked at the boy in front of him and spoke.

"How did it feel, manipulating the Marquis' greed and using him to further your experiments into monsterization magic?

How did it feel seeing the expression of despair on the Zach's face when you abandoned him that Saturday evening?

When you cruelly rejected his request to help him suppress his ever increasing bloodlust."

The boy who believed he was being spoken to became scared, he started fidgeting while the eyes of others towards him grew increasingly cold.

"Y-your highness, a-are you s-sure you aren't m-mistaken?"

The moment he asked that, many shouted in anger.

"How dare you?!"

"To say Lord Arthur is mistaken, are you insane?"

"You've been caught and you're trying to escape the blame."

The boy's eyes grew watery, he almost burst into tears. He was a timid person so the shouts and criticisms of others mad him scared.

If one didn't know the full situation, they'd think he was innocent—

"Everyone, calm down, I wasn't done yet."

--and that's because he actually was.

Arthur spoke and silenced the noisy crowd. While still looking in front of him he spoke once again.

"I asked you a question didn't I?"

He took a deep breath and continued.

"Descendant of Mammon's Grand Duchy, the House of Greed, Owen Read Mosley."

Many were about to criticize the boy again, however, upon hearing the name Arthur called, they stopped.

The boy in front of Arthur was not Owen, and he was definitely not Grand Duke Mammon's descendant. 

It was then someone spoke up, he was one of the few who wasn't interested in Arthur's story but still couldn't help but hear it. 

How could he not, he was seated right behind Arthur after all.

"Your highness, I hope this is some sort of mistake, you couldn't possibly be accusing me of being the mastermind behind all that now would you?"

"Oh, I'm not accusing you. I'm simply staying a fact. Nothing more nothing less."

Owen dropped his cup on the table with a little bit too much force.

*CLANK!

The ceramic cup made a noise as it dropped onto the similarly ceramic saucer.

The noise brought the crowd out of their stupor. They all turned to Owen who had been silently drinking tea throughout Arthur's story.

"Lord Owen?"

"He was the culprit?"

"No way"

"But Prince Arthur said it was him."

Hearing the murmurs, Owen chuckled and turned around staring at Arthur who had similarly turned around.

"Proof?"

"I have lots of it, but I don't want to use it. Your irritating schemes have caused a lot of trouble for me, you can't blame me for wanting to beat you up a little bit right?"

As Owen stared at Arthur and tilted his head in confusion, Arthur smiled widely and activated the teleportation Artifact he had prepared.

With a bright flash of light, Arthur and Owen disappeared and re appeared in the middle of the Arena.

Owen frowned while looking at Arthur, he spoke with annoyance.

"What's the meaning of this?"

"Exactly what it looks like. Owen Mosley, I challenge you to a duel. Do your dare accept or would you run away like a coward?"

"You're provoking me."

"Yes I am"

"Do you think I would fall for it?"

"Yes you would."

"Why do you think so?"

"Your pride won't allow it. Your greed won't too."

Owen couldn't help but agree internally, there was no way he would back down from such an obvious provocation.

He was confident that Arthur did not have much proof to convict him of anything, he was also confident in beating Arthur.

"If I win, you'd apologize to me publicly. I also want compensation."

"-If- you win."

As Arthur said that, he thought to the hint the Drifters gave him originally.

'The one you are looking for, is closer to three you than you think'

The Drifters had long figured out who the culprit was, they'd just been stalling. 

'It was definitely that son of a b*tch's idea.'

Arthur cursed while remembering the face of a certain high drifter who didn't seem like one. 

If Arthur had thought about it calmly, he would have long figured out the culprit. Unfortunately, he was more occupied with making Zach croak than figuring out who the culprit was.

As such, he did not figure it out until after Zach was defeated and he finally took time to ponder on those words.