Kaijin Fighter: So I Have to Make Monsters, So What?-Chapter 1559: Infighting Flockers: Bait and Switch

[Lunar Predator: Nightveil!]

As soon as Zhen Yue and Santiago detected that someone was approaching the cabin at breakneck speed, the former immediately got to work.

She knew, from the litany of crime novels she borrowed from the Library of Nowhere, that they were going to be seen as the most likely suspect for Baron Felipe's death due to the very simple fact that they were present when someone else arrived.

In other words, it was always better to be the second to arrive at a crime scene, never the first.

Now, under normal circumstances, using an aether art geared towards stealth was a surefire way of increasing suspicion upon oneself if one were to ever get caught.

As Zhen Yue stated earlier, aether arts have a tendency to leave small signs of evidence, even those geared towards stealth. However, the ability to detect such skills required the searcher to be either incredibly powerful or have skills that were designed to detect such things.

It was more than likely that whoever was approaching this cabin probably had such abilities; at least, that's what Zhen Yue thought.

However, this soon-to-be investigator definitely would not have the ability to detect [Chaos] in the slightest.

Channeling a mix of her own innate aether and [Chaos], Zhen Yue wove a cloak of energy that enshrouded both her and Santiago under a veil of moonlight that not only made them invisible to the naked eye but also fooled the senses of practically anyone thinking that they were staring at nothing more than a beam of pale moonlight shining through whatever opening it could find.

And just as Zhen Yue finished her task, the investigator at this scene had finally arrived.

"Baron Felipe," a man with a fluffy mustache called out as he entered the front door of the cabin. "I've come to deliver a—OH BY THE ANCESTORS! WHAT HAPPENED HERE?"

[Wait...I know that guy. That's Sir Flavonous,] Santiago informed Zhen Yue while cloaking his words with aether. [He's a knight and Aether Grandmaster who used to be a squire to Baron Felipe several decades ago. It should probably go without saying that the two of them had thrown in their lots with Prince Alder.]

[That makes a lot of sense,] Zhen Yue noted. [It's probably safe to assume that this guy isn't our murderer.]

The nightveil made by Zhen Yue's power technically made it so that Zhen Yue and Santiago could talk without having to cloak their words with aether, but it was just good practice to maintain such practices.

One could never have too many redundancies, after all.

Regardless, once Flavonous noticed that his former teacher was dead in his chair with an axe in his head, the mustached man proceeded to try and dislodge the weapon as quickly as he could. However, this turned out to be a bad idea, just as Zhen Yue had anticipated.

"It will only take a moment to—AAAH!"

The moment Flavonous grabbed the axe handle, a surge of sinister aether filled the room as an inlaid cursed array attacked the well-intentioned man like a horde of vipers striking at an unlucky sheep.

Tendrils of dark and malicious energy began to manifest around the handle before wrapping themselves around Flavonous's arms, causing his flesh to fester and boil. To his credit, he tried to use his own innate aether to push back against the dark energies, but alas, it didn't work. If anything, it seemed as if the aether being leveraged against it was being corrupted in the process and then being used to strengthen the curse even further.

In other words, it was a perfect feedback loop of pain.

As the curse raged on, Flavnous's complexion became paler and paler, and his festering flesh began to appear as if it were fusing with the axe itself. Eventually, the cursed knight managed to fully free the axe from his former mentor's head and began to flail about in pain.

Off to the side and beneath a veil of moonlight, Zhen Yue and Santiago shared a look that conveyed that the latter was very thankful for the former's intervention.

"I'm going to be honest, I didn't sense any of that being a possibility, but this justifies my statements about exercising caution when investigating crime scenes," Zhen Yue said after she and her fiancé redirected their focus to the flailing Flavonous. "Speaking of, we should probably leave before we become victims of our own crime scene. Albeit, one involving manslaughter and not murder."

"I get that, but shouldn't we try and help him?" Santiago asked as he gestured towards Flavonus. "Nobody deserves to be cursed like-"

[Silver Pagoda Seal!]

"And there it is," Zhen Yue noted with a click of her tongue. "Of course there's a third party…"

"Wait…I also know that guy!"

Before Santiago could even finish his altruistic intent of action, yet another aether warrior had entered the scene from the exact same entrance that Flavonous had entered literal moments ago.

This newcomer appeared to be yet another nobleman, although this man had a pointy face and the demeanor of a weasel. Evidently, this was a very literal observation because Santiago recognized the man as being a famous Sacred Thunder Weasel Bloodliner by the name of Capitano, who was actually a member of the faction that supported Princess Iona's bid for the throne.

Zhen Yue vaguely recalled that her cousin, Zhen Liu, had interacted with Iona during the Zhen Clan Family tournament fiasco from a few months back, but hadn't thought about her since then. Hell, even while she was here in the Bronze Bell Kingdom, she hadn't heard hide nor hair of her soon-to-be relative.

But now here she was, getting involved in her distant relation's political messiness.

"Well, well, well! Looks like everything went according to plan," Capitano snickered as his aether art locked Flavonous in place. "I knew you were an emotional one, but I didn't expect you to be blinded so easily by false grief!"

As of this moment, Flavonous looked positively ghastly as the cursed axe had fused entirely with his arms and was starting to drain his blood like an oversized leech. Not only that, but the pagoda construct made of silver-colored aether was holding him in place so he couldn't move and make any attempts at breaking the curse on his arms. At the very least, though, he could scream back at Capitano in response to the weasel bloodline's arrogant tone.

"False grief?" Flavonous repeated. "What the fuck are you on about?!"

As soon as that question left his lips, Captiano proceeded to snap his own fingers and cause the aether in the air to change.

In this moment, the dead body of Baron Felipe suddenly lifted into the air and began to float. While airborne, Captiano walked up to the body and pointed out a small scar around the base of the corpse's face.

"I was skeptical about this idea at first, manually changing the features of a corpse to mimic the features of another person, but it looks like I was wrong about it's effectiveness," Capitano shamelessly explained. "You know, the hardest part was actually just finding someone with the same build as the Baron, because he is such a fat fucker."

"You little..." Flavonous growled in offense for his former teacher.

While this was happening, the couple that had been hiding and watching off to the side were looking absolutely stunned at this revelation. Because even though they had both probed the body for any possible changes, neither of them had detected anything off about that little scar.

Then again, that might've due to the scar being made without the use of aether or aether-enhanced tools.

This would've also been the reason why Zhen Yue's [Chaos] didn't detect anything out of the ordinary either.

"What the fuck? Why the fuck would they go through the effort of dressing up a corpse?" Santiago asked his fiancee. "Wait, does that mean Baron Felipe defected and is now working with Iona?"

"I don't think that's the case," Zhen Yue assured him. "If it was, I'm fairly certain that he would've entered and explained himself in a bid to float, or something along those lines."

"If that's a fake, then what did you do to the real Baron Felipe?!"

"Nothing. The man's simply on a hunting trip and we have been intercepting any messages being sent from him to the Prince and vice versa."

"See?"

"Wow, that's...kind of convoluted."

Unaware of the side commentary, Capitano continued to monologue at Flavonous, going on and on about how the kingdom had become stagnant due to its esoteric succession system and now there was a chance for real change due to this strange situation.

And that, a supporters of their respective heirs, it was up to them to make sure that they got the throne so that they could reap the rewards.

"As such, you are now going to be the first of many dominoes to fall. May your bodies be used to make a most brilliant path."