Once again, Shirou was left puzzled by Myne and the situations she got herself into.
Normally speaking, even if one was wearing a magic ring, a blessing shouldn't happen unless they willingly provide the magic power for it.
Yet, according to Myne, she fired one off involuntarily. And it was so easy for her that even though a blessing of the same size would normally take five Archnobles working together, Myne did it by herself without even feeling strained.
It was uncanny, how not only did she have an abnormally large amount of mana, but could perform blessings at a much cheaper rate than everyone else. The girl was simply loved by the Gods, though Shirou couldn't understand why. He didn't understand what the Gods wanted with Myne, and he honestly didn't like it.
As a result of the blessing, Myne received an 'invitation' from Bezewanst, requesting a meeting with her guardians in four days' time.
Myne was simply lucky that baptism time was the busiest time of year from greedy little shits in the Temple, as the Blue Priests could make money by going to the villages to perform the baptisms there, and in the case of Bezewanst, doing private baptisms for the nobility.
As much as he wanted Myne, he wasn't going to pass up the chance to make easy money and take bribes in order to grab her.
Or maybe Bezewanst was lucky, since, if he had touched one of his students with those disgusting hands, Shirou would have separated the child molesting man's head from his shoulders.
So, in the days right after the baptism, the Temple was basically empty of any Blue Priest who was in bed with Bezewanst, as they all went off to satisfy their greed.
It was easy enough for Shirou to walk around the Temple completely unabated, checking the rooms of each and every individual who had left for evidence of their various crimes.
This was embarrassingly easy. No one even had anything more than a simple lock box that was as difficult for Shirou to get through as wrapping paper.
Normally, evidence gathered like this wouldn't be of much use, but with an order from the Archduke to search for who was behind the missing small chalices, Shirou had a perfect excuse as to why he was confiscating all of this and handing it over to Sylvester.
Surprisingly though, the one who Shirou was having the hardest time finding evidence on was Bezewanst himself.
"I refuse to believe that man was smart enough to not keep any evidence of wrongdoing." Shirou mumbled to himself as he went through the Archbishop's room, finding it suspiciously absent of any sort of documents, not even the normal kind. "I know he was lazy about doing his paperwork, but this is ridiculous."
Shirou had even gone through the trouble of sweeping the room with Structural Analysis, to see if there were any hidden compartments or magic items, but there was nothing. He was starting to get frustrated, when a voice interrupted him.
"Is there something I can help you with good sir?"
Shirou blinked as he turned his head and saw an eight-year-old girl, with hair as red as his had been in his previous life, watching him with a smile. The kind of smile a little girl should not have.
She was one of the girls that Bezewanst had assigned to himself during Shirou's absence. A child who would… 'offer him flowers'… God he wanted to kill that perverted old fuck. Then again, it was this entire world's fault. The fact that this child was looking at him, hoping to 'offer flowers' to him while her normal master was out, was a failing of society as a whole.
"...Yes. I received a request from the Archbishop to send him some of the documents he left at the Temple, but he neglected to tell me where to find them. You wouldn't happen to know where he keeps them, would you?" Shirou asked, praying that the girl was an idiot and didn't realize that him snooping around the Archbishop's room without his attendants with him was suspicious.
Luckily, she was. "He doesn't keep any of that stuff here. It's all locked in the box in the library. The one that looks like books." The girl said as she played with her hair. "Though, I don't know how you would get them, since he always has the key with him."
"That's alright. I have a spare key." Shirou said. "If the Archbishop forgot to leave you something, just ask my head attendant and I'll have him get it for you."
"Thank you so much!" The girl said brightly, as Shirou left the room and headed for the library.
The lock on the box in question had magic on it, but not anything impressive. So, wrapping paper held together with duct tape instead of masking tape. More humorous than challenging. Shirou analyzed the lock in order to reproduce the key used to open it and that was that, and inside he found the mother load.
A mountain of evidence of embezzlement and forgery for nearly a quarter of the nobles in the central district, as well as the city mayors and a few Giebes.
Not only that, there were letters. Letters that Shirou originally thought were from some kind of secret lover, but soon realized were from the man's niece and Ferdinand's eldest half sister, Georgine.
Shirou's memories of Georgine were limited, since he didn't think that Ferdinand ever actually met her in person, but he knew that she had a conflict with Sylvester over who would be the next Aub, and was shipped off to a neighboring Duchy as a result, ending up as a third wife so that she wouldn't cause trouble.
To say there were bad feelings between her and Sylvester was probably accurate, as she would have been Aub if it weren't for Sylvester being born, and she had tried to murder her little brother at some point, resulting in the deaths of Sylvester's close childhood friends. Though nothing could ever be linked directly to her.
The letters seemed to be basic letters about the woman's troubles, but they were also full of mentions of gratitude for the support that Bezewanst had been giving her. While this could be taken to mean emotional support, it was vague enough to be considered grounds for an interrogation from the Archduke himself, given the missing chalices.
So they had him on motive, means and opportunity. Shirou grinned, as he knew he had the man right where he wanted him.
It wouldn't be enough to have him sentenced, even the mountain of undeniable proof of corruption would likely not get him more than a slap on the wrist given his backing, but it was definitely enough to have him questioned.
He just had to pick the perfect time to have the Archduke show up for a surprise interrogation. Like say, during Myne's summons to the Temple.
Sylvester was tried as he read over Justus' report.
With Rihyarda's help, he had convinced Justus to investigate the Gilberta company and his mysterious niece, Myne. It was lucky that Justus was as curious about the girl as the rest of them, otherwise he would have never done something that would go against Ferdinand's wishes. And what he had found out left Sylvester with a lot of questions.
Mostly because, until around two years ago, no one had ever seen Myne before. The girl had simply not existed as far as they could tell, as no one in her neighborhood could even report to have known her when asked. Even those who knew her alleged parents had never seen her before then.
But during those two years, she has become something of an urban legend. The weird girl from the Gilberta company who just shows up and tosses around ideas like it was no big deal. Ideas that end up causing waves and turn entire industries on their heads. The Merchant's Guild was in chaos because of her, and dozens of businesses lost their workforce to people drawn in by her new creations, with others on the verge of collapsing as they suddenly found themselves going from a monopoly to competing against something with what couldn't even be considered a fraction of the production cost.
She had introduced four entirely new industries in the past year alone, with several new introductions into existing ones, a few of them having appeared before Ferdinand's return. She was causing a cultural revolution when it came to food, co-owning two stores, with a restaurant on the way, with the granddaughter of the Merchant's Guild's Guildmaster, who just so happened to be a young girl with the Devouring. Likely one of Ferdinand's students.
Justus sampled it and some of the food tasted better than the food served by the Archduke's private chefs, despite seemingly being made from literally chicken feed, and the sweets they sold made everything he had eaten at the Sovereignty look like a joke.
…HOW WAS THAT FAIR!?
Normally, you would just assume that someone else was making such things in the girl's name, but Sylvester had met her, listened to her talk, and knew that the girl was the true source of everything.
Justus summed it up well, saying that the child was abnormal beyond words, with both intelligence and magic power that were just unnatural. If Ferdinand had been a genius, then this Myne girl was a god child. Yet Ferdinand himself didn't seem to see anything out of the ordinary with her, acting like her level of intelligence was adorable rather than jaw dropping. Like having three dozen inventions registered with the Merchant's Guild pre-baptism wasn't a big deal. He had just smiled at her like a doting father as she explained things that were blowing the nobles' minds with the air of a lecturer at the Academy.
Justus had eventually managed to track down the girl's 'older sister' Tuuli, reporting that the pair looked absolutely nothing alike, having different hair and eye color, different skin tones, and different facial structures. While not impossible, the odds of two biological sisters to look so different was pretty unlikely. Tuuli also had been wearing high grade magic tools, which marked her as being a child with the Devouring as well, likely the third student that Ferdinand had mentioned.
Justus theorized that Ferdinand had hid his daughter away in the lower city, giving her to a poor family with a Devouring child of their own in exchange for the magic tools needed to keep them alive, tools that they would have never been able to afford in a hundred years. It was certainly more likely than there being two children with the Devouring in the same family.
Such a theory added up well, especially when you consider the fact that Ferdinand had Veronica breathing down his neck. It only left the question of who the mother was, something Ferdinand now didn't even know himself.
Given that Ferdinand would have had to have had her when he was around fourteen, it must have been when he was basically living at the Royal Academy year round as a research assistant in order to stay away from Veronica, so the mother must have been a girl he met there. Not that that narrowed down the possibilities any, since people came and went from there all the time. Though how an Archduke Candidate could have a child without anyone noticing was beyond him. Then again, no one knew who Ferdinand's mother was either.
There was also the question of what they were going to do about Myne.
Part of Sylvester wanted to encourage his brother to openly claim her, as then her industries would become part of Ehrenfest official business, meaning it could greatly boost their Duchy's standings. This would be a huge help, as Ehrenfest was currently a backwater Duchy with nothing to offer, one that also had terrible Winters every year on account of the Lord of Winter, resulting in a longer cold season and a large number of strong blizzards. Ehrenfest was only considered mid-rank territory at the moment because it remained neutral during the civil war, and wasn't punished like those who were on the losing side of it. That, and the fact that they had Ferdinand, who was a genius researcher and a powerful Knight.
Myne, who was just as, if not more, unbelievable than her father, could do the territory a massive amount of good if officially recognized as part of the Archduke family, even if it is as Sylvester's niece.
On the other hand, Veronica would likely throw a fit about Ferdinand trying to push for his daughter to take Wilfried's place as the next Archduke.
Not necessarily unjustified, even if it would not have been Ferdinand doing the pushing.
The Florencia faction, which was really run by Elvira, was already making happy noises about Ferdinand's return to nobility. If they knew that Ferdinand had a daughter, one who was extremely intelligent from a young age, was on the verge of causing a cultural revolution and looked like she would one day possess as much power as Ferdinand himself, they might start to make moves to set her up as the next Archduke, perhaps in the form of an assassination of the current heir.
Sylvester had named Wilfried his heir without any competition, because he didn't want that kind of thing to happen again, since he had lived through a very bloody succession battle with his eldest sister and didn't want his children raised to hate each other, or worse, kill each other. But while the Florencia faction might currently view all of Sylvester's children in the same light, since they were all grandchildren of Veronica, making them not care too much which of them became the heir, if someone like Myne came along and was recognized as an Archduke Candidate, conflict might ensue.
Conflicts that could result in Wilfried's death... or worse, Myne's death, sending Ferdinand on his war path.
…But could he really tell Ferdinand to NOT claim his daughter during her baptism? He couldn't imagine that conversation going well. Nor could he imagine his half brother listening to talks about a political marriage between the girl and Wilfried. They would be pretty hypocritical of Sylvester, since he refused to be a part of a political marriage.
Ferdinand's behavior towards the girl reminded Sylvester of the stories of Ewigeliebe, the God of Life, and how he obsessed over his daughter Mestionora, the Goddess of Wisdom, just as much as he obsessed over his wife. How the jealous father would attack any of his fellow Gods if they stood between him and his daughter, attempting to run them through with the sword that was his divine symbol.
…Now that Sylvester thought about it, wasn't Mestionora supposed to have had dark blue hair and golden eyes, just like Myne's. Ferdinand's hair had also been turning white ever since his near death experience, just like Ewigeliebe's.
It was while Sylvester was thinking about this comparison that a white bird flew into the room and started to blurt out a message from Ferdinand.
"I have found important evidence and need to meet with you at once. I have found important evidence and need to meet with you at once. I have found important evidence and need to meet with you at once."
The message repeated three times before the bird turned back into a Feystone.
It would seem that Sylvester would have to put off solving the Ferdinand and Myne problem until later. For now, he had other things to contend with.
