Right now, my main goal in this meeting is to preserve my neutrality. The issue is that I have two factions that are gunning for my head now. The scholars are still somewhat easy to manage. After all, they are the type not to let ego get in the way of things. They might have a negative view of me, but I think they should behave professionally at least.

  The Aegis is going to be the exact opposite. (Well, they are supposed to be cool and collected. The problem is that Anthony is nothing like that.) They will be targeting me in this meeting in one way or another.

  I can see Anthony eyeing me at this very moment, to be honest. Well, I will deal with the man regardless of what he is willing to pull off. I am sure that he is not too interested in fighting with me. After all, the man has such a bad relationship with the sentinels.

  Fighting with me would be too disadvantageous to him. The problem is that it is the logical thing to do. Anthony has shown that he doesn't think logically most of the time. Right now, all of us are sitting in the pilot's room. The reason for this is that this is the only place in the entire ship that is fully neutral. We also had meetings here before. It is the only real choice.

  Having this meeting in any other part of the ship would lead to arguments that we could do without right now. There is going to be plenty of that anyway. Even now, I can see all of us staring at each other. Nobody wants to be the one to start the discussion right now. Everybody is busy eyeing each other.

  Right opposite me, we have Alfred, who is studying all of this with a quiet kind of interest. (People tend to see us as a united force. It's rare to see all the fault lines in our organization like this.)

  Right next to him, we have John, who is eyeing searcher Amelia opposite him. I will have to be careful of them. The two of them look like they are scheming something.

  Finally, we have Anthony, who is glaring at every person in the room right now in turns. I think he thinks that he is hiding it very well. Even Alfred can tell, though.

  "We really should get this thing started, people." I say, breaking the silence that had formed in the room. "We can't be sitting here the entire day now, can we?"

  "Well, we would like to start by asking the sentinels what they have learned." Searcher Amelia speaks as soon as I shut up.

  I can see the silent challenge in Amelia's eyes. The question might be for the sentinels, but I am going to be facing the consequences of my actions. Well, so much for the Searchers being rational folks.

  "We certainly have learned quite a bit. My soldiers have been studying the captive and the prison. We can say that we have reconstructed what has happened in there to a certain degree of confidence." John speaks. "The first thing is that the corpse had died about half a day before my soldier could access it. Seeing the timeframe, there were only the searchers and the mayfires on the ship then. Would you be able to provide alibis for what you were doing in this period?"

  Why is John doing this? Right now is not the time to be blaming each other for this. John must know what happened in there. He is trying to do something with this. I swear I can sense Amelia glaring at me. I don't return the stare, though. I have to make sure that I don't react to such obvious provocation.

  "I have already provided the location of all my soldiers at this time." Alfred pipes up. "We have provided all of our alibis to soldier Eric."

  "Well, we cannot provide an alibi." Searcher Amelia says. "After all, my fellows were standing guard outside the prison. They were right outside the scene of the crime. We can confirm that nobody has entered the place through the door."

  She says all of this while glaring at me and the legion.

  "Well, I would then like to call on my soldier Eric to make his report, then." John replies as he calls out for his soldier.

  Today, I don't plan to get involved in this at all. I guess that I could speak up. I have a pretty decent guess of what could have happened yesterday. If I were to speak up, then this place would become a battlefield. Everybody is a bit too tense right now, and I have offended too many people.

  Then there is the issue of Anthony. Until now, the man has not found any reason to speak up. He will do so if I were to speak up. As I have been recording all of this, Eric entered the room and took his place next to John.

  "So, I guess that I should begin my report. Well, the first thing that I want to confirm is that it was a vampire that had killed the man." He speaks. "The reason for the man's death is that all of the blood in his body was drained."

  As he speaks, I can sense the atmosphere of the room change a bit. Before, it was tense enough that a blade drawn would have sparked a fight. Now it is a bit less intense than that. The main reason for this is the searcher. She has calmed down so quickly that I am left wondering for a second whether she was even angry in the first place.

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  "At about noon yesterday, the vampire had infiltrated the ship. I believe that the creature made use of a combination of two magics to enter the place.", Eric continues. "The first is a spell known as a blood bullet. The vampires can compress their blood and project it with their blood mana. The Blood bullet can be used to cause a small hole in the ship stealthily. We think that the vampire had made a tiny hole in the side of the ship. The hole is barely large enough for a needle to pass through. The only sign would be a burst of death mana that your searchers had reported finding to me."

  "My fellows had entered the building the instant that they had felt the burst of death mana." The lady replies. "They found nobody there except the captive."

  "Well, that is where the second magic that I was speaking about comes into play. Vampires are masters of transmutation." Eric replies. "They can temporarily convert their body into a mist. Right now, I think that the vampire had converted into a mist form to enter the place. It is the only way that it could have fit into that tiny hole. It would have just needed to maintain that form for a while to fool anybody entering the place. Your fellows would not have been able to find the vampire unless they knew what they were looking for."

  "Well, then, isn't this the fault of young master Antonio?" Anthony suddenly speaks. Somehow, I feel like punching the idiot the moment that he opens his mouth. "The maintenance and the running of this prison were under the man's supervision."

  Well, I was expecting the man to pull off something like this. I hadn't expected him to take so long, though.

  "Well, the room where we have imprisoned the captive was not a prison. I had to modify the location to bring it to a state where the man could be held." I reply. "I had explained very clearly to the searchers the exact durability of the prison. They knew the exact strength of the formation when they began to use it."

  "Well, does that matter. You are the main authority on formations in this ship. The searchers have to take your word when it comes to formations. Did you not know that the preservation formation could be breached this easily?" Anthony replies to this. "You have a history with the legion, so you certainly know a lot about the creatures."

  Well, the idiot has cornered me with these questions. If I admit that I did not expect it, that would make me look incompetent. If I were to answer anything else, it would make me look like I wanted to sabotage the searchers. With how strained our relationship is already, that would make us enemies. I will have to answer these questions very carefully.

  "Well, as I told you before, all of these discussions I already had with the searchers. I had discussed with them the exact way in which I had modified the preservation formation. I had explained to them how the formation works and how it can fail. The scholars are only a bit inferior to me in the domain of formations. They would have done well enough with the information I have given them." I reply.

  I am downplaying the difference in our knowledge about formations a bit. What else can I do, though?

  "As to answer your question of whether I had expected the vampire to breach the place in that manner, I had not." I continue. "The reason for that is that it was a combination of two separate magics. At the level of a grunt, a vampire is only supposed to be able to use one type of magic. They simply do not have the time to practice another path."

  "Well, then, how did this vampire make use of two spells?" Anthony asks. "Considering that you are not acting too surprised at the man's hypothesis."

  "That is because we are dealing with vampires from the blood court. We know little to nothing about the creatures and the spells that they use. If you want to know more about just how difficult it is, you should ask the searchers." I reply. "That is why we have been warning everybody here to be careful of the vampires. They are an undefinable variable in all of this."

  As I say this, I can see that Anthony's hands have begun to clench. I don't think that he has anything else to add to this.

  "Well, you should continue your report, Eric. We don't have the entire day after all." I say to Eric.

  "Well, to continue my report. The vampire would have then fed on the man. The bite of a vampire can leave a man in a state of euphoria." Eric speaks. "In this state, the victim will do anything that the vampires want them to do. We believe that the vampire had used this time to interrogate the man. Now, this state of euphoria doesn't last for long. So the vampire bit the man every few minutes until he died."

  "So the vampire must have been present in the temporary prison for at least a couple of hours," Alfred says to the room.

  Well, none of us had wanted to point that out. After all, we don't know how the lady will take it. (The scholars really love to maintain an omniscient image. That they know everything that is happening around them.) At the moment, I am expecting her to explode at everybody in the room.

  The lady maintains her present tranquil expression as Eric replies to the question.

  "Well, that is the present estimate for us. It would have been very hard to detect that something was wrong in the room. The euphoria of being bitten would have made the man a living statue. He would not make a single noise if the vampire did not want him to." Eric replies. "The vampire drained the man in this state, and he finally died of blood loss. That is the conclusion of my report. If you have anything to ask, you can ask now."

  As the man says this, everybody looks at each other.

  "Well, I have a question. Not to you, though. This question I have for the searchers." I find myself asking, almost on an impulse. "It must have been a pretty risky process to sneak into the ship and torture the man."

  "Yes, the vampire would have been pretty significantly weakened by turning into a mist. It would have been easy to get rid of the creature should it have been discovered in this process." Eric replies to me.

  "Well, then, why would a vampire have risked so much to just torture this man?" I say to everybody in the room. "He certainly would not have done it merely for pleasure. There must be something that the vampire was trying to find out from our captive. This is the question I have for the searchers. What have you discovered from the captive?"