Chapter 151 Taking the Blame

In the evening, Lehman reeled into a meeting with Bourne, reeking of alcohol.

"Boss, I've managed to find out about that woman. Her name is Modesty Nether. She is the youngest daughter of the former old king and the current king’s half-sister."

As he spoke, Lehman produced a tattered notebook from inside his tunic. "Stephanie, His Majesty Fergus’s etiquette tutor when he was a child, used to tutor Modesty for a time. However, this elderly etiquette tutor passed away in an accident six months ago!"

"An accident? Or was someone intentionally destroying the evidence?"

Bourne stroked his chin. The timing was far too suspicious. Wasn't six months ago right around when the evil corruption broke out?

"Her granddaughter stumbled upon this notebook while sorting through her belongings. But it was written in the noble script, which she couldn't read, so she brought it to me specifically to ask for help."

"Oh? To ask for help, or as an excuse to get close to you?"

Bourne looked at him with a half-smile. Lehman not only smelled of alcohol but also carried the scent of various perfumes. Clearly, if she couldn't get to Bourne, winning over the nominal second-in-command of the Lehman Chamber of Commerce was a decent alternative.

Bourne then patted Lehman's shoulder and said solemnly, "Still don't understand? Strength is the foundation of everything. Haven't these past few days shown you the true nature of the so-called noble class? If you keep drinking like this, you're going to ruin yourself!"

Lehman froze on the spot. Tears instantly welled up in his eyes, and the next moment, he broke down and wailed like a child.

Bourne simply stood there and watched him quietly. The reason he was only bringing this up now was to let Lehman experience the reality of the so-called nobility firsthand.

He knew Lehman harbored two ambitions: to become an arcanist and to enter the noble class. It was much like an aspiring, underprivileged commoner driven by the dream of becoming wealthy.

Though Bourne was unsure of what Lehman had experienced in his childhood to make him so obsessed with joining the nobility, it was precisely this obsession that provided him with a goal.

In Bourne's view, Lehman essentially had only one true goal: to enter the noble class, while becoming an arcanist was merely a means to wash away the taint of his commoner origins.

Yet, how many people in this world could ever achieve what Lehman had already accomplished? Let alone Hussain—that was a one-in-a-million feat.

Even the Iolum family had spent generations of effort just to squeeze into the upper echelons of Netheril.

Therefore, being born was a technical skill. If you played your cards right at birth, your starting line might be someone else's ultimate finish line—or even a peak they could never dare to hope for!

Bourne picked up the notebook. The noble script of Netheril was derived from the Draconic language. Following centuries of generational evolution and comparison, the noble script had diverged somewhat from true Draconic. Even taking apart a single character's radicals could form a new word, after all, in the supernatural world, writing possessed power itself.

The notebook recorded the personalities and preferences of various individuals. It seemed that serving as a tutor to the royal family was no easy task. Bourne even found a familiar name within its pages: Fergus.

This was the given name of the current King of Netheril!

Every monarch who ascended the throne inherited the moniker "Nether." As for which generation the current King Nether was, Bourne wasn't entirely certain.

From the contents of the notebook, it was clear that the number of royal offspring receiving unified training back then was not small. Judging by Stephanie's notes, the ones she paid special attention to were likely the front-runners for the throne at the time. Curiously, Fergus's name was nowhere among them.

Not only that, but Fergus seemed to receive very little attention. Everyone else had detailed preferences, and even elaborate notes on how they liked to present themselves; yet Fergus had merely a few points of note listed as cautions.

"It seems His Majesty the King had a rather difficult childhood."

Seeing this, the corners of Bourne's twitching mouth curled slightly, and his mind had already begun fabricating a clichéd, melodramatic backstory.

Sure enough, a bit further on, he flipped to Modesty's name. While the others had three or four pages of information dedicated to them, Modesty's entry consisted of just a few sparse words: introverted and physically frail. That was followed by nothing more. It appeared she had only briefly crossed the page a couple of times before vanishing from the records entirely.

Bourne flipped back to the earlier information regarding Fergus. Under the scan of his magical chip, he deciphered a heavily smeared line of tiny print. The gist of it was that Fergus had protected Modesty from being bullied. However, there must have been other factors at play for this particular piece of information to be deliberately blotted out.

The royal family of Netheril could be said to be the most tragic royal lineage Bourne had ever witnessed. Because the very first monarch failed to set a proper precedent, the power of the crown had been systematically whittled down to dust.

Ideally, the royal family should be the representative of the nobility, but Netheril was different. King Nether resembled a mascot more than anything else; powers of military command and political appointments were practically nonexistent. Any major decision had to pass through a cabinet-like governing body, and the head of this institution was none other than Headmaster Contarini. At least they still received a steady salary, however.

It could be said that the royal family and the nobility were fundamentally at odds. Throughout four hundred years of history, the monarchy had attempted to seize back power on more than one occasion, only to be crushed into the dirt by the noble class—resulting in the dynasty changing hands multiple times.

While the recorded history might not be entirely accurate, the general trajectory was likely correct. Thanks to those few trouble-making monarchs, the nobility completely lost faith in the royal family and stripped them of their power altogether.

Aside from the capital city, which still nominally obeyed the king on the surface, the figures with the absolute most power in other cities were the respective city lords. Even so, everyone maintained polite outward appearances; at the very least, they would still pay formal courtesy to His Majesty the King before making any major moves.

Because of this arrangement, after Netheril soared to prominence, it was often mistaken by many outsiders for the Netheril Empire. In reality, Netheril operated on a city-state system.

Even though the royal family had been reduced to a shadow of its former self, discussing the monarchy remained strictly taboo in Netheril, and the royal family still retained certain distinct privileges.

Living people might be hard to investigate, but digging into the backgrounds of a few dead ones was still feasible.

By the next day, Bourne had already found out that the various "front-runners" listed in the notebook had all died one after another under mysterious circumstances, eventually leaving Fergus as the sole surviving heir. Anyone with a brain could tell something was amiss, yet Fergus had still ended up on the throne.

Yet, try as he might, Bourne could find no additional information on Modesty—he couldn't even tell whether she was dead or alive. This only deepened the suspicion.

Bourne reached out and retrieved a battered, decrepit tome from his dimensional storage. This was the "Book of Demons" Bourne had looted from the underground altar. Because the Count had sealed it using a magic array, the evil book had reverted to its original physical state, and inscribed clearly upon its cover was a name:

Modesty Nether!

With that, the trail of clues essentially came to a dead end. However, Bourne was not a law enforcement officer; doing anything required concrete evidence.

As the saying goes, even if you can't compose poems yourself, reading three hundred Tang poems will give you a knack for it. Having been thoroughly cultured by countless television and film tropes, Bourne could roughly piece together what had transpired.

"Is this power really that alluring?"

Bourne shook his head helplessly.

Even with the assistance of an outer-planar evil god, unless the true entity of the evil god manifested in person, trying to defeat an archmage in Faerûn was nothing short of a pipe dream.

The Headmaster was engaging in entrapment, and using the situation to drill troops at the same time. Her methods were layered and ruthless. Bourne looked toward the direction of the royal palace with a trace of pity.

That level of intellect was truly distressing.

Based on the historical timeline, Bourne could deduce that Headmaster Contarini had undoubtedly suppressed everything.

Yet, what was this lingering sense of bad premonition he felt?

Could it be that he had been targeted because of his previous exposure of the serpentfolk nest? The more Bourne thought about it, the more convinced he became. In an instant, he felt like he had been utterly screwed over—taking the fall entirely on behalf of the Headmaster.

The following day, Bourne instructed his men to scatter sulfur three layers deep all around the perimeter of the chamber of commerce, and erected a multitude of lethal magical traps layer upon layer outside his laboratory.

Afterward, he plunged straight back into his experiments, giving off the distinct impression that he intended to hibernate inside the lab for the winter.

Bourne's series of bizarre, highly paranoid maneuvers left Lehman and his associates utterly bewildered, while even Hussain and the elven elder wore expressions carved entirely of question marks.