༺ The Missing Case of Silver Blaze (6) ༻
A few minutes after escaping from Charlotte, I ended up getting caught by Colonel Rose.
“Excuse me.”
“Hmm?”
“When did we first meet?”
As I walked through the secret passage she had prepared in advance, I suddenly scratched my head and posed a question to Colonel Rose beside me.
“… Don’t you remember?”
At that, her gaze momentarily donned a chilly light.
“I sponsored you when you were a nobody.”
“Ah, right.”
“You’ve been receiving regular sponsorships from me… even in recent times.”
“Haha…”
Were all the large sums anonymously deposited into Isaac Adler’s account actually sent by her?
However, the amount seemed a bit too much…
Perhaps before I possessed him, Isaac Adler had wooed several big sponsors like Colonel Rose to act as his sugar mommas.
You really were a crazy son of a bitch, weren’t you, Isaac Adler? The bitch had a blast scamming all these women, but why should I, who had utterly nothing to do with it, suffer the consequences for his actions?
‘… Well, it can’t be helped, I guess…’
However, it wasn’t the time to grumble like this.
If I didn’t want to end up with a hole in my head or be shipped to the U.S. in a box, I had to do something here.
“… Why are you stopping?”
As I halted my steps with that thought in mind, Colonel Rose tilted her head and tightened her grip on the gun that had been pointed at me.
“Trying to run away like last time?”
“……….”
“You can’t. This pistol was especially custom-made to hunt you.”
She was right. Even though I was a powerful mage and a pureblooded vampire on top, with a high-powered mana pistol aimed at my head, there wasn’t much I could do here.
You had to chant to be able to use magic and transforming into a vampire would take way too much time. Moreover, it was broad daylight, so doubted whether I could harness the full extent of my powers.
On the other hand, all Colonel Rose had to do was pull the trigger and I would be done in.
Even if I somehow managed to dodge the first shot, she bore the title of Colonel and was in possession of an artifact-grade weapon. Just with those two modifiers alone, she could probably easily defeat most mid-level bosses, let alone someone like me.
Moreover, I couldn’t even send out Princess Clay, since her power had barely recovered enough to use basic telepathy magic.
“Yes, you were my first.”
“… Hmm?”
There was only one way left.
“Thinking about it, the only reason I am here now is all thanks to you.”
“Adler…?”
“I’m sorry for not realizing it until now.”
Since I was young, I was confident in my persuasion skills.
“Why are you suddenly being so kind…?”
“……”
“You’re not resisting or acting cold like you did back then?”
“I’m not.”
“… Why?”
I had already seen many ways to handle this type of situation in comics on internet communities. Of course, I wasn’t sure if it would work in this particular situation, but there was nothing to lose here.
“Because I like you the most in the world.”
“…………”
“… Shall we hold hands?”
As I said those words and gazed at Colonel Rose, the hand opposite to the one that held the gun to my head began to slowly lower.
“But that’s not what I meant…”
And soon after, she, blushing like a maiden in love, put her arms around mine.
‘… Has it already started?’
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“What shall we do first when we get to the U.S.? Should we go house hunting? Or leave that to my subordinates and travel? Or maybe…”
“If I’m with Colonel Rose, anything is fine.”
“… Ahh…”
Colonel Rose, who had been rambling on with her eyes fixed on the road ahead soon trailed off upon hearing Adler’s gentle voice.
– Shiver…
At the same time, the pistol aimed quietly at the back of Adler’s head trembled ever so slightly.
“If you could have treated me this way from the beginning… why didn’t you…”
“That being said, I have a question.”
Adler, who had been quietly observing her, calmly posed a question.
“What on earth did you put in the curry?”
“… What?”
She stared at Adler, her eyes opened wide in surprise.
“Don’t beat around the bush and tell me. Just in case, if we need to share a kiss to…”
“What are you even talking about?”
“Pardon?”
Colonel Rose then tilted her head, asking in return.
“I didn’t add anything to the curry.”
“Then why did you change last night’s meal to curry?”
“I just felt like having curry yesterday…”
A puzzled expression spread across Adler’s face.
“Then, what did you do to Mr. Straker?”
“I entered his room under the pretext of bringing him a late dinner.”
With that, began Colonel Rose’s testimony…
“As you know, despite him having a wife, he’s in love with me. If I say something, he’d blindly follow my every word.”
“Yeah… I guess.”
“So, I simply asked him to give Silver Blaze a doping injection.”
“… That’s it?”
Adler, who had already gone wide-eyed in disbelief, soon furrowed his brows and asked again.
“Yeah, I planned to frame him and cover up my tracks later on. But then, all of a sudden, he died.”
“Then, what about the drug in the curry?”
“Oh, that slipped my mind, sorry. I had indeed delivered a drugged meal to him, however, that was intended for the Demi-Human he was training.”
Colonel Rose clapped her hands and mumbled, and then scratched her head.
“But that… it’s just a mild drug, right?”
“So… there’s no chance of him suddenly becoming aggressive or brutal if he ate it?”
“None? That’s a drug specifically for the demi-humans. For us, it’d just make our senses a bit sharper. Nothing more.”
At that, Adler fell deep into thought, his expression blank.
“… Then, why did Straker…?”
“That doesn’t matter now.”
Colonel Rose, whose hand had been interlocked with his, gently tightened her grip, pausing in her steps with a soft smile.
“We are leaving this place today.”
At the same time, a massive door began to open.
“… Huh?”
“I’ve even gathered these loyal subordinates to accompany us.”
Adler’s eyes widened as he took a step back due to the immense vibration that the door made while opening.
“How’s that, honey?”
A significant number of demi-humans were bowing their heads just in front of them.
“It’s all good but… if such a large number of people move, we will surely be noticed…”
“We’ll split up and operate in small elite groups. The ones escorting us will be the most trustworthy among them.”
“… Will all the demi-humans follow our commands?”
“They’ll have no choice but to do so.”
Colonel Rose, seeing the doubt in Adler’s eyes, took out a bundle of documents from her possession and waved them before his eyes.
“It’s all thanks to your contract magic, Adler.”
“……..”
“It’s fascinating how you, who can’t perform any other magic, excel in this one more than anyone else in the world…”
Just as Adler broke into a cold sweat due to the array of resentful stares directed at him from before him…
“… This seems to be different from what you’ve said before.”
“…….?”
From behind the demi-humans, a chilling voice began to resonate.
“Didn’t you clearly say you’d hand Adler over to me?”
“Who’s that…?”
“Did I really say that?”
As the silhouette of a new figure, obscured by darkness, began to emerge from between the crowd, Adler’s pupils widened in astonishment while a cold smile crept onto Colonel Rose’s lips.
“All I did was provide you with a hiding place in exchange for kidnapping the demi-humans from the back alleys.”
“……….”
“Don’t you know who’s the boss here and who’s not?”
A haughty voice then flowed out of her lips.
“I don’t know exactly what you’re up to, but you’re no longer needed.”
“Hmm.”
“So, it’d be best if you leave gracefully when you’re told to.”
Saying those words, she gestured dismissively toward the shadowy figure.
– Sqwelp…!
“… Huh?”
However, with the sound of something piercing, a gasping breath soon escaped from Colonel Rose’s mouth.
“Ugh, erk…”
“Since it looked fun, I helped you out a little with that insignificant plan of yours… and this is how you repay me…?”
With a bewildered expression, Colonel Rose, her body staggering, soon realized that her chest was pierced by a black knife and fell to her knees.
“I should’ve just killed you when I had merged1Okay so, this is something that the readers will truly understand way later into the story but basically this mysterious being can become other people… with Straker back then.”
“… What?”
“I don’t know why I always have such bad luck with my employers.”
Suddenly, in front of her, a mysterious shadowy figure appeared, gently caressing her chin with its dark, shadowy hands.
“… Isn’t that right?”
“Wh-wh-wh-who are you?”
“Hehe…”
As the shadowy entity turned its head, revealing a chilling smile, a pale-faced Adler began to step back… toward the place where the demi-humans were.
– Bang!
Just then, the sound of gunshots echoed inside the dim shelter.
– Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Run… Adler…”
Colonel Rose, her face deathly pale, was firing her pistol at the mysterious figure before her.
“… How pitiful.”
However, the being veiled in shadows, seemingly unfazed as it gazed down at the holes forming in its own body, soon murmured in a voice tinged with mock laughter.
– Clink, clink…
“Do you really think you can harm me with a toy like this?”
A weapon that could usually bring down any mid-level boss was effortlessly destroyed with a mere gesture from the being veiled by intertwined shadows.
– Crackle…!
“Adler…”
Then, once again, a chilling sound of something being pierced echoed inside the shelter, followed by Colonel Rose’s faint groan.
“”…………””
Shortly after, the mysterious figure, which had been silently surveying the basement engulfed in terror, lit up its eyes and spoke in an excited tone.
“Hello, Adler?”
Facing the very entity the figure so desperately desired, they felt a shiver of ecstasy run down their spine.
“I love you~!”
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“Love my ass…”
With my eyes opened wide in surprise, I kept stumbling backward in fright. Only when I saw the message before me was I able to realize…
“I really, really, really, really love you…”
‘That creature is the cause of the erosion.’
Every time I didn’t directly intervene in an event, the erosion rate would mysteriously increase without any clear reason.
The cause was now present right before me.
‘I need to run away.’
Even without witnessing Colonel Rose’s recent struggle, I knew all too well…
… That, I needed to escape immediately…
… That I had to run without even thinking about looking back…
“You’re running away?”
However, whether she had already sensed my intention or not, the shadowy figure holding a knife, as black as the darkness of the night itself, tilted her head and spoke.
“If you run away, I’ll kill you.”
Of course, even if I didn’t run, she was clearly intent on killing me, so her threat really didn’t carry much weight.
“The demi-humans behind you…”
But upon hearing the next words coming out of her mouth…
“And the girl who was hanging out with you just now. I will kill them all…”
I had no choice but to step forward and face the mysterious figure right now.
“That won’t do.”
I was truly grateful that I left Charlotte behind.
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How much time had passed since then?
“Hands up, the police are here!”
“Surrender!”
With the help of Charlotte Holmes, the officers and the police force burst through the door of the secret hideout inside the racetrack, shouting at the top of their lungs.
“Drop your weapons and stay where…”
“Huh…?”
However, after only a few steps, they had to abruptly halt in their tracks…
“Cough, cough…”
Isaac Adler, whose abdomen had been gruesomely slashed, sat leaning against a wall, laboriously breathing as he greeted them.
“… Adler?”
The moment Charlotte, who had been confidently leading the police instead of an officer from the front, confirmed the sight with a dazed expression…
“I’m sorry, Miss Holmes…”
… With a bright smile on his face, Adler began to speak.
“I seemed to have ruined the riddle…”
His eyes began to lose their focus.
“… Well, it’s okay as long as you’re safe.”
“No…”
For the first time in her life, a look of sheer terror began to manifest on Charlotte Holmes’ face.
EP Note: Hello guys, Paradox here. So, it has come to my attention that many of you guys don’t really understand what the Probability in the title means and what is Adler’s significance to the story. If you already know then you don’t need to read this note because the explanation will be lengthy…
So, from what I have surmised reading through quite a bit into this novel, the probability is more like plausibility here. Let me explain what this means. So, in the very second chapter of the novel we see the MC rattling on about how the game was abysmal and how it didn’t make sense if he compared it to the original Sherlock Holmes novels. The characters were dumb and many things just didn’t add up since the writers and the development team made such a shitshow of a story. Hence why MC had raged about the story in his passionate email that we see in the first part of Chapter 2. So, what MC is really doing here is to get the story and the world to make sense. Let me be clearer, in the Villain Maker quest it is described as… Fulfilling the Probability of Professor Moriarty’s Appearance. Here, what the author really meant was his mission is to make Moriarty being the final boss have a plausible meaning or be plausible in accordance with the world. In the game, it is mentioned that Moriarty suddenly appeared as the final boss of the game, had a battle in the Reichenbach Falls, and was defeated by Holmes, at the end. Her being the final boss had no meaning. It was all a bit too abrupt, and her appearance and defeat were more of a comical cameo rather than a full-blown ending fight. It was a fatal flaw of the game and MC was very angry about it as he mentioned in Chapter 2. So, by that mission, essentially, MC was tasked with giving her a backstory with the flow of the world and giving her a purpose in the world which she did not really have in the game. So, you see guys, what Becoming Professor Moriarty’s Probability really means in essence is that he needs to make Moriarty being the final boss in the game become an event that has a plausible reason in the world and not just be some one-off event that served no purpose at all other than to be some final hurdle for Holmes to topple with some struggle and ultimately add no meaning to this world. Adler is here to make the world have plausibility, have a meaning, and have every character go through a believable development to reach their respective roles. That is what being the probability of the world means and he is that. Hope this made some sense to you guys even though I am dogshit in explaining things.
So, the final point I am making here is that every time you see a probability modifier, except for the warning messages showing the probability of him being kidnapped or murdered or whatnot, then it means that he has to steer the event in a direction that would make it have some sense and if he is unable to the world would lose its rationality, its meaning, its purpose, its plausibility, and thus its probability, ultimately meeting its end. Since there really is no need for a world that doesn’t have any sense now, is there?
If you want to talk more about this topic, you can hit me up on the discord channel in Genesis. Peace!
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