Free Web NovelChapter 27: Camera and Projector
Emma continued her report in her flat, professional tone.
"I’m having a routine midnight patrol near the inner courtyard when my mana sensors picked up a disturbance. The intruders used high-tier stealth spells. Probably high-ranked assassins."
She paused as she glanced back at the map. "Based on their deployment pattern, they only targeted the Duke. They didn’t make a single movement toward Lady Liora’s wing, nor toward you, Young Master."
Eren’s blue eyes narrowed into two cold, calculating slits. ’They only wanted the head of the household?’
"Fascinating," Eren murmured with an amused smirk.
"And what about the intruders? Did any of them survive the encounter?" he asked, knowing her too well that she might have already disintegrated them into atomic particles.
Emma’s gray eyes flickered with frustration.
"... there was one survivor among seven of them."
Eren’s smirk widened, thinking he could cough up the details from the intruder.
"But he managed to escape," Emma revealed grimly, making his smirk twitch.
"You’ve got to be kidding me," Eren muttered, throwing his hands up in mock exasperation as he took a dramatic step forward. "How exactly does the legendary swordsmaster of the Volsver let one person slip through her fingers? Six dead men are impressive. One living prisoner would’ve been priceless."
Hearing him lecturing her on competence was the final straw for her patience.
"Careless? You absolute ungrateful idiot!" Emma snapped back, taking a step and towering him with absolute fury. "You should be down on your knees thanking me that I alone managed to take down six high-ranked, elite assassins in pitch-black darkness! It is hardly my fault that the final coward chose to run away!"
"Oh, so what, Captain?" Eren shot back, his blue eyes narrowing as he matched her fiery energy. "Last time I checked the medical manuals, dead bodies don’t exactly give detailed testimonies about who paid them!"
"If you spent half as much time practicing your swordsmanship as you do running that arrogant mouth of yours, perhaps you could have caught him yourself, Young Master!" Emma barked back.
The Duke and the captains in the room simultaneously let out a collective sigh, rubbing their temples in synchronization as they witnessed their usual banter.
"Enough. Both of you, hold your tongues," Duke Alfric finally commanded with his deep, authoritative voice, making them both freeze, reluctantly pausing their verbal war.
Eren casually rubbed the back of his neck, seamlessly shifting gears back. He cleared his throat and looked at Emma. "Alright, fine, I’m sorry for that. But... did anyone actually manage to catch a glimpse of the survivor’s face before he escaped?"
She shook her head, her tanned cheeks flushed all of a sudden.
"My initial aura strike destroyed his attire. However... Someone in the public streets probably saw him. I’ve already dispatched my team to check for any eyewitness logs."
Hearing that, Eren rubbed his chin. "Where exactly did this happen? Like where you held them off, Emma?"
One of the older captains cleared his throat. "The hallway of the right wing, Young Master. Emma engaged the first three there, then pursued them through the gallery, eventually cornering the last of them in the outer courtyard."
Eren’s gaze locked onto the window as a spark ignited in his mind.
His lips curled into a slow, sharp smile that made the Duke, Emma, and the remaining captains freeze, thinking he had become manic.
"Excellent," Eren purred smoothly, snapping his fingers. "Give me exactly five minutes. I need to check something."
Before anyone could demand a translation, Eren literally sprinted out of the Duke’s office, leaving the room in a state of confusion.
"What in the world is wrong with that boy now?" one of the mob captains muttered in absolute annoyance. "We are actively tracking a high-level national security threat, and the Young Master treats it like a playground game."
Emma, however, didn’t join in on the dismissal, her storm-grey eyes locked onto the door.
True to his word, the doors opened exactly five minutes later, and Eren entered the room with the same speed he had left, gasping for air as he clutched three small, metallic, dome-shaped devices tightly against his chest and another strange-looking device.
He marched right up to his father’s desk and dumped the metallic domes onto the paperwork, ignoring the stares from his father. pulled a tiny blue mana crystal out from the central dome and popped the mana crystal into the projector slot, pointing the lens toward the large, blank white wall on the far side of the office.
He glanced back to the hot, tanned knight. "Hey, Emma. Do me a favor and close the curtains."
Emma blinked at his audacity, but something about the absolute certainty in his blue eyes made her move. And she closed the curtains as he said.
"Eren, if this is another one of your ridiculous pranks while we are actively discussing an assassination attempt on my life—"
Duke’s voice stopped abruptly as Eren turned on the projection device.
A beam of light came out from the lens, painting the plain white wall and illuminating the dark room. The captains gasped simultaneously, and even the stoic Duke Alfric leaned forward so fast his chair groaned.
Projected onto the wall was a live-recorded visual of the right wing’s grand hallway, positioned right outside the Duke’s private chambers.
The entire room went silent. The footage on the wall didn’t look like a standard magical illusion—it was too sharp, too absolute. It was like looking into a perfectly clear, realistic mirror that had somehow captured a slice of time and locked it in place.
Everyone’s jaw practically hung open wide enough to catch a passing swarm of flies. Even Duke Alfric, a man who had stared down legendary magical beasts without flinching, was completely paralyzed, his eyes wide as he stared at the glowing wall.
"Eren..." the Duke finally muttered, slowly raising a hand toward the wall. "What in the hell is this? What am I looking at?"
Eren leaned back against the desk, casually crossing his arms. "Oh, just a little side hobby of mine from the past two weeks, Father. I call them mana-surveillance lenses. They continuously capture the light matrix of a specific coordinate and store the visual baseline directly into a blue crystal as raw data. This little machine here simply reads that data and projects it onto a flat surface."
They looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language. They didn’t understand a single word, but they could certainly understand the absolute marvel playing out right before their eyes.
Enjoying the absolute awe breaking through the room’s previous grim atmosphere, Eren turned his blue eyes toward the hot, tanned Knight. She was staring at the projection, her storm-grey eyes completely blown out.
"Hey, Emma. What exact hour did the initial ambush happen?"
