The Twelve Seats And The Dispatched Devil

In one of the rooms of Count Fontran’s mansion, the story was just about to reach its climax.

No one gathered in the room could take their eyes off the man who was now speaking with effortless confidence.

At this moment, one could say that he was the true protagonist of this story.

“In other words, everything I have just explained points to one conclusion: the person who murdered Lady Michelle Fontran, daughter of Count Fontran, was… Viscount Buffer—her fiancé. You.”

His gaze shifted toward the man standing beside Count Fontran: Viscount Buffer, fiancé of the murdered Lady Michelle.

…Wow, he really was enjoying himself.

Putting aside Viscount Buffer, the culprit, I couldn’t help sympathizing with Count Fontran, whose daughter had been killed by a man he trusted as his right-hand man, only to then have every detail of the circumstances publicly laid bare in the form of a dramatic deduction.

Apparently, the whole incident had begun when Viscount Buffer failed to properly break things off with his commoner lover before his marriage.

Because Viscount Buffer had been stingy with the money he offered her to end their relationship, the commoner woman had gone to his fiancée, Lady Michelle, and demanded money in exchange for not making a scandal out of her relationship with the viscount.

Viscount Buffer might have been competent at his work, but apparently he had terrible judgment when it came to women.

Lady Michelle had paid the woman, persuaded her to leave quietly, and settled the matter, but naturally, she had then confronted Viscount Buffer.

She told him that fooling around with a commoner before marriage was one thing, but if he couldn’t even clean up after himself, then she had to question whether he was fit to call himself a noble, and that she intended to report the matter to her father.

It sounded like an incredibly cold response, but that was precisely because the other woman had been a commoner.

If Viscount Buffer had laid hands on the daughter of another noble family instead, their engagement would apparently have been broken off immediately.

Those values were difficult for me to understand, but although this world’s civilization had reached the modern age, the difference in status between nobles and commoners was apparently still enormous.

Seen that way, the fact that Lady Michelle hadn’t secretly tried to dispose of the commoner woman could actually be called remarkably restrained.

Putting that aside, the moment Lady Michelle confronted him, Viscount Buffer panicked and tried desperately to stop her.

It would have been disastrous for him if a scandal like this reached Count Fontran, who was both his fiancée’s father and his superior at work.

He clung to her and begged her to keep the matter to herself, but his pathetic behavior only angered her further; Lady Michelle tried to shake him off, the two began struggling, and an accident occurred in the confusion.

Viscount Buffer went deathly pale, and although everything up to that point made him look like a hopelessly pathetic man, he was still competent at his job and highly intelligent.

He immediately rushed to conceal the evidence and fabricate an alibi, and because Count Fontran, his superior, already trusted him, the case very nearly became an unsolved mystery.

But that was when the man who was still cheerfully explaining his deductions had appeared: Baron Patrick, renowned as the Detective Noble.

He had eagerly thrust himself into the case and exposed Viscount Buffer’s crime.

As Baron Patrick mercilessly pointed out the amateurish cover-up and flaws in his alibi, Viscount Buffer’s face flushed crimson.

Seriously, why would you provoke the culprit before even restraining him?

I sighed inwardly, pulled a silver coin from my pocket, and flicked it toward Viscount Buffer just as he angrily reached inside his coat.

Naturally, I possessed no skill whatsoever at actually hitting a target with a finger-flicked coin, so the silver piece was secretly carried by Wind Magic and embedded itself in the hand Viscount Buffer had been using to draw a small pistol from inside his coat.

As Viscount Buffer groaned in pain, the sole of Baron Patrick’s shoe slammed into his face.

Ah, I see.

He deliberately provoked the man into snapping because he wanted an excuse for some action…

As expected, this Detective Noble really did have an awful personality.

That’s right. The summoner I had been dispatched to serve this time was this capricious, naturally gifted Detective Noble, Baron Cromwell Patrick.

“Mr. Lept, you are far more considerate than any devil who has served me before, but that last intervention was unnecessary. I could have handled a danger of that level perfectly well myself. Wouldn’t you agree?”

At present, my summoner was slightly irritated because I had wounded his pride.

Good grief, this man really was a pain.

Despite thinking that, I kept it off my face and searched for words that might placate him.

“Of course. However, had Viscount Buffer managed to place his finger on the trigger, a stray bullet from an accidental discharge might have injured someone else. I know perfectly well that you possess the ability to handle even that possibility, but I’m a coward, so I wanted to eliminate even the slightest chance that someone might be shot.”

How was that?

I had praised him while putting myself down, so I thought it worked rather well as both an excuse and an attempt to soothe his mood…

When I glanced over to gauge his reaction, Baron Patrick let out an exaggerated sigh as though to say, Good grief.

“You, a devil? An amusing joke. Still, I suppose having a cowardly, softhearted devil as my assistant might make for an interesting change now and then.”

Apparently pleased by my answer, he raised one corner of his mouth in a crooked smile.

I was grateful that his mood had improved, but there was just one thing I wanted to say.

Please don’t appoint me your assistant without asking.

My assigned role this time wasn’t to serve as an assistant, but as bodyguard to this troublesome Detective Noble.

That said, considering Baron Patrick had become displeased merely because I stopped someone from drawing a gun, there was no chance he would ever hire protection against ordinary humans.

However, there was still a reason he had paid an enormous price to summon Grazen’s subordinate devils—or, in this case, me as a dispatched replacement—to serve as his bodyguard.

Then something occurred to me.

“Come to think of it, one of the rumors uncovered during your investigation said that Viscount Buffer was financing a magical society… It seems that rumor was true after all.”

Apparently grasping the implication of my words, Baron Patrick’s expression became incomparably more displeased than before.

But since that displeasure wasn’t directed at me this time, I felt relaxed and, frankly, rather pleased.

It was a little mean-spirited of me, but I couldn’t help feeling just a tiny bit smug.

“Dispose of it promptly. As you surely understand, you are here for situations such as this, not to knock pistols out of the hands of insignificant fools.”

At the same moment he spoke, a translucent humanoid figure floated straight through the wall and entered the room—in other words, our visitor was a ghost.

The ghost glared sharply in our direction, then lunged not at me, but at Baron Patrick.

Of course, the result would have been the same no matter which of us it attacked.

I snapped my fingers, and the Light Magic I activated erased the ghost in an instant.

“Yes. After all, I am your ‘bodyguard.’ I’m delighted that I finally got to perform the job I was actually summoned for.”

I deliberately emphasized the word bodyguard.

The ghost from moments ago had apparently been linked to the sorcerer controlling it, and despite his familiar having been destroyed, I couldn’t sense the caster trying to flee.

He had probably lost consciousness, so for now, I decided we should secure him.

This world had undergone rapid technological development—in other words, an Industrial Revolution—and had passed through the medieval and early modern eras into the modern age.

However, that rapid transformation had greatly widened the gap between the cities and the countryside, causing both people and wealth to concentrate in urban centers.

And among the people who came to the cities were those whose families had quietly preserved the mystical arts of sorcery for generations.

Such people began selling the sorcery they had inherited in exchange for money and social standing, and clandestine magical societies proliferated rapidly.

No, it wasn’t only magical societies.

Hidden beneath the cities were also demonic entities summoned by low-grade sorcerers who had failed to control them and let them escape, along with mystical beings that had barely survived in the world until the modern age.

Naturally, anyone drawing attention to himself by playing detective in a place like that was bound to attract the notice of those lurking in the shadows.

Baron Patrick would probably fly into a rage if I described what he did as “playing detective,” but that was honestly how it looked to me.

And so, for his own protection, Baron Patrick had learned sorcery and summoned a devil.

He personally despised sorcery, viewing it as little more than an embodiment of irrationality, yet the fact that he had still managed to reach the point of successfully summoning a devil proved that he genuinely was a true genius.

The terms of the contract required the summoned devil to accompany and protect him.

However, unless a supernatural phenomenon was directly involved, the devil was forbidden from interfering in any way with his investigations or deductions.

I had to admit, I didn’t dislike that unwavering consistency of his.

But what I truly couldn’t understand about him came next.

His upfront payment had been his sense of taste.

He considered sight, smell, hearing, and touch necessary for investigation and deduction, so taste was the sense he chose to sacrifice as payment.

Then, as deferred payment, when Baron Patrick either died or reached the point where the brilliance of his mind began to fade, his soul would be offered as compensation.

I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to solve mysteries badly enough to abandon the pleasure of food and even offer his soul to a devil.

The mentality—the sheer passion—that allowed him to consider his present self the pinnacle and decide that if he was ever going to deteriorate, he would rather give his soul to a devil beforehand actually sent a chill through me.

But perhaps that was exactly why he was a genius.

And it was also the quality I lacked most of all.

We didn’t get along, I couldn’t understand him, and to be perfectly frank, he was an incredibly troublesome man, but even so, I could respect him.

Which was why, actually… I didn’t dislike this dispatched summoning assignment all that much.