No less than a few hours after Chairman Deacon died, a full-fledged investigative team had been dispatched by the East Panamic Transport Organization to investigate the heavy energy anomaly along the travel route between the Kandrian Empire and the Shionel Confederation.
"This…!" The head investigator of the team gasped with disbelief. "How can such a thing come to be?!"
The crater was mind-blowing, so much so that it beggared the mind. It was hard to actually fathom the sheer size and expanse of the crater that had appeared alongside the road.
"Master Sera, what do you make of this?" The man murmured, shocked.
A woman standing beside him narrowed her eyes as she inspected the crater. "Well… One thing I can say is that this was not caused by a clash between Martial Masters."
"How can you be so certain?"
"Unless something goes really wrong, a clash between Martial Masters won't spill over to the environment. We have immense control over our power and we usually only affect what we want to," Master Sera remarked. "Still…this feels far too large to be done by Martial Seniors, especially since it's clear it was done in one go."
"So then…?"
"Some kind of esoteric technology was definitely involved," She concluded. "However, reports from the civilians stated that a clash between Martial Artists had ensued, so maybe they were fighting over some powerful resource and something went awry during the fight. It's hard to say really."
"The explosion has completely annihilated any and all forensic evidence," The man heaved a troubled sigh. "We have basically nothing to work with."
"Looks like whoever is responsible for this probably accounted for this to happen," Master Sera realized. "It would explain why they started such a high-profile fight in front of so many witnesses. They knew that there would be nothing left by the time they were done."
"Well, they were right. There is nothing left. The only thing we have are shoddy witness testimony and a list of victims," The investigator sighed as he went through the initial reports that had been gathered by witnesses that had flocked to the nearest office to report their tales.
"Who are the victims?" She asked, curious. "Members of a traveling convoy of Deacon Industries are most likely the only victim, given that one of the parties in the conflict was a traveling convoy from Deacon Industries according to one of the witnesses." The man remarked. "Contact the Chairman and interrogate him," Master Sera simply remarked. "We are in the process of doing that right now, we'll get an answer soon. Until then, this is all we have."
It wasn't much later that the truth came to be. The butler of Deacon Industries enlightened the investigative authorities about the measures that Chairman Deacon had taken to protect himself. A quasi-Master level bomb being among them.
"Does that mean that both parties died in the explosion?" The head investigator frowned. "We have not seen any signs of survivors, and according to the butler, very few people knew about the bomb. So there is a high likelihood that it was an assassin who attacked the Chairman's convoy, killed Chairman Deacon, and died on the spot themselves."
There had been no witnesses recording any sole person traveling from the area, which supported such a theory, although it was also possible that they had excellent stealth.
The case quickly came to a close with the limited amount of information available at hand. The prevailing hypothesis was that both parties involved had perished in an explosion after Chairman Deacon died, triggering the explosion that caused the crater.
"…Just as planned," Rui murmured when he read the brief report that the Beggar's Sect had given him that relayed the results of the investigation.
Rui had chosen a course of action that would ensure that this would be the most likely outcome of the investigation.
He had also known that the identity of Chairman Deacon's assassin would never be looked into without any physical evidence. After all, without there being any forensic or physical evidence to work with, the only thing one could use to try and gauge the identity of the assassin or the person who hired the assassin would be motive.
There were far too many people with motives to kill him. Rui knew that there was an extremely high chance that the investigative authorities would abandon this line of investigation when they went through the sheer list of the times that Chairman Deacon had had assassinations attempted on him.
Ultimately, this was a simple investigative department of a transport organization, he didn't expect much from it based on this fact alone. What he was more concerned about was the other entities that were much more affected by Chairman Deacon's disappearance. Thankfully, however, they didn't have any means of knowing the truth.
Too many people wanted the man dead. And many of them were powerful. Rui would be a lot more concerned if he was the only person of power who had an enmity against him. But someone like Deacon had undoubtedly made enemies out of tons of powerful folks across the entire continent.
An insignificant Martial Squire who had picked a fight with the man eight years ago was nothing, nowhere near the top of the list of likely perpetrators. People would just have to move on quite quickly.
Still, Rui did not want to be too hasty, so he decided to spend just a little time until the initial wave of shock blew over.
Considering his prominence in the Shionel Confederation, he knew that Guildmaster Bradt was probably one of the largest suspects within the nation since Deacon was a constant thorn in his side.
"Hah, poor old man, taking the heat for my deed," Rui smirked mischievously.
For the time being, he resided in a bustling commercial town quite some distance from the crater, keeping a low profile. It wouldn't be long before he made his way back to his home. Just the thought of returning made him so excited that he could hardly sleep.
