Read Novel Full Chapter 478: Final Push [I]
Chapter 478: Final Push [I]
A lot of things were on my mind.
But first and foremost, that mysterious enemy Cadet with condition-based innate ability Ray talked about sounded suspiciously like Vince.
Though Vince couldn’t actively enforce debuffs onto someone with his power right now.
In the game, he achieved that progression after ascending to [B-rank]. Was there someone else in the Academy with a similar power? I couldn’t recall.
“It has to be someone high up,” Juliana’s voice broke my train of thought. It took me a moment to place that she was talking about the spy. “Not just some frontline grunt. Whoever leaked our deployment coordinates knew the exact loadouts for both units we’re going to deploy. I bet it’s that Sylvia girl.”
She spat that name with more disgust than necessary.
“Bah! You’re just saying it ’cause Sam favors her,” Alexia snorted, adjusting her arm sling.
“I don’t favor her,” I objected. “I sympathize with her. Her boyfriend cheated on her with her own sister. That stuff is traumatizing.”
“And I don’t care that he favors her,” Juliana rolled her eyes, eliciting another protesting grunt out of me. “I know people, and I can tell there’s more to her than she’s letting on.”
“You don’t know people,” Ray scoffed from his seat, incredulous. “It took you how long to start trusting us in the Wilds? You used to throw away the coffee I’d make every single day.”
Juliana narrowed her eyes. “What you made wasn’t even coffee. And just because I didn’t trust a group of idiots doesn’t mean my judgment of people is flawed.”
“Heyyy! She called us idiots!”
“And she was being generous,” Kang grunted from his branch, not even opening his eyes. The guy was sleeping!
“Et tu, Kang?” Ray clutched his chest dramatically with his free hand, spilling some of whatever was in his canteen onto his trousers. “I brought you dried venison yesterday! This squad is built on a foundation of betrayal and caffeine slander!”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache blossoming behind my eyes. “Can we focus, please?”
“Right,” Alexia nodded along. “Look, Sylvia can’t be the spy. I vetted her myself. And everyone else in our higher ranks. I’d have known if she was lying.”
“Or she’s very good at lying,” Juliana pointed out.
“That’s not how it works. I can read even the most minute fluctuations in someone’s Aura after I get a clear read on them. No one can hide deceit from me.”
Juliana raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? Do you have a clear read on me too?”
“Of course,” Alexia laughed, smiling smugly like she was accepting a challenge from a toddler. “Right now, for instance, your Aura is radiating jealousy, with a light dusting of ‘I want to stab Ray for bringing up the coffee’!”
“Oh my god, Julia! It was instant coffee powder boiled in river water!” Ray yelled, defending his honor. “We were in a monster-infested forest! What did you expect, a French press?!”
Juliana ignored him, took a few deep breaths, then looked dead into Alexia’s sightless eyes. “Okay. Two truths, one lie. Tell me which one I’m lying about: First, I actually enjoyed the muddy instant river-water brew Ray made, and I only threw it away so he’d keep trying harder to make me a better cup.”
Ray’s jaw dropped. “I knew it! I knew my brew had potential!”
“Second,” Juliana continued, completely unbothered, “I’m the actual spy who leaked Michael’s airborne coordinates to the Ivory faction, just so I could watch Young Master panic and have that adorable little meltdown ten minutes ago.”
Alexia’s brows knitted together. She tried to parse the subtle, flowing colors of Juliana’s aura. “Wait… no, that— that doesn’t—”
“And third,” Juliana delivered the final line without so much as a twitch in her face, “I’m secretly three goblins in a trench coat, and my real name is Barnaby.”
Silence stretched across the camp. Ray looked like his brain had stopped working. Kang also opened one eye from his tree branch.
Alexia stared at my Shadow for five full seconds as she desperately tried to find a single spike of deceit, a flicker of guilt, a trace of hesitation in her.
Nothing.
There was nothing.
“The… the second one?” Alexia guessed, sounding genuinely unsure of herself for the first time in her life. “No, wait! The third one! Obviously the third one is the lie!”
Juliana’s lips curled into a slow, satisfaction-filled smirk. “They are all lies, shorty.”
That was the moment Alexia’s jaw hit the floor. “What?!”
“Every single one. Ray’s coffee tasted like boiled mud and battery acid. I would rather eat my own boots than leak Young Master’s battle plans and sit through his tantrums. And I am quite obviously not three goblins named Barnaby,” she winked. “Unless I am.”
“But— but your Aura!” Alexia stammered, pointing a frantic finger at her. “Your Aura didn’t fluctuate! It didn’t ripple at all! How the hell did you say something that absurd with zero deceit?!”
“Because more often than not, sociopaths experience far less emotional friction between what they believe and what they say,” I replied, exasperated. “Inquisitors detect even the slightest hint of guilt, anxiety, or fear of being caught when trying to identify a lie. But people with strong antisocial tendencies often don’t experience that same stress response when deceiving others. That doesn’t make them impossible to read. They may not care about the morality of lying, but they still care about consequences. They can fear punishment. They can feel anxiety. But with enough practice, they can learn to suppress those reactions more easily than most.”
“…Yeah,” Juliana looked at me strangely. “Yeah, that’s correct.”
“Of course, a normal person can also do this. The trick for us is to train our brains to see the lie as a joke, a hypothetical scenario, or a game,” I continued. “I can do it too.”
“You can?” Alexia squinted at me. “No! I don’t believe you. You’re the most transparent guy I know. Your aura lights up like a lantern every time you get excited or frustrated. You couldn’t lie to save your—”
“When I was seven years old, I was kidnapped by a rogue band of underground Mole-People,” I stated, my tone sad. “They raised me in the subterranean tunnels beneath the Luxara for three years, feeding me just earthworms and teaching me their sacred native language. The only reason I was ever returned to the surface world was because I accidentally ate their High Priest’s sacred glowing mushroom, and they banished me for committing divine sacrilege.”
Silence descended upon the clearing once again.
Alexia’s face went through three distinct phases: initial confidence, deep confusion, and utter horror.
At last, her hands went to her head, and she started pulling her hair. “What the fuhh— What the fuck!? Wha— How?!”
“…Sam,” Ray was gasping. “You were raised by Mole-People?!”
“He wasn’t raised by Mole-People, you idiot!” Juliana scowled before giving me a shocked stare. I’ll be honest. I thoroughly enjoyed her reaction.
It’s not every day you can surprise Juliana Vox Blade herself, after all.
“Arghh!” Alexia grunted, sounding like she was losing her mind. Then she shook her head, forcing herself to go back to the main topic. “Fine, whatever, you freaks. You win. You can lie. But if that’s the case, then I’ll put my suspicion on Terry.”
I frowned. “Why Terry? I like him.”
“He’s the only one who knows where every Sector Officer is at any given moment. He’s also the one who telepathically relays your orders to them during a skirmish,” Alexia shrugged. “Think about it. If Julia isn’t actually three goblins in a trench coat working for the enemy, then it has to be Terry. He has access to every piece of intelligence we generate. He’s the obvious suspect.”
I gave it some thought. Then sighed, audibly unconvinced. “No. It’s not Terry.”
“Oh, come on,” Ray groaned. “Sam, if you go by your gut, we’ll never narrow down a suspect.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I waved a dismissive hand. “I already know what my sister is going to do tonight. I’m going to win anyway, no matter what her assets try to pull now.”
That spiraled into a long argument.
Alexia and Ray kept pressing. I kept shrugging off their concerns.
In the end, Kang spoke up in my defense. “I think Sam’s right. Whatever they had planned, it’s already too late now. And I don’t think Sylvia or Terry are the leaks either.”
“Oh?” I glanced at him. “Who do you think it is, then?”
Kang seemed lost in thought for a long moment. Then, very slowly, he sat up straight on his branch, inclining in a way that made the deep shadows of the foliage fall menacingly on his face. “You’re looking at him. It was… me.”
For the third time, we all went silent. Even I was taken aback.
At least until Alexia shot up. “Aha! I caught it! That was definitely a lie!”
Kang didn’t say anything for a while. Then he went back to leaning his head against the thick bark of the mangrove, looking rather downcast. “Stupid trick. Probably doesn’t even work.”
•••
“Lia, listen to me!” Princess Alice strided after her friend. “This is reckless. Just wait until—”
“No!” Thalia shot back, stalking toward her Knight Officers — a tall girl, visibly confused as to why she was summoned here at this hour of the night. “I’ve waited enough. It’s because I was waiting that he got the chance to wipe out my entire naval force in a single afternoon. Our entire navy! Do you have any idea what that looks like?! He’s down there right now, laughing with his degenerate little retinue, thinking he’s completely outsmarted me!”
“But he did outsmart us!” Alice snapped back, her usual composure cracking as she grabbed Thalia’s arm to force her to stop. “Just admit it. It was a brilliant move to direct our attention to the skies when his target was the water.”
Thalia yanked her arm free from her grasp. “Shut up! It’s my game! He’s beating me at my own game!”
Willem appeared beside the enraged girl, offering a placating gesture. “Lia, we were always fighting an uphill battle. He had the quantity, he had the quality. It was never fair. But we still haven’t lost. You don’t have to rush into panic. Let’s just wait until—”
“No! Just no!” Thalia pushed him aside. “No waiting! I’ll deal with him myself.”
“What is going on with you?” Alice raised her voice, knowing very well this tantrum wasn’t about the loss of the navy anymore. “A week ago, you didn’t even want to go ahead with this Mock War. Why couldn’t you have just talked to him? What’s with everyone in your family and this insatiable, self-destructive ego?! You all need therapy!”
Thalia froze for a second, licked her lips as if wanting to say something, then hardened her gaze into a glare. “You can either stay here and crack unfunny jokes or follow me. Your choice.”
Before Alice could stop her friend, Thalia was already in front of Lumina, her Western Knight, who was standing nervously beside two heavily armored vanguard platoons.
“My Lady,” Lumina saluted, her voice hesitant as she took in the sheer volatility radiating from the Ivory leader. “The troops are assembled as requested, but the forward scouts report that Ebony’s lines are completely quiet. There’s no movement— Khaaa!”
Her words were cut off as a blade stabbed into her abdomen. A horrific, wet squelch as Lumina’s eyes widened to the size of saucers.
Blood welled up at the corners of her lips as she looked down to see a wicked dagger sticking into her lower stomach.
A shadowy blur fell over her and she was eliminated on the spot. Not even a cry of pain or scream of surprise had the chance to escape her lips before an Instructor took her away.
With the girl gone, Thalia breathed softly, the hand that had been holding the dagger still outstretched. Crimson blood coated its pointed edge, dripping slowly onto the trampled grass.
“…My Lady?” one of the nearby Cadets whispered.
Alice simply stared while Willem looked away, disappointed yet unsurprised.
Two of Samael’s Bishops and two of Thalia’s Bishops and Rooks were already out of the board. Now, with one of her Knights gone as well, more than 50% of the total Officers were eliminated.
The condition for Phase 2 was met.
The grid restrictions were off.
The entire map was unlocked and the stage for the final clash was set.