The Legendary Method Actor

A moment later, the door opened, and a nervous mid-level manor staffer was escorted in.

"Please have a seat."

Ray said politely. He slid a piece of parchment and a quill across the desk.

"Write your name, and since you are an employee of House Starr, please write down your position. Show the paper to me when you are done."

The staffer swallowed hard, quickly scribbling his information down. He held the parchment up.

Ray read it. Then, he simply leaned back in his chair and looked at the man.

He didn't ask a question. He didn't blink. He just stared.

Seconds ticked by. The silence in the room stretched from comfortable, to tense, to agonizingly heavy. The staffer awkwardly lowered the paper, placing it gently on the desk. He looked from Ray, to Rina, to Alvon in the corner. None of them spoke.

"Okay..."

The staffer chuckled nervously, shifting in his seat.

"So... now what?"

Ray just looked at him.

The staffer wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers.

"Do you... have any questions for me?"

Silence.

"Anything?"

The staffer pleaded, his voice cracking slightly.

In the corner, Master Alvon furrowed his brow, looking at Ray with utter confusion. Why wasn't the boy asking the standardized questions?

"I'm guessing you want to know about Mr. Ramada?"

The staffer blurted out, unable to handle the crushing psychological weight of the silence.

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened, but... I don't know anything!"

Ray didn't move a muscle.

The staffer's eyes darted around the room.

"If that's it... can I leave?"

Alvon opened his mouth, clearly wanting to interject, but he bit his tongue and managed to control himself.

"Okay, I am going to leave."

The staffer announced. He stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. He walked halfway to the door, his shoulders tense. He stopped. He let out a long, defeated breath, turned around, and marched right back to the desk.

"The last time I saw Mr. Ramada was tonight. That's what you want to know, right?"

The staffer confessed rapidly, the words spilling out like water from a broken dam.

"Mr. Ramada asked me to look for Nick, the manor's gardener. So I brought Nick to him. I got curious about what it was about, they were talking just outside the manor on the south side. I listened in. Mr. Ramada was telling him that he knew Nick was the one stealing the wines, and he had proof."

Ray finally leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk, his eyes gleaming.

"Nick was begging for forgiveness…"

The staffer continued,

"Asking for one last chance, swearing he would never do it again. Mr. Ramada told him he still had to include it in his report to Lady Jane, but he said he would try to advocate for a light punishment. He told Nick they needed to talk again after the gala ended. That’s all I know! And that is all I am saying, and you can just sit there looking at me or whatever this shit is."

Ray remained perfectly silent.

"I am leaving now for real!"

The staffer shouted, turning on his heel. He grabbed the door handle, paused, and looked back one last time.

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"I have worked here for a long time. Mr. Ramada always helps us out, but this is the first time he seemed genuinely disappointed at what Nick did. That bothered me."

The staffer pulled the door open and practically ran out of the room.

As the door clicked shut, the silence returned. Master Alvon stared at the empty chair for a long time. Slowly, he turned his head to look at Ray.

"I am good with you asking the questions."

Alvon muttered.

With the first interview completed, Ray continued to work. Over the next hour, a rapid succession of guests and staff were brought into the room.

When a haughty, uncooperative noblewoman sat down, Ray initiated the Scheming Courtier. He effortlessly flattered her, making her feel so incredibly important and valued that she happily gossiped about every single person she had seen loitering near the servant halls.

When a cocky young lord tried to lie about where he had been during the murder window, Ray layered in a terrifying fraction of the Grizzled Commander's ‘Command Aura’ skill. The boy was reduced to weeping, stuttering compliance in under ten seconds.

When a terrified kitchen maid was brought in, Ray smoothly transitioned to the World-Weary Healer, adopting a soft, deeply empathetic tone that gently coaxed out the exact times the wine cellars had been unlocked for the evening service.

By the time the final interviewee left the room, the drawing room was quiet again.

Master Alvon remained standing in the corner, but his posture had completely changed. His arms were no longer crossed. He looked at Ray in absolute awe. He had watched the young Lord seamlessly shift tactics, weaponizing silence, flattery, terror, and empathy with terrifying precision. Every single interview was tailored perfectly to extract the exact information they needed.

Alvon realized Ray wasn't just playing detective. He knew what he was doing. And for the first time all night, Alvon understood exactly why Headmaster Andrade had trusted a boy with a murder investigation.

The heavy doors of the room swung open. Headmaster Andrade strode in, followed closely by Svane and Sergeant Thomas. Between the three of them, they carried thick stacks of hastily scribbled parchment, the raw, unfiltered testimonies of over two hundred frightened nobles and manor staff.

As she set her stack down on the desk, Andrade paused, her sharp eyes flicking toward the corner of the room. Master Alvon was standing there, his arms crossed. He didn't sneer. He didn't offer a biting insult about Ray's age or competence. He simply stood in silent, brooding observation.

Andrade masked her surprise perfectly, turning her attention back to the young Lord sitting behind the desk.

"The interviews are complete. We pushed them through exactly as you instructed. Did your team uncover anything of immediate value?"

Andrade announced, her voice clipped and professional.

"We identified a potential secondary suspect. Nick, the manor's gardener. He was caught stealing wine, and Warren confronted him outside the manor earlier today. It gives him motive, means, and proximity."

Ray replied smoothly.

Svane grunted, dropping his stack of papers onto the desk with a heavy thud.

“I found a few nervous servants and a handful of nobles who couldn't keep their stories straight about where they were during the first hour of the gala. I marked their pages."

"I have noted similar outliers, but sorting the genuine liars from the simply panicked will take time we do not have."

Andrade added.

"Leave that to me. I need to process this data, and I need absolute silence to do it. I must ask you all to wait outside."

Ray said, reaching out to pull the massive mountain of parchment toward him.

He paused, his golden eyes flicking to his attendant.

"Except for Rina. She stays with me."

He was not letting her out of his sight. Not with Alvon lurking, and not with a killer still walking the halls.

Andrade gave a stiff nod of understanding. She turned and ushered Svane, Thomas, and a remarkably compliant Master Alvon out of the room.

As the door clicked shut, sealing them in the quiet parlor, Ray let out a long, ragged exhale. The sheer mental weight of the situation, the repeated usage of multiple concurrently partial immersions, interrogating dozens of people was catching up to him. A dull, throbbing ache began to pulse behind his eyes.

"Young master, you look exhausted."

Rina said softly.

"I just need a minute."

Ray muttered, rubbing his temples. He looked at the pile of paperwork.

He initiated Partial Immersion yet again and activated the Eccentric Scholar‘s ‘High-Speed Reading & Memorization’ skill.

Ray’s eyes snapped open, the ambient fatigue pushed aside by the manic, hyper-focused energy of the Eccentric Scholar. His hands moved in a blur. He began flipping through the pages so fast the parchment snapped like a deck of cards being shuffled. His eyes darted side to side, absorbing paragraphs in fractions of a second, committing names, timestamps, and locations to an ironclad mental vault.

Having seen him do this exact routine late at night in their suite at the Spire of Sages, Rina was entirely unfazed by the superhuman display. Knowing her young master was momentarily lost to his work, she quietly stepped away from the desk and moved toward the small, ornate bar cart in the corner of the room.

In the Ambient Presence of Ray's mind, the committee was already tearing the data apart.

Scholar: "Cross-referencing timelines... checking alibis... discarding anomalies... Blast it all! The data is solid, but the conclusions are infuriating."

Detective: "Show me."

Scholar: "Nick the gardener was confronted by Warren, yes. But according to four separate kitchen maids, Nick spent the entirety of the murder window sobbing in the servant's mess hall, thinking that he would lose his job. He didn't poison the wine. He just stole it."

Conman: "What about the nobles Svane flagged?"

Scholar: "Aristocratic paranoia. They lied about their whereabouts because they were engaging in illicit trysts in the hedge maze, not murdering the Head Butler. Their alibis corroborate each other."

Commander: "Then we are right back where we started. Bastian Sterling."

Detective: "And we are stuck. Bastian is chemically hardened. We cannot break him without physical evidence, and we cannot place him inside the wine cellar."

Ray's hands slowed, the blur of pages coming to a halt. The throbbing ache behind his eyes flared into a sharp, blinding spike of pain. He dropped the final piece of parchment, resting his forehead against the heels of his hands. He was hitting a wall. His time was running out, and the trail was completely dead.