Transmigrated as a Playboy: I Solve Crime With Forensic

The Sound of Shattering Gods

The ballroom of the Royal Palace had become a graveyard of statues.

In the center of the c*****e stood The Porcelain Lady. She was a nightmare of elegance—a woman made entirely of polished white ceramic, her joints clicking softly as she moved. Her face was a painted mask of red lips and unblinking eyes.

"Eleanor Vane," she screeched again, her voice resonating like a bow dragged across a violin string. "Your soul is ripe. Give it to me!"

She flicked her wrist. A barrage of ceramic shards flew through the air like daggers, aiming straight for my wife's heart.

"Crystal Wall!" Eleanor shouted.

She slammed her hands together. A barrier of thick, blue ice erupted from the floor, shielding us. The ceramic shards impacted the ice with the sound of a thousand breaking plates, embedding themselves inches deep.

Eleanor flinched, sweat beading on her forehead. "She's too strong, Silas! She's a Tier-6 Transmuter. My ice is cracking!"

I stood behind the ice wall, my heart hammering against my ribs. I looked at the vial of Nitroglycerin in my hand. It was unstable. Dangerous. If I dropped it, we were both pink mist.

"Ceramic," I muttered, my mind racing through material science data. "High compressive strength. Extremely hard. But..."

"But what?" Eleanor snapped, reinforcing the wall as another wave of magic hammered it. "If you have a plan, 'Ghost', now is the time!"

"But it has low tensile strength," I finished, a grim smile spreading under my silver mask. "It's brittle. It can't handle vibration."

I looked up at the balcony. I couldn't see Nyx, but I knew she was there. I raised my hand, signaling—three fingers up. Count of three.

"Eleanor," I said, stepping close to her. "Drop the wall."

She looked at me like I was insane. "Are you mad? She'll skin us alive!"

"Trust me," I said, locking eyes with her. "Drop the wall. And cover your ears."

Maybe it was the desperation. Maybe it was the strange familiarity in my voice. But Eleanor hesitated, then nodded.

"One... Two... Three!"

Eleanor dissolved the ice wall.

The Porcelain Lady grinned, her painted mouth stretching wide. "Exposed!"

She raised both hands to cast a massive transmutation spell.

I didn't cast back. I threw the vial of Nitroglycerin.

It didn't hit her. It hit the marble floor exactly two feet in front of her.

BOOM!

The explosion was deafening. A shockwave of pure thermal and kinetic energy rippled outward. It wasn't a magical fireball; it was physics—rapidly expanding gas pushing against the air.

The blast threw me and Eleanor backward.

But the Porcelain Lady took the brunt of it. She didn't burn. She shattered.

The sudden, violent shockwave sent a vibration through her rigid ceramic body that her structure couldn't absorb. Spiderweb cracks raced across her white skin.

"NO!" she screamed, but the sound was distorted, broken.

Her left arm crumbled into dust. A jagged crack split her painted face down the middle.

Up on the balcony, a shadow moved. Nyx. She dropped a heavy crystal chandelier directly onto the weakened villain.

CRASH.

The Porcelain Lady was buried under a mountain of crystal and brass.

Silence fell over the ballroom. The music had stopped. The screaming had stopped. Hundreds of nobles stared at the cloud of smoke rising from the center of the floor.

I stood up, dusting off my velvet coat. My ears were ringing, and my ankle was agony, but I stood tall.

"Science," I wheezed, "is a bitch."

Eleanor pushed herself up, staring at the pile of rubble. She looked at me, her blue eyes wide with shock.

"That wasn't magic," she whispered. "There was no mana signature. What did you do?"

"I introduced her to a pressure wave," I said. "Ceramic creates resonance. Resonance breaks the bond."

Before she could ask more, the pile of rubble shifted.

A hand—cracked and missing fingers—burst from the debris. The Porcelain Lady dragged herself out. She was ruined, half her face missing, leaking glowing purple mana instead of blood.

"You..." she gurgled, pointing a shaking finger at me. "You are not... a mage."

"No," I said, stepping forward, letting my limp show now. "I'm a Detective."

"Guards!" Captain Draven’s voice roared.

The Royal Guard finally decided to act. Dozens of armored soldiers rushed the floor, surrounding the broken villain... and us.

Draven pushed through the line, his face purple with rage. He looked at the Porcelain Lady, then at me.

"Arrest him!" Draven shouted, pointing his baton at me.

"What?" Eleanor stepped in front of me, her ice magic flaring again. "Captain, are you blind? He just saved the court! That monster was turning people to stone!"

"He used an illegal explosive device inside the Royal Palace!" Draven spat. "He endangered the King! And look at him, Lady Eleanor. Look at his limp. Look at the shoes."

Draven marched forward and ripped the silver mask off my face.

The crowd gasped.

There I stood. Lord Silas Vane. The Hollow. The fugitive.

"Silas?"

The whisper came from every corner of the room.

"He's the murderer!" a Duchess screamed. "He killed Baroness Lydia!"

"He's a terrorist!" Draven yelled, sensing his chance to end me. "He bombed the Palace! Take him down! Kill him!"

The guards raised their halberds.

I didn't move. I didn't run. I looked at Eleanor.

This was the moment. The choice.

She looked at me—the husband she thought was a waste of space. The man she thought murdered a lover. But she also saw the man who had just blown up a monster to save her life. She saw the man who knew about the scar on her shoulder.

Draven raised his sword. "Die, traitor!"

CLANG.

Draven’s sword didn't hit me.

It hit a wall of absolute zero ice.

Eleanor had summoned a glacier between me and the Captain. Her eyes were glowing with blue fire, her hair floating in the magical updraft. She looked terrifying. She looked magnificent.

"Lady Vane!" Draven shouted, stumbling back. "What are you doing? He is a criminal!"

"He is my Husband," Eleanor declared, her voice echoing through the silent hall.

She turned to face the entire court, her back to me, protecting me.

"And he just took down a Tier-6 threat while you and your guards were hiding in your armor," she spat. "If any of you touch him... I will freeze this entire Palace solid."

The threat hung in the air. Eleanor Vane was one of the most powerful mages in the Kingdom. Even the King looked nervous on his throne.

"Eleanor," I whispered, touching her arm. "You're committing treason."

"Shut up, Silas," she hissed back, not looking at me. "You owe me an explanation. And a dance. But right now... we have to leave."

"Leaving might be a problem," I noted, looking past the guards.

The Porcelain Lady had vanished. In the chaos, she had slipped away through the floorboards. But she had left something behind.

A purple fog was beginning to fill the room.

"Gas!" I shouted. "Everyone, get down!"

"It's not gas," Nyx’s voice whispered in my ear. She had appeared beside me, seemingly out of thin air, looking like just another terrified noblewoman. "It's a distraction. Look at the King."

I looked at the dais.

The King wasn't looking at the chaos. He was looking... at me.

And he was smiling.

A slow, creepy smile that didn't reach his eyes. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers.

The floor beneath me, Eleanor, and Nyx suddenly glowed with a red rune.

"Teleportation Trap!" Eleanor realized too late.

"Checkmate," the King mouthed.

The world twisted. The ballroom, the guards, the ice—it all vanished in a flash of red light.

Unknown Location: Time Unknown

I hit the ground hard, groaning as my bad ankle took the impact.

"Ugh..."

I rolled over, coughing. The air here was damp. Cold. It smelled of sulfur and ancient stone.

"Eleanor? Nyx?"

"I'm here." Eleanor’s voice was shaky. She summoned a ball of witch-light.

We weren't in the Palace anymore. We were in a cavern. Massive stalactites hung from the ceiling. A dark river flowed silently nearby.

"Where are we?" Nyx asked, checking her daggers.

I looked at the walls. They were lined with ancient, rusted machinery. Gears the size of houses. Pistons that were silent and still.

"We're under the city," I realized. "Deep under. This is the Old Infrastructure."

"Why did the King send us here?" Eleanor asked, her voice echoing.

"Because he didn't want to arrest us," I said grimly. "He wanted to feed us."

"Feed us to what?"

I pointed into the darkness.

Two glowing red eyes opened in the gloom. Then two more. Then a hundred.

The sound of skittering metal claws echoed on the stone floor.

Clockwork Spiders. Thousands of them. And behind them, something much, much larger was breathing.

I checked my pockets. I had no more Nitroglycerin. I had no Flash Powder. The poison in my blood was suppressed, but not gone.

I looked at my wife and my thief.

"Ladies," I said, picking up a rusted iron bar from the ground. "I hope you saved some mana. Because class is in session."