Franziskus the bard, nervously plucked at his hurdy-gurdy while watching William sift through the documents the girls from his corps de ballet had stolen from the notorious brotherhood's warehouse. William meticulously separated the papers into two piles: one large stack of unimportant documents and a much smaller stack of interesting ones. He paused, pulling a page from the larger pile and rereading it. A grin spread across his face.

"I knew there’d be something," William said, holding up the page. "You told me the rules. Every quest has to be solvable. So, there must be clues where we can find them. The warehouse office was an obvious choice. But there's still nothing that directly proves the brotherhood killed the old farmer or forced him to sign the contract."

Franziskus grimaced, about to speak, when William continued. "However, we do have the date he signed the contract. And look at this note—it mentions he left a will, donating all his worldly possessions to the Church of Lieselotte."

Franziskus frowned in confusion. "The goddess of home and family?"

"Yes, and she funds all the orphanages. His donation was supposed to support that cause."

"But how does that help us? He sold everything before he died. And if he didn’t, how can we prove it?"

William leaned back in his chair with a knowing smile. "Ah, that’s where royal contract law comes into play. Did you know that real estate contracts only become valid after a full day and night? It’s to give the parties time to reconsider such an important decision. If one of them dies before then, the contract becomes void, and the heirs have to create a new one."

Franziskus raised an eyebrow. "How on earth do you know that?"

"You paid for this book on the kingdom's laws," William said, pointing to a thick, leather-bound tome with colorful bookmarks sticking out of it.

Franziskus picked up the book, flipping it open at random. "You actually read this thing? I tried, but it made my brain want to strangle itself." He read aloud, "The tenant in demesne shall render fealty and scutage in lieu of military service.” He looked up from the book and closed it: “Is this even the same language as we’re speaking?”

William shrugged and took the book back, opening it to one of the red bookmarks. "It’s a bit archaic, but it makes sense once you get the hang of it. I gained the Law skill after a day of study, and now most terms have explanations attached, only someone with the Law skill can see. There are many rules regarding the sale of land. Like this, for example, by the assize of novel disseisin, a plaintiff can seek redress for being wrongfully dispossessed of land."

Franziskus stared blankly. "What?”

"Basically, it’s a legal action to recover land someone was unlawfully removed from."

"I still don’t see how this rule about the delayed validity of the contract helps us."

William rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "The brotherhood probably doesn’t know about this rule or cares if they do. But we have the contract date. If they killed the old farmer right after he signed it, the contract would be void."

"And how are we supposed to prove exactly when he was killed? There will hardly be a death certificate with the time and date if he was murdered and buried in the forest."

William stood up and started walking up and down the room while gesticulating, “We can determine his exact time of death by asking the Church of Death to perform a clairvoyant ritual. They can then issue us an official death certificate. According to the kingdom's laws, that would be legally binding."

Franziskus raised an eyebrow. "Which church is that? I haven’t seen any temples to a death god around."

"That’s an interesting story. The church of Grimnir, the god of death, secretly sided with the necromancers during the last plague, but his plot was discovered by a group of revenants. In a worldwide coordinated strike, the revenants destroyed every single shrine and temple in a single day and killed all of his higher-level priests. Since Grimnir’s clergy and temples were all well known, none escaped, and the god was declared censured, his worship banned, and his name stricken from most records. His former avatar Uthgarl, the keeper of the scales, was elevated to a minor deity. I’m still not sure how that worked. Now, there are a few services he can’t perform. The information is quite vague, but it seems like he only controls the entry to the afterlife but has no access to it. To find out if someone is dead or to return the soul of someone for a true resurrection, you need another god. And there is only one god with the right access: Nistrul, god of necromancers and undeath.”

The bard’s eyes widened. "You want to use evidence from the church of their supposed patron god to prove their guilt?"

"It’s one of their holy services to confirm if someone is dead and when they died. It’s not cheap, and we’ll need to provide an object important to the deceased. Like a wedding ring or, failing that, a body part if we find his corpse."

"He wasn’t married, and the brotherhood probably burned his body and possessions."

William shook his head. "No, they most assuredly didn’t.”

"And why not?"

The investigator grinned broadly: “Because destroying a corpse that could be raised as an undead goes against Nistrul’s divine commandments."

Franziskus slumped back in his chair, dumbfounded. "That still leaves us without a personal object or a lead on where they might have hidden his body. Or his zombie, for that matter."

„I have a few ideas about where we can look.”

Franziskus sighed. “That will have to wait. It’s almost time for me to log out, and I’ve got a lot of studying to do this week. I’ll be back at the start of the weekend.”

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“That’s twenty in-game days away! We can’t leave those poor refugees to suffer that much longer!”

The bard shook his head apologetically. “There’s nothing I can do. I have to log out. The girls have already left. Feel free to keep investigating on your own. Maybe some of the NPCs can help you.”

William’s shoulders slumped before he shrugged. “I’ll manage somehow. The truth is out there, waiting to be found. Maybe one of these other books will help. They’re full of obscure, mostly forgotten knowledge.”

Franziskus glanced at the book at the top of the stack. “Gods of Olden?”

“I’ve read some of it. Did you know that Lieselotte was once called Lies-a-lot, the goddess of liars and rumormongers in the Cathurian Empire?”

"No way!"

"Yes, and there’s something strange about this book. It keeps turning up everywhere." William emphasized the last word.

"What do you mean?"

"I’ve found it in every library, church basement, and even private collections I was allowed to look at. It’s the one book fate seems to really push you to read. And I still haven’t figured out why."

"Maybe it’s something about Lieselotte?"

"I don’t think so. My guess is it’s about one of the disbanded or forgotten churches since they’re barely mentioned anywhere else. There’s Grimnir, whose church was disbanded for sympathizing with necromancers, and the church of Nistrul, which is officially forbidden to build temples in the kingdom. Yet they are still allowed to have shrines because some of their services are needed. Then there are suspiciously many but vague references to a god named Quorll, the Destroyer, but nothing specific. It’s frustrating. I can’t find anything about him anywhere else."

William picked up the other document he’d deemed interesting. "There is something else I wanted to show you. I found a copy of the standard contract they make the refugees and other workers sign, but I couldn’t find the loophole they used to enslave them. It’s a fair contract with an easy termination clause, no hidden fees or reference to obscure General Terms and Conditions or any other external rules. I expected some clever fine print, but there’s nothing like that."

Franziskus frowned. "It can’t be something only a lawyer would notice. That wouldn’t be fun. There must be another way to solve this puzzle."

William leaned back in his chair, staring at the contract in frustration. The words blurred together as he tried to find the elusive catch that had trapped so many innocent people. There had to be something they were missing. A hidden clause or a phrase that twisted the meaning of the agreement. But despite his careful reading, everything appeared to be in order.

"Maybe it's not in the contract itself," he muttered, more to himself than to Franziskus. "Maybe it's in the way the contract is enforced or something outside the legal framework."

Franziskus, who had been packing up his hurdy-gurdy into a bag-of-holding compartment of his wheelchair, paused and looked over at William. "What do you mean?"

William tapped the parchment with his finger. "Think about it. If the contract is fair and straightforward, then the trick must be in how it's applied. Maybe they use intimidation or threats to keep people from exercising their rights. Or maybe there’s some unwritten rule or pressure that forces the workers to stay despite what the contract says."

The bard frowned, considering this. "That would make sense. The brotherhood isn't known for playing by the rules. Their members don’t jokingly call themselves the League of Evil for nothing. But how do we prove that?"

William sighed. "That’s the tricky part. If it’s intimidation, we need testimony from someone willing to talk. And the non-disclosure part of the contract prevents them from doing that. If it’s something more subtle, we need evidence—something concrete that ties their actions to the suffering of the workers."

Franziskus rubbed his temples. "And here I was hoping we’d just find a hidden clause or something. But I guess things are never that simple."

William stood up and began pacing again, his mind racing. "We might not find the evidence we need in documents, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We could try talking to the workers and see if they can give us at least a hint of where to look. We could send someone to infiltrate them. Or at least spy on them."

Franziskus nodded slowly. "It’s worth a shot. Maybe we can find someone who’s recently left their employ—someone who’s not too afraid to talk."

"Exactly. And in the meantime, I’ll keep looking through these books. There’s got to be something here that can give us an edge."

The bard slung his instrument over his shoulder and stood up, stretching. "Well, I’ll leave you to it, then. Good luck with the investigation. I’ll be back in twenty days. Hopefully, we’ll have more to go on by then."

William nodded as Franziskus logged out, his character vanishing from the room.

Alone now, the investigator's easy smile faded as he stared at the stack of books and documents before him. So many pieces to the puzzle, yet the picture remained frustratingly incomplete.

He still hadn't reached a conclusion about the revenant invaders. Some of them seemed surprisingly nice, and they acted utterly human. After infiltrating one of their teams, he’d found that they never dropped their cover, even among themselves. It was an excellent security measure, one he had to admire. He suspected some kind of mind control was used on agents during missions or perhaps compartmentalized memories that were locked while they were on this planet.

He had discovered their main weakness: they couldn’t stay in this world indefinitely. They needed to recharge, usually following a schedule of eight days “online” as they called it, followed by twenty days outside. There were mentions that time flowed differently in their world, but he hadn’t dared ask too many questions in that direction for fear of blowing his cover. He was still astounded by how easily the invaders had accepted him as one of their own. A couple of casual trivia questions about current movies and pop culture references that was all it took. At least, as far as he could tell.

This seemed to confirm their claim of being normal humans from an earth that was at least similar enough to his own, that they shared a common pop culture. Had the invaders assimilated a parallel dimensions version of his earth? Or even actually his home? Or was it just a set of prepared identification codes they just happened to have taken from Earth, because they already used it as their fake identities background?

There were also mentions of revenants who could stay longer, or even seemingly permanently, mostly leader types, like Baron Othello, the ruler of Mulnirsheim. So, early on, he had admitted that he would stay behind when the others left. Giselle, one of the combat ballet girls, immediately concluded he was on a sabbatical. After he confirmed it, there had been no follow-up questions. The invaders were so sure of themselves. They didn’t seem to expect any opposition or espionage. But did they really? Maybe they had specialized agents, some kind of counter-espionage organization, or even an inquisition they relied on.

He had to admit, though, that their self-confidence was well-founded. Everyone agreed that revenants couldn’t be killed. They just kept coming back. He had collected multiple trustworthy witness accounts that confirmed this. But what about himself? He was an Isekai. Would he also come back from death? There was only one way to find out, and he had no intention of trying it.

He picked up Gods of Olden again, flipping through its pages absentmindedly. The disbanded churches, the forgotten gods… there had to be something important here. Why else would fate keep pushing this book on him? And not just on him, everyone who researched anything about gods or churches would find it.

He looked out of the window of one of the rooms Franziskus had rented for his team on the third floor of one of the newly expanded inns. He could see the traffic on the main road dwindling as revenants disappeared from the sidewalks left and right.

With renewed purpose, he began reading and making notes again. The truth was out there, and now, he felt closer than ever to uncovering it.