Chapter 12 – Cora’s First Case
Should I just shoot the little guy outside?
Merik shook his head and folded the letter neatly and put it into his pants pocket.
Stepping outside, he saw Miss Sofia was almost done with her work. His polite footsteps made her glanced in his directions.
“Done with the little memory lane?”
“Ha, yes, ma’am.”
He was about to say goodbye but his deeply grained in habits, made him act otherwise.
“Anything I can do to help, ma’am.”
The reserved woman gazed at him with a slight smile. Then she slowly said,
“Sure, you can take out all the trashes to put them in the city dumps, please. Surely, it must be easy for the Overseer of Peace to lift these bags a lady is struggling to. I must reposition the furniture's inside his house and in a bit, I’ll be finished, too.”
“Well, then. Farewell, Ma’am Sofia. Take care.”
“Farewell, Merik. You take care as well.”
Merik smiled with his eyes and went to the trash bags but what he saw made his mouth turn slightly agape seeing the bags.
The trash bags were by no means, small or in any way, light. And there were five of them.
Cleaning your house gave birth to five child-sized trash bags. How much of a dirty menace are you, old man?
He silently cursed and carried all the trashes within his hands.
A sudden urge made him looked at the branch of the tree and he saw that the crow was already flying away, towards the sunset.
________________________________________________________________________
Surely, he did acquire one of the most mysterious powers, hell, one, people had no knowledge about. But he did, by no means, not know the ideas of dreams lest use it at his own leisure.
The abilities were related to one’s knowledge over the said abilities. Meaning that if a person were to acquire affinity towards fire-related abilities, he must learn the basic meanings behind the “fire” itself, not just that “Fire burns and it hurts”, and so on.
Suppose that he is trying to learn how to ride a bicycle. Him knowing that a bicycle is made of steels and composed of wheels and a handle and a seat, doesn’t make him acquire the ability to ride it. He has to try riding it and only after learning how to ride will he know that he has acquired the ability to ride said vehicle.
However, one has to fall multiple times, if not countless, if he were to learn riding a bicycle and this goes the same for learning the abilities and spells as well. Only scratches and slight injuries could happen to a person trying to learn riding a bicycle but for a person trying to learn the unfathomable nature of earth’s elements and even dreams, unspeakable things could happen and to no one’s surprise, it happens a lot.
There are numerous cases of undead corpses, endlessly burning themselves and endlessly suffering before the Overseers found them and help them be “less sufferable” and horrifying cases of descent to madness.
Life-threatening side effects discouraged a lot of people from trying to embark on such deadly journeys and the information on acquiring the powers were already hidden enough.
In Merik’s case, he tried to learn a lot of abilities and spells, as part of their regimes as Overseers, of course. Be it fire and physical strength affinities which were one of the most common abilities in their world, even the more complicated ones such as condensed elements, i.e., lightning. However, the weird ability of his devoured the acquired ability before it even had a chance to manifest itself in Merik’s body.
Without any reasonable explanations towards his colleagues, he and Albert decided to just let the others know Merik as a talentless guy but with efficient and capable abilities yet wasted potential.
Back to the problem, with Merik only able to perceive dreams as some unexplainable and absurd play-like phenomenon that comes to people when they’re asleep, he, by no means, couldn’t use dream-related spells, much less be the strongest person.
But hey, better me than anyone else, right?
“What are you contemplating so much for? You just got back from the check-up strolling and are you just going to daydream all the way?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Merik raised an eyebrow and looked at the pessimistic girl who was now hovering over his desk.
“I mean with your area being peaceful and all, my life as an Overseer going to end up always strolling in the morning, stuck to this daydreaming senior for the rest of my life?”
Cora slightly sighed.
“When will we get a case, a real case, like the ones that intimidating, rude guy, what’s his name, oh right, Rabies, uh, Davies. Right. The ones he has to solve all the time.”
She silently looked at where the Rabies would be, afraid that he might hear but the guy was nonchalant.
Merik just slightly mumbled.
“Careful what you wish for.”
Merik straightened himself and started to explain to her.
“It is true that compared to our region, the guy has to solve a lot more cases and, in some cases, serious and deadly ones and doesn’t necessarily mean that all the cases are not as serious and deadly. So, my advice is to just enjoy your peace while it lasts.”
Cora frowned, visibly dissatisfied with the answer.
Seems the girl wants to prove her worth so much to her colleagues or just, to herself?
Merik shook his head slightly before looking at the entrance of their garrison. There was a young man, an officer worker named Lenny, wearing such dreadful expression on his face, opposite to his usually light-hearted demeanor.
Merik sighed and looked at Cora, this time his voice loud and clear.
“See, I just said to be careful what you wish for.”
Cora’s eyes lightened up at the sight of Lenny panting and ran into the garrison with panic.
The audacity of this girl was boundless.
Lenny, the young lad, was carrying some kind of letter in his hands. It could be a newspaper or it could be a report on something.
Everyone went to him and started asking questions.
Landon came out from his room hearing the ruckus and the moment he came out, people made way for him and kept silent while staring at their freshly promoted, red-haired, sharp eyes, Head-Captain with anticipation.
Merik, at least, had to acknowledge the authority of his superior because he thought that Landon had to take some time in taming the whole garrison but it seemed that his previous reputation as a successful Overseer carried over, in a good way.
“Old man, you’d be proud.”
Or it could just be his lineage, heh.
But Merik would be lying that if he said he wasn’t intrigued by this event because it was not any every day that a person would barge into their garrison with a lot of sweats and panic.
“Breathe, Lenny. Take a deep breath. And tell me what happened. Clearly.”
Lenny took a deep breath as at the words of his supervisor and started explaining.
“Captain, uh, Head-Captain, sir. I believe that a severe case of Paranormal just broke out in (blank) district just last night and it seems that it will affect the neighborhood soon if we are not taking actions!”
Landon didn’t say anything but just glared at the young lad and Lenny understanding the glare, gulped and continued reporting.
“I’m not sure about the exact level but it seems that a dangerous monstrosity has appeared and it is one we haven’t seen in years. Well, at least, my years, anyway.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Uh, I couldn’t take a look but I can confidently say that the victims are two females and a male, a mother and her two children and, ...”
“Will any of you lot save my wife and my children?”
A middle-aged old man barged into the office room right after the hoarse yelling. But the rest of the officers rushed to him and held him by the arms.
Obviously, barging violently into the government organization's hideout was not ideal of a plan.
“What the hell, why are you punks holding me? Let me go. I’m not here to look for problems. I’m here to ask for your help, goddammit.”
Visibly intimidated, the man lowered his tone a bit and started to cooperate properly with the officials.
The man wore a severely serious signs of insomnia and his body slightly reeked of alcohol. While his age should be in his early forties, the mature features of older years were apparent on his gaunt face. He was a skinny fat man of middle class, according to his attitudes towards the officials. Not so intimidated and but no daring at the same time.
After the officials let go off his arms at the wave of Landon’s hands, he grumpily huffed. Then he repeated his and Lenny’s words again.
“Please, you need to save them. You’re the only ones that can help me.”
“Tell me what happened. Mister...?”
“Jackman.”
After making sure that he wasn’t given a seat, he sighed and started to explain thoroughly.
“Last night, I went to a pub as any man my age would. Called “Lily’s Window.” There, drank with my mates for how much hours only Light knows. Then, I went back and noticed that my wife and the children were missing from their beds. Surely, I wouldn’t think too much if it were normal times but even my drunk ass knew that it was 3 0’clock in the morning! She was supposed to take the children to bed and slept, herself was supposed to.”
Still not given a seat, seemed that the man was getting a bit frustrated.
“Aren’t you at least give me a chair to sit in?”
No one moved but Cora. She willingly gave her seat to the man and finally he was able to sit, in the middle of the office. Of course, all people present were staring at him.
“Sure, the Overseers are by no means, a polite bunch but damn, aren’t we a bit rude?”
Merik thought to himself and kept the thought to himself.
Fazed by the pressure, the old man continued after coughing slightly.
“But then, I saw them. Near the damn well. The old well since the age of my granddads. The same well that my father warned me not to wander around and his father before that. Scared shitless... umm, sorry, I was scared so I called out to them. Didn’t get any response back, so, I went up to them and asked why were they not in bed. But then, what I saw shocked me.”
The whole room was so silent even a drop of a needle could be heard.
“My wife, my boy and my girl, they, they..., they are not “them” anymore.” They have become “it”.”
“What do you mean “it”?”
The man started to despair and covered his face with his rough hands, his voice slowly raising at with each word.
“It wasn’t my family. THAT WAS A MONSTER!”