The abyss was dark, and silent. But not so that one would think themselves gone blind and deaf.
There was a presence to it, a gaping emptiness, like a maw about to close.
Scratch was without a body and indelibly conscious of the blackness, it was all he could hear and see until the whispers of demonkind reached him.
Whispers and wishes towards nobody, into the void.
"Bregornatis," he said, "Youthere, somebody speak to me."
A finger gestured for him to come and, through paths unchartable, he came. Somewhere at the other side of the world, where a dungeon had pierced into the abyss.
Little speck of light as he was, he following the gesture.
It was the incubus, Youthere, leaning on something invisible, summoning him. There was something different about him, the bangs that covered his eyes were combed back, revealing his piercing gaze. "I shan't call you master anymore, because you no longer are." He said. "How should I call you? By your true name?"
"Don't speak nonsense. Get me out of this state." The speck Scratch tried to take control of the boy's body, but nothing happened.
"I'm afraid I'll be your familiar no more." The demon said. "Did you believe you were able to bind me by the strength of your own soul? I willingly remained your slave for as long as I believed the forces of Evil would benefit. Alas, no more."
He opened his mouth and Scratch, a tiny mote of spirit light, was briefly enveloped by his beastly jaws and slurping tongue. He jumped out of the way before the mouth could close around him.
"Quit your messing around. If you haven't noticed, the Promise has fallen. Get me somebody that can help me get another body... the lich, Rita, I don't know. If we don't re-establish order now they'll run rough-shed over... over..."
Youthere had folded his hands under his chin and nodded along in a sort of quasi, mocking expression. It gave him pause.
The demon smirked. "Still in denial, are you? There'll be no order of any kind, your underlings will be exterminated and your territory seized. No. Demonkind would really prefer that you stay dead.
This way, the crumbles of your empire can at least be used to inspire further oppression. You've been a very big disappointment to all of us, Scratch."
"E-exterminated?"
"Yes! A huge disappointment." Youthere agreed with himself.
"I have to find them." Scratch said.
"Oh no, I'm sorry to say there's no possible way for you to do that." Youthere said, not sorry. "Bregornatis and I discussed it extensively, power comes from a body and you have none. So there is no possible way for you to do anything."
"For christ's sake, quit your playing around. You're here to help me, aren't you, why else would you come down here?"
"I came here to mock you." Youthere said, suddenly quite serious, "I came here to spit on you and your restrained evil. The family of temptation believed you to be our next king, and you would have been, had you shown the slightest commitment towards cultivating bloodthirst and sadism. Instead you wallowed in mere pride and greed, shallow, mortal evils. We can use your legacy better than yourself. Good riddance to you!"
There fell a silence. Youthere smirked and turned to leave.
"Think about your failings in the darkness."
Scratch sputtered. "This isn't the end. I refuse. There's still sympathetic magic, there's still family on the continent."
"But you have no mana, never did." The demon ascended onto the stone steps into the world above.
No matter how he tried, Scratch could not follow. The abyss held his soul.
----------------------------------------
Never did have mana.
Scratch had been able to use spellrods with the help of a leech demon. The creature had been able to digest his blood and convert it into a flow of magical energy.
But it had also done something else. It had produced venom and had to be constantly controlled not to shoot it into his bloodstream. An unpleasant surprise after having made the pact.
Perhaps that should have been a lesson not to trust demons.
....
What IS mana?
Scratch swirled around the faint light of the dungeon entrance, trying desperately to distinguish his own thoughts from the whispers of the unmade demons. The perfect verbal memory that goblins possess was gone, and he found himself struggling to remember anything.
Mana is stored magic. Stored magic. It is released in parts to power spells, like floodgates for a watermill. That's right, because magic flows ever down. Spells are just controlled release of it.
Dungeons are just concentrated rivers down into the abyss.
He could see the lines of magical flow pouring out of the opening. The stem of the dungeon, the concentrated slipstream of pure magic.
You don't need a flood-and-release system if the river itself is strong enough. That's how sanctums work.
He placed himself directly into the stem, close enough by the opening before it dissipated into all directions by the wide open space that was the abyss. But he was not a magical crystal.
"How does this work." He wondered out loud.
He could see clearly in his mind's eye the circles and patterns that mirror had twisted the magic in to link individuals to their depictions, but he couldn't replicate it.
"Is that something of the body as well? It's possible though, isn't it?"
The voices of the other demons grew louder, and he could less and less hear himself think.
----------------------------------------
Rita had gotten rid of her jester costume. On reflection, she was a bit embarrassed by it.
At the time she had attributed some symbolic meaning to it, having been made the fool by her family. But that was something nobody could have appreciated other than her. And then she had wound up killing the fire lady in it.
She was much more presentable now, in middle-class moss green Promise wear, and quietly swore to herself never to dress up again.
The panic was setting in.
The other café's were shuttering their doors, goblin delivery boys ran hurriedly across the cobble and not to deliver anything, the streets were cleared out.
She took another sip of her parfait.
Goblins didn't scare easily. Or rather, they didn't scare quickly, only once it was too late. The boy waiting on her table was scared of her, and he hadn't closed up shop when perhaps he wanted to.
"What's got everybody running for cover?" She asked him.
"Oh! M-miss Rita. The city is getting flooded."
"Flooded? Aren't we two-hundred meters above- ah, so it is."
There was a shimmer of water trickling through the cobblestones, rising up on the sidewalk and touching her heels.
"Everybody is packing up. They say the whole city's going to sink and the men of the green city are coming to kill everyone."
She dug into her satchel for a value 1 bill and held it in front of her face. "Papa. What's happening? I got the fire mage didn't I?"
But the salf-satisfied expression of the one-eyed goblin on the denomination remained frozen in time. There was no response.
"He's not at his mirror." She tossed it to the waiter boy as payment, "I'll go look for myself."
Her warp spell fizzled. As if the warp circle weren't there.
She looked at the boy and he gave her a difficult expression. So she pressed her fingertips together and levitated up, to gain a vantage point.
The flow of magic was wrong. The roads and parks that had been designed to channel it towards the hungry maw of the dungeon laid limp with magic, like unremarkable city streets.
And at the horizon, where the manor was supposed to stand nestled against the cliff-face, the stone had a hole in it showing the azure sea.
-
Two days later she again had a value 1 bill in her hand. The ferry had given it as change when she paid for entry into New Heiligdom.
The man had taken one look at her bone-white skin and horns and come to his own conclusions. "You're part of the 'family' aren't you? The spire is a safe haven for your kind, as long as you have money, you can sleep easy."
She crinkled her nose at a peasant getting so close to her face.
"Wh... say.... ow."
"What?" She turned her head with the idea that the ferryman had said something to insult him.
"Please, take a seat." He said, gesturing towards the mass produced cushion seating attached to the metal benches. The gondola was about the size of a medium sloop and could carry about as many people. For the journey, the passengers could sit on the basic seating and watch the world go by through the portholes.
She stood over the cushion and lowered herself on it. It smelled musty.
The college of magic had felt like a punishment coming off from her life of privilege at Reddington castle, but at least it had had private quarters and bedding. She had a horrifying premonition of a lifetime sitting on thin cushions and eating peasant bread.
"R...ta.."
She looked at the crumpled up note in her hand. "Oh, Papa." And folded it out.
"Rita. Why aren't you with the others?"
"What others? Last time I was at the Promise the whole dungeon was gone."
"Shadow bandits? Werewolves?"
"Papa? Where are you? The whole region is overrun by foreigners. Whoever made it out, they're heading towards the safe zones."
"I want you to go back, establish order. With the sorcerers and adventurers on our side-"
"Scratch, everybody thinks you're dead. You are the one that's kept everyone together this long, without you everybody has gone their own way. Ritter has disappeared the college into the clouds, corporations are bending the knee to this 'lords of the green city' business, the whole world is occupied with protecting their own little pocket. I can turn this ship around but I cannot establish anything without you there."
The image stared into nothing for a while. "I'm a little tied up at the moment. What are these safe zones?"
"New Heiligdom, a few bandit towns... the Grienicians are imprisoning highborn so the palace towns are keeping them off."
"Grienicians?"
"Yes, the republicans from Grienice? They're everywhere."
"Rita... are you still ambitious?"
She sighed and rolled her eyes. "I guess."
"With me, the Grienicians have killed this world's banking system. That's fine by them because they forbid usury, but it means two things. First of all, a lot of prominent people in trade have lost a lot of money that had in their payment accounts, I mean devastating wealth-destroying amounts, and secondly, credit is gone, no more lending or capital build-up. This means the currency is about to go into a deflationary spiral. Do you know what that means?"
"No?"
"That means the dollar you're holding is going to be a lot more precious in a few weeks when people realize how rare it's become. Save up now, sell your dress, don't buy anything. You'll have a bit of money when the market stabilizes. I want you to take in family when I send them to you. Give them a hot and a kot and put them to work."
"I've got to play mom for your lost spawn?" She whined.
"That's what it means to be a leader. If you're going to be a queen, this is a good place to start... what's the place?"
"I'm on a ferry to New Heiligdom. But Papa-"
"A good place to start. I'll reach out to the others.
----------------------------------------
It took a bit of finagling, but the sympathetic magic reached everywhere his image had.
Going back and forth between various family members, Scratch could organize two groups. Those who had escaped to the surface, and those who hadn't.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
As Youthere had said, Lydia and most of the core family had drowned during evacuation, but there was a village worth's of subhumans still in the underworld desert, in the homesteads surrounding the troll garden. The cavern leading up to the lion's head had been wrest from the earth and dragged unto the sea, but that underworld expanse couldn't be taken by the sea.
What had happened was that the underground river that fed the garden had been poisoned by sea water. The whole farm had been salted and become dead earth. Even the grass and trees between the houses had begun to die.
The kids had panicked and turned against each other, but the voice of their Papa could get them to calm down. Cooler heads prevailed and amongst themselves they were able to chart a course of action. They'd boil as much sea water as they could to fill up their vases and vessels with distilled moisture, then don their most protective clothing and trek into the desert.
Somewhere the plane had to connect to the overworld once more.
They dug out Cyclophan's shard and left the dragons where they were. With the dungeon collapsed, the small god didn't have much power, but he could one day prove useful. He was built into a food cart as the floor.
-
The situation on the surface was more complex.
The new world order had cast itself as a people's revolution, headquartered in Youthere's Grienice.
Their ambition was not just on the downfall of the Promise, but of all noble houses. The dispossessed goblins could ally with the noble houses that had once been their vassals (and some that hadn't) to fortify their palace cities against the men of the green city.
Most didn't make it and were swallowed up by the new Grienician empire. But their were a few loose coalitions that could establish a territory with the help of their ogres.
-
As Scratch had predicted, access to money for all sides of the conflict plummeted, and violence became the new currency.
Not self-sufficient, the palace cities raided the farms and caravans of the Grienician's people's collective, who in turn attacked their own enterprises with the ambition to weaken their power and capture ancient treasures.
Much of the unique industries of the Promise were destroyed forever. Even with the men of the green city reclaiming the fallen metropolis, alchemical plants and advanced machinery couldn't be revived. Along with the new age of strife, it rang in hunger and disease for the continent.
-
Following these events play out, Scratch felt as if the millions of value 1 bills bearing his image were strings connecting him to the world. Like a massive web of twine that anchored him to reality, little lines he could pull individually to nudge things to his liking. He became eager to make Benesant regret this attack.
But as the weeks went by, the dream of reclaiming a body without the goddess' help became ever fainter.
The goblins of the palace towns kept the use of currency alive, even valuing the smallest denomination above its fiat for the connection it offered to their papa. The goblins of the underworld desert had no need for money and spoke to him via small wooden effigies. But the Grienician empire worked its hardest to block him out.
-
He suspected his old familiar of having a hand in the policy. Anybody could have suspected he might have a window through the value one bills, but only a disciple of his would so quickly mimic the method of replacing currency.
As the citizens of the overworld still counted their wealth in goblin money, they couldn't simply be commanded to burn it in exchange for an unproven coin. Especially those who remembered the fall of the gold value. Instead Youthere, or those directed by him, had done what Scratch had once done. They had issued money backed by the old currency, always guaranteed against a stockpile in the city treasury. In a few decades, they would have gotten used to counting in Grienician Thaler, and the removal of the goblin guarantee would cause no great protest. Right now, they sat in a dark vault and were no gateway to anyone.
----------------------------------------
The weeks turned to months and then years, and Scratch began to grow dull. He'd repeated the same cliches to so many of his offspring that the whole process had become an unthinking routine. Blackouts in his memories where he had had entire conversations with ambitious followers without being consciously aware. Now more common than his lucid time.
He would have worried about the unthinking time swallowing up all of his essence and becoming a prattling machine like the disembodied whisperers, if that thought had not too been worn out.
-
But he was stirred once more when the strings that connected him began to disappear.
One by one, something was plinking away at his presence in the world of the living.
He was in the effigies of the desert tribe. Now dwindled but hardened by the environment, capable of survival and shepherding a next generation.
He was there with the trading palace towns, increasingly there for the sake of the goblins rather than the other way around.
And he still had his limited presence within the Grienician empire.
But in all these places, his presence was thinning.
"Rita," he said, "can you still hear me? How goes the plan?" His voice came through in a mask ornament within her private quarters.
"Hhm? Ah, papa Scratch. I can still hear you."
She had herself attended to by a cadre of incubi. Each being shapen by her own ideal they were identical.
She barely looked up from the pedicure/manicure/full body massage.
"The plan goes... well you know how it goes... same as always."
"You're shirking your mission," he admonished, "we need to defeat Benesant before I can pass on. What have you done to prepare for the battle with the second wyrm?"
"Well I... I kind of have my own thing going on now, you know? I'll get back to it."
The mask paused. "Benesant killed your entire adoptive family."
"Yeah? Will killing her bring them back?"
"What!? No, but-" For some reason her callousness angered him. "Well no."
"Okay, so... kinda doing my own thing."
He couldn't explain why what she'd said was so offensive to him. She was following her own best interest, had he ever expected anything from anyone other than that? "I think the empire has caught on to my trick. They're burning currency- are those demons you've got there?"
Rita groaned and dismissed the men. They backed away bowing.
"It's like you don't know anything. We're working together with the green city."
"I think you're forgetting something here. The men of the green city want to kill all noble-born, they're hardcore revolutionaries."
"...That was years ago." She sighed, "we came to an understanding with the political families."
"Families?"
"Governorship is a family business, just like any menial trade. Really, they're just like noble families fighting to protect their power, but instead of spell and sword it's with money and lies. That's how I think of it. The Guero family vetoes military decisions in the senate and in return we send them some boys every year."
Scratch looked around in the room where he was situated. There was an opulence to it, and the demons that stood humbly to the side stifled smug grinning. "What is going on? Since when are we selling kids to demons?" He was just asking bewildered questions now, unsure of any of the machinations going on. Now I know what it's like to be Cyclophan... I don't like it.
"They're not slaves," Rita said as she stood up and bathed her stark white skin in the sunlight, "they go there as 'refugees' to increase the voting block. Ever since the breaking of the Promise Grienice has had a policy of accepting all non-humans claiming persecution with no proof of identity. Let's see, how did Youthere put it...? 'They will be life-long children, never responsible for one another, always the responsibility of others. Thus the republicans may agitate how they are left in destitution and the monarchists may complain about having to feed the children of another, but neither will raise them to be self-sufficient."
"Rita, incubi are demons of temptation." Scratch said carefully. "I send him over there because I didn't want him corrupting the culture at home in the Promise. You're sending young boys to be brainwashed, that's not what we want."
She looked at him and laughed. "That's not what you want. But the world has left you behind, Papa Scratch. You came to ask me why your image is disappearing? Because you're no longer relevant, that's why. The goblins are forgetting you, the indulgent narratives of demonic temptation are their new religion."
She gestured towards the window and by extension the general masses outside.
"You think this flood of skin and flesh is your family? Your family's dead, alongside you. There's nothing here for you to be fighting for."
He was taken aback. "And what about you? You're just... doing your own thing?"
"I'm just enjoying myself while I still can. If anything is going to goad out the goddess of light herself, it'll be something the demons in Grienice cooked up. The whole city is their testing ground after all.
But when that happens, alright, I'll set our plan in motion. Only then."
"...Will I be there to see it?"
"I don't care."
----------------------------------------
He wasn't.
Over the next century the decline of his legacy went very quickly. The undergrounders found and mixed into other underworld cultures of dwarves and dark elves, Cyclophan found a new dungeon master, the palace town goblins started using the new republican credit system, and any depictions of him if there were any began to be mixed with ancestors of other sagas until they could hardly say to be his image at all.
The sprawling web that had connected him to the world had dwindled into a handful of threads and he began to feel like a tight-rope walker dangling above the pit after failing his act and barely holding on.
The last few bits of Scratch in the world of Lite were ancient artifacts and curiosities, kept in darkness and then... none.
-
He tumbled through the darkness.
If his soul were to be taking out of the abyss and into Benesant's domain, he would once again be at her mercy. He had as good as eradicated her religion while in power and she wouldn't make the mistake of giving him a goblin body a third time.
Why does it always come down to this? Is this my inevitable fate? To be judged? Perhaps I should have been making peace with the higher power, self-reflect, become a better-
A point of light showed itself. A last thread impossibly small and far away that he had never noticed before in the light of the others. He eagerly snatched and escaped.
----------------------------------------
Scratch opened his eyes and tried to move, but only his largest joins cooperated.
Like a man dancing the robot he wrestled himself loose from some sort of foam he was in and pushed away a flexible transparent force-field.
He was still trying to focus his eyes when he took a step forward and felt his foot impact wood with a hard solid *tock* sound.
He tested the ground again, and leg tapped against it like he was made of solid material.
He looked at his hands, and first felt relief to see his familiar moss green goblin fingers once again, but then noticed a shininess and lack of detail. He tested them and they were of a hard unmoving substance.
It took him a moment to realize what was familiar about it. It was something that had once been common in his life, but not for some time.
Plastic.
The wood he was standing on was part of a giant shelf, and he had just wormed himself out of a display box, not the only one lined up against the back.
He was still trying to catch his bearing, turning to see the room the shelf looked out over, when he came face to face with what was to him a giant man. A chubby-cheeked colossus with glasses, staring mouth agape at the moving miniature.
"Y-you're not the goblin all-father, are you?"
Scratch looked up at him, looming and fat. "Depends on who's askin'."
"But that's impossible. You're from my isekai world, how did you...?"
"It's best not question these things." Scratch said. "Who are you, where is this place?"
"I'm Stevie. This is my studio." The giant said nervously.
-
It had seemed like a large open space, but compared to its owner, it was a relatively small room.
Display cases of figurines and colorful posters took up ever inch of space so that there was nowhere to put one's eyes that wasn't an assault on the senses.
There was a stained mattress next to the door and desk with laptop on the other side, on which a deep blue orb glowed magically.
"I normally don't get a lot of visitors." Stevie said. He snatched one of the miniatures nearby as if protective of it and put it away out of sight.
Scratch pointed. "Take me to that ball next to your computer."
The man was hesitant to touch him so he held up an old comic book for the plastic man to stand on and transported him to the bureau. "That's the world of Lite, where you come from." He placed him down. "You see I'm- I'm a writer, and I write about the things going on there. The people of my world, a certain subset of them, they're really interested. These figurines I have... they're collectibles. We just released an expansion in the card game about the goblin empire."
Scratch touched the outside glass with his plastic hands. Inside the starry sea he could see Lite floating, flat as a pancake. "Is it actually, you know in there?"
"Y- yeah. I assume so."
"And you're just a regular person? This isn't some celestial realm above reality, and you're not a divine creator."
"No." The man almost laughed saying it. "I'm a shut-in from the north. I bought this thing online. Oh... online is like a series of tubes we use to communicate-"
"I know what the internet is Stevie, goddamn. I'm from the city too. This is the real world- I mean the previous world, I mean Cradle! Lite is just a snow globe on your desk..." He violently smacked his plastic face. "And you're the author. The one that put all those heroes there."
"You're not saying... you're from here?"
"Of course I am. Do you have any idea how many people have been getting sucked into this thing?"
He was stunned for a moment. "N-no. The only people that are supposed to get isekai-ed are those I pick myself. Thought you were native to the goblin population."
"You had nothing to do with it?"
"I- That's why I'm confused. The device lets me reincarnate fans of my work that have recently died, you're saying there's others?"
Scratch tapped that glass. "This thing's been leaking. Benesant- you know the goddess? She's been picking up and gathering souls across all sorts of worlds. I ended up butting heads with her on... a legal disagreement, and- well look at me."
The eyes behind the spectacles grew wide. "She turned you into a toy!?"
"No man. She trapped me in your world ball. I can only reach out to you now because you made a toy based on me. Listen, you're the one really in charge though, aren't you? You can do anything to a soul coming in?"
"Yes. I can even make them gods. You've met my friends from highschool, they're gods there."
"Let's figure out a deal."
-
Half an hour of negotiations later, Scratch had written down a set of instructions on the back of an envelope with an enormous ballpen.
"This is the combination for my rainy day fund. Couple of million in untraceable cash. It's all yours. Enough to put your career on pause for a bit, no?"
"Hah." The man gleamed but then soured. "But I can't isekai you. The ball lets me add powers when a soul transitions from here to there... you're already inside."
"I don't want any more isekai-ing from you. What I need you to do is cut off reincarnation completely, so Benesant can't send her cronies after me again. Can you do that? Cut them off?"
"I don't know..." He sat down to stare at the ball. "Wait... maybe- yes. Benesant's realm is in the celestial plane of this world, so if I turn off this valve... she'll only be able to receive and place souls within the world of Lite."
"You seem to know what you're doing. That's great. How much time is passing inside right now? There's a mismatch, isn't there?"
"Usually a lifetime passes by within a couple of years. I tend to be finished writing about someone's adventures just before they start, then the next person can be born in time to live through that adventure."
Scratch stared at him for a moment. "And that's how you make a living."
Stevie fumbled with his glasses, feeling called out. "I mean, it's still a lifetime to them. I give souls that passed too early a second life to live out their fantasies... magic, adventures... friends..." he became wistful for a moment. "It's everything a nerd wishes for."
"Well that's pathetic. Why Japanese?"
"They're my main audience. Japan loves isekai, look, I have some manga here about my light novel." He grabbed some comic books and held up the insides to the toy. "That's Abyss. He's reincarnated with his whole school bus after they crash, but they betray him and it's this whole... This story ends with him becoming the demon king. It's pretty metal."
"Metal? He destroys the world, doesn't he?" Scratch asked. "You're okay with that?"
"Well he doesn't -destroy- destroy it. He just turns the overworld into, sort of, a world of darkness for a few decades, and then his successor is the villain for the next story. I like to have a demon king raze the world from time to time, so history doesn't build up too long and too complicated, but it all goes back to normal in the end... Oh! Want to see your whisk card?"
"I can't believe it."
Stevie put away the comics to rummage to a drawer. "Yeah. Whisk cards are manifested to use for a collectible card game we're publishing. Your goblins are actually the face of-"
"You're killing thousands and you don't give a shit. It's actually amazing!"
"Oh." He flushed red. "That's- You were trying to become demon king too. Didn't you spread an addictive substance and create bandit cities?"
Scratch put his tiny plastic hands on his hips. "Yeah, I'm a thug, I admit it. I go over bodies sometimes to get what I want, but killing isn't the point. I did it to create a safer world for my family."
A bit miffed, Stevie put the collectibles down harshly. "Well that didn't work out for you, did it? You know... I've seen a lot of people come and go and it's always the 'ends justify the means' guys that end up feeling betrayed by the end. In the end it's all those years of making it happen that make up your life, what you get at the end is just as temporary as anything else. I- I mean to say, you didn't think you'd get to the finish line and everybody would be safe forever, did you?"
Scratch looked away, avoiding his eyes. "Not my place to judge you, I suppose. I have nobody to protect now. I'll just need to take Benesant down."
"When you let go of this body..." the man said more gently, "your soul will be taken in by Benesant's realm. She will not be kind to you picking your next life. On top of that, Abyss stands to take over the world unopposed. It's going to be a chaotic period. Are you prepared for that?"
He spread his arms. "I've been on the back foot before. That's where I'm at my strongest."
"Very well." Stevie flicked him with his fingers.
When the toy fell down, it was a lifeless object.
----------------------------------------
Popular Author Implicated in Drug Trade
You may not recognize his name, but Stevie Lauer has a dedicated international audience. As ghostwriter for several publications he is responsible for a veritable deluge in fantasy stories. His works have been adapted in comics, video games, and even cartoons. ('Manga' and 'Anime' according to some.)
But now Lauer is in the spotlight for a less glamorous reason. He was taken in by police after attempting to take money from a safety deposit box they say has been used by a recently deceased drug lord.
Law enforcement have been staking out this depot for months, lying in wait for the criminal's accomplices to finally show themselves and last Friday, they finally got one.
Lauer claims to be innocent, but if he wants to prove he had nothing to do with the drug money, he will have to explain how he knew it was there. Either way, fans will need to wait a bit longer for the next issue of their favorite manga.
>>Read all about the recent crackdown on drug gangs on page 6