Rank 3 of the 33 Stars — Charon Sol — poured Shyme Enma’s her tea with a billion dollar smile on her face.
The fox-girl watched the colored liquid trickled into the porcelain cup. The situation was surreal. The girl a league stronger than her was calling her a master and making her tea. Arrogant, volatile, independent — those words described Chuang’s entire being. Now — right before Shyme — that statement turned upside its head.
“I want to apologize for my tea, Lady Shyme. I fear I am new to this job,” Chuang — Charon Sol—bowed politely. “I need to ask whether you prefer Lady Shyme or Mistress Shyme.”
Shyme squirmed. She felt uncomfortable with this getup. Somehow the term mistress flipped an internal switch she didn’t know exist.
“I-I will go with mistress,” Shyme stuttered, turning redder than tomato. Somehow, she couldn’t wipe the derpy smile from her face.
“Yes, mistress,” Charon bowed politely. “I have taken care of the rest of the work you left the previous maid.”
“All of them?” Shyme blinked.
“Yes, the books in the library is in its proper shelves. I have complete and air the laundry. I have cleaned all fifteen of the master bedrooms and living rooms. I also finished checking the spell-works maintaining the mansion,” Charon answered crisply. “Currently, the automaton I made are copying the files from previous years.”
“Automatons?” Shyme blinked again. “You can still build that?”
Charon bashfully fiddled.
“I self-studied about puppet making art when I was young,” Charon’s memory resurfaced alongside her answer. “I have little material to work with so I can only build basic automatons that scan the document and copy the text down using a robotic limb.”
“Where do you even get a material? How?”
“The used item that supposed to get thrown out tomorrow,” Charon answered. “I thought it is a waste given that I still have many works to do, so I disassembled several of the usable part from the junks. Sir Lancaster let me borrow the inscriber. The rest I had to do is reassembling the scrap into robotic automatons and inscribed the spell-works circuit.”
“You mean robot does all of your work?” Shyme gaped.
“The cleaning? Yes. But I work on the library myself,” Charon giggled. “I love reading, so it pains me that the library is in such a mess.”
Shyme’s mind got bat to the orbit of Mar. Was this the brash girl infamous for her explosive temper and consistent lost to Tai Hua Tianshang? Even without her memory, her instinct as a puppet-maker was still legendary enough to build working automaton from junks. Shyme studied the lovely girl in front of her, stunned to submission.
Shyme’s brain suddenly clicked.
Now that Shyme Enma reflected, Chuang’s beef with Tai Hua was the only thing most knew about those two. Shyme never heard Chuang talked about any other subject except Tai Hua and how much she hated her rival. Everything Chuang accomplished from the age of 10 — every spell mastered, every puppet built — was for a single obsession: defeating Tai Hua Tianshang.
In that moment, Shyme arrived at the question quietly planted in her path by Rem.
What could Chaung accomplished when she wasn’t blind by her fatal obsession and inferiority complex?
Shyme gulped. She must ask that enigmatic human about this. Was Charon Sol a part of a vast scheme Remus Breaker sowed for the future?
…
The man in a blue-robe stumbled down the alleyway.
How was this happening? It should be easy money. How did they find out about him?
It started a month ago when a certain figure approached him inside the locker room. They knew that he was deep in debt and gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Every night after that fateful day, he followed their orders to a letter. The request wasn’t that hard—give out several patrol routes, help cover for several kidnappers. Easiest money ever made. A life of a worthless street urchin for a healthy stack of credit.
A fireball blasted the wall next to the man.
He turned to see his worst nightmare.
A pale figure floated from the roof and landed ominously in the dark alley. Shadow framed his pale face. But there is no hiding the strongest of the royal-mages in the Grand Empire.
“Captain Wayward,” the blue-robe stumbled back. “I can explain this. Please, I can tell you ever-“
“You disappoint me, Roiche,” Wayward’s glowed with blue light.
Crash!
The wall on the building's side crumbled, and a tattooed mage rush out, stretching his hand in a bid of desperation.
“Stop it, Wayward! He is one of-“
A blue flare erupted from Wayward’s palm and engulfed the blue-robe mage. Roiche never had time to scream. The flame burnt his skin and reduced him into a skeleton in a second, leaving nothing behind.
Vice-Capitan Kruger watched his leader reduced a man to ash. His eyes widened with a mixture of horror and outrage as he stepped in an unresponsive daze toward the corpse and knelt.
“You can take him alive,” Kruger muttered. “Why?”
After a beat of silence, Wayward picked his answer.
“I need result.”
It happened in an instant. Kruger sprang out from the ground and swung his fist at Wayward. The blow collided with Wayward’s face, but the Capitan of the royal mage didn’t even flinch. Kruger ignored how badly outmatch he was, grabbed Wayward’s collar and screamed at his friend.
“Result? This is Roiche! What type of mission is so important that you throw away your comrade?”
Wayward looked at the red-hair buffoons with disdain.
“Throw away? He betrays us first, doesn’t he?”
Kruger trembled.
“You don’t know! He might have another reason!”
“Is that the excuse you plan to bring to Marchioness Marmel?”
Kruger froze. Then his face scrunched up in rage as he howled as his captain.
“You are selling our own to that bitch! We are the royal-mages. We are not the protector of some hedge noble with a decent popularity with farmers. We do not answer to those filthy thieves in the slum. We answer to the Emperor and the royal family and our own. That is all our lives matter to you? One stared from a fat grandma with cash and you become her dog.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“That fat grandma with cash feeds million of people, Kruger.”
“She is not my boss!”
“You are right,” Wayward pressed his palm on Kruger’s stomach. “I am.”
Kruger only felt the heat as a blast of force hit his stomach and sent him smashing into the building. Kruger painfully gasped for air, but the fiery bird smashing into his face a second later blew his consciousness to rubbles.
“That is a warning shot, Vice-Captain,” Wayward fixed his collar as Kruger’s body fell off the brick wall. “If you want to question me, I suggest you get powerful enough to challenge my rank.”
“Are you fine, Captain Wayward?” A youthful man in glasses peaked his head out from the alley’s corner and winced at the unconscious Kruger.
Wayward stole a look at his knock-out Vice-Captain.
“Nothing,” Wayward said with stone-cold eyes. “It appear I am getting sentimental.”
Sol sighed.
“I don’t know you are sentimental type, Boss,” Sol smiled warmly.
“Stop with the tease, Third-wave Sol,” Wayward retorted. “At least this will placate the Madam for a while.”
…
In the distance, Remus Breaker opened his eyes as his consciousness returned from Remote Viewing.
“Our lead is dead,” Rem declared to the empty room. “Update that on the thread.”
Scathach looked at Hikma, who started typing furiously on Za Wa.
“Okay, I have been wondering for a while now, but how did you trace that guy from hundreds of royal-mages in a five days.”
“It takes a day and a half,” Rem corrected. “The answer is the Earth’s greatest detective: The Internet. If you think the explosive in Millian is dangerous, it is nothing to compare to the web.”
Melody glanced at the computer’s screen.
“Rem, I take back whatever criticism I have on your world,” the demoness stared wide eyes at the replies on the thread. “First guns and now this 4chan, your world is fucking awesome.”
Cytortia peaked over.
“I only see a lot of hate thread on black people and jews.”
Cytortia unknowingly opened the floodgate of rants from the internet expert.
“Because they are LARPing as a white supremacist and Nazi. It is a way to keep the mass off the site because most of the population are easily uncontrollable idiots living in a city like Seattle and San Francisco.”
“Still, what the deal with this chaos,” Luxinna scrolled down the list. “It is like I am witnessing the meeting of xenophobic demons.”
“Lux,” Rem looked at the elf as if she was an imbecile. “There is no site more inclusive and honest than 4chan. Every post got judged not by the poster’s identity, but by its own merit. If you get banned, you can hop back with a refresh. The board is literally open to all kinds of people regardless of ethnicity with equal treatment under anonymity. This is humanity’s true self when no one is imposing order.”
Luxinna starred long and hard at the board.
“Wow, I think I my faith in humanity just got crushed.”
Rem smiled.
“It is true. This board did some pretty fuck up thing at a time, but they also busted up child-porn rings more than once, solved multiple anonymous cases, tracked down an animal abuser regularly, triangulated a terrorist’s location from videos, sent a celebrity to Alaska, tricked people into microwaving their phone, and cheered up lonely people. It is the solid proof human are bastard, but even if these autistic no-lifer still have enough kindness inside to a help a stranger, there is hope for even the worse of us.”
“That is why you are using them to track down our murderer?”
“These guys are collectively the best detectives in the world. With data from Chuang and Madam, our victory is inevitable. Plus, Phantasia’s low opinion on Earth and the anonymity of the board make our investigation nearly undetectable. Our culprit won’t realize that we already triangulate the ritual’s location tonight. You must give it to the internet: deducing the previous locations from our mages’ identity, the ritual-zone and property registries is downright ingenious. They even theorized several routes the kidnapper can use and their address. It narrowed the list down to what I can work with CCC. With the kidnapper’s faces in our hand after Hikma’s secret visit to the previous locale, the murder party is officially over.”
Everyone but Hikma paused on their track and looked at Rem.
“That’s it?” Luxinna barely believed her ears. “But how? Wayward already killed our lead, right?”
Rem snorted.
“Little Wayward misunderstand that he have plenty of time to eliminate the lead to the royal-mages and bury the case back to obscurity. He doesn’t notice that the game is pretty much over the moment I leaked the data to the nasty hand of the internet. Even if he kills Roiche earlier, it won’t be able to stop the internet from discovering our link and patrol zones. The story will end the same way. The only thing Wayward accomplished today is silencing one verbal witness.”
Rem stood up and declared.
“I call the vote! Tonight, we will launch Operation Pedo Hunt. Using Breaker CCC and all the variable our investigation provided, every bastard responsible for this mess will get their ass handed to them by midnight. Melody I want you to contact the Madam and forward her our investigation. Tell her to have these following houses booby-trap for a surprise raid.”
“Wait,” Melody skimmed through the document. “How do you identify these guys?”
“That is me,” Hikma raised his hand up. “I took a trip to the previous crimes scenes and used [Psychometry] to witness the murderer’s name and faces.” Hikma’s fist clenched. “After the vision I saw, there are no way in hell I forgot their faces.”
“Then I cross-reference those faces with Breaker’s CCC to discover their hideout.” Rem said. “Tonight, we threw these scumbags into a prison row alongside their puppeteer: Orwell Mehest.”
“STOP!” Scathach yelled. “When did you two put this together? You still stuck in the no clue zone five days ago! What is stopping you from using the internet then?”
Rem pulled out one picture of a victim: a cat-girl.
“The internet picks their cases,” Rem embarrassingly admitted. “There are only one shot to convince them and I need to pick the Achilles’ heel. An innocent, cute cat-girl with siblings who worked her hardest only to get kidnap, rape and murder? That tragedy will activate even most apathic of 4channers.”
That explanation stunned the room.
“You are waiting for a beastman victim?” Luxinna twitched.
“Hey, I don’t make their taste,” Rem shrugged. “These people have a soft-spot for animals and hate urban woman. An innocent cat-girl is pretty much god-bless for them and the surest method to fire their engine.”
Cytortia decided she wanted a full explanation then.
“Okay, Rem, using my command as a Director I request you and Hikma explained the case, I want the full picture.”
“Yeah, I am so confused,” Luxinna said. “When did it happen and how did Mehest do it?”
“Elementary, my dear,” Rem spoke. “Hikma, I will describe the case, achieved this down for future reference.”
Hikma started scribbling
“It started a month ago when Orwell Mehest caught wind that Enma Shyme posses an unidentified tome officially named the Archive of Deathless. Mehest recognized the Archive of Deathless for what it is, sneaked into the Enma’s clan manor in Venistalis and stole the book.”
“Two questions: How did Mehest recognize the book and how did the measly ranked 30th of the 33 Star sneaked past the Enma’s clan defense?” Scathach asked.
“To answer both questions: Orwell Mehest secretly descend from the tome’s authors — The Deathless Clan. The clan specializes in soul-base spell-casting. These masteries also includes the spell to shift into a spirit form and transverse any barrier.”
“Wait,” Scathach’s eyebrows scrunched. “Those guys should be exterminated ages ago by the—”
Scathach’s eyes widened.
“Oh. Shit.”
“Bingo, the Deathless Clan got genocide ages ago by the Grand Empire sponsored by the Holy Church. They refused to surrender to the Grand Empire during its expansion era and got annihilated. The clan’s heritages and artifacts either got destroyed or scattered. Orwell Mehest watches this city every night to remind himself of how his ancestor barely escape alive and it fuels him with an obsessive sense of revenge Breaker’s CCC received from a mile away. When he heard one of his families' sacred text got bought from the black market by a plucky girl from Enma Clan and left to rot in her collection, he did the predictable thing.”
Rem continued.
“Dear Orwell then performed the ritual his ancestor would disapprove,” Rem said. “He anonymously hired a bunch of the slum’s hoodlums and scumbags to kidnap orphan children no one important will care about and sacrifice them to a ritual that will nuke Venistalis and make him a god. For extra measure, he contacted his connection in the criminal underworld with share hatred for Grand Empire and offered to make the Empire suffer for some aid. The connection decided that with the current carnage in the Phantasia—Heavenly Daughter’s rampage in Starland and the opening of that tomb in the Isle of Knowledge — the god’s attentions are sufficiently diverted for a bet. They plan to have the agent they planted inside the capital aid Mehest and backstab the capital forces when the party starts.”
“And the agent planted here is Wayward,” Hikma added.
“Scathach,” Melody asked, stone-faced. “Just how many folks have beefs with Grand Empire?”
Scathach couldn’t answer.
“Mel, please don’t ask that question to the petulant children playing house in the sky,” Rem brutally answered. “She cannot answer because she ignored all of this mess during its conception and now we have to fix their mess for them. And we are lucky we pull his pant down this early.”
Rem laughed sarcastically.
“If the time-table is right on track, the royal families — together with the rest of the generals — will return from their stay in the border within a month. That directly coincide with Mehest’s ritual deadline. If everything went according to his plan, he will net the capital, the royal families and the generals in a fell swoop. You got to hand it too him. If not for us, he would achieve the impossible and level Grand Empire without a fight.”
And that night the group of unknown heroes led by a Mafia aided by Pepe the Frog saved the Grand Empire from sure-fire annihilation in the name of all the good in the universe.