Chapter 167 - Locating the danger

Something felt off.

He looked around, and most residents milled about their business as usual. Some got their evening drinks on the counter while others huddled in their small little groups to chat.

Nothing seemed out of ordinary to his naked eye, but his intuition for the societal structure was going off like crazy as if something was very very wrong within the hotel.

But what?

Not sure what to make of this, he proceeded towards the staircase to get back to his room. At that moment, he felt it, and a shiver went down his spine. A pair of eyes were glued to his back. He was sure of it.

Ever since his first day in Elmhurst, he'd been exposed to these prying eyes, and after he came back out of the Third Rune, it had almost become into a supernatural intuition where he could vividly feel it when someone stared at his back.

Managing not to turn back with sheer will, he maintained his stride and ascended the stairs. Even if someone's monitoring me, I can't let them know I've caught on.

His cane clicked rhythmically as he crossed one floor after another at his leisure. When he turned sideways to go into the hallway for his room, he let his eyes flicker in the direction of the gaze for but a moment, and he saw it.

A figure wearing heavy black-purple robes sat on the bar, their eyes glowing behind a symmetric mask of thin bones curving upwards. Vern acted as naturally as possible, letting his gaze wander off as he made his way back to the room.

Why is everyone ignoring them? he wondered. Such an outfit stuck out like a sore thumb in the hotel, yet no one even looked in their direction.

As Vern made to unlock his room's door, something else caught his eye. On the other exit of the staircase, in the corridor opposite to his own which housed rooms 310 all the way to 320, something even bizarre was going on.

Over five of those black-purple-robed figures crowded the hall, standing outside what looked like room number 319 to him. Vern dared not stare too hard and just waltzed into his own room, his heartbeat getting faster by the second.

What the hell is going on? he exclaimed, closing the door behind him. Who are these people? What are they doing here?

.

.

.

Where's Beaumont? Surely, the butler must know something about this, right?

He kept his cane close and sat on the chair by the study table, a thoughtful look on his face. Should I be doing something? Did this situation warrant he do something?

It was hard to gauge from the information at hand. If this was just some investigation by one of the organizations in the city, was it really his place to intervene? And for what reason?

From the looks of it, it seemed like something went down in room 319. Who lived there? he tried to recall and stressed his memory. Alas, nothing came to his mind even after repeated tries. After all, he hadn't gone out of his way to socialize with everyone on this floor.

After spending a few minutes deliberating the situation, he thought Can I ignore it, then? In truth, he had a lot to do today. He was planning to go back to Nexus and try to figure out how things worked there. So, he wasn't exactly keen on poking his nose where it didn't belong.

But goddamn, why do I feel like shit? His perception was suggesting signs of instability, and a sense of imbalance gripped his very being. It seemed that the structures around him were really in disarray.

He tried to ignore it and prepare for his matters, only to be unable to focus at all. Lady above, this is tortuous, he sighed and got up. Sticking his eye down the peephole, he tried to survey the surroundings. Nothing seemed out of order.

Standing back, he decided to cautiously unleash his perception. Using the insights gathered throughout his stay here in the hotel, a mental map of the grays of the building formed in his mind almost instantly. As time went by, footfalls began to appear on this map, which his perception most probably intuited using the subtle tremors of the structure.

Unfortunately, he couldn't see through the walls in the truest sense, and unlike back in the Ironhart district, where the pollution actively scrambled his perception, he couldn't use the lack of grays to determine who was an observer and who wasn't. At least not with the current information.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

After all, it worked on his personal insights on the matter. Even if they had subjective ownership of the space, he couldn't be sure of it until he tried to manipulate it and had to resist their authority to do so.

Luckily, all that didn't matter right now as he had no plans of envisioning any changes—he just wanted to survey the hotel.

He watched the footfalls shuffle and move around in the world of grays everywhere around him with keen focus. After spending longer than necessary to analyze it, he realized there was only so much he could glean from this skeleton of the hotel, specially in this situation where he had little to zero context of what was going on.

Thump, he tapped his cane to the ground in frustration as the Instability of the social structure around him declined steadily. I need to do better, he told himself. Closing off his perception, he reassessed the situation. Let's try something else.

He went through all his options one by one.

Divination might work, but I'm really lacking information to get anything of value. I might get something if I use Axiom's singularity, but there was no guarantee it would help. He would most probably just waste that limited singularity once again.

No. That's not ideal. What else, then?

He ran his fingers through his hair as he sat there by the table, an increasing sense of urgency gripping him.

Maybe I can go out there and ask others? Surely, the trio of Benedict, Martha, and Wilfred, with whom he chatted frequently, knew something about this.

Not keen on wasting too much time, he got up, only to suddenly halt in his tracks. Out of the blue, he facepalmed. Lady above, I'm stupid. I have all these artifacts, but I didn't even think to use them.

Shaking his head, he pulled out the amulet with a tiny mirror attached to the chain. It was the artifact he'd received after cleansing the mirror spirit in the Ironhart district.

Hmm, Irene said I can see through mirrors in my vicinity using this. He couldn't believe it wasn't his first instinct to pull this out. It was a perfect tool for this situation, after all. Shaking his head, he sighed, I really need to start thinking like an Observer, not just as a fundamentalist.

He settled back down on his chair and narrowed his eyes, planning how to avoid getting ensnared by the limitations of this artifact. If he remembered correctly, if someone else made eye contact with his reflection in the mirror, he would be trapped. And if this situation was as risky as his intuition suggested, that would be a fatal mistake.

Can't let that happen, he concluded. It should be simple, really. He already knew the layout of the hotel quite deeply. As long as he used small, out-of-the-sight mirrors, it shouldn't be risky to use it.

*Hmm, actually, I should use it in conjunction with my perception. Using the grays of instability caused by the footfalls of the people, I can predict the chances of them accidentally looking in my direction. As long as I back out in time, the risk should be reduced further.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized how this was such a great tool for him. After ironing out a couple more details, he took a deep breath and decided to take the plunge.

He unleashed his perception once more, and using the mental map which extrapolated other rooms to be like his own—just symmetrically rotated, he poured some representation into the mirror amulet.

The moment he did, a world of bright nodes appeared in front of him—populated by mirrors all around him. Some small, some tall. Some were circular, while others had myriads of shapes. Yet, there were also some that were too tiny to even be focused on.

Looks like there's a limit to how small of mirrors I can use. That was to say, he couldn't use particle-sized mirrors to not get noticed at all. It also made sense. After all, such a small surface couldn't even reflect properly.

Under the simultaneous guidance of the grays of his perception, he willed his mind in this world of mirrors to move towards what should be room number 319.

After cross-referencing multiple times and calculating the paths of the people in question—who were most probably the black-purple-robed raiders, he found one small circular mirror up high on the wall of the room to be the safest window to peep through.

Not dilly-dallying and allowing the positions of the footsteps to change too much, he dove into it.

Zssss

A bright light suddenly poked through the small crystalline mirror, and a room quite like his own appeared in his sight.

However, before he could survey the surroundings for long, his eyes fell on the figure laying face-down by the study table of that room, unmoving.

He frowned, Could it be…? Had another murder taken place in the hotel, and these people were here to investigate it? He silently took in the sight, while making sure no one turned to look at him. Who knew what kind of intuition they had?

That's when a thin, high-pitched voice entered his mind, "I'll leave the cleanup to all of you. It seems the child of death has escaped for good. There's no point in me wasting my time here anymore."

"As you will, mistress." Answered one of the lackeys, bowing. "How would you like us to deal with the tenants here? Some of them had their memories of Child of Death suppressed by Shepherd Walter, but given that he's no more, it's only a matter of time before they come back to their senses."

Child of Death? Shepherd Walter? Were these…

The tall woman, wearing a black-purple robe and holding a staff inlaid with what looked like an…eye by her side, replied as she walked out the door, "Erase their memories completely. If they resist, feel free to do whatever you want with them."

Vern couldn't help but be taken aback as dots connected in his mind. Could this be…?

It's related to those two people, isn't it? He'd almost forgotten about the pair that he'd written about in his notepad that night. He'd lost his memories and somehow woke up with a gun and the parchment with Instability Inducement on it.

So, someone or something killed one of those two men, and now that we may recover our memories over time, they want to end us for good? A sense of panic coursed through his mind as the implications of what was about to happen dawned on him.

"Fuck! This is bad."