“Mirror up.”

In their narrow room, they sat facing each other with the table in front of the bed. Yurine held a small mirror while Yu trimmed his beard with a straight razor.

He thought he was also incredibly handsome when he had a beard, but he always shaved it off because he thought he looked best without it. He was also uncomfortable with the beard.

“My arm tired. We didn't do this in the capital, are you going to make me do this all the time?”

“The full-length mirror at Lucia's inn stands up on its own, so I can do it there by myself, and I don't want to pay a barber, so until I find a solution, yes, I will.”

Even if he was afraid to go to a barber who did not have the facilities of the twenty-first century, he would eventually have to go to one for his hair, but if he went to a barber every time for his beard, it would cost him dearly.

And even though he didn't like beards, he liked to shave his beard, that was one of the reasons why he didn't want to go to the barber.

“Most of the people I see here are beardless, and even more than beardless, it's as if they are completely hairless. I haven't seen any leg hair or arm hair. I wonder if it's something to do with the genetics of the people in this world. I wish there was a spell that could completely prevent the growth of unwanted hair.”

He didn't want to be the only hairy person in the world.

“It would be especially nice if I could stop pubic hair from growing. I can't cut it because Yurine is with me, and how am I supposed to cut it when she's not there? I can't get in there with a straight razor, no. Is there a depilator here or something? How do characters in other isekai adventures do it?”

He didn't know how to find out the answer, as he was too embarrassed to go and ask someone else how he got his pubic hair.

“I need to solve this problem soon.”

What exactly was the library at the Wizarding Academy like? If it was a place of all kinds of information, he might find a recipe for a depilatory there, or he might try to corner Marino or Raul and ask them.

“But what am I supposed to say? I can't ask someone how they got there.”

Maybe he could try waxing, but it hurt just thinking about it.

“And if I don't, my beard might sting when you want to kiss me.”

“Wha! Why should I kiss you?!”

When she shouted, she dropped the mirror in her hand and it fell on its back.

“Hold the mirror.”

When Yurine lifted the mirror, he ran the straight razor over the last of the foam on his face. It was now almost completely smooth.

“It's sunny today, isn't it?”

“Yes. Are we going to keep doing research?”

“We'll go to some houses close to us. Tomorrow we will return to the capital.”

Four days later, the first match was to begin, for which they distributed letters. Their first match was between the Sea Monsters and the Vesthelm Storm. Yu had made a deal with both teams.

“Those idiots still haven't arrived.”

“Do you worry about them?”

After washing his face, he towel dried himself and fixed his hair in front of the mirror.

“Don't be silly, I don't worry about anyone.” Yurine's cheeks puffed up as she said this, making her sound unconvincing. “I'm just saying that if they fail, it will be harder for us.”

“Maybe they are still at work, but I don't think they will be gone for a week as they have bought a few days' worth of food, they should be back soon. They might even come today.”

As much as Yu wanted them to find something, he didn't think it was likely, but since they had been in the forest for a few days, his expectations were inevitably raised.

"There is a possibility that they died in a monster attack... I hope not."

If he lost them, he wasn't sure he could continue the search for a dangerous killer on his own.

But that wasn't why he didn't want them to die, he just didn't want more people to die because of him.

“Yesterday in the carriage you were saying something about killer.”

“Him?”

He remembered that moment as if it were an old memory, even though it had only happened yesterday.

“I think other people who are investigating this matter have noticed it too.” There was one detail that stood out among the killer's murders, his targets were not so randomly chosen. “I think the killer prioritizes the knights. In fact, I think the word "I think" is redundant, the killer chooses knights to kill.”

Almost half of the names on the list they had begun with ‘sir.’ That meant they were knights.

“There are more non-knights killed than knights.”

You could see that the first murders were knight-dominated, but in the later murders the number of knights killed decreased and the number of ordinary people increased.

“Yes, this may seem confusing, but here's the thing: most of the civilians killed are servants of the knights. They reduce the percentage of knights among the victims.”

The killer also killed the servants he found in the houses he visited. The number of times he entered a house without a knight in it was five.

*Knock, knock, knock.*

There was a knock on the door of their room. Yu approached the door to unlock it.

“Who is it?”

“It's me.”

He pulled the bayonet from the door and the door opened by itself.

"Lan, is this door broken?"

If the door was not locked from the inside, it would open by itself.

“Lylphia, why do you answer ‘it’s me’ instead of saying your name?”

“Eventually you realized it was me and opened the door.”

Lylphia was holding a large, thick-covered book bound in brown leather. After saying good morning to Yu, she poked her head inside and looked for Yurine. When she saw her, she entered the room and greeted her.

“How are you? Do you like your present?”

“Don't think that a superior being like me is a child to play with toys.”

Yurine crossed her arms over her stomach and refused to make eye contact with Lylphia, lest her eyes reveal her true feelings.

“I knew you'd like it.”

Lylphia seemed to have pulled herself together. The difference between the Lylphia who had left a few days ago and the Lylphia of now was marked.

“It's good that she recovered quickly. It would have been useless if she had to mourn someone she just know for a day.”

Poor morale would lower motivation and reduce productivity.

“I wanted to be with you on your birthday to give you a present, but Yu sent me away and had to leave you two alone.”

“It was your suggestion to leave us here, though.”

And he still couldn't get used to Lylphia calling him Yu.

“That was better anyway.”

“Alone with Yu?”

“Wha! No, of course not! What are you talking about?” Yurine shouted, pointing her finger at Lylphia.

“When do you plan to confess your intense love for me?”

Yu thought it would be a good idea to embarrass him a little. He wanted to see more of her shy face.

“Your ass easily fly! Don't think you're something just because I just show you my nice side!”

She was kicking the ground at the same time she was screaming. Yu felt like he need to bite her because her cheeks were red like pomegranates.

“I got you a present too,” Lylphia said after laughing hard at Yurine's reaction. She handed Yurine the book she was holding. “Mr. Valarfin doesn't seem to know much about raising children…”

“How dare you?”

She insulted Yu's abilities and continued as if nothing had happened.

“…that's why I wanted to do something to improve your relationship.”

Yurine put the book on the bed and began to turn the pages.

“A storybook.”

“Yes. You can ask Mr. Valarfin to read it to you when you go to bed at night. I think it will help you grow closer.”

“Why should I get close to this guy? You bought it for a ridiculous purpose...”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Yurine put the book under her pillow.

“That's a nice gift. I can't wait to read Yurine a story. It's a father and daughter activity.”

The idea of lying in bed with Yurine and reading stories excited him.

“Well done anyway, you are lucky to be able to offer a gift to a supreme being like me. I appreciate it.”

“I guess that's a way of saying thank you without saying thank you.”

Yurine had managed to thank Yu yesterday, but today it seemed that she was still trying to keep her distance from others.

“It's better this way,” he thought. Somewhere inside he was afraid that Yurine would get close to others. “Thinking in this way wrong. I am still no more than a stranger for her, trying to replace her mother because of my regret and fear of became alone. Still I don’t want her to love someone else more than me. It makes me afraid, I don’t want to see her leaving me.”

Even knowing it was wrong, he couldn't stop himself from thinking in that way.

What he was looking for was family. He had no romantic or other intentions, he was looking for someone to replace with his older sisters he had lost months before. And it was Yurine who took his melancholy away from him, who filled the void. He can’t imagine the intensity of darkness he would fall into without her.

The last scene of him holding his sister's hand while it was still warm flashed before his eyes. The moment happiness was taken away from him by worldly desires, the moment his life was irrevocably changed.

The urge to cry was strong enough to crush even the happiness Yurine had created.

“Crying doesn’t fit my handsome face.”

The memory of Satoshi, whose pain he thought he had forgotten, reasserted itself, encouraged by Yu's lowering of his guard.

He thought that if he had chosen to stay on the second floor instead of the third, the killer might have gotten into his room. If he had been a good person, if he had accepted Satoshi as a friend and they had talked about their world through the night, Satoshi might be alive.

“Look at you handsome! You let your guard down front of girls.” He smiled to Lylphia. “Now that you're back, the others must be back safe and sound, right? Did you manage to find anything useful?”

“We found something, but I don't think we should talk about it in public. We can go to Sivina and Ana's room and talk about it there.”

“I think that would be better. I have something to say too.”

He didn't want the prize to be stolen, so his research had to be kept out of other people's earshot.

Even the forester he had hired to accompany Lylphia and the others had been given the minimum amount of information possible. What they learned had to stay inside of the group.

With Lylphia leading the way, Yu and Yurine went downstairs to get two glasses of drink for themselves and then up to Sivina and Ana's room.

Their room was still in the same place, opposite Satoshi's room. Satoshi's room had been vacated after the murder and no one wanted to keep it.

The owner of the guild said that people wouldn't want to keep a dead person's room and announced that it would now be used for storage.

It was not only about that room. This murder in the adventurers' guild made people feel unsafe here, and even less trusting of adventurers. Half of the people staying at the inn had moved.

Yu said “Hello there,” and entered the room.

“Hello,” Sivina and Ana replied.

Compared to Lylphia, girls had not recovered yet. And that was normal, Lylphia was in shock over the death of someone she had only known for a day. Sivina and Ana had known Satoshi for two months.

But he couldn't understand Raul's feelings sitting on the bed across from them. His expression was not one of grief, he was changing the shape of his face so that his true feelings could not be seen.

“I heard you managed to learn something.”

“Unexpected development, I did not expect success from you.”

Instead of sitting next to Raul, Yurine dragged the chair across the room to the end of the bed where the girls were sitting. Yu was also standing with his hands on Yurine's chair.

“I already knew Yurine wouldn't lose her hardness in a few days.”

Ana tried to put a wry smile on her sorrowful face.

Yu didn't like it when they were in low spirits, but as long as their low spirits didn't slow them down, Yu could ignore them.

“Tell me what you found,” Yu said.

“We didn't find Sony or the killer,” Sivina, the leader of her group, began to explain. “We found traces of life.”

“And not in one place, but in certain places at certain intervals,” Raul added.

Yu put his left hand to his chin and began to think.

The traces they found could have belonged to Sony or William Berry, or they could have belonged to someone else. Nevertheless, the fact that they were able to find something in the area where they planned to find traces was a satisfying result.

“Go on.”

At Yu's signal, Sivina continued.

“Our first target was the cave you mentioned. We found evidence of short stays in the cave.”

“There were scratches on the walls. Because of their shape, we don't think they were caused naturally or by an animal.” Lylphia traced the shapes in the air with her finger. “It looked like a human hand, whoever did it must have done it to pass the time.”

“There were some charred pieces of wood and stones scattered around. We assumed they had brought the stones to make a circle for their fire, because there is no other way for stones of that size to be dragged into the cave.” Sivina spoke again after Lylphia.

“Of course, we can't definitely say that Sony or the killer was there, but I believe that these traces are important. Assuming that the people we are looking for are there, they could still be nearby.”

Lylphia spoke again after Sivina. Their successive speeches were beautifully synchronized.

“I can tell by the tracks that the time they were there was not too far away,” Raul, a tracker unlike the others, said. “They might have been there from time to time.”

Raul's theory made sense as there are few safe places to live in the forest.

“After that, we kept looking. The trail we found belonged to the next camp. Even a stake had been left there or forgotten.”

Ana was the one who spoke. Sivina continued speaking immediately afterwards.

“We also found traces of human life in an area where the trees are dense.”

“We only explored the eastern side of the river and the locations we explored were no more than three hours away from the river. Finally, we found another cave, not exactly a cave, but a hollow. And inside there were traces of a fire. That's all.”

Raul had the last word and completed their reports. Yu listened to them attentively.

“This is satisfactory information. Thank you for your efforts.”

They now had the data to assume that their target lived nomadically in the forest. New questions were next.

“I wonder if the tracks you found belonged to someone or something that lived there? Or are we sure they were human tracks and not goblin tracks or something?”

He looked at Raul. If anyone could answer that question, it was Raul.

“I don't know.”

“Uh...” Yu sighed in disappointment. “Then we will continue with assumptions.”

“There's one thing I still don't understand. Why would Sony hide in the forest instead of leaving Redchapel or even the country?” Raul continued after the disappointment he made. “If I was a fugitive that people were looking for, I would have already left the country instead of staying here.”

“Maybe the killer is holding him hostage,” Ana theorized.

“Maron said Sony could only go as far as Redchapel. Of course, he mentioned that distance. He could also go to Southelm, but since he was last seen here, we're looking for him here. I also don't think the killer could take Sony hostage. After all, Sony is a mage, it shouldn't be hard for him to kill the killer. I can't think of any other possibility except that they're working together.”

Maybe it had something to do with the Blessing that Sony had stolen. Maron insisted on not telling them and they would not get the answer until they caught Sony.

“I think we should prepare ourselves in case Sony is in cahoots with the killer.” Sivina agreed with Yu.

Although they had no evidence that Sony von Bishory had helped William Berry, it was the most likely possibility.

“Maybe they are old friends,” Yu said.

“Why would he want to be friends with a murderer?” Yurine asked a fair question.

“I don't know,” Yu said. He rubbed his chin with his left hand. “Why would anyone want to be friends with a murderer? There was a serial killer who was very popular with women. Even though he only killed women, when he went to prison he got a lot of fan letters from women, and when he got out of prison he married one of the women who sent him letters. Maybe it's a similar situation.”

“People are really stupid creatures, except for my mother.”

“I wish you had put ‘and except for my one and only, my darling, my Yu.’”

“How you can be my one and only?!”

Yu had a strong urge to squeeze Yurine's cheek. It used to scare him when she got angry, but now he thought she was just sweet.

“To be happy, I don't deserve...”

Today, every time he felt happiness, negative thoughts came to his mind again. It was different from yesterday. Maybe this was his way of punishing himself against happiness.

“You had something to say too.” Lylphia brought up what they had talked about in Yu's room.

Yu nodded. He had spoken to Yurine upstairs and now he could explain his theory here.

“I have a theory based on our research.” Yu looked at Sivina and Lylphia. “The killer may be choosing knights to kill.”

“Satoshi...” Sivina silently recalled the name of her dead friend.

“He was not a knight.”

But here were two people who were knights and therefore likely to be targeted by the killer.

“What gave you that idea?!” Raul became angry, thinking Yu tried to blame Sivina. He raised his voice, as Satoshi often did.

Yu had previously thought that he loved one or both of the two girls, but after his sudden anger, he could believe that he was in love with Sivina. Unlike the hopeless Satoshi.

“Apart from knights, he has also killed ordinary people or other people who are loyal to knights, but his main target has always been knights. I don't know his motivation for killing the knights' servants, maybe it's linked to hatred of knights, but the reason he kills people who are not knights is probably to hide his real goals.”

A painter could paint a bright sun portrait and add a few small hills in front of the sun, but it was still a sun portrait.

“The killer wanted to get into Sivina's room that night, I think. So that's my theory, there's a possibility that it's not so.”

When Yu spoke his idea, Sivina put her hand to her chest and lowered her eyes to the floor. Clearly, as expected, she was blaming herself.

“Lylphia is a knight too, you can't blame Sivina directly!”

At first Yu had tried to ignore Raul's anger, but now it was getting too much for him to ignore. Raul stood up and shouted, louder this time.

“Sit down and don't raise your voice in front of me again.” Yurine, unlike Raul, spoke calmly.

“We are not your servants!” Raul countered Yurine's calmness by shouting back.

Yu couldn't see Yurine's face, but he could feel the cold wind against his skin. Sensing Yurine's mana surge, Ana stood up and sat Raul down.

“I don't blame Sivina, in fact I prefer Satoshi’s death than Sivina’s. Sivina doesn't need to blame herself for it either, it just happened. If you want to blame someone to ease your conscience, you can blame me for bringing you here.”

The first part of what he said was sincere, but the last part was just to calm them down. Even though Yu blamed himself for the murder, he was afraid they would blame him.

“Out of curiosity, why Sivina and not Lylphia?” Ana didn't want her friend to be blamed either, but instead of getting angry like Raul, she took Sivina's hand and asked calmly.

“So far, with the exception of Satoshi, we have no data that the people the killer targeted were able to use magic, so we can assume that he didn't target mages. He probably would have been happy to kill Lylphia, but since she was a mage, he must have been afraid to attack her.”

If the killer was also unable to use magic, he might have seen mages as a dangerous opponent for him. An ordinary person could be held by the arms and prevented from moving, but as long as the mage’s mind was clear and he had mana in his body, he could cast spells even if he could not move his arms.

Lylphia was wearing a knight's uniform from the Wizarding Academy. So it was easy to recognize that she was a knight who could use magic.

Sivina wore a knight's uniform from Elhaven. While there was always the possibility that anyone could be a mage, Sivina could have been targeted, as knights who could use magic were rare outside the knights of the Wizarding Academy.

“Unless he has done extensive research on all the knights in the country, he must have found out about Sivina the day we arrived here, when we left to do research.”

“But he accidentally entered Satoshi's room and not ours, you say.”

“Yes, that's what I'm saying, Sivina, and I'm telling you not to blame yourself.”

In order of importance, Sivina was higher than Satoshi. His healing magic was rare, but they already had a healer, and a knight's strength was also important. Although Yu considered Satoshi closer to him, he would have preferred the killer to kill Satoshi and not Sivina, and so it was.

“And you are a girl and Satoshi was a boy. I think if Satoshi were here and I am the one who died, Satoshi would say it’s okay because you are the one alive.”

He wasn’t totally okay with Satoshi's death, he felt sorry for him, he felt pain and he blamed himself for causing it.

But he couldn't face them in a low mood and demoralize the group even more.

“So, what do we do with this information?” Yurine turned her head and asked Yu.

“Today we will continue the investigation and tomorrow we will go to the Berry family home. If they don't turn us away at the door, I have some questions I want to ask about William. If we're lucky, our theory will be right and we'll find out what he has against the knights.”

“Why does the killer choose knights to kill?” This time it was Lylphia who asked the question.

“This is where the second murder is important. Thomas Chember was a bad person by all accounts and there may have been a personal issue between him and the knight, maybe his hatred of knights was born because of him. Maybe he only does it because killing knights satisfies his ego.”

Ego satisfaction, revenge and entertainment could have been different motivations of the killer.

“I have a plan.” Yu made eye contact with Sivina. He wanted to see the determination in her sea-green eyes. “Our goal is to meet with the Berry family, but I don't want to be the center of attention. Sivina, will you swear a vow of revenge for us?”