"Why don't you cast a healing spell on the sore spots? How much mana can it cost to relieve a slight pain at most?" Yu said as he rubbed the wrist of his right hand.
Last night, after dinner, they had spent the whole time at Marino's company writing letters. Their initial goal was to write a hundred thousand letters, and although they didn't reach their goal in one night, they managed to write a considerable number of letters.
The price was the pain in his wrist. The last time he took pen and paper and wrote long texts was in high school, in college he started taking notes on his phone and used a keyboard for all his daily writing.
When he was learning the alphabet of Rolderhelm, he had to write, but because he was a fast learner, it hadn't been as difficult as yesterday.
“If it was about spending mana, I would say that all the mana I spent to heal you was wasted.”
“Can I infer from this that your effort was not wasted?”
Yu replied Yurine's robotic, emotionless voice jokingly. Yurine took a deep breath and judged Yu with accusing eyes. Then she took the same deep breath again and continued speaking.
“Huh... It's not just about that. You can't use a superior being like a low level spell for useless things. And don’t blame me for not relieving your pain, but blame that stupid person who tried to write tens of thousands of letters with a few men.”
“It's like she's back to normal. It's good that she's starting to talk like nothing happened.”
Yu was trying to act as if nothing had happened, and it was a relief that Yurine was starting to talk as if nothing had happened.
Besides, Yurine really didn't want to use her magic unnecessarily, as he had realized when he healed his bleeding hand yesterday.
“It's better this way. What we are doing is risky and Marino's share will diminish as the number of people grows, he has only brought in the people he trusts the most. They will finish the first week's letters by the time we get back, after that it gets easier.”
“Will those people still be trustworthy when they find out that their deal was a fake?” Yurine made a point that Yu was also worried about.
They scared Marino's associates with the magical pact game and secured their loyalty, just as they had done with team owners, Marino and Barney Loyd.
“There is no such thing as a magical deal, and if there is, it's not something I know how to do. When they find out you tricked them, they may refuse to honor the deal.”
“The team owners I deal with and Barney can do that, but Marino would be stupid to do that. We can expose him or take revenge in other ways.” Marino must have realized that Yurine were strong enough to kill him. “Still, I took precautions to prevent him from doing such a foolish thing.”
In their agreement, they forbade talking about their agreement. If no one mentioned it, it was only by chance that they would find out whether it was real or fake.
Silence fell as Yurine did not continue the conversation. After a few seconds of background noise of other people talking on the deck, Yu decided it would be uncomfortable to stop talking.
“Writing and distributing the letters for the first two weeks is the hardest part. It will get easier as we go along.” The final number of letters to be distributed was six thousand two hundred and fifty. Writing and distributing six thousand letters was nothing compared to a hundred thousand. “When we get there, we're going to inspect the Redchapel so that we can help with the hard parts.”
Their goal was to determine the location of the houses where the letters would be distributed. Details such as a certain distance between the addresses, the orderly distribution of the same letters to certain areas rather than a mix of letters, etc. had to be decided, noted down and the next distribution adjusted accordingly.
If adjustments were not made, letters could be sent again to people to whom the results of the match were incorrectly communicated, or they could send letters to locations close to each other, making the letters known to the general public.
The problems did not end once the locations of the letters were set. One hundred thousand letters had to be distributed and people had to be able to avoid being caught in the distribution process.
The number of people Marino had in common with him could be counted on one hand and it was impossible to distribute a hundred thousand letters with them in one night.
They had no intention of distributing all the letters in one night. One hundred thousand was still a high number and they had to finish in a week.
“Even if we drop off the first letters the day before, it won't be a problem. With me and Yurine on board, it's not impossible.”
One of the two remaining problems was secrecy. Being discovered while distributing the letters could jeopardize the plan.
One of Marino's employees had offered to bribe them in case they were caught, but Marino had already spent all his available resources on paper, ink and travel expenses, so there was no way he could afford a bribe.
The money Yu had was barely enough to support himself, let alone bribe him. The bribe offer was rejected as presented, not because bribery was bad business, but because they lacked the resources. They would certainly distribute the letters without anyone getting caught.
The last problem was that towns and villages could be dangerous at night.
The city of Rolderhelm was safer for ordinary citizens than most places in the world, even though you could walk at night and be cornered and beaten by someone, or walk at night and the road you were walking on collapsed and you were killed by a beautiful witch.
Villages and towns, however, might not be as peaceful as the city. The few stories he heard from Lucia were about murderers and monsters. The world beyond the city walls could be terrifying.
“I never thought a coward like you would go to Redchapel.”
“I'm not afraid because I know you will protect me, Yurine.”
“Hmph.”
Since there were no ports in the vicinity of the Wizarding Academy, they had to stop at the port of Redchapel before going there. In short, it was a connecting journey.
Yurine had been to the Wizarding Academy with her mother before, so she must have used the Redchapel route too.
“The Redchapel Killer is a psychopath who kills people in horrible ways. He considered himself an artist.”
Yu was astonished by the marginality of the people of the Second World. First he had encountered killer clowns and now he was hearing rumors of another killer who called himself an artist.
He prayed that neither he nor Marino's employees would encounter him.
“His name is known, he must be in the vicinity of the town as most of the murders take place in Redchapel, but still, all those knights and adventurers can't catch him.”
The killer of Redchapel was a middle-aged man named William Berry. Everything was known about him, from what he looked like to his past life.
This was not because of the success of the detectives, knights or adventurers who pursued the killer, but because of the killer's own choice.
William was the eldest son of the merchant Berry family and heir to a large fortune. But he had disappeared a few years earlier and at the time of his disappearance, a series of murders, known as the Redchapel murders, had begun.
Most of his murders were in Redchapel, but he also committed murders in other parts of the country.
In his first murder, he left no name behind, so it was assumed that he had killed an old man who lived alone in Rolderhelm. The killer had no other murders in the capital.
“Anyway, we're not going there to talk about Redchapel. We have a more important matter to discuss.”
Sitting in the middle of the deck, away from the edge of the ship, he began to hold his stomach. He was not good with the sea and he was talking to forget the nausea, but his technique was no longer working.
“What are we going to talk about?”
“Rie.”
Yurine narrowed her eyes and made direct eye contact with Yu when her mother's name fell from his lips, and her usually emotionless expression turned serious.
“Why did she want to go to Sigma Tower? What was she trying to achieve there?”
They had never discussed anything about Rie before, both because they had different priorities and because he didn't feel ready.
Even if they had, they would have gotten nowhere, they would have only played themselves, without meeting the needs that needed to be met.
They had to find money to support themselves, to feed themselves, to buy clothes because they could not go naked. And beyond money to support themselves, they had to find money to realize the plans they had made.
They hadn't found that money yet, but they had a plan to find it. Now they could slowly start to take care of their real goals.
“And if I'm lucky, Yurine will quickly realize that time can't be turned back, and we'll spend the rest of our lives in a mansion, rich and peaceful, with our lives safe.”
If Yurine never realized this, Yu would continue to chase an impossible dream as a prisoner.
“Yurine is right, I'm an asshole. I pretend to believe when I don't. I use it as an excuse for my crimes. I deceive a little girl.”
He was using her to ease his conscience and try to lighten the burden of his crimes.
Ostensibly they would go to the Wizarding Academy, follow the clues and solve, or come close to solving, Rie's murder.
Then, with the money from the scam, they would go to Mora, assemble a team and resume their work. Maybe they would turn back time.
One part of Yu's heart told him this, but the other part knew it was a lie.
When he stopped trying to ease his conscience, which was in a constant state of contradiction, he really wondered what had happened to Rie.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I don't know, she didn't tell me.”
“She didn't tell her own daughter? Oh, no, I see.”
Yu's confusion didn't last long. In Rie's eyes Yurine was a little child and adults didn't tell little children everything.
In Yu's eyes, Yurine was also a child, but Yurine was technically his employer or partner. The style of their relationship led Yu to tell Yurine about his plans.
“I wish Sherlock Holmes was here to help me. I'm sure it would be a fun adventure for him.”
“It's not fun, watch what you say!”
“I didn't mean it like that...”
He was not going to try to explain a character from the First World to Yurine, who was doubtful that she even believed that world existed. If one day Yurine believed in Yu and wanted to know, of course he would tell her, but now it was a different matter.
“I'm sorry,” he continued. “Do you have any idea why he might have gone there?”
“I don't know.” Yurine shook her head. “Maybe to become stronger. That's why we entered the Wizarding Academy.”
“Was it greed for power that led him to his death?”
Rie hadn't given him the impression of a person with a greed for power. Besides, Rie had talked about taking something. What could it have been?
“Clowns? Did she mention them? As if they knew each other.”
The clowns had called Rie young lady. And Rie had made it clear that she recognized the clowns when she met them. They must have had some hostility from the past.
“I don't know,” Yurine said again. “She didn't say anything about them either.”
After a deep sigh, he lay down on the deck to think and looked up at the dark sky covered with gray clouds.
“What am I doing?”
In a murder with no clues, they could only proceed with assumptions. At least if they could recognize that it was a murder and not an unfortunate encounter, it was possible to develop a perspective.
“Maybe it would help to create a road map.”
He didn't want to pay the tailor, so he sewed the broken sleeve of his bag back together himself, clumsy and rough, but somehow stronger than before.
From the bag he took out a diary, a pen and a jar made in Rolderhelm. He unscrewed the lid of the jar, dipped the pen in the ink and began to write in the diary.
“Rie and his group were attacked in the Sigma Tower by two killers wearing clown costumes and using the names Joy and Sorrow. Rie was killed by Sorrow. The tower was on fire from the clowns' stocks at the time, and the clowns probably killed other people who were supposed to be in the tower.” He spoke at the same time so that Yurine could hear what he was writing.
During his time in Rolderhelm he had heard that the bones of dozens of people had been found in the Sigma Tower. Since they hadn't seen anyone else in the tower, it was safe to assume that they had been killed before they got there.
“Rie wanted to enter the Sigma Tower for some unknown reason. In order to hide, Rie chose to enter the tower through the sewer system. While traveling through the sewer system, she was attacked by a monster.”
He drew a straight line on the page and marked the events below the line in chronological order.
“Given what happened both with the monster and in the tower, we can be sure that someone planned the murder precisely and wanted to make sure the victim was dead.”
The feeling of vomiting was getting stronger as he shifted his attention from keeping his stomach under control to writing.
“Rie had a map in his hand, where did she get that map?”
“That stupid apprentice's uncle gave it to him.”
He was finally happy to have a clue.
“Who is he? What's his name? Tell me about him,” he said excitedly.
“N-name is Salery.” She didn't like saying people's names. She said the name in a whisper. “He's the headmaster of the Wizarding Academy, and my mother's apprentice's uncle. My mother told him about the tower and said he was the one who gave her the map. I don't know much more, when they besides me…” Yurine's voice became a whisper again. “…they don't talk much about important things.”
“I understand.” Yurine felt left out. Yu, once a child, knew how she felt. “So what's his full name, let's write it down.”
“Last name, Bishory.”
Salery Bishory, the Wizarding Academy headmaster who gave Rie a map of the sewer system and directed her to the Sigma Tower.
After writing the note, he looked at his writing, which looked like a computer printout, and felt proud of himself. Even though he had just learned the alphabet, he could write better than the local users.
“But I feel like throwing up.”
Yu was at his limit, he had completely missed the opportunity to keep his stomach under control by focusing his attention on writing, and now he knew he couldn't stop it.
“Just throw up.”
He put down the pen and the diary and ran, sticking his head out over the deck and puking his guts out.
He spat, trying to get rid of the feeling of vomit in his mouth. “I can't taste the vomit either, but I have this disgusting feeling in my mouth and it won't go away...” he hadn't finished whining when the second mail arrived and he could feel the uncomfortable stares of the people on deck as the fishy vomit spilled overboard. “I don't like the sea or the fish.”
On the Rolderhelm they ate fish almost every day. Even though he couldn't taste the food, he was tired of fish. If one day he had a choice, he would choose to stay away from fish for the rest of his life.
“As long as we live here, we will see plenty of fish.”
He rinsed his mouth several times with water from the plastic bottle he had brought from his world and spat it into the sea. The vomiting was bearable, but the disgusting feeling in his mouth was unbearable.
“Normally people don't keep maps of the sewage system handy.” He continued to rinse his mouth while talking. “This Salery guy is our first suspect.”
Yu wondered why a teacher would want to kill Rie.
If he wanted to kill her, there must have been easier ways to do it. It was a far-fetched plan to kill someone by first capturing a monster, placing it in the victim's walkway, and then hiring clownish killers to burn down one of the city's most famous landmarks.
“Could the Sigma Tower have been burned down so that it couldn't compete with the Wizarding Academy?”
That would be the first thing a normal person would think. Competition was certainly the first motivation that came to mind when a teacher from the Wizarding Academy set fire to another educational institution.
“Maybe it was a crime of love. Maybe it was a betrayal or a rejection... But that seems unlikely.”
Rie was beautiful.
When he thought of teachers, based on his own teachers, he thought of middle-aged people with thinning hair. He was unlikely to be young, especially if he taught at an academy.
Rie was twenty and wouldn't have gotten close enough to such a man to cheat on him.
“I had a feeling she liked me. I think I'm the only one high enough for a high-end beauty like her to like. She wouldn't even consider a man like Salery. So that leaves rejection as a more likely option, but that's unlikely.”
Rejecting someone does not give the rejected person the right to take revenge, and even if he wanted to take revenge, he wouldn't burn down a huge tower to do it.
“Rejection killings are usually carried out with knives or guns, or, if the intention is to inflict pain rather than to kill, with caustic acid. Burning a tower is too extravagant.”
He didn't think what happened to Rie was motivated by romantic feelings. Given the scale of the murder, there had to be deeper reasons under the iceberg.
“Of course, the perpetrator could have simply been a real son of a bitch who did it for his own amusement.”
Without knowing more about Rie, it would be difficult to draw any reliable conclusions about the motive.
“If that asshole killed my mother...” Yurine's face turned red with anger, she clenched her fists and bit her lip. “I'm... I'm going to kill him. He didn't even have to be the one who planned the murder, he had a part in it and I'm going to kill him!”
“Calm down.”
“DON'T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!”
Yurine's angry voice attracted the attention of the other people traveling on the deck. Yu pulled Yurine by the wrist and sat her down on the floor as he told them to turn around.
“Calm down. We can't act without knowing the backstory. I also think Salery has a share of the blame right now, but when we meet him, you'd better put on your usual nonchalant expression. Hunters don't want to frighten their prey.”
It was hard not to notice, but they had to make sure Salery didn't think they were coming for revenge. If Salery realized that Yurine was trying to get revenge on him, things could get messy.
Even if Yurine convinced Yu and they went there and tried to kill Salery, they would have blown it.
Yurine had a power that Yu could only dream of reaching, but they couldn't underestimate Salery, who was a headmaster at a place called the Wizarding Academy.
“How does a murderer act?” Yu's face tensed, his eyes shifting from Yurine to the floor. “Like me... How can I be so relaxed?”
His first murder was Rie. He felt guilty for her, but he blamed himself less and less as the days passed.
The second was not really a murder. Sorrow's death was purely in self-defense and he would do it again. He felt nothing for Sorrow.
But the third was Camaeron Don's murder and Yu could not comfort himself in any way.
He was the one who stabbed him. He had killed Cameron Don with his own hands, with his own selfishness.
Yu had not only killed him, he had stolen his future from him. All the dreams he had built, all his hopes, all the emotions he had felt had been taken from him in one simple move.
Yu Valarfin was a selfish thief and murderer.
Camaeron was burning him, and Yu was not the only thing he was burning. Camaeron had also burned Yu's ships. Yu could no longer turn back where he came from, he had to go forward, even if it meant going to the bottom of the pit. At least that's how he felt.
But there was also a desire to leave it all behind and live a peaceful life. Yu's feelings were tangled and he couldn't untangle them.
“Does Salery feel the same way?”
It was natural for anyone to feel guilt when they killed anyone else. But would someone with a bad personality feel guilt?
He thought the answer was no. Salery had sent Rie to his death, as it now appears, and perhaps he believed that what he had done was the right thing, that he was above society and above universal morality.
Perhaps Salery was not sure that Rie was dead and felt on edge. Salery would be relieved when Yurine appeared before him without Rie.
If Yu noticed this relief, it might increase Salery's suspicions.
“But I still can't understand why a teacher would do such a thing.”
Someone living in Rolderhelm wouldn't set a fire in the middle of the city and get dozens of people killed, knowing that he would be executed if his crime was discovered.
“There is a possibility that Salery is just a pawn. That way it could go beyond Rolderhelm to the Mora. I thought you said you came from there. Tell me what you did there.”
Yurine told him they came from Mora. Yu thought that the suspect, Salery, could not have had enough motivation for the murder, and the only thing he could say was that it could be traced back to Mora.
If the culprit was somewhere in Mora, Yu's job would be difficult and he had a feeling it would lead there. He didn't know why, but in his chest it was as if someone was whispering to Yu.
Mora was a poor country that had been bleeding with civil war for several years.
But years ago, it was a rich kingdom, far ahead of its neighbors in trade, agriculture, animal husbandry, mining and other fields.
It was the Battle of Heroes which began for stop Gawain of Gluttony, struck a blow to Mora's shining days.
The country was badly wounded during the Battle of Heroes, and attempts to recover after the war were unsuccessful.
Traitors who only cared about their own interests had been placed in the country's highest positions, and the kingdom and religion had become corrupt.
And three years ago the kingdom fell apart with the emergence of a new king. The king had no evil intentions. He wanted to strengthen his authority and put religion on the back burner in order to get rid of the rats that plagued his country.
But when the Zodian Church, the main rulers of the country, opposed the strengthening of the king's authority, the king said that he did not recognize religion and the kingdom split in two.
The Kingdom of Mora, led by the king on one side, and the Zodian Church, led by the Cathedral of Andromeda on the other, had been at war for three years.
The Zodian Church was a religion that worshipped the Storm God Azer. The Storm Kingdom to the west of Rolderhelm also worshipped Azer, but the only country where the Zodian Church was active was Mora.
Azer was the god who created the Blessings of Azer, with which Yu was somehow related.
“Zodiac, Andromeda, Church... All these words are familiar. I had assumed that the calendar was similar to the one on Earth because of the influence of the Rolderhelm prime minister, but the Church of Zodia has hundreds of years of history. Someone from my world must have brought these words, perhaps Azer himself is someone from my world.”
Zodia comes from the English word 'zodiac' and Andromeda is the name of a galaxy in the universe where the First World is located.
“Someone came before me, lived and died. Why can't I accept that?”
Changing universes was a big deal, travelers between worlds were the main characters in their own amazing stories, and they were all forgotten. He was afraid that one day he would be forgotten too.
“If this is a dream, I don't want to wake up,” he whispered.
“What are you mumbling to yourself?”
“You took so long to answer that I drifted off.”
“I was trying to think of something to say.” Yurine sat cross-legged and began to explain to Yu as if she were lecturing. “Azer is a god who was expelled from heaven four hundred years ago. After he was expelled from heaven, he gathered his followers and started Zodianism and offered his Blessings as a reward to his followers. My mother is the Cardinal of Virgo Cathedral, one of the sects of that religion.”
Yurine spoke as if her mother was still alive, making Yu feel pressured.
“If Rie is a religious leader followed by millions of people, his death will have a great impact.”
“Unfortunately, the Virgo Cathedral is not very popular. It only has a handful of followers and I don't think most of them care about the cathedral, and the cathedral building is not a big place.”
“Still, she is a representative of the Zodian religion, and the murder is still no small matter.”
“Yes, but unfortunately, with Mora in such a mess, no one will care.”
Yurine's small fists clenched again made Yu want to hug her and comfort her, but Yurine wouldn't let him do that.
“Then we have to add the possibility that the murder was politically motivated to the list. Salery is probably just a pawn.”
“We will find those responsible and hold them to account, even if they are in the bowels of hell.”
With their ship arriving at the port of Redchapel, they decided to continue their conversation later and set foot in the depressing gothic town.