Claud felt his spirits dampen as he looked at the field of bones. How many had been buried here? A hundred? Two hundred? He didn’t know, but the number of rotting corpses was more than enough for him to look down in sorrow. How many families had grieved in silence, when one of their loved ones vanished one sad day, never to be found again? He didn’t know, but even one family was one family too many.

“Lots of half-rotten bodies,” Claud observed quietly.

“There’s something in the soil that has slowed the rate of decomposition down,” Lily replied. “Hopefully, Caroline’s people can uncover some clue to capture the bastard.”

“The Third Bearer of Destiny’s dead, though,” Claud replied.

“Do you really think the Third worked alone?” Lily asked. “The reports we got all said that these people had their crown of their heads severed; no trace of their brain could be found. And Julan…my family was almost certainly part of this cabal too. Perhaps there are other families involved in this too.”

Claud closed his eyes. The whole thing behind Zulan Patra’s death was very problematic. First, the killer was Nero, who had been mentally dominated by the Third Bearer of Destiny. Due to all the extenuating circumstances, the White Church had essentially given up on prosecuting Zulan Patra’s death, especially since the Third Bearer of Destiny had been killed. However, someone who was essentially a mindless servant needed clear instructions, and Claud had a feeling that the Third couldn’t be taking care of him all the time.

After all, Farah had said that there were multiple such incidences of people being controlled throughout the continent in the past year or so. It was clear that the Third’s goal was to create lots and lots of chaos, but without the necessary people in place…

“Huh. Yeah. If they were causing chaos in Nachtville, there must have been people stationed there to take advantage of the chaos, right?” Claud muttered.

Lily tilted her head. “…so we were brushing shoulders with some of the Third’s accomplices and we didn’t know it?”

“Seems like it.” Claud felt a rueful smile crawl up his face. “In fact, we also caused quite a lot of chaos, remember? The Julan main house blew up, which drew Baronet Nacht away from the town. But if the baronet wasn’t there, would the attacks have taken place?”

“My head hurts,” Lily replied.

“Funny, me too.” Claud rubbed his head. “So, is Baronet Nacht an accomplice? Or is he not an accomplice? Would his second-in-command benefit from the chaos more?”

“Hmm. It’s hard to tell.” Lily stared at a particular body, and then shook her head. “We don’t know the internal politics of Nachtville. Furthermore, Dia and Risti arrived a few days after we left, and these odd deaths had been made known to the count. Anyone angling for power would have been noticed immediately, unless the Third intended to use his Absolute Domination on someone, but that’s also a problem.”

“Anyone who’s been afflicted with Absolute Domination would probably seek help after the Third died and the skill lost effect,” Claud replied.

The two stared at each other for a moment.

“Let’s just do what we came for instead,” Claud eventually said.

“That sounds a lot better, true,” Lily replied. “Shall we ask the workers here first? Maybe we can get an idea of what exactly happened here.”

“Okay.”

The two of them looked around for a moment, before spotting the rare Captain Blake, who had been promoted to Licencia’s guard captain. From the dead eyes the captain was sporting, however, Claud could tell that he was beginning to resent his new post.

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“Captain Blake,” Claud called out. “Nice day, ain’t it?”

The captain eyed him and shook his head. His mouth and nose had been covered by a cloth mask, and a decaying, stinking stench wormed its way into Claud’s nose as Captain Blake came over.

“Nice of you to drop by this place,” Captain Blake replied, his voice muffled. “Boss lady sent you here, I see.”

“Yeah. Gotta earn our keep, right?” Claud replied.

“There’s almost certainly more than one person behind these deaths,” Lily added, “so we came by to see if we could figure out more clues.”

“It would be easier if we could work without this Moondamned stench,” Captain Blake replied. “Everyone’s running off to heave yesterday’s breakfast every three minutes or so—”

Retching that made Claud’s stomach flip slid into his ear, and Claud had to discipline his mind. Normally, he would take a really deep breath, but considering that Captain Blake smelt like death itself, Claud wasn’t going to even breath any more than necessary.

“We should have gotten an artefact to disable our sense of smell,” Lily muttered.

“Seconded, motion passed.” Claud pinched his nose, but there was no delaying his body’s need to breath. “Yuck. You, captain, are definitely not paid enough for this. Last I checked, Schwarz is still looking for someone to man his bar the whole time. You interested in taking up that job?”

“All this will pass in good time,” the captain replied. “Probably. I think.”

Considering that there was a really ominous proclamation about the great Dark, Claud had a feeling that the good captain would be very, very busy in years to come, assuming that he managed to stay safe the whole time. On a plus point, Captain Blake was now a one-folder, which meant that he at least had the minimum qualifications to protect himself.

Probably, anyway.

“Putting your hopes and dreams aside,” said Claud, “do you have any new discoveries to share with us?”

The captain glared at him, and then cleared his throat. “Yeah, some unpleasant ones. We found proof that there were a substantial number of people living in this forest. Like a little village of murderers.”

“How did you guys not notice them?” Claud asked, disturbed.

“Why would we?” Captain Blake asked. “This place has been bandit-free for the past few decades. Presumably, these people simply entered Licencia, brought whatever supplies they needed, and then left at night to return to the forest. Since they didn’t commit any crime that we knew of, even if we knew that there were people living in the forest, we wouldn’t have cared about them either.”

“The murders were hard to trace too,” Lily muttered.

Claud took a deep breath. This den of murderers had been operating rather close to Licencia the whole time. If he had been a bit unlucky, he could very well have been one of the bodies buried in the forest too. He and his mum had been living in the lower echelons of society; Claud had a feeling that if they had been targeted, no one would have noticed.

“What was the point of killing so many people?” Claud asked.

“That’s the hardest bit.” Captain Blake shook his head. “The relative lack of attention to these people means that they couldn’t have been anyone important. Of course, it’s possible that the corpses were moved around and shunted here, but I also cannot fathom why anyone would do such a thing, unless…”

Captain Blake’s eyes widened. “Unless it’s a skill acquisition condition! A skill that somehow requires lots of corpses to learn!”

“Like Zulan Patra?” Claud asked. “The unnecessary torture and all that.”

“Yeah.” The captain took a deep breath. “I’m going to report this to Caroline. Want to come along?”

“Are you allowed to do that?” Claud asked. “Feels like you’re trying to make use of this chance to get away from this stinking place, though.”

“Come on, don’t expose me like that,” Captain Blake replied. “And this is important enough news…why didn’t I think of this earlier?”

“Well, you probably weren’t in the right state of mind to organise information in such a way that makes sense,” said Claud. “Besides, I don’t think obtaining a certain skill is a common motive to commit a crime. It’s natural that you didn’t really think in that direction.”

“It makes sense when you say that, but do remember that I was the one who brought up that very motive for Zulan Patra’s murder, though…” Captain Blake rubbed his head. “Well, whatever. Let’s go find Caroline for a good talk. She definitely needs to know this, and I think she might be able to tell us just what skill needs such a twisted condition.”

Lily nodded. “It’s probably a skill with very powerful effects too. Why is everything crashing down this year? The great Dark, murders and more murders, Ruler Umbra’s death…”

“Yeah,” Claud replied. “What happened to our everyday lives? The past few months have been an absolute riot. It’s insane, and I don’t like it.”

“You think you have it rough, wait till I tell you what us city guards have to deal with now,” said Captain Blake. “All sorts of instructions are coming down from up high; I’m beginning to understand why they decided to make me the guard captain.”

“Oh? Go on, I’m all ears.”

“Well…”