Episode 76
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 76
The innkeeper who had been sound asleep during her last visit was nowhere to be found. Apparently, the building itself had been purchased for the investigation—support that Blair had managed to secure by persuading his parents.
However, Caden’s mother, Countess Hertz, was in such a state of shock that she had fainted, so they had to hide the fact that the investigation was due to suspicious circumstances.
After a brief introduction to the five soldiers from the Linton family, Elysia headed up the stairs. She needed to focus, but she couldn't shake the stray thoughts, as if puppet strings were tugging at her mind.
Her thoughts kept drifting back to Cain, as if by inertia.
He couldn’t have simply not asked because it was a bother…
No, that was impossible. Cain was the type to pester someone with endless questions, not the type to suppress his curiosity.
She replayed Evan’s reaction the moment he saw the pistol. Seeing a soldier like him deduce it was a firearm just from its appearance meant that guns were not nearly as advanced in this era.
So why hadn’t that man asked about it? It was only natural for him to be curious when a woman of ambiguous status, not even a noble, was carrying such a thing.
But he hadn't asked a single question, as if it were a pointless exchange.
So, why?
She kept coming back to that question. Why? Why on earth wouldn't he ask anything after seeing a threatening, unfamiliar weapon? That wasn't a normal reaction.
The blue solution glowing over the bloodstains, and the man standing behind it, watching her.
“What’s wrong?”
Lost in thought for a moment, she missed a step and stumbled. Evan immediately grabbed her arm to steady her, his voice laced with concern. Elysia shook her head, regaining her composure.
“...It’s nothing.”
Straightening up, she let out a quiet sigh. This was no time to be distracted. She looked up and took the documents being handed to her.
“Explain,” she said curtly.
“First, the floor of the inn that was connected to the adjacent building was being rented by a woman who paid for a full year. She didn't reveal her name or face, so we haven't been able to track her. Additionally... the building you discovered was originally used as a dye factory. It’s been nearly five years since the factory ceased operations.”
“Who owns this factory?”
“That... it’s written in there.”
Elysia opened the file, confirmed the first page was the building’s deed, and flipped through the pages. The deed detailed who had commissioned its construction, to whom ownership had been transferred over the years, and for what purposes it had been used.
When she saw the name of the final owner, she let out a dry laugh.
“Caden Hertz?”
“The Hertz family briefly considered getting into the dye business. The young master apparently looked into it and purchased the property then.”
“But never used it?”
“The business plan fell through, so the family likely...”
“So he forgot what he even owned. But Hertz remembered.”
She sent one of the soldiers into the room where she had found the bloodstains and pointed to various spots with her index finger.
“Check everything carefully.”
Leaving the room without a second thought, she walked into the hallway, counted the number of rooms, and tapped her lips, lost in thought. There were six rooms in total. She began by opening every door.
Aside from the first room with the bloodstains, the entire floor was being used for storage. After checking four rooms thick with choking dust, she threw open the door to the room closest to the stairs.
A couple of nondescript wooden crates were scattered about, looking as if someone had missed them while moving the boxes in a hurry.
As if reading her mind, a soldier produced a crowbar from somewhere and pried open one of the wooden crates. With a loud crack, the lid came off, revealing it was full of an unidentifiable white powder.
“...Secure it for now.”
Elysia commanded with a deadpan expression, then left the room and went down the stairs to the factory’s first floor. She took the will and the letter from her inventory, brought the papers to her nose, and took a sniff.
“Smell of oil?”
“Oil?” Evan asked.
“And sweat, very faintly. And... the smell of smoke. That’s the strongest.”
The smell of oil, the scent of sweat as if from being in a hot space, and the smell of smoke.
The large vats, installed for mixing dyes with water, were filled with black dust and the dried corpses of dead insects.
Tearing her gaze away, Elysia walked toward the large furnace in the center of the factory floor. Unlike the other dust-covered equipment, this one alone was polished, as if it had been used recently.
Scorched scraps of paper were scattered around it. Elysia picked one up, smelled it, then brought the will to her nose again.
The smell of oil used to burn the paper, the smell of smoke from the fire, and the smell of sweat from the heat. A cold smile touched her lips as she understood. You wrote the will here while burning documents.
Evan noticed her looking around and asked, “What are you looking for?”
“Something was heated and extracted. The tools that would have been used for it.”
She took the monocle from her pocket and took a deep breath. Focus. I have to remember everything I find.
System: Active Skill ‘Observation’ has been activated. (Duration: 15 minutes)
The culprit had left in such a hurry that they hadn't even managed to take a few suspicious boxes of powder from the second floor. It was only natural they wouldn't have had time to properly dispose of all the evidence.
But the moment the skill activated, Elysia froze. Words flooded her vision, so many that it made her dizzy. She could barely stand.
[Portable lamp: Ignited with oil. Considerably old. Signs of use for at least 30 years.]
[Copper still: Appears to be frequently used, has a sheen.]
[Curtain rod: New. Purchased about three days ago. Applewood.]
[Decorative candlestick: Used about 3 days ago.]
Text floated above the massive pile of countless items. It was, in a word, information overload.
The analytical results appeared faster than she could follow. She had to press her fingertips to her temples and grimace.
Ugh, my head. Why is there so much junk piled up here? The pile of objects was nearly as tall as she was. The sound of information updating rang in her ears, threatening to burst her eardrums. Elysia staggered without realizing it.
[Bathtub: Contains clean, uncontaminated cold water. Appears to have been used for cooling.]
“My head’s gonna split open. Just stop...”
[Chair: Ebony wood with cowhide. Used for over 76 years.]
“Ah, damn it.”
The constantly updating analyses were preventing her from identifying the important information. It was overwhelming just to read the useless data that kept popping up. Worse, there was no consistency whatsoever in the results.
Evan noticed Elysia’s strange behavior as she stared blankly into the air, completely dazed. He gripped her by the shoulders.
“El.”
“...So much...”
“Elysia?”
Whoosh. The man’s face entered her field of vision. The information that had been flooding her sight vanished around him, and she could finally breathe. Elysia clamped her hands over her ears and shut her eyes.
Calm down. Let’s try to organize what I just saw. Okay, there was a candlestick, but no, that’s not important at all. What was important?
She needed to open her eyes—the skill still had over ten minutes left—but she couldn't bring herself to do it.
The sheer volume of information was paralyzing her mind. As she stood with her eyes closed, hands over her ears, trying to catch her breath, the man leaned his cheek gently against her hand and asked.
“I’m going to take off the monocle.”
“...”
“I don’t know what’s happening, but I think we need to start with that.”
A gentle hand slowly removed the monocle. The rapid-fire sounds of information updating, which had been overlapping one another, finally faded away.
Elysia’s eyes snapped open. She tried to sort through the information she’d managed to read before Evan removed the monocle, but ultimately failed and muttered in a low voice.
“...There’s too much.”
“The items?”
She nodded, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead to soothe the lingering ache.
“There are too many items, so... there’s too much information to analyze. So much that I can’t see what’s important.”
“Has this ever happened before?”
“Usually, people try to erase evidence, not leave a mountain of it behind.”
As she said it, Elysia froze. A chill ran down her spine. Something was wrong. It was...
Aren’t the ages of the remaining items all over the place?
From an item bought just three days ago to things nearly a hundred years old. Next to items that a woman might have used, there was suddenly an object that a seventy-year-old man would own.
With a confused expression, Elysia stared into her now-quiet field of vision, free of the analysis window.
This is... deliberate. Someone bought items from a random assortment of people and left them here to be seen. But why? Could they have predicted I would use my skill?
No, that’s impossible. The ability to activate a skill with a monocle and digitize everything observed—that was a skill she had brought from <Panic in the City>. A ‘normal’ person in this world couldn't even imagine such a power.
To anticipate an ability like that and prepare for it... it was absurd.
“...For now, let’s find out everything we can.”
Pushing her anxiety to the back of her mind, Elysia walked toward the pile of items.
As she struggled to move the distiller, Evan immediately came over and helped her pull it out. A clatter of miscellaneous junk came tumbling down.
Elysia quickly dodged a candlestick that was about to fall on her foot, and something caught her eye.
Evan, alarmed as Elysia stepped recklessly into the collapsing pile, rushed after her. He blocked a glass bowl from falling on her head with his hand and said urgently.
“El, you’ll get hurt.”
“Found it.”
As if she hadn't even heard him, Elysia’s gaze was fixed on one spot. She ducked down and crawled on all fours into the pile, then pulled herself out from between the objects with a gasp of air.
Evan frowned when he saw what was in her hand.
“A notebook?”
Elysia took the will out of her pocket and held it up side-by-side with a page from the notebook, as if comparing them. Text immediately appeared before her eyes.
Compare the ‘material’ of the acquired evidence? Y | N
...Analyzing...
100% match.
“Hertz’s will was written on this paper. It seems Caden Hertz stayed here the entire time after he disappeared until he was murdered.”
“But...”
Evan took the notebook from her and flipped through all the pages, a troubled look on his face.
“It’s all empty. They tore out all the pages. There’s almost nothing we can learn from this.”
Elysia stared intently at Evan’s hands as he checked between the pages again for anything he might have missed, then muttered to herself.
“...Hmm... I wonder if I can recover it.”
“Hm?”
“Ah... I don’t know. Will it work? It’s tricky. Hmm, maybe it’s possible? Let’s take it for now.”
With a puzzled tilt of her head, Elysia stored the notebook in her inventory and turned away without a second glance.
Finally, she opened the lid of the copper distiller to check inside, then slammed it shut with a bang and put that in her inventory as well.
She let out a sigh and looked up at the grimy factory ceiling, murmuring.
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
“A bad feeling?”
“Yes, a very... bad feeling.”
The bright blue sky filled the window, yet she felt uneasy. She had the distinct sense of being targeted, but she couldn't tell where it was coming from.
Averting her gaze from the window with a grim expression, Elysia muttered coolly.
“Well, it’s not like I’ve ever let a good or bad feeling stop me before.”