One More Case Closed
It was the light of the rising morning sun that stung Elaine's eyes and brought her back from the unconsciousness the sudden plunge into the water had stolen from her.
"Where... am I...?"
She could feel her body, and she could breathe — so she was alive, apparently. Hk-ghh, hk-ghh! Coughing up the water still lodged in her lungs, she pushed herself upright.
"Hey... snap out of it. You have to wake up!"
Wobbling as she braced herself on both legs, she reached for her last memory before blacking out beneath the lake.
She had slipped out at night to dig into Reus's secrets and hidden herself near the lakeshore — then, without warning, something had seized her and dragged her down into the water. And then...
Reus, hauling her up just before she drowned. His face as he swam desperately toward her was still vivid in her mind.
"Lord Reus... was it? Or wasn't it? Did I imagine it? What was that?"
By her own memory, Reus hadn't been anywhere in sight at the time. She hadn't sensed him approaching, and there'd been no sign he'd arrived beforehand.
Could she have simply mistaken one of the soldiers stationed around the lake for him? She was mulling it over as she pushed out of the thicket—
"Lord Reus? What on earth are you doing out here at this hour?"
"Well, ah... I came out for a walk, and suddenly I felt like a swim, so I dove in — and only after climbing out did I realize I can't actually swim! So I hurried and swam my way back, you see."
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
A murmur of voices carried over from near the lake. Unless her ears were still full of water, she had definitely heard the name Lord Reus.
She turned toward the sound and found Reus, soaked through like a drowned rat, sitting on the ground wringing out his drenched clothes.
Lord Reus? So it wasn't my imagination?
Shaking the water from her hair, she hurried toward him. He, in turn, noticed her and rose to his feet.
"Lord Reus."
"Ah, Inspector Elaine! You're awake? Thank goodness."
From those words alone — you're awake — Elaine read a great deal. First, that what she'd seen before losing consciousness really had been Reus.
And second, that he had arrived at the lake without anyone — herself included — noticing, and saved her from drowning.
How? No — never mind how. When, exactly? I never once let my guard slip!
Setting aside the method, she hadn't even detected when Reus had appeared. Her instincts had dulled since her scouting days, she knew, but this was simply impossible to swallow.
"When did you arrive?"
"Before nightfall, on my own. I couldn't sleep at all, so I'd come out for a walk."
An evasive answer. She couldn't argue that Reus hadn't confirmed she was asleep before slipping out — but neither could she prove otherwise.
"Forgive my rudeness, but where were you?"
"Hiding in the grass nearby, lost in thought. Wondering how best to resolve the trouble at the lake, you see~. And in the middle of it, I heard a sudden splash — someone falling in — so I ran. There was no time to fetch anyone, so I thought, well, here goes nothing, and dove in... only to find it was you, Inspector. What a shock that was, I assure you."
Roughly speaking, it held together — from start to finish, at least. There were gaps here and there, but Elaine couldn't press on any of them.
To pick apart the holes in Reus's story, she would first have to explain how she had come to be there in the first place.
"Then... do you happen to know what caused me to fall into the water?"
"Of course I do. I know exactly what happened."
"You — you know what caused it?"
Elaine, who still had no idea what had grabbed and dragged her under, snapped her eyes wide open at his answer.
"That."
Where Reus pointed lay a ruined fishing net, tangled with patches of green algae and wedged full of pebbles.
"It was wound tight around your legs, Inspector. With its end snagged on that large rock over there."
"A... rock, you say?"
"Yes. My guess is you misstepped, and by sheer bad luck got tangled in the net and went under. That's my theory, at any rate."
Don't spout such absurd— Elaine bit the words back.
Whatever had gripped her ankle back then had clearly been pulling her toward the lake, dragging her under on purpose. Dark as it had been, she could tell that much.
But to say so, she would have to be certain of what she'd seen — and with everything still hanging in a fog of uncertainty, the words stuck in her throat.
The greatest reason of all, though, was simply this: hounding the man who had just saved her life with interrogation after interrogation pricked at her conscience.
"I see. I... sincerely thank you, my lord."
"There's nothing to thank me for. If I'd been the one drowning, you'd have done exactly the same."
"I — I suppose I would have."
At the sight of him laughing breezily and shaking the water from his hair, Elaine's pulse beat faster than usual.
She had been watching him from close by for a while now, and a rather favorable image had already taken root — and now, on top of that, he had saved her from death itself...
"Something's floating on the lake!"
"What? What's floating?"
"A horse's corpse! A horse with no lower body!"
"Gods above — it was quiet for a while, and now a horse has died?"
"There's a huge drift of boiled fish carcasses floating out there too! What in the world is going on?"
"Everyone, calm down and assess the situation!!"
Reus flinched, just slightly, at the shouts of the soldiers running up in the distance. Fortunately, Elaine didn't catch it.
After exchanging a few more words with the knights, he rose to his feet with a face that looked oddly refreshed.
"Well then! Shall we head back as well? It seems everything here is finished. Allow me to escort you."
"Y — yes... let's."
With the rising morning sun blazing behind him and that silly grin on his face, Elaine carefully took the hand he offered.
An escort? Where on earth had he learned a word like that? A man who seemed to know nothing whatsoever of etiquette, pulling moves like this — wasn't that cheating?
In seven years as an inspector, it was the first time she had ever felt something beyond inspection for the subject of one — and all the way back, she struggled mightily to hide the fluttering in her chest.
Done! I did it!! It's finished — completely!!
Walking away with the lake at my back, I silently cheered myself over and over. I did it, I did it, I actually did it!!
When Elaine woke up and started pressing me with questions, I thought my heart was going to burst. Thank goodness I'd prepared my answers in advance — if I hadn't...
More than that, I can't believe she actually bought it.
It was lucky I'd fished out that ruined net as a prop for my excuse. I never truly expected her to believe it... but she seemed to, thankfully.
Had I told her the truth instead, a report declaring me a madman would have landed on Count Jorden's desk. Not that dodging a System penalty was ever on the table in the first place.
That Kelpie... it was more dangerous than I expected. Maybe because everything I've faced until now was nothing but mindless brutes charging straight in.
Goblins, werewolves, Jack-o'-lanterns — none of them were the type to think things through. They all just trusted in whatever abilities they had and bulldozed forward.
But this thing had been remarkably cunning. Not human-level cunning, perhaps, but it had reeked of the hard-earned craftiness of a beast that survived in the wild.
Well, I suppose that's how it went undetected for so long.
I don't know when the Kelpie first took up residence there, but the fact that it stayed hidden in a lake dozens of people used every single day — right up until the incidents began — proved without question that it was a clever creature.
Still, the biggest surprise was the moment it turned my own magic back on me. I'd never once imagined a monster could use magic.
If I had fought it without donning the Armor of Water... the body floating on that lake by now would have been mine.
So from now on, do I have to account for monsters copying my magic when they see it? What a headache.
I hadn't been careless until now, but I'd have to be even more careful going forward. One wrong move and Elaine could have caught on too.
My head ached from a dozen different worries and my body was dead tired — but one single fact kept my heart light.
No one needed to fear that lake ever again. The sun, fully risen over the water, poured down its clear morning light.
Bathed in that cascade of sunlight, the calm lake glittered brilliantly — and nowhere on its surface remained the sinister shadows of before.
One month later.
"My lord, the reports from our dispatched inspectors have arrived."
"Good. I was wondering when they'd start coming in."
Count Jorden took the consolidated stack of inspection reports from his butler and began skimming from the very first page.
He handled his other business with one hand while flipping through the reports with the other. Even juggling both tasks at once, his pace never slowed.
"Wastrels, the lot of them. Exactly as expected."
The contents of the other inspectors' reports fell squarely within his predictions. More than half of the untitled lords hadn't strayed an inch from the range he'd forecast.
Line their own pockets, take bribes to fatten their purses — time and again, they'd been caught trying to fill their own bellies first and foremost.
Do they not understand even the basic structure of society? It is the foundation beneath that allows what stands above to endure.
Ambition itself was no vice. But these men prioritized their greed to the point of excess.
And so they can't even see the ground rotting away under their own feet. How do they imagine a manor keeps running once its peasants vanish? Fools.
Be flayed dry by your lord and wither away, or flee the manor and die a vagrant's death — to the eyes of the exploited peasants, there was little difference between the two.
According to the inspectors' reports, conflict was running fierce between peasants gambling on flight by night and the lords hunting them down.
Worse, the phenomenon wasn't confined to one or two estates — several reports also noted displaced peasants turning to banditry.
So this is the price of obsessing over the power struggles in the capital and forgetting to mind my own lands. I'll have to act. Only by pruning the crooked branches can a tree grow tall.
He couldn't have cared less what those vermin did elsewhere — but doing it on his lands was unforgivable.
If enough of these small infractions piled up, Jorden's own reputation would erode in the end. For the sake of the ambition he harbored, this much had to be stopped.
"My lord, this one as well."
"Hmm? And that would be?"
"Inspector Elaine's report, from her dispatch to Crow's Head Valley."
The moment Jorden finished the last of the reports, the butler handed over Elaine's — noticeably thicker than the rest.
"Thorough as ever, that Elaine. The thickness alone sets her apart."
Among those serving under him, she ranked comfortably within his top ten for competence, and the Count accepted her report with evident satisfaction.
I shall first report on the current state of the said manor. At present, this estate exhibits no trace whatsoever of graft or corruption of any kind—
"Nothing at all?"
That despite Elaine's notoriously merciless scrutiny there wasn't so much as a single instance of petty corruption was what astonished Jorden most of all.
More than that, the claim that every coin of revenue the manor earned was poured straight back into reinforcing its facilities and improving the soldiers' welfare stunned him a second time.
However vital a well-run manor may be, this is absurd — he takes nothing for himself at all? My, my... a man this impeccably clean is a difficult one to handle as I please.
Reus had no choice but to behave this way, since his life hung on his manor's survival — but through Jorden's eyes, it looked like a rectitude excessive to the point of suspicion.
Lord Reus is very young and handso████ as well as a gall████ considerate toward wom████
"Hmm?"
He seemed to glimpse a passage brimming with personal bias, but someone had blotted it over with ink, smearing most of it into illegibility.
Refugees fleeing other manors, along with a variety of talented individuals, are naturally gathering at Crow's Head Valley, and the settlement is steadily growing in scale.
"Just as I thought. A perfectly natural current, then."
Furthermore, a strange incident occurred at the lake near the said manor, during which—
The latter half of Elaine's report covered the lake incident: the bizarre affair that had unfolded there, Elaine's own assessment of it, and the note that Reus had shown a persistent interest in the matter.
From the day I nearly drowned onward, no further incidents have occurred at the lake — and for reasons I cannot explain, Lord Reus showed no surprise whatsoever upon learning of this fact.
No surprise at all? As if he knew the incident would be resolved? If so, only two explanations remain — either he knew the culprit had vanished... or he was the culprit himself.
Elaine, writing through a slight filter of affection(?), had declined to record even that possibility — but Jorden analyzed the probabilities with cold detachment.
Karaton's letter, and now Elaine's report... two separate people voicing the same implausible account. Once is coincidence. Twice is inevitability.
Given Karaton's jealousy-poisoned gaze, he might say anything — but Elaine could be trusted. Reus was unquestionably hiding something.
I need certainty. A third confirmation will settle it — who Reus truly is, and what abilities he possesses.
The cautious Count drew out a fresh sheet of letter paper. If he was doing this at all, he wanted to confirm it three times over and dissect the man completely.
And then I shall make him my right hand. Reus... I know not what power you conceal, but you will spend it for me and me alone.
Delighted at the thought of finding yet another spearhead to realize his ambition, a smile spread across Jorden's face as his pen began to trace words across the page.