Chapter 10
Translator: True Detective
Cults of the Ghouls (2)
The police officers who visited me early in the morning let out a sigh and left after our conversation ended.
It wasn't that we had particularly hurt each other's feelings. It was just that the police, feeling at a loss because there was no progress in the case investigation despite my earnest cooperation, unintentionally let out a sigh.
"Phew..."
I was feeling equally frustrated. To think that someone I exchanged greetings and parted ways with with a smile just yesterday went missing overnight, and now it's unknown whether he's dead or alive.
"Could it be the activity of a simple criminal organization...?"
Taking out my phone and checking the text messages, the personal information of the man I had worked at the study room with for the past year had flown in as a missing person alert text.
From information I already knew, like his name and age, to information I didn't know because I hadn't gone out of my way to ask, like his height and weight.
It's just that an unfortunate victim happened to appear nearby. There were quite a few suspicious parts to just gloss over it with that thought.
'They said a massive amount of bloodstains was left behind.'
It's not a murder case, but a missing person case suspected to be a kidnapping. The possibility of it being a murder case isn't nonexistent, but since the body hasn't been found, it is still classified as a missing person case for now.
'Of course, due to the traces of a near-lethal amount of blood being spilled, the atmosphere was practically treating it half as a murder case, but...'
Even if they define and investigate it as a murder case, the troublesome problem remains the same.
To inflict a wound likely to spill a massive amount of blood and kill him inside the study room, and then take the corpse of the victim attacked in such a way to another place and hide it?
Not only does just the imagery seem very suspicious, but if they had done that, the bloodstains should have continued in a line along the direction of movement.
'However, they said bloodstains were found only in the study room.'
I felt like I knew why the police were racking their brains. The more I thought about it, the more things didn't add up, leaving too many strange parts.
Blood of a level where a person would die or at least find it hard to move remained at the scene, yet not a single trace of the victim's corpse could be found inside the study room.
However, if one assumes they moved it elsewhere, the bloodstains that would have poured from the victim's body exist only inside the study room. It means there was no trace of the perpetrator dragging the victim outside.
'Moreover, crucially.'
Because the surveillance cameras were destroyed, the exact situation at the scene at the time could not be known. The cameras, which were perfectly fine just while I was working, suddenly shattered and broke.
'It's certain that someone intentionally broke into the study room and killed him.'
The problem is why, and for what reason, they suddenly killed him.
According to the police, the recent chain of missing young adults cases seemed to be that people suddenly disappeared without a single trace, as if they had evaporated.
However, this time, the trace of the victim's blood was suddenly left entirely intact.
'Are there two possibilities?'
Either the meticulous perpetrator unintentionally made a mistake, or there is no longer a reason to commit crimes covertly.
Looking at the severity of the situation, the latter is more serious, but either way, there is no progress in solving the case.
'Should I have just stayed back then?'
To be blunt, it is not my fault. Not only did I not commit the crime myself, but we only knew each other by face and weren't even that close.
Above all, since I didn't know such an incident would happen, it was an unavoidable accident. I might have been able to prevent the accident if I had been there, but it was an incident I couldn't do anything about unless I had the ability to see the future.
Because the police and the study room owner lady also knew that fact well, they only worried about me and didn't reprimand or scold me, asking why I didn't help him.
'That is certainly true, but...'
A sigh echoed in the silent house. Today was another day with no classes, following yesterday, but unlike yesterday, it wasn't a very pleasant silence.
—Squeak!
So, I left the house to clear my troubled mind as well.
Because since the past, taking a walk would loosen my complicated feelings, and occasionally I could find the answers to troublesome problems.
Of course, that wasn't the only reason for today's walk.
'We weren't that close of a relationship, but it's still a relationship where we saw each other's faces for a year.'
Didn't we even smile at each other and say 'see you tomorrow'? To draw a line and move on, saying it's a matter that has nothing to do with me, my mind was uneasy in many ways.
'I should at least try to put in enough effort to relieve his grievances... even if it's not to the point of avenging him.'
If I find the culprit, even if I can't kill them myself, I plan to give them a somewhat fitting punishment.
Even if Korean law forbids cutting off limbs or severing heads, it doesn't forbid making a person a cripple by striking their acupoints.
To begin with, modern medicine would find it hard to distinguish symptoms caused by acupoints, and even if they did distinguish them, they wouldn't be able to know who did it.
'Because ultimately, it's something I'm doing for my own peace of mind.'
Come to think of it, it's something I don't necessarily have to do. Not only am I not the target of the crime anyway, but if the police investigate, there's a high probability they will naturally figure it out and apprehend the culprit on their own.
Therefore, what I am doing now is ultimately nothing more than a sort of self-satisfaction. To relieve my uncomfortable and uneasy mind, wandering the streets looking for traces of the culprit whenever I have time for a few days is all it is.
'Let's go to the study room first.'
There is a high probability they are cordoning it off saying it's a crime scene, but they can't even stop people from wandering around and watching from the vicinity. To begin with, if I make up my mind to enter, it's not like there are absolutely no methods.
Although I can't guarantee its level of completion because there is no subject for comparison, it's been a long time since I created at least one martial art specialized in stealth and covert movement modeled after assassins in my own way.
Because if I use Qigong, acts like stepping on walls or ceilings and moving against gravity, like in famous Japanese ninja comics, are also possible.
'As expected, they've blocked it off by setting up this and that.'
The scenery of the study room I arrived at like that wasn't much different from my expectation. Just like what you usually see in the news or movies, the building was half cordoned off with various equipment including tape.
Furthermore, there were even police officers on standby to prevent anyone from entering or leaving the scene by any chance, and for the purpose of investigating whether there were any parts missed at the crime scene.
With an incident like this happening following the chain of missing person cases that had become noisy recently, the police also seemed to be moving quite swiftly.
'Are the person behind the chain of missing person cases and the murderer of the study room night worker the same person? It doesn't seem likely that two such bold criminals would appear in a short period of time.'
Unless they want their crimes to be discovered, there is no way they would commit such a crime in the current situation where the police are glaring with wide-open eyes due to the chain of missing young adults cases in full swing.
It was the moment I was about to turn back after taking a quick peek inside the study room through the window with those thoughts.
'...Wait a minute.'
My Qi Sense, which I habitually keep spread out to some extent, swept through the study room and caught my footsteps as I was about to turn back.
'What is this repulsive aura?'
I felt a somewhat chilling aura lingering throughout the entire building where the study room was located.
If I limited the range strictly to the inside of the study room, the eerie aura was even thicker.
It was as if an aura that started inside the study room had gradually spread to the entire building as time passed.
'The aura is volatilizing and disappearing starting from the outskirts of the building far from the study room, but a certain sinister aura is definitely flowing out from the study room.'
It is not an aura that could come from an ordinary human. It is a kind of aura I have never experienced once in my life.
If I were to pick the most similar thing, it would be...
'It's an aura with properties more similar to the anomalies inside anomalous phenomena harboring malice toward humans, like the Mount Geumjeong Forked Path, Yeongshin Elementary School, and Monkey Dream.'
Who leaked such an aura? What on earth did they do with such an aura?
Various questions rummaged complicatedly through my mind, but at least one thing floated up clearly in the form of an answer, not a question.
'It's not the crime of an ordinary criminal.'
This, from the very beginning, was a problem the police could not solve.
A raw fish restaurant can become an excellent makeshift workshop. It's a story spread by word of mouth among mages who use life or the byproducts of life as materials.
Fundamentally, the space is quite ample, bringing in raw fish can conceal the supply of materials, and it provides an excuse that can appropriately mask the stench of blood and rotting corpses.
Since you can get a lot of water as well, it's also good for cleanly washing the inside that has gotten messy with massive amounts of blood. As long as you're careful, electricity and gas come in just fine, so there is no problem making it a combined workshop and residence from the start.
The thoughts of the French mage with the Cults of the Ghouls, Marcel Lacrima, were aligned.
'It's very comfortable to enjoy such luxury after doing nothing but living a tiresome life on the run for years.'
His home country and main area of activity, France, was a region where it was hard for a mage with a cruel grimoire like the Cults of the Ghouls to live.
The Mystic Management Bureau acting for the purpose of concealing and managing mysteries. The Clock Tower of the UK systematically nurturing and managing mages. Even the Vatican's Holy See, which persecutes beings trying to dig into the truth by putting forward the name of an abominable god.
'Even if it wasn't them, there were also the Association's fixers rushing at me aiming for the bounty on my head.'
He had barely escaped from a life where bastards who were exceedingly annoying and dangerous even if there was only one chased him in swarms.
Of course, the Bureau exists in Korea too, but there are no friendly forces comparable to the Bureau like the Clock Tower and the Holy See.
'There are the Association of Shinto Shrines of Japan and Liangshan Marsh of China, but unlike Europe, the three East Asian countries have a bad relationship with each other, so... there's no way they'll cooperate to catch me in these parts.'
With those thoughts, Marcel smacked his lips. Breathing out with his mouth intentionally closed, he ruminated on the flavor rising from his stomach.
A man he had sought out as if possessed, guided by the Cults of the Ghouls, and devoured the night before. He remembered the taste of the young man in whose young and healthy body an abnormally massive mystery was accumulated.
'That was a delicacy. Have I ever obtained that much mystery in a single meal until now?'
They say mysteries have become rare in modern times, but even in Europe, where various mysteries like mages and priests are relatively overflowing, he had never seen a human possessing that much mystery.
'To think I would enjoy an unexpected banquet in this remote, foreign country of the East, and in a coastal city that isn't even the capital, at that.'
Smacking his lips and drooling, Marcel opened the Cults of the Ghouls. At the same time, his pupils changed.
The whites of his eyes were dyed black, and his black pupils were dyed white. It is a bizarre eye called inverted eyes or black-and-white eyes.
It was the 'Ghoul's Eyes,' a magic he had acquired not long ago to get his hands on even more mystery.
"Ha, haha! Bwahahahaha!"
Marcel, who was greedily reading the Cults of the Ghouls with the Ghoul's Eyes like that, laughed maniacally as if he had lost his mind. His eyes sparkling with ecstasy, the hand gripping the grimoire trembled violently.
The ends of his eerily raised corners of the mouth twitched. He saw what the Cults of the Ghouls was trying to convey while resonating with the Ghoul's Eyes.
"That, that was just a fragment...?!"
A human with a mystery that was incomparably fulfilling. For Marcel, who was recalling the taste of that corpse he wondered if he would ever encounter again in his life, it was a shocking fact.
What he had eaten was the dregs of mystery. It was merely the residue left behind, failing to disappear completely.
Because occasionally, a mystery would exert a faint influence like a trace on a being that lingered around it for a long time.
If so, where on earth did that mystery originate from? Just who possesses a mystery that mighty and fulfilling?
"I want to eat it, I truly want to eat it!"
Drooling profusely from his mouth and spewing rough breaths, Marcel was already in a state hard to call human. He was in a state that had become similar to a ghoul, the corpse-eating monster, the being worshipped in the Cults of the Ghouls.
'Since I moved noisily up until now, the Bureau must have definitely made a move. If I stand out any more than this, they might step on my tail, but...'
He didn't care about that kind of thing in the slightest anymore. If he could only swallow the core of the mystery the Cults of the Ghouls craved, he could finally complete his eternal life and become the god of those who eat corpses.
'For the time being, I'll have to painstakingly prepare magic.'
Magic to accurately capture and track the target. Furthermore, magic to strike down the target and plunder that mystery.
'The true power of a mage comes from thorough and meticulous preparation.'
Marcel Lacrima had nothing to hesitate about anymore.