This Is the Guy
“Heh heh heh.”
This year, forty-year-old Civil Guard member Ronan had once again taken advantage of the pendant manager’s absence to steal a whole box of pendants.
“How much will this fetch?”
When he first received the secret request to kill someone and steal the pendants, he had naturally refused. But his spending habits were extravagant, so he was always short on money.
Once the debts began piling up, he made his choice. Just close his eyes once and commit a single deviation.
“Damn it… I swore I’d only do it once…”
The first victim had been someone Ronan didn’t get along with. So when the man died, he didn’t feel much guilt. And once he’d crossed the line once, the second time was easy.
By the time the eleventh victim appeared, he felt almost nothing. Instead, he started craving even more money.
“Aigo. Today’s haul is pretty big.”
He casually hid the goods in his secret spot and returned to his post.
“Who’s on night duty today?”
“That would be me.”
“I’m here too.”
After successfully stealing the appropriate amount of pendants over the next three hours, he gathered his weapons for his regular patrol as usual.
Should be smooth sailing until next month’s next murder case.
He was about to walk out with his colleagues when—
“Hmm?”
Something grabbed his sleeve. He turned to see a silver-haired little brat.
“What the hell?”
And the expressionless brat who looked at him and spoke was…
“This person. The culprit.”
“What?”
It left Ronan slightly flustered.
“Who’s that kid?”
“Why is an outsider here?”
Even though Selene had pointed out the culprit, the first reactions were cold. Most of the guards and Civil Guard members had no idea who she was.
“What’s with that person…”
“She must be the outsider Brika brought.”
Those who knew that Brika had brought Leonia and Selene for consultation showed open wariness. This was a place where the strongest among those who couldn’t use magic gathered.
They didn’t particularly welcome a mage wandering in and out—even if it was the Empire’s Sword Leonia, a magician was another story.
Especially to those with a strong aversion to the elite class, Selene was nothing more than a stranger from the academy.
“Hey. We’re heading out on duty. What are you interfering for?”
Ronan, sensing the atmosphere, tried to brush it off nonchalantly.
“I’ll be going, so… hmm?”
But he couldn’t move. What, what is this? What kind of strength is this?
At some point Selene had grabbed not his sleeve but his entire arm, and she wasn’t letting go. Ronan, who prided himself on his size and strength, couldn’t take even a single step.
“Culprit. Don’t go yet.”
“W-what?”
“Ronan, what are you doing? Hurry up and let’s go.”
At his colleague’s urging, Ronan tried to move again. But he still couldn’t.
“Th-this woman is using magic on me!”
Eventually Ronan decided to use his trump card.
“What?”
“Th-this woman did something to me! I can’t move!”
“You academy bastard! What the hell are you doing?!”
There were many here who felt inferiority about being unable to use magic. When Ronan shouted, plenty of people immediately reacted. Ronan glanced slyly toward where Brika was standing.
“Aigo.”
She looked flustered, as expected. At this point, Brika still trusted Selene. She was an unusual and capable person, so there must be a reason for this sudden accusation.
“H-hey, Selene.”
But this person had zero tact. Stepping forward in a situation like this was far too dangerous.
“Brika! What exactly is going on here?”
“That’s right! And you called him the culprit?”
“Who exactly is the culprit here?”
“Ah, well, you see…”
Brika scratched her head, trying hard to smooth things over. But—
“Culprit. Civil Guard serial murder case. Involved.”
“What?”
Selene kept dropping bombs without stopping.
“The culprit?!”
“You’re saying one of our own colleagues is the culprit behind that incident?!”
The claim that the culprit was inside the organization—and among their own colleagues—coming from an outsider filled the scene with deep fury.
Now’s my chance to slip away.
Ronan saw this as an opportunity and tried to quietly shake off Selene.
“Hey, outsider miss. Stop talking nonsense and—”
“Hey! You got any evidence before you spout that crap?!”
“Yeah! Show us proof right now!”
But the situation wasn’t going the way he thought. The arrows were still aimed at Selene. Yet the atmosphere was gradually shifting from a simple exposé to something like a courtroom.
“Uh… I mean, I…”
“There is. Evidence.”
And then.
“What?”
With one short, decisive answer, the entire scene froze in silence.
Clink.
Selene pulled out a pendant in her hand—the exact same kind as the problematic ones from the warehouse.
“Wh-what? When did she—?”
A flustered Ronan checked his own pocket.
“Hmm? What’s that pendant?”
“We discovered that thefts have been occurring regularly from the pendant warehouse lately.”
Brika jumped in without missing the chance.
“Someone has been stealing pendants in bulk on a regular basis.”
Brika decided to go all-in and trust Selene just this once.
“But doesn’t that warehouse have a barrier that only authorized personnel can enter?”
“Yes. And right now, entry is possible. Because when the designated entrant dies, the barrier loses all effect, right?”
“Huh?”
“Exactly. Someone was killing the authorized people to steal the pendants.”
“What?”
The crowd began to stir. Ronan grew flustered and tried to calm the situation.
“W-wait! That’s my pendant. Don’t you know I’m on patrol today? Of course I’d have one!”
“That’s right, Brika. No matter what, you’re suspecting a colleague?”
His hastily made excuse hit the mark. The crowd was still on Ronan’s side.
“No.”
But—
“This. Not that person’s.”
“What?”
Selene didn’t back down. With a whoosh, she moved her hand at a speed slow enough for everyone to see—
“Wh-what was that just now?”
—yet at a speed too fast for Ronan to react, she pulled another pendant from his pocket.
“Eh? Ehh?”
“What the—? Why do you have pendants? Two of them?”
The murmuring crowd froze again.
“N-no, that’s… I-I accidentally…”
Ronan tried to smooth it over again.
“I-I was in a hurry and grabbed an extra one—”
“No.”
Whoosh. Selene pulled yet another pendant from his opposite pocket.
“What?!”
“Ronan… you?”
“N-no, no, that’s not it!”
Whoosh.
“Huk?!”
“Th-this… this is a trick.”
Whoosh.
“Ugh.”
“Ronan… you son of a bitch…”
Ronan was regretting it. He regretted secretly skimming off more pendants than the amount his client had requested.
“S-so… I…”
“What the hell is going on here?”
The scene began stirring again. But this time the arrows were slowly turning from Selene toward Ronan.
“Y-yeah. I stole them.”
Ronan quickly changed tactics.
“I-I’m sorry, guys! I got blinded by money for a moment!”
“What?”
“But please believe me!”
He was caught anyway. So he’d shrink the scale of the incident and bury the problematic parts for now.
“I-I didn’t steal anything else! I swear! This is everything I have!”
Ronan slammed his head to the ground and made sobbing noises. He wasn’t actually crying—just smashing his face into the floor.
“What’s going on?”
“What the hell is this situation?”
The scene stirred once more. They still thought of Ronan as a colleague. So the crowd was split almost evenly between those for and against him.
“He looks suspicious no matter how you look at it.”
“B-but Ronan wouldn’t do something like that!”
“Still, we should investigate.”
“Ronan’s a gambling addict, sure, but he’s not the type to kill anyone. Everyone calm down.”
Ronan breathed a sigh of relief inside. As long as they couldn’t find the real evidence—the box of pendants he’d stolen today—the situation wouldn’t change. It would end in insufficient evidence. He might get punished for petty theft, but…
“Anyway, it wasn’t me! I only did a little stealing—huk?!”
The moment he thought that and felt relieved, Ronan’s mouth fell open.
“Huh? What’s that?”
Selene, who had disappeared at some point, suddenly returned from outside the guard station carrying something huge.
“What is that? A rock?”
Thud.
She set it down in the middle of the guard station.
“Hup…”
Ronan panicked. The reason he had never been easily caught was right before his eyes. His client had given him a special device. When he cast a shape-shifting spell with that magic tool, the box full of pendants could be turned into a giant rock.
If he left the ordinary-looking rock outside the guard station, the client would come, cast the shape-shifting spell again to turn it back into a box, and take the goods.
It was a plan that caught people off guard by doing the transaction for the stolen items right at the scene of the crime, but—
“Wh-what? How did that woman even lift it?”
“Must be some kind of body-strengthening magic.”
That woman had noticed it instantly and carried the stone in front of everyone with her own strength.
“Wh-what are you doing?!”
Ronan played innocent again.
“A-are you trying to crush me to death with that rock?! S-save me, everyone!”
After all, to turn the stone back, you had to use shape-shifting magic. And that magic was so complex that you needed the exact same magic tool to reverse it.
(Gulp)
While no one was looking, Ronan swallowed a ring. It was one of the two rings that could turn the stone in front of him back into a box.
“What is that woman trying to do?”
Just as the crowd was murmuring again in that ambiguous state, Selene walked up to the rock, grabbed it with both hands, and—
Crack.
She split the rock in two with her bare hands.
“Whoa?!”
“I-is that body arts? It must be body arts, right?”
“Y-you’re saying she did that with her bare hands?”
The security personnel began to panic at Selene’s sudden display of superhuman strength.
“Huh?”
Right after that, starting with someone’s bewildered voice, they noticed it.
“It’s pendants!”
A whole box’s worth of neatly arranged pendants…
“Wait, what is this? These are our Civil Guard pendants, aren’t they?”
“That’s almost a full box, right?”
“How the hell did he get them inside a rock?”
Naturally, all eyes turned to Ronan. Whatever it was, it looked like Selene had presented the rock in front of them as evidence.
“Wait, wait a second!”
It was Ronan’s turn to argue again.
“No, no—what does that rock have to do with me? If I stole them, I’d steal the box. How could I split a huge rock in half and hide pendants inside?!”
“That’s true…”
Logical counterarguments followed. Ronan was anxious, but he was still confident of victory. As long as he had the magic ring in his stomach…
Thud!
“Kuhk?!”
A fist flew into his solar plexus at that exact moment.
“Ugh?!”
He felt the object he had just swallowed rising up his throat. No!
Ronan’s mind ordered his throat to suppress the urge to vomit and swallow the ring again.
“Kuhup?!”
But he couldn’t.
“Mmph!”
Selene’s small, soft hand reached deep into his mouth and snatched the ring from his throat.
And then.
The ring glowed and shot a beam of light toward the rock.
“Ah…”
The ring that clearly belonged to Ronan turned the rock back into an ordinary box—the exact box from the Civil Guard pendant warehouse.
“......”
A heavy silence fell. Every gaze locked onto Ronan.
“Fuck…”
Ronan spat out a single word. Then he pulled something from his chest.
“That bastard’s doing something!”
It was another pendant, different from the ones used by the Civil Guard.
Crack.
The moment that pendant shattered—
“Aaaagh?!”
“What the—?!”
The pendants inside the box began resonating, and one by one they started exploding in a chain reaction.
“Kuaaaaaagh!”
Suddenly, a Civil Guard member standing next to the box clutched his chest and screamed.
“C-catch him… ugh?!”
Ronan immediately fled the scene, and in an instant everyone inside the guard station began writhing in agony.
“Leonia. Brika.”
Except for one being…
“Ugh?!”
“Wh-what is this?”
The two who had been suffering the same pain were freed the moment Selene touched them.
“Ah?! That son of a bitch Ronan!”
“Professor Selene.”
“Don’t worry.”
Selene calmly reassured the two who were panicking over the fact that they had let the suspect escape.
“I let him go. On purpose.”
“What?”
“Leonia.”
Selene helped Leonia to her feet as she spoke.
“Protect the people here.”
“What should I do?”
“Do it with Viera.”
“Viera?”
At the sudden name, Leonia was about to ask again. Professor Viera is on long-term vacation…
But—
“Bweeeeeeegh!”
“Ah…”
Leonia and Brika couldn’t speak. The sight before them left them unable to even think.
“Uuuu… please don’t eat me…”
When they saw Selene spitting out Professor Viera Nebul from her mouth, they completely lost the ability to form words.