"Whoa."
The cri scene had been perfectly preserved. The person in charge was eagerly explaining that it was the result of combining several types of magic, but his words didn't register. The cri scene was a secluded room deep inside the Magic Tower.
rcenaries and priests had gone up to investigate Karlin, the owner of this room, and a short while later, an explosive sound rang out. The person in charge said that when he hastily ca up, the rcenaries and priests had all been utterly destroyed inside the room, and Karlin had vanished.
"Horrific."
The scene looked as if the very word "gruesoness" had been made manifest. The small room was filled with the stench of blood, even though a considerable amount of ti had passed since the incident. Pieces of what appeared to be internal organs were stuck to the wall surfaces, and the contents of the glass flasks had degraded, their original forms lost.
"What kind of mage was Karlin?"
"We don't keep close track of individual mages, so there's not much I can tell you. As I recall, she was a mage with red hair and a pretty decent personality."
"A rather vague mory."
"Well, we rarely crossed paths. Karlin hardly ever left this room."
"How were the corpses positioned when they fell?"
It was a scene that looked as if a bomb had literally gone off. Despite that, the corpses were fairly well-preserved. I wondered if this was a trace of the Magic Tower having used magical ans to restore the bodies, or if they had originally fallen so neatly.
"Ah, well..."
The person in charge hesitated, scratching his head in apparent discomfort, before speaking to .
"It's a bit grueso, but... are you sure you want to see it?"
"I don't mind."
Once he had my permission, the person in charge, with a reluctant expression, raised his staff and chanted a spell, waving it through the air. The crystals embedded throughout the room began to glow, shooting out small, laser-like beams in every direction. The light was so bright I had to squint.
The lasers slowly began to form lumpy shapes. They were masses of various sizes, so resembling hands, others human faces. These masses were stuck to the walls. And they had a texture very similar to human flesh, caked in red blood....
"Fuck...."
The light was reenacting the cri scene exactly as it had happened. I could see the pieces of flesh scattered everywhere, the few intact lower bodies, and the forms of several corpses that had been blown outside the room. The person in charge looked around the room, which had instantly beco the set of a B-grade splatter movie, and spoke.
"What do you think? This is the Scene Preservation Magic the Magic Tower prides itself on."
"Do incidents like this happen often?"
The magic itself was impressive, but considering such magic is usually created to deal with frequent trouble, it wasn't exactly a welco tool.
"It's a magic we use for scene reenactnt before handing over mages who suffered a lonely death to their bereaved families. We never thought it would be used for a mass murder incident like this."
Fortunately, unlike the real thing, these light-ford shapes had no texture. When I lightly kicked the foot of a priest lying on the floor, the form just flickered and distorted slightly; it didn't feel like I had actually kicked anything.
"Regardless, that was one hell of an explosion."
Inside the room, the furniture was fine, but all the people had burst. Blood had spread out from the center of the room as if in an explosion, and the people's corpses were also scattered outward from the center. I found the scene rather strange.
"Does no one usually visit Karlin's room?"
"No. We do our patrols every week to check for lonely deaths or accidental deaths, so the mages aren't particularly averse to visits."
"Then why did Karlin attack the rcenaries?"
Why would soone who didn't mind visits attack the rcenaries? The rcenaries only ca to make inquiries about Evangeline, not to investigate Karlin. There wasn't a single trace in the room that would suggest Evangeline. If I were Evangeline and planned to disguise my identity as a Magic Tower mage, I would have hidden my real belongings in a different hideout.
"Don't you think the rcenaries or priests might have discovered sothing suspicious about Karlin?"
"So there was sothing suspicious, yet Karlin readily opened the door? Does the Magic Tower order mages to open their doors during a rcenary's investigation?"
Besides, if there was sothing suspicious, she could have just not opened the door. There must have been more than one or two mages in this Magic Tower who wouldn't open the door for rcenaries. In that case, there would be no reason for the rcenaries to single out Karlin as suspicious among all the mages.
"We do not coerce our mages to do such things."
"If Karlin is Evangeline, then it ans she deliberately hid suspicious items in this Magic Tower, deliberately opened a door she didn't have to, lured the rcenaries in, and then deliberately exposed her identity and escaped."
"Perhaps she was careless? Everyone makes mistakes."
This was a ticulous woman who placed prohibitions on people to not reveal her identity and wore a mask even at the slave market. She would make a mistake like that?
"Karlin might not be Evangeline herself, but one of her minions. That's why she panicked and fled."
"That's also a possibility."
The person in charge's opinion was plausible. If Karlin was one of Evangeline's subordinates, she might have been startled by the sudden arrival of rcenaries and priests, escalated the situation on her own, and fled. But even so, there were more unusual aspects.
"But the explosion seems to have occurred in the middle of the room, right?"
"Yes, that's right. It seems it was caused by strongly concentrating magic power and detonating it."
"If Karlin was inside the room..."
I roughly inferred where Karlin would have been located from the explosion mark. About two steps back from there. It was where the lab bench and chair were. I sat down in the chair and spoke.
"Karlin must have been sitting roughly here."
From the chair, the door was directly in front. The rcenaries and priests probably entered through that door. As I painted a picture in my mind, sothing felt off. The magic power explosion happened in the central part of the rcenary and priest group, so it wasn't strange that the personnel were scattered in all directions.
I looked at the wall behind the chair where Karlin had sat. A mage's corpse was there. The mage was lying with her back to the wall. If Karlin had unleashed a magic power explosion the mont they entered, as we had assud, then the mage lying here should have died with her head smashed into the wall, not with her back to it.
If the magic power explosion was set off in the center of the party, this mage, who would have been standing at the very front, would have been caught in an explosion from behind.
"Her face is severely injured."
But the mage's face was completely shattered, and even at a glance, there were no wounds on the back of her head. I said to the person in charge.
"Could you go down for a mont and check the rcenary mage's corpse? You need to confirm if there are any traces of being hit by magic on the back of her head."
At my words, the person in charge muttered a few words while drawing his staff in the empty space, then looked back at
and spoke.
"They say there were no such traces. Just so bruises."
"Magic is convenient."
"Would you like to learn?"
I shook my head. This re-frad the situation. Karlin didn't abruptly blast the incoming rcenary party with magic. There was a possibility that the rcenaries and priests had surrounded Karlin. Karlin had been caught with so kind of decisive evidence. When the rcenaries and priests surrounded her, she set off a magic power explosion as a desperate struggle and then escaped.
"Looking at the corpses, it seems they were surrounding sothing. What did the rcenaries and priests see that made them surround Karlin?"
"Didn't they find evidence that she was Evangeline?"
"Evidence that she's Evangeline? Where is such a thing?"
"Didn't Karlin take it with her when she fled? To evade responsibility even if she's caught later."
So, is this how the story ends? I scratched my head. To summarize it roughly, it went like this. Karlin confidently let the rcenaries and priests into her room. But Karlin, being a fucking idiot, let the rcenaries find evidence that she was Evangeline or was connected to her, and she was on the verge of being arrested. As a last resort, Karlin set off a magic power explosion, killed all the rcenaries and priests, and then escaped.
It felt a little lacking, but it didn't seem like any other conclusion was possible.
The person in charge looked at the mage's corpse slamd against the far wall of the room and spoke with pity.
"She was such a vibrant young lady. It's a sha."
"It was a woman?"
I had only skimd the rcenaries' personal details, so I hadn't even checked who the mage was. A pretty mage, huh. I felt a little regretful myself.
"Yes. Her face is so shattered now you can't even tell who she is... Anyway, isn't she quite the bold young lady? To co all the way to the front like this to try and stop Karlin..."
Face so shattered you can't tell who she is? Ca to the front to stop Karlin? Only then did I realize I had been thinking about this all wrong. Why was the mage at the front in the first place? Shouldn't the priests and other rcenaries be at the very front? Does it make sense for a mage to be in the vanguard?
And why did I assu the mage had to be from the Magic Tower? There are plenty of mages who just register their nas at the Tower and roam freely. So many mages who travel freely under the label of "rcenary." What was I mistaken about?
Why did I assu Karlin was the one who set off the magic power explosion? There was one more mage.
I painted the picture in my mind again. A more natural picture.
The rcenaries and priests visit Karlin for investigation. Karlin willingly opens the door, and the rcenaries and priests file into the room. Because they need to be equipped with various experintal tools, each room in the Magic Tower was quite spacious. Soone steps forward to explain the situation and takes out a docunt for the inquiry. The mont Karlin focuses on the docunt, the mage at the very back takes out her staff and chants a spell.
And then, bang.
Karlin, who was facing the mage, is sent flying with her face shattered and slams into the wall. The priests and rcenaries are blown away in all directions.
"What was this rcenary mage's hair color?"
"It was red. Now that you ntion it, the sa as Karlin's..."
The person in charge stopped mid-sentence, his expression hardening. He was clearly going through the sa inference process I had. Speechless, he looked at . I urged him on.
"Contact Karlin's family right now and ask if there are any physical characteristics that can identify her."
Evangeline, that fucking bitch, was toying with . From the mont I started recruiting rcenaries, I was already playing right into her hands.
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