"Damn it, a bunch of vulgar people who don't understand the beauty of dolls..."
As he walked out of Baron Cosmi's residence, Emlyn was still seething, muttering complaints under his breath.
The mocking laughter of those men still seemed to echo in his ears, and it was more than he could stand.
So what if they found the target a little before I did? What's there to be so smug about!
I'll go out and investigate tonight, spend the money and hire detectives, and get in touch with [Justice], Bishop Utrafski, as well.
Let's see, with this many different methods running at once, surely I can't come up empty on every single target.
Oh, right, and there's also that notebook the [Magician] has... I might as well just borrow it from her directly. If I spot the target, I need to move the moment I see him, the faster the better!
Anger had left Emlyn a little irrational.
He no longer cared about the exorbitant rent; instead he hurried straight back to his residence, intending to pray to the Fool and borrow "Lenormand's Travel Journal" from the [Magician]!
But that anger didn't last long. By the time he reached his own front door, he had already calmed down.
Never mind, I'm strapped for cash too... I can borrow it once I've actually found the target, there's no rush.
Emlyn thought to himself, better to focus on finding the man first...
With that thought, he reached out and grabbed the door handle.
A soft night breeze drifted past.
"Who's there?!"
Emlyn's body suddenly went rigid, and he spun around, scanning warily in every direction.
He felt as though someone's gaze was on him. But after looking left and right, he found nothing at all, and his spiritual instincts gave no warning either.
Was it just my imagination... am I on edge because today's been so rotten it's made me jumpy?
Emlyn muttered to himself, then pushed the door open and went back inside.
---
St. Samuel's Cathedral, underground.
On the table in front of Silas, the case files were stacked into two small mountains. He held a thin scene report in his hand, reading it closely:
[Senior Deacon Sylvester's movements on the day in question:
8:00 to 10:00 a.m., met separately with the five Red Gloves squad leaders stationed in Backlund;
11:00 a.m., went alone to the library to consult reference materials;
3:00 p.m., held a lecture on the Goddess's scriptures, attended by several nobles, including Earl Hall, Viscount Last...
6:00 p.m., after dining, told his attendants he wished to rest and pray, and a dedicated prayer chamber was arranged for him underground...
10:00 p.m., since he had exceeded his scheduled time, an attendant went to check on him, and found Sylvester already dead.
Scene investigation:
The deceased was found kneeling on the bed, both hands clamped around his own throat, as if he had strangled himself. His spirituality had been extracted, and its state was normal.
There were no signs of a struggle in the room, but the body showed some evidence of resistance; it appeared he had attempted to transform into an incomplete mythical creature, but for some reason had stopped partway through the transformation...]
"Hm?"
Reading this far, Silas's brow furrowed slightly, as though he'd noticed something off.
For a Sequence 4 whose divinity was not yet strong enough, activating an incomplete mythical creature state was essentially a gamble with one's life, and recovering from it was extremely difficult.
Under the circumstances, facing a life-or-death crisis, it would have been a reasonable choice... and yet Deacon Sylvester hadn't gone through with it.
Had he stopped of his own will, or had something forced him to give up?
Combined with the strange method of self-inflicted death, Silas couldn't help but think of one particular Beyonder pathway: the Spectator.
They possessed the ability to manipulate the human mind, capable of hypnotizing a target and making them act however they wished.
But to make a Sequence 4 kill himself without offering the slightest resistance would require at least a Sequence 3 Dream Weaver, wouldn't it... The Psychological Alchemy Society? Was the killer that damnable King of the Black Throne, Barros Hopkins?
Silas thought this might be a breakthrough point in the case, so he wrote the thought down on paper.
He turned his attention back to the files, focusing on the man's movements that day.
If there really was an insider involved, then the culprit was most likely among the people he'd been in contact with that day.
Was it one of the five Red Gloves squad leaders? Or the attendant assigned to look after him, some servant... or perhaps it wasn't an insider at all, but one of those nobles...
Silas mulled it over, trying to find some clue buried in the files.
Clearly, he wasn't cut out to be a detective. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn't spot anything out of place, and in the end he had to give up.
If the cause of death and the identity of the killer were both dead ends, then he'd have to try another angle instead, the motive, perhaps?
A senior deacon of the church, what could have driven the killer to break into the dangerous Church of the Evernight and murder him...
"Thud, thud, thud!"
Just as Silas was lost in thought, a series of hurried footsteps sounded outside, someone running up to the door of his office. A moment later, three knocks rang out.
"Come in."
Silas tossed the file aside and said in a cold, indifferent tone.
The door swung open, and the person who walked in was none other than his former colleague, Leonard Mitchell.
"Lord Ishmael."
Facing the icy, disguised version of Silas, this normally easygoing poet looked unusually serious for once. "We spoke with our contact among the vampires, and it turns out..."
"They refused to help, didn't they."
Silas asked, as though he'd already expected as much.
"That's right. They stalled us, claimed they hadn't noticed anything related to it."
"That's impossible."
Silas smiled faintly. The "Primordial Moon" was an enemy of the vampires, standing in direct opposition to their faith. Since it was a conflict on the level of belief itself, they would have to be the most sensitive of all to the presence of an enemy. "So is that the only thing you two brought back for me?"
"Of course not."
Leonard said quickly, "Captain Soest is still over there negotiating, and he intends to arrange manpower to track the movements of any vampires behaving strangely..."
As he spoke, he handed over a document.
"This is a list the Church has compiled: vampires currently residing in Backlund..."
Compared to devils, vampires kept relatively good control over their own kind, and had achieved something close to coexistence with human society.
The Church, too, kept a cautious, ongoing watch over them, with no intention of taking forceful action unless they crossed a clear line.
Still, even so, the Church made every effort to investigate relevant individuals, to ensure it wouldn't be left entirely without intelligence should hostilities ever break out.
Silas took the stack of files and flipped through them idly. Suddenly, a somewhat familiar face leapt out at him.
Emlyn White.
No. 48 River Bend Avenue, South Bridge District.
A Sequence 7 vampire, both parents doctors...
Hm? Wasn't this the vampire who'd gone to visit Klein that one time?
This air about him... why does it feel like I've seen him somewhere else too?
Silas thought back for a moment, and then, all at once, the young, handsome, slightly arrogant face in the photograph connected itself to that blurred presence behind the gray mist.
Could it be... that this fellow is the Moon?
That actually seems possible!
He knows Klein, so it's plausible Klein pulled him into the Tarot Club, and besides... it seemed like he was the one, during their last exchange, asking around for a Beyonder who believed in the "Primordial Moon"!