Today is the 10th of the 9th month of the new millennium. And it's the second-last of my vacation days, so of course I go out for drinking tonight, but I immediately feel like there's something different in the air.

I try some games at first, but my luck isn't getting a hit, and nothing new catches my attention, so I move to women, but the [Acting] feels a lot more obvious and forced this time, ruining my interest. Next, I try the booze, and the boys all pass out too fast, leaving me with a half-empty bottle and the feeling that something's missing, so I go smoke some haash on the balcony.

No matter what I try, it doesn't feel the same, it doesn't get the heart pumping as fast, and whatever high I get, it quickly fades away. I feel out of balance, or… out of touch… though the only thing for certain is that there's something wrong with me.

That much is pretty obvious.

But that's not all. Rabanara is changing -it always has- it's just that I'm not keeping up with it anymore, and that frightens me. It almost feels like the town is a stranger to me, and so the night ends earlier than expected since I suddenly feel tired like an old man.

I can't get my head in order, and it's better if I don't punish the boys with my brooding. I'm annoyed with myself.

The streets seem safer, though, so I guess there's that, but that isn't related to my feeling of estrangement… or at least that's what I think. I really can't think straight today.

Eventually, I manage to wander back home. As my hand moves to open the door, someone twists the knob and pulls it away from me, and in my poor drunken state, I'm unable to stop, so I continue to chase after it and lean forward, losing my balance. A soft bosom breaks my fall, then my nostrils are filled with a sweet, nostalgic perfume.

"Welcome home, my lov-…" her sweet words fade from memory as my head collides with the ground, and a blinding pain makes me forget all about her.

"AH!" I groan out loud and roll on the floor while holding my forehead. Clarity returns a second later as I realize that my drunken and half-asleep brain was playing tricks on me.

Cruel tricks.

As the pain subsides, I stop rolling and grimace. I hate these memories, but I also hate the "treatment" the priests want to give to me.

I'll deal with the pain myself.

But maybe I should start by drinking less; it's certainly counter-productive to trade soul pain for physical pain.

 

The next day, I have a hangover, but that was expected, so I just take a potion for it and another for the bump in my forehead, and then I spend the rest of the day inside and resting.

My house is a mess.

I'm never in here long enough to be worth cleaning up, though, so I just cast a few [Clean]s for the dust and leave it at that.

But then I start to get bored… and I quickly realize that I hate being left with my own thoughts.

I can last one day…

And I do succeed in not making myself go crazy.

 

I eagerly put the uniform on, and lock the house then take a [Gate] to the main Townsguard office. Things seem to be very hectic today, but I guess that it's because of the Lapis Waterway. Now that it has been cleared, a new trade route is going to emerge, and different soldiers need to be stationed over there. Thankfully, I'm rotating out of the Landsguard Division, so I don't have to deal with that mess.

I was never good with paperwork.

"Captain Ansara, the Commander wants to see you," a secretary informs me the moment I arrive at my desk.

That was expected since I have literally zero work to do, but I hoped I'd at least get a few moments to talk to the guys.

Oh, well, duty calls.

 

I open the door to his office, and I'm attacked by the smell and smoke of hash. It's nothing heavy to not impair his work, but I think that Commander Martan would need to smoke a whole book to even get a little bit high.

"Captain," he greets me as I open the door. He's a pudgy, balding deskman like most others, but he still carries the aura of a high level, so nobody wise ever took him for a weak merchant and left with all their teeth intact.

"Commander," I greet back with a respectful bowl.

And he slowly lowers his long pipe as he begins without even waiting for me to take a seat, "We need to get to you your new assignment. Any Division you feel like going to?"

"As long as it isn't Customs, I'll be fine," I offhandedly answer and take a glance at his office. I'm pretty sure that the rustic furniture has become even more gray and stained due to his smoking, but at least there's a new plant at the corner, though I'm not sure if the poor thing will survive for long.

"You need to learn to keep your tongue tied," he grunts and turns around the pipe then hits it against his ashtray to clean it up.

But I daringly smirk back. "That's when I lose my youthful charm and become an old grumpy man like you.

He lets out a grunty snort and frowns. "You better behave, then, or I will send you to Customs as punishment," he threatens, though he isn't very serious.

"I always… well, almost always do," I reply and embarrassedly clear my throat.

But then he stares at me with his beady eyes, and I sense the pressure increase. Now he's serious. "I want to send you to Crimes, so I need you to behave."

"Oh? What for?" I curiously ask back.

He sighs tiredly and throws a report my way. "Yesterday night, a 'scion' of a 'rising merchant family' got killed, but I'm already hearing quite a lot of Godsdamned whining from the merchants, and with the Waterway opening, the Lords don't want the merchants to feel insecure, so I want you to take care of this."

I just take a look at the page, and my eyebrows rise on their own. This one will be bad. "Is this official policy?"

And Martan becomes as ugly as an orc as his frown deepens. "No, so it's worse, it's unofficial."

If it's unofficial then it's too important for it to publicly fail.

"I just came back from my vacation," I remark and take another look at the report.

"Yeah, and you'd be bored out of your mind if I didn't give you something interesting," he grunts wryly and starts stuffing more hash in his pipe.

"Hmph…" I frown at him then frown deeper at the report.

"Take the case, Ansara," he orders, almost sounding like he's asking.

"I wasn't going to say no," I reply, and a smirk starts to appear in the corner of my lip. I can feel the "high" coming, and it's going to be a real one.

"Who do you want to take with you?" he continues and promptly lights the pipe up.

And I instantly have the names in mind. "Just a couple of bodyguards. Most of my boys are good warriors that wouldn't fit with the Investigators."

"You have it. Now, give me some results," he answers without even hearing the names.

So I hand back the report and wryly remark, "You talk as if it was easy."

Now he grins smugly like a fucking goblin. "For me, yeah. I just point you somewhere and you do it."

I'm not sure if having the Commander think like that about me is a good thing, though. For my career? Yeah, I guess that's fine. For my health? Definitely not.

But I can't stop myself; I must get that high.

 

Now that I'm in Crimes, I get to pick a mask to cover my identity. Sometimes, Investigators can be targeted because they're just that good, and though I'm not at that level, there's also no reason to show my face, so I take my time picking one.

The poor man won't be any more or less dead no matter how long I take, anyway.

And I pick a stony-faced mask that reminds me of the Dream Eaters. This choice is more about what I wish than wanting to look cool. I need someone to eat my bad dreams away so they stop haunting me.

Then I set off to the north of town, but not to the Nobles' Quarter. I actually like it there because they try to make the area livable. There are barely any shops or interesting places to go in the Quarter because it's their own walled garden, and if you can't afford to hire your own dancers, you don't really belong there.

The home itself is a big walled mansion, one of the good ones, even, so I'm actually surprised that someone managed to barge in and kill the scion. And they even did it by going through the front gate since as it's obviously busted open and the Forensics team is still working on it.

People don't recognize my mask, but they do my bodyguards, so we just nod at the men standing guard and show our IDs, and then we're allowed through without a word.

The cobble path looks new, so no moss to be disturbed and give us footprints, though there is one pair of bloody ones. Well, not much of a pair with only one foot leaving the prints, but he definitely has at least another foot considering his gait.

I say "at least" because I've seen weirder things out there.

The footprints end before they reach the gates, so we don't have an idea of which direction they took after getting out. Still, with a partial footprint, we'll get some [Tracking] dogs to seek for more around the neighborhood.

Then we get closer to the main entrance, and we start to hear the cries of the widow.

"Spirit exorcised," Tarin remarks. That's why I chose him as my main officer. He knows how to work on Crimes.

"Spirit exorcised," I repeat.

The widow wouldn't be crying so loudly if we could bring back his spirit for questioning, which makes things a lot harder for us since we can't ask the dead man who killed him, but this also means that they were prepared for it. This was a planned assassination.

So I sigh deeply. I really don't feel like talking to widows today… or ever.

I can stall for time, though, as I first need to speak to Forensics and get a feel for what happened before we can even start interrogating people.

The "battle" took place in the entrance hall, as we can assume by the blood and the whole Forensics team being here. We also have to avoid the hundreds of little markings to not step on random blood drops and ruin the scene, but my boys and I are well-trained in that part.

"Zara," I call as I approach the little Mantis girl playing around with a knife, trying to recreate the battle.

And she suddenly stops and then tenses up, recoiling her extra pair of arms towards her body. She's definitely feeling self-conscious about her job. "Oh, Investigator," she squeaks like a little animal.

"Give me a run down," I bluntly request. I don't feel like navigating around her weirdness.

And she looks around then sighs tiredly, letting her extra arms go limp. "We haven't finished yet. This is a mess."

"I can tell," I wryly hum back.

But she quickly recollects herself under my stare and gives me what I want, "We're certain that there has been a break-in by three assailants who fought and quickly finished off the victim, then they left some scribbles and ran away with lots of valuables. You might want to start with the scribbles. That one is bound to be interesting."

"'Scribbles'?" I repeat.

And she points with her magical pen to the wall to our left. It's blocked by a group of Forensics guys, so I didn't notice it as we came in, but it should've been obvious that something was going on there.

"Boys. Explain," I order as I approach them.

"Investigator!" the dorks exclaim as they realize who I am. Well, who I'm supposed to be because I doubt they recognize my voice.

One of the more scholarly ones immediately launches on an explanation, "We believe the Cult of Harvest tried to take claim for this murder, but it seems that they left in a hurry before they could finish."

"The symbol is unfinished!" another dork shouts at the first.

"They were in a hurry obviously," he snobbishly states.

A third supports the second, "The Cult wouldn't fear some mere servants. They'd finish the symbol to honor his necromancer then kill whoever witnessed them, too."

"The Cult isn't immune to messing up, as evident by the crime scene," a fourth joins in.

But I raise my hands and interrupt them, "I've been on vacation for a while. What's this Cult?"

An older, more reasonable fifth dork answers, "Just another necromantic cult. They've been preying on the homeless lately."

"Why would they go for a big rich merchant like this one, then?" I immediately ask.

But they aren't Investigators, so they aren't keen to assume.

"A necromancer holding a grudge…?" tentatively questions, but nobody even reacts.

"That'd be great for us as it makes it easier to find who they are," I answer and he frowns as it obvious how this is unlikely even for crazed necromantic cultists.

"It's not our job to make assumptions," the older dork soberly states.

"It's the Investigator's," another agrees.

"Let's just show him the symbol, then," the first suggests, and for once, they all agree, so they step aside so that I can see it.

A scythe around the neck of a person praying.

This doesn't make sense. The fuck is this cult doing here?

And the longer that the recreation of the murder goes on, the less sense it makes, too.

This is a mess.

Forensics isn't doing very well today, so I decide to just inspect the body of the victim.

 

Signeur Dalas Sasluzar has been taken to another room so that the Examiners can do their work in peace, and they've stripped the man so that they can inspect the wounds. The air is thick with the smell of blood, and the pair speak in hushed voices to not risk offending the spirit in case it actually comes back.

But we know he won't, and hopefully, the poor man is in Paradise.

He's a natural Rabanarian like me, with black hair and pale skin, and he's also very young-looking, possibly in his mid-twenties considering his level, so he didn't get to enjoy his marriage for too long.

Another one…

Now's not the time to envy the dead, though, so I approach the body and inquire the Examiners. It seems that his wounds are mostly on the arms as he tried to defend himself without a weapon against shortswords, but then he took two stabs to the heart and collapsed.

Nothing special or odd about it; just the work of thugs.

"He didn't have any enchantment to preserve his life. Quite brave for a low-level merchant as rich as he was," one of the Examiners quietly remarks.

"That's odd," I hum back and frown.

"What is?" he innocently asks back.

And I sternly point out, "Enchantments. None of them. Did the sniffers find anything on him?"

The other Examiner shakes his head as he answers, "No mana, and his [Item Box] didn't even have a potion in it. It was a completely non-magical kill."

I scratch my head in confusion as I remark, "I know youths are reckless, but it was like he was asking to be killed."

"That's too much," the first Examiner sternly warns me. The ghost isn't coming back, they never do when exorcised by actual assassins like these, but I don't want to pick a fight with them, so I just ignore it.

"Well, he was attacked at night, so it isn't like he'd be dressed for battle," the second Examiner ponders.

"Still…" I grumble as my frown deepens.

But he also isn't the only dead. The other was an unlucky guard who was pelted by multiple spells and got his neck snapped by an [Earth Bullet]. Sniffers say that the wounds are all from magic tools since the mana has been very poorly converted, but this is curious since the Signeur died without receiving a single spell.

There isn't much else to learn with the Examiners, so we go through the staff and get a timeline of the murder.

It started at eleven of the night with the guards being put to sleep by some sort of magical mist that the Forensics haven't been able to identify yet. Then the criminals rammed the gate open with something magical while also using an expensive [Silent Room] magic tool because nobody heard a thing. Still, this raised the alarm within the mansion.

A pair of guards met with the criminals as they rushed in, but they were knocked out by a flurry of magic tool attacks. One of them was the unlucky man who died in the spot while the other survived to give this testimony.

There were three hooded criminals, and one might've been a wereanimal considering the shape of his hood, but the guard couldn't recall any other detail from the few moments he had to look at them.

Well-armed cultists. Not surprising, but why did they kill Signeur Dalas without using any spells, then…? I guess they might've preemptively used [Dead Zone] because it isn't like they knew that the Signeur had no defensive enchantments.

The Sniffers will likely confirm this soon enough.

Continuing, after an unlucky meeting at the entrance, they murdered the Signeur then stole things around the mansion and left before finishing the scribbles on the wall. There were only a few servants in the mansion at the time, and they hid once the alarm was sounded, so they didn't meet with the criminals, but they did hear them hastily go through the rooms in search of valuables.

And that's everything we can get from questioning them, but now the widow's wails have lowered, so I stop stalling and go ask her some questions.

 

She's in a room deeper into the mansion with the rest of her family as they attempt to console her, and, thankfully, Commander Martan was kind enough to send one of the priests to talk to her. I'm not the kind of man to sweeten my words up… or rather, I guess I lost touch with that side of mine.

The widow is a foreigner, it seems, a gorgeous succubus with dark red locks of luscious hair, yet her crying face does nothing to me. No sympathy, no pity, and no patience. All I want is to get going with this case, so, at most, she makes me feel annoyed.

I'm both the best and worst Investigator of the Crime Division.

"Madame Zwir," I gently greet with as much patience as I can muster.

She sobs a bit more, then seems to notice my presence and slowly recognizes what I'm here for. "Hm…? Oh… oh, are you… the Investigator?" she quietly hums between small sobs and dries her reddened eyes. Her pupils are also red, making her look beautifully haunting, but I feel like she's more of a painting than a person.

"I am. I'd like to ask you some questions," I answer hushedly to make it seem like I'm being respectful.

"Very well…" she hums and slowly nods.

Signeur Dalas was a trader of enchantments that got lucky in the last couple of years, a common story in these times as the Ryders and the Anaras are now bringing in more gems into the market, so the smart ones are taking advantage of the change to make a disgusting amount of money. I know because this also means that fraudsters and conmen have been spreading like goblins.

But the fact that he dealt with gems also makes this a more delicate matter for Rabanara. Can't let our most important merchants feel uneasy now, can we?

"What about his enemies? Someone like him would definitely make a few by rising so fast," I bluntly ask.

But this makes her clam up. "I don't know much… he had competitors, but could they really be 'enemies' to the point they'd kill him?" she answers evasively and turns away, looking as if she's about to cry again.

Odd…

"What about his friends?" I immediately turn it around.

And so does she. "Oh! He had so many friends!" she exclaims and brightens up.

I know she's a grieving widow, but still…

"We're looking for someone who might've betrayed him," I sternly continue.

And she becomes meek again. "I don't… I don't know about that, but I can just tell you what I know."

 

As we leave the mansion, Tarin curiously asks, "Investigator, was it my impression or was the Madame more eager to point us to his friends than enemies?"

"She was, but the question is 'why?'" I casually reply without looking at him as my mind continues to work.

"Doesn't she suspect it was a betrayal?" he answers in a predictable way.

So I lightly scramble the puzzle in his mind, "Or was she afraid of naming his enemies in fear of being next?"

But he snorts and backs off, "You're the investigator, so I won't make assumptions."

And I smirk, though it's unfortunate that he can't see it. "The real answer is that it doesn't matter. We need to go after the Cult of Harvest."