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“So we’re up to six now.” At the Schillings mansion, Yukinari sighed when the familiar brought him the report.
It had been perhaps twenty days since he had found the ring and armband inside the xenobeast. But the case had gone unsolved, the body count was mounting, and time was dragging on. Fiona and Yukinari were working with the community watch, Arlen and his companions, and Yggdra’s familiars to make the town as secure as possible, but even so these cases kept multiplying.
The specific details of the incidents had been kept from the townspeople, but there was a palpable unease all the same. Yukinari came to town nearly every day, but generally slept at his sanctuary, so it took him several days to notice the change in the atmosphere.
“This is bad...”
“That’s for sure,” Fiona said. “We can’t find any commonalities in the victims or in the frequency with which the murders occur. We’re completely on the back foot here.” She and Yukinari were in the living area, along with Dasa, Berta, Ulrike, and the middle-aged familiar. It was he who had brought them the report of this sixth death.
“Maybe we’re making some kind of mistake?” Yukinari said, sinking into the sofa and staring up at the ceiling.
At first, he had thought perhaps the wife of the first victim was continuing to kill. But the fact that the murders had gone on so long without them being able to do anything suggested they were missing something—perhaps even investigating the wrong things.
“The dead body was just left there, right?”
“Yes. That much is the same. And I have heard that there were no injuries to the body other than the chest wound.”
“Meaning we’re not dealing with the work of a demigod or xenobeast, here...”
Demigods and xenobeasts would eat highly intelligent creatures to increase their own intelligence and spiritual power. But the other side of the coin was that this was the only reason they had for attacking humans. Since the brains—the seat of intelligence and spiritual power—were left undisturbed, it was hard to imagine this was the doing of some demigod or xenobeast who had snuck into town.
“So is it the work of some outsider...?” he muttered.
“I kind of doubt it,” Fiona said. Very few visitors came to Friedland. If anything, a stranger walking along the road would be noticed immediately. Friedland was not such a minor settlement that every single person knew every other person’s face, but still, there was a good sense of who was and wasn’t familiar. If any strangers had been seen, rumors would have spread. But then who was perpetrating these incidents?
“There’s even some superstitious talk that it’s a ghost stalking the town and killing people.”
“Superstition, right...” Given that Yukinari was now an actual god, he thought maybe it wouldn’t be right to smirk at the mention of folk beliefs.
Whatever the case, a killer with no name and no face could cause untold trouble. It only started with the actual murders. It continued with the fear and unrest this would sow among the townspeople. If things went on and these feelings got out of control, the people could easily begin to doubt and suspect each other.
Were we wrong to ask Arlen and his knights for help? Yukinari thought suddenly.
If a spirit of suspicion took hold, its first targets would be the people’s former enemies. They were patrolling the town in full armor for safety, but if people began to think of them as missionary knights of the True Church of Harris, an unfavorable reaction could soon ensue.
He had considered that scenario before asking for their help, but simple necessity had dictated his priorities—there were simply not enough people to keep everyone safe.
Anyway, with everything that’s happened, they’ve turned pretty friendly...
If anyone said it to his face, Arlen would probably have spit and cursed and denied it, but he had gotten rather used to the routines of life in Friedland. When the flying demigod had attacked, he was the one who had fought to protect the children from the orphanage, making him a particular favorite among Berta’s younger sisters. Yukinari had even heard rumors that when Arlen was done with his duties, he would go to the orphanage of his own volition to help with any physical labor that needed doing. He seemed to be taking his current patrol responsibilities very seriously, as well. He still loved to act haughty, but Yukinari had begun to suspect that this was a way of covering for a certain shyness on his part.
However, Arlen’s change of heart was probably not reflected in all of the missionary knights. Those who had been “domesticated” by the Friedlanders accounted for no more than half of the missionaries who had first come to the town. The remaining number still considered Yukinari and Friedland to be their enemies and were still imprisoned in a warehouse on the outskirts of town.
Then there was the possibility that some of the knights were outwardly cooperating, but still harbored ill motives in their hearts. In fact, Yukinari suspected they were the majority, and he suspected the townspeople knew it, too. If the people started to suspect them, there would be no way to keep the discord from spreading.
Yukinari and Fiona, as the town’s god and deputy mayor respectively, might have declared Arlen and his companions innocent of wrongdoing, but that was hardly going to be enough to allay suspicion. After all, they could only make that declaration because they were in positions of power.
If things went wrong, Friedland might start to destroy itself from the inside. And that would be bad. Very bad.
“Have we told everyone to make sure they lock their doors at night and don’t go out when the sun is down?”
“Yes, we’ve done that.”
Yukinari could remember in his previous world, in Japan, hearing that out in the country, there were some people who didn’t even lock their doors when they went to sleep at night. Everyone in these little villages knew each other, and being overly cautious was actually seen as rude. Or something like that. There were some villages where pretty much everyone was more or less closely related, making the entire place feel like one extended family.
Yukinari, thinking the same might be true of Friedland, had recently suggested to Fiona that they recommend that people lock their doors at night and avoid going out when the sun was down. But this wasn’t something that would have a dramatic effect on safety, and now another incident had occurred regardless.
“Also, and this is only a way of treating the symptoms, but I thought we could move over here from the sanctuary and stay in Friedland. We could help with security. I don’t know how much, but...”
Yukinari normally stayed at the sanctuary on the outskirts of town because it was a geographically convenient place from which to protect the village from xenobeasts and demigods. But of late he had only encountered the one xenobeast, and it was now dead; there didn’t seem to be much external danger. If anything did show up, assuming he was careful and prepared, he could deal with it even while based in town.
“I think it would help,” Fiona said. “I’d appreciate it.”
“And in town, I can be even quicker to get Yukinari information,” Ulrike said, looking at Yggdra’s other familiar.
Friedland, of course, didn’t have anything in the way of telegraphs or telephones. Sending information required a messenger. But because Ulrike was connected to Yggdra’s other familiars via a sort of spiritual net, she was able to send information “wirelessly.” The familiars made excellent messengers, and with everyone on high alert, information would travel even more quickly.
“If need be, I could bring several more familiars here.”
“No, I think we’re fine for now,” Yukinari said. “Just make sure you’re keeping a careful eye on Rostruch. Until we know what’s going on, we don’t know it won’t happen there, too.”
“In Rostruch... too?” Dasa said, cocking her head. “Yuki, you mean—”
“Do you mean you think the Missionary Order might be behind this?” Fiona said, picking up on Dasa’s hesitant words.
“I don’t have any proof. But we can’t discount the possibility. That’s all.”
“But Arlen—”
“No, no,” Yukinari said, shaking his head quickly. Fiona seemed to think he suspected Arlen, but Yukinari was concerned about a completely different unit of the Missionary Order. “We didn’t finish off all of Angela Jindel’s followers. They could be hiding out in the wilderness, exacting their revenge. Admittedly, it’s not a very strong possibility.”
The members of the Ninth Missionary Brigade had abandoned most of their equipment and provisions when they fled. But if they had gone into the mountains, they might be able to subsist on fruit and nuts, or maybe hunt small animals. It wasn’t yet getting so cold at night that anyone would freeze to death. These were trained warriors; they might not last against a demigod, but there was a chance they could take down a xenobeast. Ambush was a possibility.
But then again, Yukinari was making periodic patrols to ensure that no demigods or xenobeasts were anywhere around town. He was not, of course, specifically looking for human remnants, but it still seemed likely that if they had spent long in the wilderness, he would have found some trace—the ashes of a campfire or something.
“With everything that’s been going on, I’ve been putting it off,” Yukinari said, sinking into the sofa. “But I need to try to interrogate Angela Jindel again.”