29 / 04 / 2019 - Daito, Osaka Prefecture, Japan.
10:00 PM, Wednesday. Akane's Room. Four days later.
"Hmmm…"
Akane let out a low hum, his crimson-ashen eyes sharp and fixed forward, but he couldn't completely mask the deep weariness dragging down his expression — a faint imprint of dark circles had permanently nested beneath his eyes.
On the wall before him, a map of Osaka was covered in a chaotic, overlapping scribble of lines, pinned against a heavy silence.
Right when most normal people were fast asleep, Akane was still cross-referencing coordinates.
Having recently hit a genuine breakthrough on the case, he couldn't bring himself to rest despite the mounting mental burden.
Crossing his arms over his chest, he drifted his gaze to the top-left corner of his makeshift board.
A specific sequence of numbers was listed there: #03 — #08 — #23 — #12 — #32… right alongside a dozen other entries that had been aggressively crossed out.
"Where the hell are you hiding, huh?"
He muttered the words hoarsely under his breath, staring intently at a freshly circled digit on the list. It had already been three days since his self-imposed Sunday deadline, and his progress was still frustratingly slow.
'Too slow. It's dragging…'
Akane clenched his hands into tight fists, the muscles in his thin arms tightening and slightly straining the fabric of his black t-shirt. Still, his eyes didn't budge from the map.
In his overestimation of each operator's capabilities, any competent investigator should have cracked this case open within a week by their own means. Those who dared to accept it at this level should have all the necessary resources to progress.
His own breakthrough of cross-referencing the state of the bodies with the chronological order of true time of death was just a standard baseline for professionals.
Yet he — with his neutered means — was still stuck, immersing himself in manual cross-referencing like this. His crimson-ashen eyes gleamed even more at the thought.
From the start, from the moment he accepted this contract, he should have tempered his expectations.
He was still a complete novice in this hidden part of the world, lacking any formal, systematic education on how his own ability parameters worked.
Even so, he couldn't help but harbour enough stubborn ambition to want to out-compete the professionals in the industry.
And yet… and yet —
"Why am I this angry? Is it even worth getting worked up over?"
Irritation, the simmering pool of despair rotting inside — like a volcano — but in the end its pulse rippled down to something small and simple: he had begun to question himself, and lately this was manifesting as emotional instability.
He found this weakness very jarring. Accustomed to his calm, rational self, the sudden tears or flares of anger when something didn't work out were not characteristic of who he was now.
So he hadn't found a single moment of genuine peace over the past few days, and had simply chosen to ignore it. He let the intrusive thoughts drift.
Even the brief, satisfying rush of hitting his recent timeline breakthrough had faded within minutes, throwing him straight back into an endless loop of repetition.
'This is genuinely sickening…'
Whatever. Since he couldn't force his brain to shut down, he might as well channel the spite into his work. Which was why he had been stuck here, repeating this cycle for the past few days.
Focusing his eyes, he traced the marker lines back to their definitive origin point on the map: Victim #03.
"Based on the limited forensics, #03 was discovered around April 18th," he murmured, his mind instinctively supplying the data blocks to organise his thoughts.
"The victim was a homeless man found in an advanced stage of decomposition. Based on basic biology, he had been rotting for exactly two days before the police even logged the scene."
That exact structural mismatch between the official "Discovery Date" and the biological "Time of Death" was what had forced him to completely reconstruct the timeline two days ago.
It was a massive pain, meaning the local hospital morgues had become mandatory stops for his information gathering.
"#03 was located in Sakai City, sharing the exact same biological markers as #12, #05, and the recently logged #42. Case #42 was apparently so putrid by the time they found it that the neighbours practically smelled it through the walls…"
So, the first definitive cluster was Sakai City. That was the opening chronological node. Moving his gaze downward, his eyes tracked the lines toward Matsubara, which was littered with a high density of markers.
"Five victims discovered in Matsubara. Cross-referencing their states shows the oldest has been dead since April 16th…"
He didn't stop there, tracking the path across the prefecture as his shoulders finally relaxed, letting his arms drop loosely past his waist.
"Eight victims in Yao City… the oldest dying around the 17th. And Case #18 in Higashiosaka was Matsui-san, found on the 18th but officially dead on the 17th…"
The macro-pattern was finally laying itself bare. The phenomenon — whatever entity was causing it — was actively moving.
It started in Sakai City, cut through Matsubara, travelled into Yao, breached Higashiosaka, and was now bleeding into Daito.
'First variable: almost every victim dies in the dead of night and gets discovered the following morning.'
'Second variable: a new casualty immediately pops up in the neighbouring city by the next cycle.'
"Which means the cause is actively travelling," Akane deduced. "But what's the motive? Why the specific itinerary?"
He paused, thinking it over. He had spent a considerable amount of time exchanging information with Takahashi-san, trying to find any common thread connecting the fifty-two victims.
But according to her team's official database, the targets shared absolutely nothing in common — no matching occupations, no mutual acquaintances, no overlapping lineages. The only variable they shared was that they all went to sleep at night.
Reminded of his chat logs with Takahashi, Akane's expression softened slightly, his eyes narrowing from weariness as his mind wandered.
Despite the massive disparity in their institutional status, Takahashi never looked down on him or treated him like a third-rate informant.
Akane couldn't quite tell if she was just inherently dense, or simply a genuinely kind person by nature. He didn't know the answer, but he was more or less satisfied with the dynamic.
Even with her unit currently running a high-priority crisis investigation, she always managed to spare a few minutes to reply to his messages or help him clear up data confusions.
Whatever she did, it was highly effective at lowering his usual caution around her, even if his defensive walls never completely came down.
To keep the transaction perfectly fair, Akane had traded her some exclusive intelligence regarding the Khtonres expedition.
As it turned out, the various factions on Earth had only managed to dig up surface-level data about Khtonres by interviewing the sketchy natives of the First Seas.
Since Khtonres had served as the operational epicentre for Bishop Marten and Azngur, any authentic data regarding its infrastructure was worth a fortune on the underground market.
Recalling the memories of that bizarre expedition, Akane's eye twitched slightly as he thought about the civilisation's sheer scale.
'The technology in Khtonres was honestly absurd…'
Even though it functioned like a completely closed-off, isolated realm, a few high-level blueprints had managed to slip through and filter down to the First Seas — things like advanced automation, autonomous puppets, and heavy combat golems.
Their crowning achievement was a conceptual "Thought-to-Energy" conversion mechanism, which literally recycled the excess cognitive processing power of the mind and translated it into pure physical electricity to run their machinery.
Unfortunately, further development on that front was a dead end. The core material required for the conversion was based on the Malevolent Fragment, which was now lost to spatial turbulence.
Of course, Fraiigilar had casually mentioned finding an alternative workaround using ancient Runes — a neat little asset currently sitting quietly inside Akane's dimensional inventory.
All in all, Akane felt a quiet wave of pride regarding his informational monopoly. He had thoroughly impressed Takahashi-san with his insights.
Since the official Wild Hunt expedition was scheduled to last seven days but catastrophically collapsed by day five, absolutely nobody else on Earth had managed to catch a glimpse of Khtonres' interior.
Except for him, of course. Heh.
The small victory did its job, lightening his dark mood. Snapping himself back to reality before his thoughts could stray any further, he flicked his gaze back to the map with a dry, self-deprecating half-smile.
'Of course, it's not like I'm getting head over heels because a woman texted me back… I know my exact order of priorities. This is just a little harmless vanity to soothe my ego.'
Then again, he didn't know her age or her appearance — for all he knew, she could be someone's grandmother already.
Chuckling dryly, a stray thought still lingered regarding the true nature of that expedition.
Was the government's goal really as noble as they claimed on the news, or was the reality a lot murkier? Was it just a primitive grab for resources?
"All right. I have five cities locked down," he muttered, shaking the thoughts away.
Currently, his most recent data point was Case #56, with a confirmed biological time of death mapped to 6:00 AM this morning.
The absolute oldest data point was Case #03 — an unknown window, but statistically tracking to the daytime hours based on his trajectory conjecture.
'But the oldest sites are completely clean. Totally empty.'
Case #03 and Matsui-san's apartment were completely devoid of physical evidence he could find, aside from that stale stain. Honestly, it was a massive bottleneck.
If the oldest crime scenes were physically clean because the entity was constantly travelling, did that mean it was moving entirely of its own volition? Or was it running away from a pursuer?
He frowned deeply. He still didn't even know if this anomaly looked like a human being, a mutated creature, or a cursed object.
Was it even sentient? Or was it just a mindless force of nature drifting blindly through the suburbs?
'So, my strategic choice is to audit the oldest nodes first. That leaves three viable scenes near my perimeter…'
Bringing his focus back to the list of numbers, he squinted, his eyes zeroing in on Case #32. Coincidentally, the coordinate sat right in his neck of the woods: Daito City.
He paused, letting out a long, slow breath to clear his lungs.
Given that his high school schedule and mandatory Kendo drills were going to completely dominate his daylight hours tomorrow, he only had time to visit a single location. Just one.
"Case #23," he decided, his voice settling into the quiet room. "That's the play."
———
6:25 PM, Thursday. Near Central Park. One day later.
The sun dipped entirely below the horizon, submerging Osaka in darkness as the night sky took over.
It was a windy evening, but the sky remained remarkably clear, decorated only by a sparse handful of clouds and a faint glitter of stars.
A cold breeze swept straight down the empty residential street, some of the chill managing to seep deep past the unbuttoned collar of Akane's high school uniform jacket.
Walking casually along the edge of the road, Akane carried his backpack slung over his left shoulder, while his bamboo training sword shifted rhythmically in its bag against his side.
His expression was entirely perfunctory — the face of an exhausted teenager heading home from club activities.
Yet beneath his glasses, his eyes gleamed with a faint radiant bluish-silver against the backdrop of the night, scanning the pavement as he walked.
'It has been fifteen minutes…'
He calculated his time budget idly. It had been exactly twenty minutes since he clocked out of Kendo drills and immediately detoured toward Case #23's perimeter.
Gazing down the quiet, orderly road lined with brightly lit houses, his mind felt surprisingly calmer than it had all week.
Maybe it was because he hadn't found anything yet. The closer he got to the actual site, the more his boiling irritation from the previous night cooled down into a flat, steady focus.
He paused for a moment to adjust the heavy strap on his sore shoulder, muscles aching from the intense training session.
Letting out a weary sigh, he let his head hang low, using his right hand to push up his glasses. His eyes were burning from days of continuous strain.
'Is it overexertion of mental power? This didn't seem to happen in Khtonres…'
Wiping his tired eyes, he let out a dry, sarcastic mental scoff. Back during the expedition, he had thrown around derived Manifestation skills like they were free candy, utilising fatal techniques that should have logically turned his brain to mush or struck him blind.
So why was he crashing now? Was it really just a basic lack of sleep? What was he, a fragile little kid?
The worst part was that even when he did manage to catch a few hours of sleep, the mental fatigue refused to leave his bones.
"Huhhhhhh…"
Exhaling a long, pent-up breath, his blurry vision finally snapped back into focus, processing the grainy texture of the concrete illuminated by the overhead streetlamps.
Then, his face completely changed. The deadpan fatigue vanished, replaced by utter confusion, then immediate seriousness.
"Huh?…"
Akane dropped into a low crouch. The anomaly on the pavement was so minuscule, so utterly faint, that a normal pedestrian would have subconsciously ignored it as common street debris.
It looked like a scab. A tiny piece of thick, grey fur attached to a pebble-sized fragment of reddish-brown flesh, just lying there on the edge of the asphalt.
His gaze locked in. His breathing paused, and his heartbeat seemed to stagnate in his chest. It looked completely mundane, yet everything about its residual weight felt violently wrong.
Reaching out his bare right hand, he carefully pinched the piece of fur-covered meat and brought it up to eye level.
The texture was incredibly rough. The stiff grey fibres practically tickled his skin, but the moment he applied pressure, a sharp friction sliced his fingertips.
An unnatural biological structure. A tiny bead of blood welled up on his thumb. The sudden, stinging contact sent a strange, visceral shiver straight down his spine.
'What the hell is this…?'
Something he had already come into contact with before? No — no way. Was it even connected to previous events in the first place? Then what? What was it?!
His mind was screaming with questions, yet his external face remained perfectly flat. And that was when a faint, sickly whiff of rot hit his nostrils.
This was a creature. A living entity that had somehow slipped through the cracks. A false alarm? They shouldn't be here.
The mathematical probability of a random mutated animal dying precisely on his calculated chronological path was too coincidental.
And if it were a normal animal — or even one of the creatures that had slipped through the net of Heaven Gate or the military — it wouldn't explain why it was actively wandering into the hyper-dense centre of a major city.
Then was it…
Unless…
'…It really is a chase.'
Bringing the sample closer to his nose, he analysed the scent. It was rotten, wet, and carried the foul stench of something that crawled in the dark.
Grey fur… tumorous flesh… A dog? No, the anatomical variance didn't match a canine. A cat? Completely wrong. A rat? Those… things from the deep tunnels?
His eyes went completely still as his thoughts raced, narrowing down the possibilities until they collapsed into a single logical conclusion.
He stood up, pulling the piece of flesh away from his face, though he kept it securely pinched between his fingers.
'It is an extraordinary creature from the First Seas. An invasive entity that shouldn't even exist on this side of the veil since the main passages are closed.'
'Furthermore, its current behaviour contradicts its natural instincts. A creature like this should be actively hiding from human populations, yet it's traversing a brightly lit residential zone. Why?'
He looked down at the sealed suburban houses. The answer was staring him right in the face.
"There's a second party here…" he whispered to the empty street.
A dry, hollow amusement bubbled up in his chest. The "Party B" and "Party C" he had casually theorised in his bedroom calculations weren't hypothetical anymore.
They were a reality. Pulling a small plastic specimen bag from his backpack, he carefully dropped the flesh sample inside, sealed the lock, and slid it into his uniform pants pocket.
'The physical evidence is still technically weak. A single scab can't structurally support a definitive conclusion…'
Yet, despite the lack of absolute proof, a slow, dark grin began to spread across Akane's face.
He couldn't help it. For the first time in days, he was locking eyes with something familiar — a tangible piece of the things that had become the cornerstone of who he was now. Something of yesterday; not that he hated it.
But more than that, the sheer absurdity of finding this exact trace precisely when he was stuck felt like the invisible hand of fate guiding him — though he doubted whether "It" had hands in the first place.
It felt exactly like the calculated machinations of a certain entity.
'Serpent… oh, Serpent. Is this another one of your twisted trials? Has the mathematical outcome of this entire sequence already fallen under your bright golden eyes?'
Was his grin mockery? Silent defiance? Or perhaps just a profound sense of helplessness in the face of destiny? Akane didn't care to analyse it. He simply shook his head, letting the smile die on his face as his features returned to a flat calm.
The next step was completely clear. He either had to verify this trajectory by obtaining more physical traces, or —