Chương 263: Psychosis

"Alright, it's very simple, you see… It might sound a bit crazy, but we have those strange monsters which–At a glance–Don't seem to have any clear origin or source from which they could have come from, but with my new theory, we can not only discover the true perpetrator of the killings, but we can also figure out who was responsible for the existence of these creatures… And that's because they are the same person""If I may ask… Are you alright, Binibelle?

You look like you've forgotten what a bed looks like""I am the finest I have ever been, Hilene. I just came up with what I believe to be the explanation that solves the only mystery that was ever able to give me trouble. I have been doing this for a long time, you know? I've been THE mage-detective for a while. I am older than I look. I have worked on hundreds of cases""Have you heard of the Great Bloodshed? I am the one who found out the identity of the werewolf. I have dealt with countless murder-happy madmen.

I have encountered some real filthy and disgusting creatures that are supposedly sapients like you and me… I thought this lycanthrope would be the worst individual I would ever have to deal with, but I have been proven wrong" The four adventurers looked at each other, all the while Jupo seemed like he was about to fall asleep at any time. Binibelle scratched the bridge of her nose.

"Alright… The reason this case was so complicated is for one simple reason: The one whom I now wholeheartedly believe to be the criminal possesses an ability to interfere with… Basically, anything that attempts to discover things about the case or themself. It is an incredibly powerful ability. Overcoming it is difficult beyond belief, but even once 'overcome', the information shown is never actually the real truth" Hortus cleared his throat.

"Is… There are false and real truths?" The halfling nodded widely, slamming her fist into the corkboard behind her.

"Absolutely! Our world is a mad, needlessly complex one–So of course contradicting truths can coexist! They do not truly coexist in the way one would imagine, however. What I am able to peer at are actually alternate realities. Whether they are genuine worlds parallel to ours, or just mirages of what could have been, I do not know, but they present events often similar to what happened in the real world, but in an altered manner""That's what I didn't wrap my head around at first.

I thought that I was either shown the real truth, or was being misled, but in reality, I was being misled by an alternative truth… Get it?" Yeldt lightly rubbed his chin.

"Huh… That… That's brutally confusing. This interference ability is properly insane… How did you even manage to figure anything out if the best intel you can get is basically falsified evidence?" Binibelle grinned.

"That's where it gets fun, Elf Boy! You see, what is shown to me isn't straight-up false. It is more like a re-imagined version of what actually happened. Like a book being rewritten by another author, adding certain elements, removing some, changing the orders of events, all that stuff, but in the end, the core of the story remains mostly the same… And then, there are the televisions that manifested all over the place, all of them accompanied by a tape or something similar" Gontra raised a worried eyebrow.

"You didn't watch those, right? They curse you""Don't worry, I can deal with curses. I was gifted a necklace that can detoxify my body of them""So you got cursed a bunch of times?"

"Let's not dwell on the details, Hilene. What matters is that these cursed pieces of 'footage' are related to the case. You know why? Because the one wielding the Nightmare Plague is the steel monstrosity that appeared in Tolten all this time ago, and most importantly, its true identity was once a human woman!" Binibelle ripped off a piece of paper on the corkboard, revealing the smaller copy of a portrait she secretly made using magic.

"Mara Maeve Maya Nebulo, The triple M. The Three M. N!" Jupo's forehead met the table. He had definitely fallen asleep. The sound of his skull against the wood felt deafening in the silence that followed Binibelle's declaration.

"Mmh… Didn't she go missing like… Twenty-two years ago? Maybe even longer? Why would she have suddenly shown up again as a monster after all of this time?"

"I am glad you're asking, Hortus, but trust me, there is no other logical conclusion to this bundled mess of a mystery! Let me explain her background first so that we're on the same page… Tell me, if you've heard of her before, what do you know about this woman?" Hilene leaned back in her chair.

"As far as I am aware… She was just a nice sister to Leton Nebulo. I mean, he talks about her like she was his guardian angel""A guardian devil would be a more accurate description. I had no idea at first, but this woman is a real piece of work–She was banned from knight training due to being excessively violent during sparring sessions.

To be precise, she was banned due to an accident where she beat another trainee so badly that he partly lost control over his limbs, and when the instructor tried to step in, she punched him in the throat""Oh my…" Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"Keep some shocked reactions in reserve, Troll Girl, we are barely getting started… Mara Nebulo has a history of violence. On record, she never killed anyone, but that's only on record. You see, she was suspected in–Get ready for it–Dozens of murders and disappearances" Binibelle inhaled and exhaled strongly, stepping to the side to pull off a sheet covering a second corkboard. This one was covered with sketches and old reports the halfling had gotten from city guard archives.

"She was suspected of those for a simple reason: She had a motive for each of those cases. These people, one way or another, were causing trouble for her brother, and she had already shown herself willing to use violence in such cases in front of many witnesses""For example, a student once tried bullying Leton Nebulo for his limp, and what happened the next day? Miss Nebulo waited for the student to come through the gate and beat the living shit out of him in front of everyone.

He had no intact teeth by the end of it" Yeldt threw his arms up in the air.

"Who the hell would mess with her brother after this?"

"Oh, he went to multiple schools. His education was quite in-depth… Also, she used her status to suppress as much of it as possible–But speaking of status, the cases that took place in public all involved people of lesser status compared to her""Meanwhile, the people who were killed or who disappeared tended to be of equal or higher status.

I would wager that she didn't kill those lesser than her solely to make it appear that she was someone who dealt with problems in broad daylight, rather than a maniac who would go out late at night and ambush people to murder them for even slightly messing with her brother" Binibelle went over several specific cases, which she had come to learn about thanks to the cursed footage she had seen, which displayed a figure whose face was obstructed, attacking a whole slew of victims.

"How did no one actually figure out it was her, though? Even if she already had her interference ability, it should have been pretty obvious that she at least had something to do with them, right?"

"Unfortunately, Mara Nebulo is a professional. Apart from a possible motive that the investigators clearly didn't believe was very solid to begin with, there was nothing against her. When asked, Leton Nebulo would always back up his sister and claim that she was at home with him…

Additionally, there were basically two different modus operandi at work""Either the victim vanished entirely, that's when she would silently kill them by breaking their neck, or she would absolutely maul them, but then proceed to plant false evidence that it was either a violent robbery, or that they had been slain for having some shady connections""To be frank, if I had been around for these cases, I probably would have let her go too. She's a real genius when it comes to this stuff, and according to the reports…"

"Hold on, I get what you are saying and all, but… How does this relate to the black and white clown, exactly?"

"Oh, sorry, I got a little bit turned around for a moment… Mmh… Right, I was talking about the current case at first. So basically, I think she's the one who killed those five girls at Harvey's Diner. From what I was able to gather by cross-referencing real facts with several pieces of evidence found in the alternate realities, there was no great mystery about who wore the Glown suit. It was just always worn by the same person" Jupo was suddenly startled awake.

"Master, we still didn't find any motive for this, though…" He yawned.

"... She might be a maniac, but there always were clear motives and comprehensible reasons behind her actions. When she beat up those other trainees as a knight, it was because she believed that's how training should go. When she targeted people messing with her brother, it was to defend him, and even then, she was willing to let some go with just some beatings, so she clearly wasn't uncontrollably bloodthirsty, so… Why kill those five girls?

I don't think it makes sense""The automatons went missing eventually, and soon after, Leton Nebulo pushed the concept of mechanistry forward by leaps and bounds. It can't be a coincidence. She must have killed those girls to close the diner, and she then killed Wilston and Adem to silence them once they served their purposes""Isn't it overly extreme, though? She has shown herself to be careful and calculated. Why kill to make the place close down?

She could have just sneaked expired food into the recipes, or infested the place with rats… Hell, she could have just come back at night and stolen the automatons while the place was still open!"

"It doesn't make sense if it isn't her. Who else could have done it? Why would the whole story be marred with interference if she didn't play a major role?"

"What if Wilston or Adem did the killing, and it was not part of the plan?"

"Mmh… Interesting, go on""We know those two are involved to some extent, so what if there was an agreement between the three to make the place close down, or to otherwise cause something big? We know that Mara Nebulo was close to the five girls, and we also know well that she is rabidly protective of those she cares about, as evidenced by what she did to protect her brother… So what if the other two went too far by killing those five by using the likeness of Glown? And in retribution, she killed both of them""This…

This could make sense to some extent. But what about that one tape we saw? Of the ghosts cornering the obstructed figure? We both agree that the one with the black square on their face is actually Mara. Why would the spirits go after her if she isn't the killer? We already established that the alternate realities would go as far as changing the culprit of the murders, so…"

"They could simply be mistaken. If they were killed by someone wearing the Glown suit, and they believed that Glown and Mara were one and the same, then it would make sense, wouldn't it?"

"Hold on, we're forgetting about the Coco suit, it was there in reality, there were witnesses!"

"Ah, crap…I forgot about this… Master, we're also forgetting about the concept that the last victim was lured by someone not wearing the suit, someone with a black square over their face, which would be…"

"I mean, your idea could still work if the other two got Mara to lure the fifth girl, and she only realised that they were killing them afterwards""I suppose so…" The four adventurers felt dizzy. Binibelle and Jupo were endlessly going back and forth. It was to the point that they could barely tell who was speaking anymore. Hilene slapped her own face to clear her mind.

"Alright! So you basically didn't solve anything. You just… You just came up with a bunch of crazy theories, none of which can actually be proven to make more sense than any other, and… And you freaking built them using 'evidence' from alternate realities where things are literally provably very different from here…"

"I… I don't mean to insult you guys or anything, but this is batshit insane" The master and disciple duo looked at one another for several seconds, until Binibelle coughed into her fist.

"Perhaps we are slightly losing our minds over this, but… I assure you that we did find solid evidence for a few things. It is without a doubt that the steel abomination is Mara Nebulo, and that the colourless clown is directly related to her. That's pretty easy, it's all in the colour of their eyes""... All this for the main evidence to be eye colour? I think we need to get you guys checked by clerics"