Chương 267: Blood Remains

"Miss Binibelle, Jupo… I think this is a terrible idea, and I still believe that you should receive a long night's rest accompanied by a few healing spells. You guys were trying to argue that the case you're working on was actually directly linked to the Abyss, and then you spent thirty minutes theorising that the Abyss was actually a fully sentient being.

This is not normal""I understand that you worry, Miss Hilene, but it was all merely debate practice, and interrogating witnesses who might be partly guilty is part of the course in any investigation""I get that, alright? But aren't we straying from our original objective by a lot? And by 'a lot', I mean completely. We were supposed to be on the trial of the black and white clown girl, yet here we are, back in Tolten" The halfling rubbed the back of her neck as she looked up at the swordswoman.

"I mean… Our lead on the black and white clown went cold. We had a good idea of where she might be hiding, but we can't really disregard local laws and annoy the important people of the area, with our only explanations being that we think a monster in the form of a clown woman is hiding somewhere""I don't know how or why, but it seems like she stopped acting sporadically altogether. She must have met up with something or someone who was able to rein her in, and let me tell you…

I think there is only one individual capable of this–The steel monstrosity, who's also Mara Nebulo""Master, I can agree with this idea, but only if part of the theory is that she didn't kill the five girls""This is negotiable…" Hilene intervened before they could launch themselves into another debate. Those things genuinely gave her headaches.

Past a certain point, she genuinely became unable to tell the difference between who was talking as they kept bouncing off one another and jumping headfirst into madness-inducing theories that barely even made sense. Right now, the best and most solid evidence they have to link Mara Nebulo to the steel monster is that they apparently shared an unusual eye colour, but there is a bit of a problem with this. The similarity was based mostly on hearsay.

Neither Binibelle nor Jupo could actually confirm that this idea was true. Jupo had met face-to-face with the monster, but he had never met Mara Nebulo. She had gone missing before he had even been born. Paintings of her couldn't be reliably used either, depending on the one you looked at, details like the shade of her purple eyes would differ. Paintings were rarely an exact representation of a person, after all… And finding the exact colours wasn't exactly a simple affair either.

As such, Hilene did not exactly feel very confident in the foundation of their case about the murders of the five girls, or even their case about what was going on nowadays. Especially since most of the information Binibelle was able to acquire with her spells was inherently dubious due to them coming from alternate realities. One could not simply point their finger at someone for something they might have done in what was essentially a different world, where they were basically a different person altogether.

However, it seemed like the halfling's detective instincts were pushing her toward pursuing this lead… Which is why they now all found themselves back in Tolten, where everything had begun. This was where the five girls had disappeared and eventually been found dead, and this was where both the iron entity and the colourless clown had emerged, the latter alongside another creature. Their first stop was at the place where Harvey's Diner once stood.

The diner had been left abandoned and untouched for a while following the terrible events that had taken place there. It had remained a vestige of a dark past for more than twenty years until the place was suddenly burnt to the ground. In the charred remains, two bodies had been discovered, and the belief of most was that two fools had gone inside carrying torches or oil lanterns, and accidentally burnt everything down alongside themselves.

Of course, much like everything else concerning this damned diner, Binibelle's spells had not worked as they should when she had tried to discover what had truly transpired, which had led her to believe that their deaths had something to do with everything else. One interesting thing Binibelle had noted was that no automatons were found in the smouldering aftermath of the fire… She had never revealed it to anyone before, but her investigative spells weren't limited to viewing events from the past.

She could also stimulate her brain with an augmentative spell, allowing her to think and make connections between different events at a rapid rate. It also allowed her to remove any brain fog or bias that might prevent her from reaching certain conclusions–The only issue with this spell was that it led her to create an absurd amount of explanations for a single event, and in this particular case, this spell truly became exhausting to use.

This spell was to be blamed for some of her more insane theories, but nonetheless, once she got the time to arrange everything, discard the bad conclusions, keep and cross-reference the good ones, then it could sometimes appear as though Binibelle had somehow used a spell that just told her the correct solution. The power of this spell of hers was great enough that she preferred to keep it under wraps and keep people guessing.

Such a strong augmentative spell focused on the mind and brain could do an absolute killing for any mage. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. It was with several uses of this spell that she had come to the idea that Mara Nebulo was important to everything that had and was happening, but she had to concede to her disciple that, according to all that was known about her, it made no sense for her to be the killer of the girls.

Even with her spell, the halfling was unable to find any scenario where that made sense without going against the evidence she had. Which was why Binibelle decided to do something bold and question Leton Nebulo directly about this. He had shown himself rather cooperative concerning everything. He had helped even when it seemed to bear ill on his sister's reputation, but…

"I think he's a big fat liar. A very good liar, I would say. He knows how to control conversations and hold himself in a way that makes people simply not ask him anything, but I bet that he knows much more than he lets on–After all, isn't he a genius? There is no way he wouldn't have eventually realised that his beloved sister was overprotective to a dangerous degree""Is it really wise to just go up to him and ask him?

If he really doesn't want to answer, who's to say that he won't use his war machines to get rid of us?" Binibelle merely shrugged.

"He won't do this""And how can you be so certain? I am not bringing in my teammates just based on a random guess. Nebulo's mechanical creations are no joke. I don't think we'll be able to get away if he gets serious about it""Trust me, Hilene. He is hardly capable of harming a fly…" Getting a meeting with Leton Nebulo was trivially easy, but the setting in which they all met immediately set the tone.

Rather than his office down in his massive workshop, Leton was standing in the wide hallway one needed to traverse to step into the spatially distorted underground. He had both hands on his cane and was looking forward with a flat expression.

"Greetings, Mister Nebulo. I wanted to ask you a few questions concerning your sister""I figured that it would eventually come to this. Anyone else would have given up a long time ago, but the greatest investigative mage isn't one to let go of a problem… Ask away, Miss Binibelle, I won't lie to you""Great… The steel monster, is it her?"

"Yes""What about the black and white clown, as well as the shadow-dwelling creature accompanying it? What are they?" The four adventurers and Jupo glanced at one another as they stood by Binibelle's side. They doubted that Leton would have answers to such things, however…

"Merely byproducts as far as I am aware. They were born out of negativity. What happened at Harvey's Diner meant a lot. I suppose the negative energy produced from the event was stronger than any other""Speaking of Harvey's Diner… Did she do it? Did your sister–Mara Nebulo–Kill those five girls?" Leton stayed silent for a few seconds.

"Does it really matter? My sister… Mara had killed so many people. It is absurd, more than half of the disappearances and violent deaths were her doing alone. Since the very first instance, I had known it was her, but I did not ask. I acted oblivious, and I allowed my mind to imagine a world where it was just a whole bunch of coincidences""That my sister was not a bloodthirsty lunatic who would kill at the slightest occasion, and… It worked for a time, I suppose.

After all, she was so caring and had such humane problems. How could my sister be this ruthless killer when her days were mostly spent looking for a husband and looking after me? How could it be her when she had to be responsible for the business of our parents?"

"Alas, the illusion eventually broke and then… I made a terrible decision. I chose my sister over all of her victims. Over all of those people who had certainly not deserved the brutal fates they had encountered. I knew that it was not right. That not stopping her only meant that the mountain of bodies would keep growing, but she is family, and I fully intended to live with the knowledge for the rest of my life…"

"... Something eventually changed. She… She vanished. She disappeared. I was left alone. I aged as the last Nebulo, and I did my own things. I developed my own morality, detached from my sister. I still fully intended on maintaining her good reputation to the public, and to never reveal the atrocities she had committed, but then… But then…"

"She came back""She was still here, after all this time, and she had not changed. For a while after discovering it, I allowed myself to think that the monster she had become was different to the human she had been, but that was yet another illusion. She was exactly the same. She did not change. She merely adapted to her new vessel" Leton sighed and tapped his cane against the ground.

"By this point, it had been more than twenty years, and the man I had become was no longer the person who could put my sister before the lives of countless innocents" He emitted a low, humourless chuckle.

"Even now, I find myself considering simply ignoring it all, but I have walked over the line already, and… I have a responsibility. Not only to the victims, but I must… I have something I must tell her directly" Binibelle frowned.

"This is interesting, but does not answer my question, Mister Nebulo""Ah, forgive me. I haven't had the occasion to speak my mind about this for so long, I guess I rambled without realising it… You want to know if she killed those five girls?"

"Yes, I would like to know""She definitely killed Wilston and Adem, she told me so""What about the girls? Are you avoiding the subject?"

"Well… I am only avoiding it because my honest answer is not one you will like hearing, Miss Binibelle. I do not know if she killed those girls. She might have, she might not have… I know my sister well, but I am afraid that even I was not privy to the deepest motions of her mind. She was quite fond of those girls, so I would assume she didn't do it, especially since it was unnecessary to do so, but…

I am incapable of affirming it""Mara is very unpredictable""The only way you can get an answer about this is by hearing it from her own mouth" He turned around and began walking away.

"If you feel brave enough to stare death in the eyes, you can try to find her at the House of Freedom in Aesther" The doors to his workshop came shut. The discussion was over.

"Damn… I wanted to ask more questions…"