Chương 288: A Near Reflection

"Alright, Master… This revolutionary spell came to me whilst I was dreaming about the case. On its head, it is very simple, but came from a place of profound wonder–As you know, we have a lot of blind spots about details of the case, but there is something in particular that has always bothered me… That being a simple interrogation: Where do the families of the five lost girls fit in? Or even… Where are they at all?"

"We tried to find out where they were today, as, after all, as far as we are aware, all of the parents of the lost girls had married very early on and had children quickly. After twenty years or so, they should have still been alive and well… But we weren't able to track them down at all.

So we presumed that they were slain at one point, or that they left Tolten altogether""However, their absence started much earlier, as they are nearly completely missing from the files of the investigation that had taken place at the time of the tragedy… Our basic assumption was that most of their parents were simply absent from their lives and that the disappearance didn't really seem to bother them that much, but… We couldn't be certain""Which is why I came up with this brand new spell right there!

It is somewhat experimental and mixes some elements I am not really good with, but the core of it is to allow us to investigate a whole new playing field" Jupo expressed himself very well, but it did not hide the fact that he was as pale as a sheet and had bags under his eyes nearly as dark as darkness itself. He hadn't slept ever since he had had this dream he mentioned. The dedication was admirable, but after getting him to explain what the spell was actually about, Binibelle sent her disciple to sleep.

Though it looked more like he fell unconscious than anything. The spell he had come up with was indeed an impressive one, though. It combined elements of Binibelle's investigative spells alongside elements of necromancy, all to allow the spellcaster to reach out to the dead and interrogate them.

Of course, this spell was far from a simple or weak one to actually cast, and since Jupo was still lacking in experience, he was only able to craft this spell he envisioned by incorporating a bunch of rules and restrictions into it.

Binibelle would have liked to be able to make a better version of this spell, but having dedicated herself to her own brand of spellcasting for so long, her capabilities in using other elements were not only quite poor, but it was mostly because she had let herself fall into overspecialisation and taken unbreakable restrictions upon her spellcasting to boost her investigative capabilities. Nonetheless, the spell was solid, and she went ahead to test it immediately.

Since they were currently staying at an inn, she simply went to the room she had for herself, locking the door as she sat down on the ground to focus. One of the most basic restrictions one could put on a spell was to make the spell require a certain amount of time to be cast, no matter what. So Binibelle sat there for fifteen whole minutes before anything actually happened. When it did manifest, it did so quite splendidly, however.

The spell worked by manifesting some sort of cocoon around the caster, creating a specific scene in which the interrogation was to take place. It was a simple, dark space featuring two chairs placed opposite of each other across a table. One was for the interrogator, the other was for however the spellcaster wanted to try and reach.

"Alright… Who should I begin with?" The spell wouldn't stop her from trying to talk to multiple individuals, but it would consume quite a lot of mana every time a spirit would be successfully summoned. One thing that was important to note was that it was basically impossible to genuinely call upon a person who had died with just a spell like this. So whatever would appear in the chair opposite from Binibelle would actually be a fragment that might lack some memories.

"Let's try… The father of one of the lost girls" Nothing happened for a few moments, but eventually, floating, trembling words appeared in Binibelle's vision. The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists"... What? What do you mean by 'no longer exists'? Was his soul freaking destroyed? But this spell grabs fragments, so was his soul entirely erased from the face of this world?" She tried the mother. The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists"Both of them?"

She had tried to reach out to the parents of the girl called 'Poppy', who were supposed to have been little bourgeois or something of the sort.

"In what kind of trouble did they get themselves to have even their souls purged like this?" The halfling was quite confused, but she moved on to Annie's parents. The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists"... Surely, it isn't the case for all of them, right…?" Elowen's parents were next. The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists Then Gigi's…

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists And finally Nessa's. The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists"What the fuck is going on here? The spell should work correctly, I checked it several times–What the hell happened to these people?"

Saying that their souls didn't exist anymore was a very specific and strong term, and Binibelle had no clue who or what actually had the ability to do such a thing. Especially without anyone realising it. No one even seemed aware that the parents of the lost girls had died or disappeared in any way. Back when she had been conducting investigations and trying to figure out where these people were now, she had gotten a whole slew of different responses…

"Poppy's mother passed away due to her sorrow""Annie's parents went their separate ways and left the city""Gigi's father passed away in his sleep just a few years ago" But she remembered two of these responses very well due to how odd they had seemed.

"Nessa's parents still live in the same house" And…

"Elowen's father is a senior guard here in Tolten" These pieces of information were verifiably untrue. The house Nessa's family used to live in hadn't just been deserted. It had been demolished to build a restaurant. As for Elowen's father, he had indeed been a guard back then, but there were no traces of him ever becoming a senior guard, or even traces of him anywhere. For all intents and purposes, he had vanished not too long after the remains of the lost girls had been discovered.

Yet, the people who said these things had seemed absolutely certain of themselves. One had even mentioned talking to Nessa's mother recently at the time. Binibelle had naturally found it all to be incredibly odd, but without much to go on, she could only chalk it up to her interlocutors being old people with bad memories and who were simply confused about what they were talking about. … With the information that the souls of these people had been utterly destroyed without leaving anything behind, though…

It puts things in a brand new light. The people Binibelle had spoken to had probably been genuinely convinced that they were telling the truth, but instead of being confused due to their old age, they had been confused because the people they were talking about had been slain in a very odd way. In a way that might have made it so they disappeared in utter silence, with others becoming certain that they had gone away normally, died normally, or even that they were still around.

"How bizarre… What about the lost girls themselves?" The soul you tried to reach refused to come It said the same thing for all of them, which only raised more questions. The fact that they could refuse implied that their souls were quite powerful, and also that no pieces of their souls had been left anywhere. Their souls were whole and intact. The halfling wasn't stumped like previously.

It had made the rounds that Mara Nebulo not only had an affinity for ghosts, but that spirits with the appearance of young women had been spotted in areas where she was either known to, or strongly suspected, to have been. As much as Binibelle would like to use this as evidence for something, it could be twisted to fit two opposite visions.

Either she was accompanied by these spirits because she killed them in the first place, or she's accompanied by these spirits because she cared about them and took them in after their death. This was definitely one of the worst things about this case. Mara Nebulo was a weird woman, and explanations that went into completely different directions were equally as likely with her.

"Anyway… I'll surely find a spirit to talk to, right?" She went ahead and tried to talk to Adem, who was strongly suspected to have been part of the accident, so his testimony should be valuable… The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists"Him too? What's going on here?"

"What about Wilston?" The soul you are trying to reach no longer exists"Damn it. This is getting annoying… The spell works just fine, but all of the people I want to speak to are either erased from existence or are able to just deny me entirely. Who does that even leave–Oh. What about…?" The soul was successfully reached Sitting across from Binibelle was a figure garbed in black, with a very unusual style. It was a pretty, older woman with raven-black hair.

The detective had expected to meet a corpse-like figure, but the soul manifested with a very lively appearance.

"My apologies for the disturbance. Are you Miss Lativa Nebulo?"

"Yes, that is my name. Can I help you?" Binibelle needed to pick her words carefully. For one, Lativa would have no clue about most things involving her daughter since she had passed away when her children were still quite young, and also… Binibelle immediately noticed that this woman had a rather intimidating presence. The halfling was doubtful she would be willing to say anything that could incriminate her children, no matter what.

"You see… Your children, Mara and Leton, have become quite famous, and I was wondering if you would be willing to tell me more about their childhood, so that I could write an accurate biography of them""Why not ask them directly?"

"They are hard to approach, fame and all…"

"Mmh… What do you want to know, little-big woman?"

"Aherm… I have heard that Mara studied a lot of different topics. Was there anything she was particularly good at?" Lativa's expression did not budge in the slightest.

"Mara is a boneheaded genius. Except for ways of power and magic, she could have excelled in absolutely anything, but she always had the bad habit of pushing people away. He wouldn't admit it, but she's exactly like her father in this regard. They can both do very well in pretty much any scenario, but they can't help themselves from speaking their minds when they don't like something""Is that so?"

"Indeed, but Mara also has her own unique issue that her father lacks. She can be far too… Involved in something. She had a bright future in knighthood, but she wanted to do things 'the right way', and got herself expelled. She isn't one to take orders she knows are incorrect or inefficient" Lativa shrugged and formed the slightest of smiles.

"It isn't a unique problem, actually. She got it from me. Who likes to listen to an idiot who thinks they know everything? Idiots should shut up and be thankful when they are shown the errors of their ways. Mara showed the knight instructor that he was a fool, unqualified to teach her. She shouldn't have been expelled, he should have been fired for being incompetent…"

"... What kind of instructor gets completely defeated by one of their students? Embarrassing. If not for my husband, I would have had him beaten and then made sure that no healer would ever see him as he lay paralysed in bed with his limbs broken" Binibelle swallowed her saliva. It seemed like the apple indeed never fell far from the tree…