Far east of Athenian, bordering the Kingdom of Bacchus.
An isolated, yet not hidden, crime scene was surrounded by remnants of the Forest of Nymphs fleeing south. Soldiers formed a small crowd, encircling black bags on the ground—reaching thirty victims.
On the road descending from the city, a line of black vehicles struggled to move due to overcrowding. Ambulances tried to go up; police vehicles chose to go down. In the end, they were all stuck in the same frustrating and disordered situation.
Ethan, stressed by the inappropriate chaos, abandoned the vehicle alongside Luanne and walked nearly five hundred meters down to the crime scene. Although it was a short distance for deviants and healthy individuals, the Duke's difficulty was noticeable.
Luanne quickly found it strange, as he was capable of much more. A small theory gained strength when the Duke, strained by the short walk, coughed while clutching his chest, pressing against the region of his heart.
"Are you alright?" Luanne asked, analyzing her companion's posture.
Ethan stood withdrawn, with heavy eyes and lowered shoulders. He was also short of breath, and by analyzing his energy flow, she noticed a slight fluctuation.
"Yes, I am…" he replied without confidence.
Rolling her eyes upward, Luanne stepped in front of the Duke. Blocking his path toward the crime scene, she pressed him with a sharp gaze.
"I'll go with you to the consultation."
"What?" He stepped back, coughing with a bitter sensation.
"You came here to take Theo to a proper doctor and start his treatment. Your core isn't well, is it?"
He glanced sideways, hiding his hands inside his coat. Licking his lips in constant discomfort, he moved away before adding fuel to the fire of theories.
He walked along the road until reaching a sidewalk at the end, which led to a square. Leaving the settlement and arriving at a field flooded by the storm's water, they joined the forensic team. Initially, they were stopped by soldiers; however, Ethan was recognized by one of the officers.
"Hey, hey! Let him through!" a young man shouted from afar, trying to maintain order.
Though he had just turned twenty, he was physically strong, with an enviable stature; his eyes were faintly wine-colored, hiding in shadows and nearing black. His blond hair was neatly trimmed, brushed back, with naturally black strands.
He wore a gray vest over a white dress shirt rolled up to the elbows, nodding toward Ethan.
"Cadet Moris!" the Duke greeted, only to be corrected.
"Cadet?" Luanne muttered, shrugging. "Not keeping up with your former subordinates?"
"What?"
As he approached, Moris grabbed his former mentor in a crushing hug. Even being in shape, the former apprentice's muscles nearly broke his bones.
"Now I'm Officer Ziziel, Rank Seven!" he boasted with a bright smile.
"Look at that… Didn't expect you to become an Officer so quickly…" Ethan said with sarcasm, still catching his breath.
"And I'm almost a Lieutenant! Not much left."
"Of course you are! I'm happy to see you doing so well."
Crossing his arms with his chest puffed out, Moris walked while trying to hide his own pride.
"You're almost at our level…" Luanne commented, analyzing him with satisfaction. "So, Officer Ziziel… what exactly happened here?"
Rolling up his sleeves and crouching beside one of the bodies, Moris pulled back the black bag covering the corpse. The skin was dry, with dead veins protruding through the lifeless muscles; the eyes were sunken; the lips were cracked and drawn inward; the hair had fallen prematurely.
Ethan was startled at first, falling into analytical reflection. It was impossible for someone to be in such a degraded state.
"All of them were collaborators of the Klauster Corporation… outsourced companies in the production of energized machines."
Scratching the back of her neck in discomfort, Luanne stepped back a reasonable distance.
"We checked their records and found that, coincidentally, all of them were workers in the same sector," Moris said, shifting his gaze toward Ethan.
In turn, Duke Lawrence silently prayed that the next words wouldn't leave the Officer's mouth.
"Engine purification."
Biting his lips in disapproval, Ethan turned toward the forest. He drifted through the flow of energy among the trees, disappearing into the air right before the corpses.
"I was told they died during the storm… So how can they be like this?" Ethan asked, looking at the marks on the body.
Pulling the bag further to reveal the victim's heart, Moris exposed a hole in the chest; the flesh was rotting, with scarce blood turning into water.
"According to reports, they walked up to five meters into the forest, as if they were hypnotized zombies. It happened during the storm, so no one could see exactly what took place here. Strange, right? They decided to use the storm as a way to suppress the evidence."
"They didn't decide…" Luanne countered, her back turned and arms crossed. "They fabricated it."
Both remained attentive to the Priestess's statement, who seemed convinced of what she was saying. She walked to the edge of the forest, analyzing the mana particles in the air. They wandered without rhythm, disoriented by the wind—something unnatural.
In contrast, the particles gradually disappeared along with the remnants of the rain.
"This storm was conjured by a deviant. Someone capable of manipulating natural disasters."
"Are you sure about that, Priestess?" Moris inquired, covering the corpse again.
"Yes. Look at how the mana particles are disappearing after the storm. It was made to cover the traces, to make tracking impossible… I think even experts will struggle to follow them."
Hiding his arms in his pockets, Ethan stepped back after analyzing the corpse once more. He took a deep breath and walked through the area, following the traces Luanne mentioned.
Distant and reflective, he followed the unstable flow of energy down to the roots of a tree. Soon after, he noticed the flow extending through the other victims.
"The fact that we can't identify any peculiar trait in the mana implies it must be a neutral-core deviant. Right?" Moris asked, standing up afterward.
"Correct. This storm wasn't conjured like a spell; it was manipulated as something external. Only neutral-core deviants can accomplish such a feat."
Nodding with furrowed brows, Moris pulled out a notebook from his pocket and wrote down the Priestess's theory.
"Would you mind reporting this theory to the inspector, Priestess?"
"Of course. I can do that."
"Great," he said, closing the notebook. "Do you have anything else to add to the investigation? Since the commotion is preventing our specialists from arriving, I want to see the situation through the eyes of two experienced people like you."
"I do," Ethan pointed out, pulling his gaze away from the forest. "Look for creatures, Moris. I'm not exactly sure whether they were conscious or manipulated, but they fled into the forest. The problem is that this forest is inaccessible…"
"Yeah… but I'll take that into account, my Lord. I'll set up a perimeter up to the borders with Hardian."
"Good. Don't leave the bodies exposed to the air, the evidence might disappear. And Moris…"
"Yes!" the Officer responded, fully immersed in Ethan's guidance.
"Fix that mess…" the Duke ordered, pointing toward the commotion at the entrance. "This is a multiple homicide scene, civilians can take another route."
Puffing out his chest, Moris looked at the crowd before swallowing dryly.
"Yes, sir!"
Saluting in military fashion, Moris walked toward the perimeter entrance. Once they were alone, with no one within a twenty-meter radius, Luanne gathered the courage to ask:
"So… Christopher and Alexander were right. In their system, this is definitely nether… That's why they're in accelerated decomposition. Do you think it was those so-called demons? The ones responsible for the murders."
"Probably," Ethan replied. "I'm sure it's a group of powerful individuals, since they managed to manipulate a storm of that magnitude just to hide magical evidence. Influential enough to tame demons and make them massacre all those workers…"
"Yeah, yeah…" she murmured, observing the forest and following the curves of the trees to the end—where the mist of the second zone took over the environment. "What do you think this forest hides from us?"
Rolling up his sleeves and crossing his arms over his chest, Ethan reflected alongside her.
"Why don't you ask your goddess that?" the Duke questioned.
The Priestess laughed.
"The gods cannot influence human evolution…"
Suppressing his disbelief with a morbid sigh, Ethan complained once more about a pain in his chest.
"And yet they've slowed our evolution once again," he muttered, turning and walking away.
Away from where the world did not want his presence.