Chapter 21
THAT ENDED THE TESTING of the warrior-class adventurers. Now, only the mage-class adventurers were left.
Julius had returned from deeper inside the guild holding a piece of equipment that looked as if it was for conducting experiments. It was apparently used to investigate a person’s aptitude for becoming a mage, and they could use it to determine what kind of mages the remaining adventurers were.
“They let me borrow this and even taught me how to use it,” he explained.
“All right,” Wolf said. “Why don’t we hurry up and get started?”
Hearing him say this, the rest of the adventurers quickly lined up as if to show that they wanted to prove their innocence quickly.
The aptitude test was simple. A couple adventurers completed it quickly and were determined to be innocent. No one so far had evinced an aptitude for demonology—or for summoning, so Mira was a little let down.
“Oh! He has an aptitude for divination as well as sorcery,” Julius announced, reading the test results of a man who claimed to be a sorcerer.
“Wow. You don’t say?” the man murmured, surprised. Apparently, he’d never taken an aptitude test, and this was the first time he’d heard that he was cut out for anything besides sorcery.
But if he’d never taken an aptitude test, how had he even known he’d make a good sorcerer? Why had he pursued that particular path? Upon asking that, Mira very quickly got an explanation from Wolf.
Proficiency in a certain discipline of magic was passed down from a parent, so sometimes a person knew what they’d have an aptitude for without ever taking a test. Depending how they were taught, they might simply end up developing whatever discipline they’d inherited a knack for without ever learning about any others, the loquacious detective explained. The man’s parents were apparently very accomplished sorcerers.
Next up was a cleric who also had aptitudes for multiple disciplines, including demonology. That meant that by mastering Endogenous Sense, they could use the Demonic Arts. However, gaining the ability to use Endogenous Sense would mean dividing their magic power.
The adventurer in question had used quite an impressive Holy Art, which meant that—even if they learned the Demonic Arts using Endogenous Sense—they’d quickly reach the limits of their magic power. It was unlikely that they could use Demonic Arts at Fuzzy Dice’s level.
The chief detective went on to state quite confidently that he wasn’t sure anyone could achieve Fuzzy Dice’s prowess in Demonic Arts, even if that was the only discipline they focused on. He seemed proud that he knew this from firsthand experience, having faced off with the phantom thief in person.
The next test’s results were in. The adventurer who’d just taken the test was a woman who claimed to be an exorcist.
“She seems to have aptitudes for banishing and summoning.”
“Ah! So it’s like that with me too,” she murmured, smiling brightly. While multiple aptitudes were reportedly rare, from her aura alone, she seemed to have come from fairly impressive magical stock.
All that interested Mira, however, was that the woman had an aptitude for summoning.
“Summoning, huh? If I’d taken an aptitude test back in the day and gone with that, I wonder if I’d be riding high on the summoning boom right about now?” the woman mused suddenly. She was alluding to the fact that, thanks to Mira’s proselytizing the day before, summoning had suddenly burst into the public eye.
Of course, Mira had to stoke the flames further. “It’s not too late to start now. Learning of your summoning aptitude here must be fate. How about trying to learn some summoning using Endogenous Sense? I can help!”
As if her big moment had finally come, Mira began listing the benefits of summoning. By using summoning circles for convenience, she could perform low-level summoning with Endogenous Sense. Plenty of people did very well without being able to summon beyond that level. Mira emphasized that weapon spirits, in particular, had a multitude of uses. If a person trained enough, they could use them as shields, decoys, or even bodyguards.
“Uh, yeah…I’ll consider it,” the female exorcist politely replied. In contrast to the impassioned Mira, she’d been half joking. Unable to bear Mira’s smile, which shone at the prospect of having met a comrade, the exorcist quickly left.
Come to think of it, yeah… There are people with summoning talent who never pursue it. If they could just develop those talents using Endogenous Sense, summoning would gain even more steam.
Although she was in the middle of trying to unmask Fuzzy Dice, Mira’s head spun with ideas about her next moves to revive summoning.
That’s when it occurred to her that—up until then—she’d only thought of summoning being used as a main class, but summoning via Endogenous Sense was another avenue.
Plenty of successful mages probably had the talent for summoning slumbering within them already. No doubt some would try learning at least a bit of summoning for supplementary purposes if she showed them just how useful it was. If that helped them thrive, it’d probably entice others to make summoning their main class.
I’ll make sure to study up on this in the future!
Luminaria and Mira had touched on Endogenous Sense while chatting once before. At that point, Mira learned that former players were fundamentally different from other people, so they apparently couldn’t learn Endogenous Sense. Still, since she could use both summoning and Immortal Arts, Mira could do something similar to it. Luminaria theorized that that was because Mira used Hidden Arts rather than normal skills.
The conditions for mastering the Hidden Arts were extremely complex and difficult to perform, so Mira hadn’t been able to entice many former players who were mages to the path of summoning. This world’s citizens, however, could learn Endogenous Sense, so they were a different story.
Having mentally glimpsed summoning’s potentially bright future, Mira vowed to investigate summoning via Endogenous Sense.
As Mira fantasized about summoning’s future, the magic-aptitude tests had continued, and the final person had just finished.
“Well now, what should we do?”
Seeing the results, the chief detective and Julius were stumped, and so were the rest of the adventurers in the room. They had believed that Fuzzy Dice concealed himself within the group, so the warriors and mages had all been tested to unmask him. But they’d determined that none of the adventurers fit the criteria to be the phantom thief.
“Hey, Chief Detective, what does this mean…?”
“Maybe Fuzzy Dice isn’t a demonologist?”
One mage among the adventurers had an aptitude for demonology, but it wasn’t anyone’s main class. Some of the adventurers began discussing whether their original hunch that Fuzzy Dice was a demonologist might’ve been incorrect.
“No, he’s most certainly a demonologist.” Still, that was nothing more than Wolf’s hunch.
Moreover, that conclusion was based solely on what the chief detective had surmised after countless scraps with Fuzzy Dice. It wasn’t solid proof. But Wolf was convinced that it was true, and he asserted that Fuzzy Dice must’ve tricked them somehow.
“Hmm. Well, if you say so, Chief Detective…”
The adventurers would normally have aired their grievances at being put through the wringer for nothing, but that didn’t appear to be in the cards. It seemed that Wolf, who’d been an accomplished adventurer in his day, was still respected by his fellow adventurers.
“I just spoke with the guild staff. They say it’s impossible to deceive the magic-aptitude test,” Julius announced as he came back in, having apparently gone to ask the guild staff more details about the test. They said that the most obvious way to cheat it was to doctor the results afterward, and that under normal circumstances, the results displayed on the spot would be correct.
The adventurers had taken the test one by one for all to see. If anyone had done anything suspicious, they would’ve been spotted immediately. And it was virtually impossible to tamper with the testing device or its results.
“Well, what should we try next?”
Seventeen adventurer suspects were present, but they’d all been proven innocent. It was enough to raise doubts that the phantom thief was even still there. But the chief detective didn’t seem dubious; he stared musingly at the line of adventurers. Seemingly prompted by his behavior, they also began looking at each other.
“Hunh… Where’d he go?” the man who’d bought the cloak for Fuzzy Dice asked suddenly.
Somebody called out, asking what was up. The man replied that he couldn’t spot the greenhorn adventurer who’d had the other half of the joker-card invoice.
“What?!” another adventurer shouted.
Amid the sudden uproar, they did a quick roll call and determined that it was indeed just as the man said: The greenhorn had suddenly vanished.
“Could that mean… Was he Fuzzy Dice?” an adventurer asked.
The chief detective confirmed that that was indeed the case.
The greenhorn had stepped forward and cleared the first suspect. Thanks to his timing and the honest relief he and the first suspect had shared when the latter was cleared, everyone had naturally assumed that the two were a team. They hadn’t realized that, since the greenhorn adventurer had been so bold to step forward when he did, they hadn’t ever suspected him.
The adventurers discussed this, concluding that Fuzzy Dice really was something else. Finally disappearing without a trace while no one was looking was another of the phantom thief’s hallmarks. Perhaps because they’d seen something incredible right in front of their eyes, the adventurers abandoned their paranoid behavior and began chattering loudly with each other.
Then one adventurer spoke up: “I did notice something…”
The room again fell silent.
What he’d noticed pertained to the barrier around the guild. If someone had gone outside that barrier, they should’ve been notified of that—and yet, nothing. In other words, Fuzzy Dice had likely disguised himself as someone else and remained among them.
When he finished saying that, the sense of paranoia returned to the room.
At that point, Mira, who stood at the chief detective’s side, casually looked at the magical tool producing the barrier. “Is the barrier down?”
All eyes instantly turned toward the chief detective, who was in charge of operating the device.
“It can’t be…” Wolf turned and checked the device. Then he suddenly tensed and muttered, “How on earth…?”
The barrier device was shut off, just as Mira suspected. The adventurers started chattering again about when exactly it’d been deactivated. The chief detective likewise began to theorize about the same thing.
“It must’ve been then…” he muttered, smiling because Fuzzy Dice had put one over on him again.
Fuzzy Dice had probably turned off the device when the “greenhorn” dropped the instructions on how to carry out the exchange for the reward. He must’ve dropped the note on purpose to gain a chance to turn the device off, Wolf elaborated.
“Which means that…” While they’d been showing off their fighting skills and taking aptitude tests, one adventurer realized, Fuzzy Dice was long gone.
“Incredible!” someone muttered. That revelation eventually made its way around as well, getting the adventurers fired up again.
Then a guild employee came over and let them know that they’d disarmed the enchantments on the evidence.
“How’d it go?” the employee asked eagerly.
The adventurers began to explain what’d happened. Chief Detective Wolf’s plan had been flawless, but the legendary Fuzzy Dice was on another level. Their battle had truly been something to behold.
“Looks like he got you again, Chief Detective.” Julius hung his head as if accepting defeat.
Wolf’s despair at having worked so hard, only for Fuzzy Dice to escape once more, radiated through the room. But the sharp glint remained in the chief detective’s eyes, and a fire yet burned in them.
“No. I’m not sure that’s the case,” he answered, fixing his eyes on the adventurers.
Strangely, the words seemed to strike a chord with the adventurers, who’d been busy chatting about Fuzzy Dice’s impressive performance. All eyes in the guild fell on the chief detective.
“What is it, Chief Detective? Do you have another plan?”
“I don’t think it’s much use going after Fuzzy Dice now.”
Lavish praise for Fuzzy Dice, as well as eager questions about what the chief detective would do next, filled the room.
Amid all that, the chief detective spoke ambiguously. “Considering that Fuzzy Dice turned off the barrier without us realizing, we’re dealing with a guy who can always disappear without anyone noticing. He could’ve escaped at any time.” The chief detective continued to speak, as if checking his own answers, while he slowly reactivated the device that put up the barrier. Keeping his gaze on the adventurers, he muttered, “I only just realized it the other day…” before pausing.
“Realized what…?” one adventurer asked, much to the chief detective’s delight.
Having apparently been waiting to hear those very words, he opened his mouth. “I only just realized that the phantom thief is more righteous than I thought,” Wolf declared, before at last unveiling his final hypothesis.
Fuzzy Dice always seemed to appear and disappear whenever he wanted, he reasoned. However, the phantom thief had led people to believe this by setting up situations in which it appeared that he could’ve left at any time. Really, he just stayed undercover in a guild and, once those present determined that he’d escaped, simply departed when everyone else left.
Then, predictably, someone asked why Wolf believed that to be the case.
“That’s simple. Fuzzy Dice needs to wait and keep an eye on the situation until all the enchantments are dispelled in order to avoid causing casualties,” the chief detective said, shifting his gaze toward the guild counter with a cocky grin.
The staff had finished preparing the evidence and were beginning to organize it. The evidence here and at the cathedral would be collected, and once it was submitted to the relevant authorities, the Dorres Company’s fate would be all but sealed.
That was in the best interests of the chief detective, who added that he’d had a strategy in place from the very beginning—namely, never clarifying how many adventurers were there. Both when the adventurers had initially split into two groups and when they’d split into warriors and mages, the chief detective had purposely never explicitly tallied them aloud. But at every point throughout the process, he revealed, he’d counted each group for himself.
“You counted us…? What’s that got to do with anything?” another adventurer asked, fascinated by the chief detective’s ambiguous phrasing.
Once again, those seemed to be the very words the chief detective had been itching to hear. “When you all first split up, Fuzzy Dice was most likely with the group of adventurers that nobody recognized.”
The chief detective smoothly continued his explanation with an even cockier look on his face than usual. He’d counted the adventurers at four points: First, when they separated into familiar and unfamiliar faces. Second, when they’d demonstrated their fighting skills. Third, during the magic-aptitude test. Finally, the fourth time was after they’d realized that the barrier had been deactivated.
“The first time I counted you, twenty of you recognized each other and seventeen didn’t. The second time, there were eight warriors and nine mages, while the third time, there were nine warriors and eight mages. And the fourth time…”
The chief detective stopped, as if his big moment had finally come. He surveyed the adventurers, who were hanging onto his words before him, before finally continuing.
“There were twenty-one and sixteen of you. That’s right—in all the commotion that broke out when we learned the barrier was down, Fuzzy Dice slipped into the group of adventurers with familiar faces,” he announced as if striking upon a decisive fact. He spun his wheelchair around. “When you brought out the joker card and celebrated having been cleared, we followed where you led us. But at that point, we didn’t have any conclusive evidence. This time it’s different.” The chief detective spoke very deliberately as he faced the adventurers off to the side. “Isn’t that right, Fuzzy Dice?” he demanded in a forceful yet quiet voice.
The moment those words left his lips, the room fell silent, and everyone followed his gaze.
“I-it’s not me!”
“It’s not me either!”
The adventurers who knew each other scattered to avoid the chief detective’s eyes, dispersing into smaller groups so that the large group of adventurers who were acquainted with each other splintered. After all that sudden commotion died down, a shiver ran down the collective spine of everyone in the guild.
After all the adventurers had stopped moving, a single man remained where Wolf was looking. He looked rather plain, without any defining traits, resembling the kind of mid-level adventurer one would find anywhere.
The lone man didn’t panic or start making excuses. He simply stared at the chief detective. Someone called out, asking whether anyone knew him, but not a soul answered.
“Hey… Is he really…?”
“The detective actually saw through his disguise…”
The entire room studied the man whom the chief detective had deduced was Fuzzy Dice, watching his every movement with bated breath.
Hunh. No doubt about it. That’s Fuzzy Dice.
For quite a simple reason, Mira knew they’d identified him: That was the conclusion one came to upon using the Inspect function.
Fuzzy Dice’s illusion techniques were really exceptional. Even Mira couldn’t see through his disguise, and her skills were nothing to sneeze at. To really pull the wool over her eyes, a person would need to use Demonic Arts of an even higher caliber than the Wise Man Lastrada’s. After they’d committed to such a disguise, anyone using Inspect on them would simply call up a fake profile.
But Mira wasn’t deceived. When she’d used Inspect, the man had come up simply as identity unknown.
In this case, Fuzzy Dice’s high-level Demonic Arts had actually backfired. If they’d been too low-level to fool Mira, then she’d simply have seen his profile like anyone else’s, and that would’ve been that. And if she’d been unable to Inspect him at all, she’d only have known that he was a former player. They had no idea who Fuzzy Dice was or where he was from, so just knowing any of that wouldn’t prove that it was him.
However, only high-level techniques like Fuzzy Dice’s could be responsible for the man coming up as “identity unknown.” Still, Mira knew “identity unknown” didn’t mean for certain that he was the phantom thief. It was technically possible to cast such illusions on others.
He’s the only suspicious one now, though.
No one else in the guild had registered as unidentified, and she’d already used Biometric Scan to determine that no one else was hiding anywhere. She had little doubt that the man whom the chief detective had so impressively exposed was Fuzzy Dice.
Yet Mira merely continued keeping an eye on the situation. Having a former player’s eyes could be considered an unfair advantage in this kind of battle, so she avoided interfering unnecessarily. This duel was still between the chief detective and the phantom thief. It wouldn’t be right to butt into a showdown between the men. Mira couldn’t imagine intervening, and she didn’t intend to move a muscle until the duel concluded.
All eyes in the room quietly fell on the man. He had no distinct features; even his expression was vague. He looked like a guy one could find anywhere. Not showing the slightest bit of panic or bewilderment, he simply looked around, then straight at the chief detective.
“Well done, Chief Detective Wolf.”
With a sudden gust of wind, the man standing there vanished. In his place stood another man, his face concealed by a mysterious mask, wearing a cape that fluttered in the wind. The dashing phantom thief Fuzzy Dice had appeared.
A stir swept through the guild, probably because Fuzzy Dice had never revealed himself like this. The adventurers were at a loss for what to do next. At that point, of course, their eyes all turned toward the chief detective. Wolf had used his skills of deduction to see through Fuzzy Dice’s disguise—a grand accomplishment for him.
“I’ve finally caught you, Fuzzy…!” Overwhelmed with emotion, the chief detective had begun saying the words he’d long yearned to speak when the loud cheers of fans suddenly poured in.
“Eeeek! It’s Fuzzy Dice!”
“You’re amazing!”
“Look this way!”
Gazing toward the window, one could see fans pressed against the glass. A group of them had seemingly peeked inside and told the others who they saw. When Fuzzy Dice’s devotees saw the unprecedented situation in the guild, the festival-like atmosphere among them reached a fever pitch.
“I’m not sure how to put this, but…sorry.”
Fuzzy Dice empathized with the chief detective, perhaps owing to the fact that Wolf was his rival, and so regretted that the sleuth had been cut off during his big moment.
“No, it’s fine…really,” Wolf replied, trying to hide his noticeable disappointment. He cleared his throat and began again. “Now then, I’ve finally caught you, Fuzzy Dice!”
At that moment, Julius sprang into action. They must have come up with a plan beforehand. He and two burly men suddenly surrounded Fuzzy Dice, each holding a magical tool that they activated upon surrounding the phantom thief. A wall of light encircled Fuzzy Dice in a fraction of a second.
“Wow. I’m impressed.” The phantom thief looked around with apparent admiration.
It looked like he’d been captured in a cage of light. He appeared to have no chance of escape, although screams and shouts of encouragement rang out from outside.
“What do you think of this trap? It was no easy task getting my hands on you.” The chief detective smiled defiantly. Even at a time like this, he was as chatty as usual.
The magical tools they were using were designed specifically for captures, so they were high-powered and even employed by the Sentinel Institute. Using more of them made them even more powerful. The only way for Fuzzy Dice to break free of the cage would be to shut off the tools held by Julius and the others or to break through the cage-like barrier by force.
Having explained all that, the chief detective wheeled himself toward Fuzzy Dice before stopping directly in front of him. Seemingly on cue, Julius and the men drew close to the cage of light.
“Apologies, but I’ll be using your code against you.” The chief detective stared at the phantom thief, a grin breaking across his face. Fuzzy Dice’s code was not to hurt anyone, no matter what.
It would be impossible for the phantom thief to somehow stop the magical tools that Julius and the men were using. His only option was to break through the cage. According to all their information, he’d certainly be capable of that.
But since the tools had officially been adopted by the Sentinel Institute, they were likely quite durable. Breaking the barrier they’d created would require considerable firepower, and destroying something that powerful would have serious consequences. Any technique strong enough to do so would likely also hurt the chief detective and the others now standing right beside the barrier.
The chief detective was using himself as a human shield to limit what Fuzzy Dice could do.
“I see… This makes things tricky,” Fuzzy Dice said, staring at the chief detective after carefully studying the cage of light.
He could just have focused on escaping, broken through the cage, and told whoever got injured that they’d brought it on themselves. But he didn’t seem to have any intention of doing so. Even if it put him at a disadvantage, he’d stick to his code—he wouldn’t harm anyone, not even his enemy.
His righteous conviction melted the hearts of the fans looking in through the windows, and they began to swoon. It seemed like their love for him would somehow grow even greater once again.
I had no idea the chief detective had this plan in his back pocket.
Wolf said that he hadn’t thought beyond registering Fuzzy Dice with the Lock-On M Type-2. But Mira gathered that wasn’t quite the case. The current situation had been his true plan all along.
The fact that Fuzzy Dice had gotten wind of their plan to register his mana suggested that he’d heard her and the chief detective discussing it somewhere. But Wolf had anticipated that. He’d told Mira that it was up to her what to do after their plan concluded, just so he could set up his own plan in secret.
Still, I’m guessing it’s almost my turn to step up to the plate.
Up until then, she’d gotten the impression that Wolf was simply a long-winded, somewhat bumbling detective with a sweet tooth. After seeing the masterful way he’d ensnared the phantom thief, she had a renewed respect for his skills. As she stood watching the scene unfold, Mira wondered what he’d do next.
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