The air in the cavern was stagnant, heavy with the metallic tang of blood and the ozone-like scent of a reality that had just been forcibly recompiled.
I stood there, testing the weight of this new vessel, adjusting to the lower center of gravity and the irritatingly high sensitivity of Clarisse's nervous system. Every sob Elysia let out felt like a physical vibration against my skin. It was inefficient. It was clutter.
I needed to clear the cache.
I walked back toward the girl, my boots—Clarisse's boots, delicate things ill-suited for a crime scene—clicking rhythmically against the stone. I stopped just outside her personal space, observing the way her shoulders pitched and rolled.
She was a textbook example of acute traumatic stress, but beneath that, there was a secondary layer. A tremor that wasn't just fear. It was guilt.
"Elysia," I said, the name feeling like a foreign object in my mouth. "Let's skip the part where we pretend you're a grieving loyalist. It's boring, and I've already seen enough scripts to know when a secondary character is lying to the lead."
Elysia looked up, her face a mask of snot and salt.
"M-Master, what are you... I would never..."
"Stop." I held up a finger, cutting through her protest with the cold precision of a scalpel.
"I'm currently navigating the fragmented directory of Clarisse's memories. It's a mess—mostly corrupted files and low-resolution emotional snapshots—but a few things are surfacing. For instance, the way you were holding that concealed dagger before the System collapsed. The angle was wrong for defense. It was positioned for a mercy kill. Or perhaps, a final solution."
Inside my skull, a sudden, searing heat flared. It wasn't physical pain; it was a psychological scream, a surge of raw, unadulterated emotion from the original occupant.
[NO! Elysia would never! She's the only one who stayed! She was going to help me! You're twisting it, you monster! Stop looking through my things!]
I felt my eye twitch—a involuntary biological response to the parasite's interference. I ignored her. I leaned down, my shadow swallowing Elysia whole.
"Why?" I asked, my voice dropping to a clinical whisper.
"Why did you want to kill her? Was it an order from the Fahrmann estate? A shortcut to end her suffering before the 'System' could finish the job? Or were you simply tired of being tethered to a sinking ship?"
Elysia's eyes went wide, the pupils dilating until the blue of her irises was almost gone. She began to shake, not with fear now, but with the violent release of a secret kept too long.
"She was suffering!" Elysia suddenly shrieked, the sound echoing off the cavern walls.
"They were going to turn her into a monster! The ritual... the System... it was eating her alive! I couldn't let them have her! I was going to... I was going to give her peace!"
I watched her, my detective instincts cataloging the confession.
Motive: Altruistic Homicide. Category: Emotional Burden.
"I see," I murmured. "
A mercy kill. How very tragic. How very... scripted."
[Elysia... oh, Elysia...] The parasite in my mind began to weep. It was a pathetic, cloying sensation, like being drenched in warm, sticky syrup.
[She loved me that much? She was going to save me from the pain? You see? She's good! You have to tell her it's okay! You have to-]
Shut up, you parasite.
The internal scream went silent, cut off by the sheer force of my ego. I didn't have time for the melodrama of a villainess who had let herself be a victim for years.
I had a world to investigate and a death to avenge—even if that death was my own.
I turned back to Elysia, who was now staring at me with a mix of horror and confusion. She had heard the dual-layered resonance of my voice when I silenced Clarisse.
She knew, on some primal level, that she wasn't talking to a human anymore.
She was talking to the ghost in the machine.
"Listen to me, Asset Elysia," I said, my tone regaining its terrifyingly calm cadence.
"The girl you wanted to 'save' is technically dead. If you want to continue your mission of 'protecting' Clarisse, you will do so by serving me. Because if I fall, she goes into the digital abyss with me. There is no mercy now."
I reached out and grabbed her shoulder.
I could feel her heart racing through the fabric of her sleeve.
"The Fahrmann estate... the ritual... you mentioned they were going to turn her into a monster. Give me the data. Who authorized the ritual? What was the intended output?"
Elysia swallowed hard, her voice trembling.
"The... the Duke. He said she was a failure. That if she couldn't inherit the Divine Power of Gevurah naturally, they would... they would force it. They used the trial to bridge the gap. They called it the 'Void Integration.' They wanted a weapon, not a daughter."
I processed the information instantly.
It sounded like a high-level energy manifestation, something that should have been similar to the power structures I'd read about in the archives of my previous life's most complex cases. But "Void Integration" suggested something else.
A paradox. An attempt to fill a vessel with a vacuum.
"The Duke," I repeated. "Target acquired. And this 'Void'... it's what the System was trying to stabilize before I forced it to crash, isn't it?"
[It hurts...] Clarisse whispered, a faint, flickering signal in the back of my mind.
[The cold... it's still there. Even with you here... the ice... it never stops...]
"The ice is just data, Clarisse," I thought back, my internal voice a sharp, cold command. "And I'm the one who knows how to format the drive."
I looked at Elysia.
She was watching me, her eyes searching for any trace of the master she knew. She wouldn't find it. What she would find was a woman who had spent a lifetime staring into the darkest corners of the human soul and didn't blink when the abyss stared back.
"Stand up," I ordered.
Elysia hesitated, then slowly, painfully, rose to her feet. She was taller than this body, a physical reminder of my current limitation. I would need to fix that. If I was going to play the villainess, I needed to be the most imposing figure in the room, regardless of height.
"We're leaving," I said, turning toward the light.
"From now on, you'll become my guide. Tell me everything about the political structure of this kingdom, the key players in the Fahrmann household, and exactly how many people I need to 'remove' to secure our position."
"But... the guards will be looking for us," Elysia said, her voice small. "The ritual was supposed to be secret. If they find out it failed... if they find out you are here..."
"Let them come," I said, a genuine, chilling amusement bubbling up in my chest.
"I've spent my entire career catching people who thought they were above the law. This world? This 'System'? It's just another crime scene. And I'm the one with the badge."
I started walking, the light of the sun hitting my face. It was blinding, but I didn't look away. Behind me, I heard Elysia's hesitant footsteps.
[You're going to kill them all, aren't you?]
Clarisse asked, her voice sounding small and far away.
Only the ones who are guilty, parasite, I replied, my mind already mapping out the first phase of the investigation. But in my experience... everyone is guilty of something.
I stepped out of the cavern and into the world of the living.
The wind caught Clarisse's long, silver hair, whipping it around my face like a shroud. I looked out over the sprawling, medieval landscape—the jagged mountains, the distant, shimmering spires of a capital city that thought it was safe.
I didn't look back.
I didn't look back at the discarded husk of the person I used to be. That Yui Katagiri was dead, buried under a slippery patch of pavement in Tokyo. This Yui Katagiri was something else. A villainess with a badge. A ghost with a grudge.
And God help anyone who stood in the way of my closing this case.
I felt Elysia come up beside me, her presence a constant, nervous shadow. She was terrified, but she was there. Compliance secured. Now, all I needed was the evidence.
"Tell me, Elysia," I said, my eyes fixed on the distant city.
"Does the Duke have a favorite room? Somewhere quiet? Somewhere... private?"
Elysia shivered, but she didn't look away.
"The study, my Lady. He spends all his nights there, obsessing over the archives."
"Perfect," I said, the half-smile returning. "I've always preferred a study for a final confrontation. It's where all the best lies are kept."
The hunt had begun.
And for the first time in either of my lives, I wasn't just solving the crime.