The days in Nairn settled into a deceptive rhythm, like the calm surface of a deep, dark lake that hid leviathans beneath the waterline. To the casual observer—the hungry patrons of "The Rusty Spoon," the gossiping neighbors, and even the ever-watchful, sweaty-browed Gorn—Lencar was simply a diligent young man trying to earn his keep. He chopped vegetables with metronomic precision that bordered on art. He carried flour sacks that would make grown men groan without breaking a sweat, his reinforced body treating the weight like feathers. He played tag with Marco and Pem in the alleyway, his laughter although genuine, it also masks the mind of a killer.
But when the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in bruised purples and blacks, and the "Closed" sign was finally flipped with a satisfying clatter, a different life began.
Inside the Scarlet household, the domestic warmth was a smokescreen. After the chaos of dinner had subsided—stew wiped from chins, dishes scrubbed to a shine—and the children were tucked into their beds, dreaming of the fairy tales Lencar spun for them with professional cadence, the Heretic went to work.
Lencar sat in his small room, the door locked and sealed with a [Wind Magic: Sound Barrier]. The moonlight filtered through the window, illuminating a workspace that looked less like a bedroom and more like a laboratory of the arcane. Spellbooks stolen from the dungeon lay open. Vials of mana-infused ink sat uncorked. The air hummed with silent tension.
The problem plaguing him was not one of power. He had power in spades—Stage 4 capacity, an infinite battery in his ring, and a library of stolen attributes. The problem was residue.
The Department of Magical Forensic Research was looking for an entire "Organisation" or a "Monster". They were tracking the piles of ash and the voids in the mana stream left behind by his [Replica Magic: Absolute Replication]. Although this was only Lencar's conjecture for now but if this matter was to be brought to Marx Francois or if he personally investigates, he will definitely find this matter. Because every time he harvested a soul, he left a fingerprint—not a physical one, but a metaphysical scar on reality where a mage used to exist. The universe abhorred a vacuum, and Lencar was creating them all over the Nairn region... For now at least.
"Day One," Lencar whispered, opening his grimoire to a page dense with runic scribbles.
He held a small, glass jar containing a live beetle he had caught in the pantry. It wasn't a mage, obviously, but it possessed a tiny spark of life force, a microscopic mana signature that obeyed the same laws as a human soul.
"Test One: Post-Extraction Scrubbing via Elemental Combustion."
He placed his hand over the jar. He activated a low-level replication spell, draining the beetle's life force. The insect withered instantly, the moisture evaporating from its exoskeleton, turning it into a husk of dry, grey ash.
Now came the clean-up.
Lencar raised his finger. He channeled [Fire Magic] (harvested from the bandit Rorg) combined with [Wind Magic] (harvested from Tess). He visualized a miniature vortex of superheated air, a localized crematorium.
"Incinerate," he commanded.
The flame flared inside the jar, bright and angry. The ash vanished, vaporized by the intense heat. The glass jar glowed red, then cracked with a high-pitched ping.
Lencar inspected the result with his [Far-Speaker's Mirror], utilizing its scrying function to look at the microscopic level of the jar's interior.
Failure.
The physical ash was gone, yes. But the mana residue of the fire spell was screaming. To his enhanced senses, the air inside the jar tasted of sulfur and aggressive magic. It was a beacon.
"If I do this at a crime scene," Lencar muttered, rubbing his temples, "I'm just trading one clue for another. Instead of 'mysterious ash,' the investigators will find 'high-level fire magic traces' where there shouldn't be any. It doesn't hide the murder; it just changes the weapon."
He spent the rest of the night trying to use [Water Magic] to wash the traces away, diluting the magical signature. It worked to an extent, but it left a damp, magically charged puddle that was just as suspicious. He tried [Earth Magic] to bury the residue, compressing it into stone, but that created a dense pocket of mana that stood out against the natural background radiation.
Every attempt took too long. Every attempt left a new signature.
Day Two and Day Three followed the same pattern of frustration.
By day, he was the perfect employee. He smiled at customers, remembering their orders before they sat down. He wiped tables until the wood grain shone. He listened to Rebecca complain about the price of sugar with empathetic nods.
By night, he returned to his room to bang his head against the wall of magical theory.
"I am treating the symptom, not the disease," Lencar concluded on the third night, staring at a pile of failed experiments and broken glass. "I am trying to clean a stain after I've already spilled the ink. I need to prevent the stain from forming in the first place."
On the fourth night, he shifted his strategy completely.
He focused on the [Replica Magic] itself.
"The ash is formed because I rip the Soul Gem out violently," Lencar theorized, pacing the small length of his room. "The body loses its structural integrity instantly. The mana that held the cells together collapses. It is an implosion of biological order."
He tried to modify the spell structure. He placed his blank grimoire on the table and poured his mana into the specific runes that governed Absolute Replication. He tried to rewrite the code of the spell.
"Soft extraction," he whispered, sweating with concentration. "Don't rip. Siphon."
He spent hours meditating, visualizing the flow of magic like a gentle stream rather than a vacuum. He tried to slow down the absorption process, to drain the target over ten minutes instead of ten seconds, hoping that by leaving the structural mana intact longer, the body would remain whole.
It worked, partially.
On the fifth night, he managed to drain a test subject—a larger rat caught in the basement—without turning it to ash immediately. The body remained... mostly whole.
But it was desiccated. It looked like a mummy that had been dead for a thousand years in a scorching desert. The skin was tight against the bone, the eyes sunken pits.
"Forensics will still flag this," Lencar sighed, leaning back in his chair, the wood creaking under his weight. "A body that looks ancient but died five minutes ago? That screams 'Curse Magic' or 'Life Drain.' It's even more suspicious than ash. At least ash can be blown away by the wind."
On the sixth night though, Lencar's mind, honed by weeks of high-level magical theory when he was in Sosei village reading in the Hage Grimoire Tower and desperate calculation and experiment of the past 5 days, thought of a solution.
He had been thinking linearly. He had been thinking like a killer.
Live Body -> Dead Body -> Ash.
Live Magic -> Stolen Magic -> Void.
He had been trying to destroy the evidence. He had been trying to delete the matter left behind.
But in physics, and in the fundamental laws of magic in this world, matter cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change form.
When he used [Absolute Replication], he stripped the Soul (binding agent) of its Soul gem. The body then becomes disorderd, chaotic and distorted because the binding agent was gone (Lencar hadn't discovered it previously or when he was actually using Absolute Replication as he had directly turned the corpse into ashes using his fire magic and it was only because of his subsequent experiments that he found this).
But what if, instead of letting the body become chaotic distortion (entropy), he actively guided the distortion?
What if he used the [Replica Magic] not just to pull the soul out, but to push the remaining physical matter down?
"Reverse engineering," Lencar whispered, his eyes widening to the size of saucers. "Devolution."
If he could modify the spell to break the organic bonds of the body at the precise moment of death... into Raw Natural Mana.
He could turn the corpse back into the "ingredients" of the world. He could turn a human body back into water vapor, carbon, and ambient mana particles.
If he did that... there would be no need to burn the body into ash. There would just be a patch of air that was slightly richer in mana than the surrounding area though with the "Void" signature. And in a world filled with magic, a high-mana pocket wasn't suspicious. It was natural. It was invisible. And it would also disperse over time.
"That's it," Lencar breathed, the air rushing into his lungs as if he had been holding his breath for five days. "I don't need to hide the body. I need to recycle it."
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of contrasting energies.
When the last customer finally left and Gorn flipped the sign, the walk home was different.
The walk home from "The Rusty Spoon" was filled with the tired, comfortable silence of a long day's work ending.
They arrived at the house. The routine took over, acting as a buffer between Lencar's experiments and his execution. He helped get the kids into pajamas, broke up a minor skirmish between Marco and Luca over a wooden soldier, and oversaw the chaos of brushing teeth.
Dinner was quick—leftover bread and cheese eaten by the fire. Lencar ate mechanically, his eyes unfocused. He was mentally drafting the runic circle he needed to draw.
Once the house was finally, mercifully quiet, and the rhythmic breathing of the children echoed from the next room, Lencar retreated to his sanctuary.
He entered his small room and locked the door. He placed his hand on the wood, sealing the frame with a [Wind Magic: Sound Barrier].
The mask dropped. The helpful employee vanished.
Lencar stood in the center of the room, the moonlight casting long, pale rectangles on the floorboards. His eyes were cold, sharp, and lit with the terrifying intelligence of the Heretic.