Reincarnated Into A Dead Woman's Body In Another World-Chapter 350: Arc 5, - 44: Old Case

"Who pissed in your cereal?" the deer-man with black stubble and neck-length hair queried as Morgana walked by.

"Ain’t the time," Morgana left without a glance.

He was already leaning against the wall and now he crossed his arms with a slight shrug. He loosened up his black tie and looked for the other four most probably departing the interrogation rooms. And out they came.

"How’d things go over with Alicia?" he spoke to them as they approached.

"About as well as it could go," Jotou raised her palm to reveal the numbers.

"Looks like she gave you her home phone."

"Did she now," Hotaru’s eyes narrowed. She shook her head, "Sorry, Quinn, correct?"

The deer-man in the black suit, blazer unbuttoned, stood upright, "Detective Quinn Nunley, at your service; though, not really," raspingly he spoke.

"Did you need something from us?" Fumeko asked.

"You’re still after that bloody murder case, right? Thought I’d do you a favour and bring you up to date with the cult and its history so far."

"And, why do us this favour?" the blonde squinted.

"So you can put that sceptical nose somewhere else and stop snooping around the building. Also, so that if you do end up facing them again, it doesn’t end up like that whole debacle last week," he walked out.

Fumeko grumbled under her breath as she walked out—the others followed suit. Hotaru’s ears bristled and she looked about the open space of the building... "Maybe I should keep an eye out for Alicia," she suggested.

"Do we need to hide from her? I can help," Asobi offered. "She seemed nice though!"

Fumeko peered around, "I think we’re fine—I think..."

"Besides, you’d be the best to look through files and documents. I assume we can’t take them with us," Jotou looked to Quinn.

"Not a chance. And I can’t lie, having someone on the lookout for her might be useful. Saves me the trouble at least," the little fuzz of brown fur-like hairs on his slightly curved ears bristled.

"I can probably do a better job at that," the brunette told.

Hotaru sighed, "Your eyes are better used on those files, you can all tell me about them later. It’s not a big deal, just go, I can most likely catch her coming," her crimson ears pricked.

"If that’s what you want," Jotou gave a shrug. "We’ll be back in a minute."

"Bye! Take care!" Asobi was the last to walk up the steps.

To the second floor they ascended, led by the detective down the walkway to an office by the side. "So, is Mrs Aetherton always that heated or?" Fumeko queried.

"Quite the opposite; Morgana tends to keep it together day in and day out—hardly emotional she is. But when she does show emotion, you know it’s serious," Quinn opened the door with a key tucked under his sleeve.

Fumeko’s gaze fell to the floor.

"So, are you... the sixth best detective here!?" Asobi made her wand sparkle out the number.

His eyes glazed over, "Seventh, actually... If I can get a few more cases done over Maevis, then maybe I might get sixth- What am I on about, the numbers don’t matter."

"Sorry," Asobi’s wand now sparkled the number seven.

"Anyhow, how much do you know about the cult already?" he entered with them in tow.

"We had a brief summary," Fumeko answered and looked about.

"I’m surprised there’s still so much to know. Can it all connect back to these cases? All that cult stuff happened sooo many years ago," a few question marks floated above the elf, illuminating the otherwise unlit room.

"Can’t say for sure till it clicks. But don’t skimp on the details, every little bit can help.

You got two loose threads with no connection and suddenly some insignificant little detail from five years ago will crack the case. You never know," he pulled out a silver flip top lighter out of his blazer.

The room itself was not too big, not too small. Filing cabinets made up the walls and there were no windows. The only light in the room were the few bulbs on the ceiling which Quinn flipped on.

"All we know so far, is what we saw of those new gods. If we can get anything on them," Jotou stated.

"How’s a symbol for a start?" the deer-man walked over to one of the desks where some folders had been prepared for their perusal. "Here," he flourished a paper towards them.

"What’s that, a flying snake?" Fumeko looked sideways.

"I’d say it’s some winged sea serpent," Jotou pointed to it, "It looks like it’s ejecting itself out of the water from the way it’s drawn."

Asobi made the image into an illusory figure in the air, "It has pretty feathers."

Like they had described, the serpent-like figure made a couple of twists from tail to head going up. Its middle part had feathery wings akin to an owl’s spread out wide.

Its head faced up with a fang and an eye visible from the side. There seemed to be some light lines beneath and a few dots, almost like a body of water it was shooting itself out of.

"Some people call it a winged serpent, some call it a halcyon; some call it a bird, some call it a reptile—flying snake fits in just fine," he placed the paper back.

"Why didn’t anyone tell us this sooner?" Fumeko examined the serpent further.

"Little details," Quinn repeated. "Also, it’s likely you’re never gonna see that bloody symbol in most cases. Cult members had them as tattoos, but it was under an enchantment. Unless they wanted it to be seen, nobody could really see it."

"Must be a secret ticket into their evil villain lair," Asobi replied.

"I figure branding would be stupid for what was a secret organization," the blonde remarked and placed her hands on the rest of the folders. "Any notable members?"

"You can scan through all the papers you want. Left pile’s members already caught, questioned and punished; right pile’s names that’ve gone missing or unable to be found within the borders of Burnetrout."

As if ’pile’ was the right word for a few sheets of paper. All the documents had yellowed and some dust still got kicked up as she shifted them.

They split the files between themselves, Fumeko and Jotou taking the most of them while Asobi bounced her gaze between the blonde and brunette.

It took a couple of minutes before Quinn stood by the doorway and lit up a cigarette he popped out of a box. Jotou gave a side-eyed glare as she caught whiff of some of it, though he directed the smoke outside into the open space.

"The blood of one of the heads of the zealous Deuctus Cult was transferred via injection. The point of entry was point-five millimetres in diameter to either side of the temporal bone, facing upwards at a forty-five degree angle-

I’m gonna stop there," Jotou winced an eye. "The transfused blood gave the cultist immunity to magics and abilities that allowed compulsion or compliance. Chemical agents produced no apparent results either."

"Hm, sounds like what Detective Namora already told us. Nobody could read their creepy thoughts and get their secrets," Asobi added.

"I’ll try to look for something else," the blonde searched.

"This might be something," Fumeko uttered. "The precise date of the start of the Great Fire of Burnetrout is unknown, but approximations suggest May 962, AH.

The origin point can be traced to western Burnetrout, between North and South Hestover, which then spread further eastwards, engulfing Coëurhaven and the majority of Bonlousse and Plumeshire.

The true source of the start of the fire, is unknown," Fumeko shuffled the documents. "Well, it’s something to keep in mind at least."

"Might’ve found something to add to that," Jotou glanced through the pile she had. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"You couldn’t’ve split them better?"

"I didn’t see what paper said what detective," Jotou cleared her throat and skimmed through to find the important part, "The fire spread for days, then weeks.

Eventually catching up to southwest Dolpool, western Belle-Ventrialis and Tourenshire. The fires were failed to be contained due to the emergence of a new force.

The new force—later to be known as the Deuctus Cult from various self-proclamations of perpetrators and public announcement—continued to stoke and rekindle flames to extremes.

Often times the cultists would injure themselves or perish to the flames—whether by accident or ritual is unknown.

When magical assistance was required in an emergency response, the magical practitioners of Burnetrout were struck down or impeded by greater magics than their own—later to be discovered to be the magics of the heads of the cult.

As fire spread across the lands, the cult prevalently vandalized public and private property to etch their motives loud and clear to the public.

’To better dominion, to end the war, to bring power to Burnetrout once more. Burn away with the ashes and be born anew. Like the old Gods once reigned, the new shall stage this coup.’

Eventually, with enough manpower and assistance from allied nations, the Great Fire of Burnetrout was quelled. What came after, was a snow of ash and dust that sickened the earth and life.

Several weeks were spent in clouded darkness and within shut doors. As tax rates and prices skyrocketed, the Deuctus Cult seemingly disappeared from their grand scheme, which was a show of power.

With the ash brought down to earth and into a river, a firefighter from Luxinor named Kazuo Namora would four years later, bring the leader of this malicious operation in chains."

"...It started like a report and it became a dramatic play," Fumeko’s brows furrowed.

"I might’ve gotten lost in the moment and sorta interpreted it myself," the blonde admitted with a wriggling smile.

"It was still a cool legend! Kazuo Namora sounds like a folk hero!" Asobi cheered.

"Anyway, the fire continued cause the cult pushed it and that’s when the new gods showed themselves," Jotou focused back on task.

"Connecting that ’end the war’ part to what my dad said, it’s possible that the new gods were busy pushing away the Malecise Regime. If that’s the case, were they exhausted and had to retreat?"

"That might be more historical account than detective report," Jotou reasoned to the brunette.

"Yeah, you’re right. What else’s in here," Fumeko searched.

"I got this," Asobi waved a few papers. "It’s associations of the cult to notable organizations in Burnetrout! There’re lot of hospitals, schools, nursing homes, orphanages, real estate companies, even city hall!"

Fumeko peeked over Asobi’s arm, "By associations you mean..."

"All the places the cult broke into and stole stuff from. I don’t really understand a llllooot of this, but I can kinda get that," the elf pointed her wand and underlined some sentences and paragraphs.

"It’s not just broken into, it’s association. All these cultists had to have come from somewhere. They were probably spies within these places to help illegal documentation," Fumeko read as much as she could.

"Well, then this one connects," Jotou had some of the first papers of her pile. "Missing persons reports and associations."

Quinn snuffed the cigarette butt onto the doorframe and dusted off the soot, "Obviously not all missing persons at the time were related to the cult, you can’t recover every body when half the country’s burning."

"Could the fire’ve been a coverup then? It’d allow a lot more people to ’disappear’," Fumeko suggested.

"It’s a good shot, but no hard evidence. Still, good shot and could be the case, but sadly," he pointed to Jotou’s document.

The blonde looked down and read it, "All missing persons cases during this time is suspended indefinitely due to no further leads or requirement... This was a decade after the missing persons cases were started, so."

"Got that right. The government put the case to rest about four years ago. They deemed it unnecessary use of resources and the taxpayers, to an extent, shared the sentiment," he took a deep breath. "Which means, if it was a coverup, it worked."

"They also had a base of operations that got torn down four years ago in Orchid Borough," Fumeko looked to the last of her papers.

"The property got released to a private auction and sold to the highest bidder eventually," Quinn relayed.

Both Jotou and Fumeko pondered for a moment in silence. "Is that everything?" Asobi asked to the deer-man.

"Everything useful, yeah. You’re welcome to dig deeper, but it’s only a dive into a sea of typescript. I’d say these are the only things relevant to present day and even then it’s a maybe."

"Then we’re pretty much done here, right?" Jotou glanced to her detective.

"We’ve got a few more dots to work with, so yeah. Thanks, by the way," Fumeko looked up to Quinn.

"Don’t mention it. Actually, do mention it to Werner if you can," he began shuffling all the documents by date and alphabet.

"We’ve got clues, we’re going to sleuth~ We’re gonna figure this case out, before you can say boo~" Asobi’s wand had turned into a magnifying glass as they left, "Let’s not keep Aru waiting!" her hat was a fedora all of a sudden.