Reincarnated Into A Dead Woman's Body In Another World-Chapter 362: Arc 5, - 56: Critical Decision

Tiffany’s head swivelled as she examined the interior of the company. Together, the five all walked further in—adventuring gear worn and weapons sheathed. Even right through the entrance, they already heard voices.

"Are you fucking serious? We can’t let the police into the vicinity, what are they going to do? Shoot at whatever’s there? We have no reconnaissance on the building," the voice of a man they did not recognized being the first.

"That ain’t a problem, I’m working on it," Morgana continued.

"That’s all fine and good, but we still gotta make a move," Peter replied.

"Sure, we’ll get Quinn, five of us go in and get whatever we can and get out," the unrecognized voice suggested.

"We’ve got no plan of escape if things go south. Besides, the kids reported back remember? Pistols aren’t gonna beat that kind of magic—not without a proper plan at least," Kazuo remarked.

"There might be too many of them, we don’t know. I say it’s better not to engage at all. We keep our distance, get what we can and do what we can from there," Morgana retorted.

It seemed all the arguing was coming from inside Kazuo Namora’s office. Fumeko gave it a couple of knocks and the room grew dead silent.

"Come in kid," Kazuo uttered.

The door opened, "What’s going on in here?" Jotou was the first to ask.

"Lotta things," Morgana replied, tight-lipped as ever.

Next to Peter, they saw a man with cat-like ears; the right ear had a curved slice out of it and the left had two gold rings pierced at the top.

He had floppy dark hair and wore thick-rimmed spectacles. A slight hunch, shorter than Morgana and a tucked in blue checkered shirt—reedy, he was.

With bug-like hazel eyes he looked at those who entered and with a mawkish voice said, "Those the kids? Why are they here? Why’d you bring them here?" he turned to Kazuo.

Kazuo’s arms were already crossed and he shrugged, "To let them know."

"I don’t believe we’ve met," said Hotaru.

"That’s Heath, don’t worry about him, he’s leaving," Morgana responded without a glance.

"Leaving?"

"We’re not engaging, end of discussion, piss off," Morgana repeated.

"No, that’s your damn decision, don’t put me in that circle," Heath protested.

"Alright, alright, alright, everyone’s tired-a runnin’ around. Heath," Peter ushered the man out. "Nice to see ya kids," he gave them all a greeting smile. "Who’s this flashy friend?" he paused.

"Kid, why d’you bring her here?" Kazuo’s brows furrowed. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"Long story, but she knows everything and wants to help," Fumeko avoided his eyes.

Kazuo sighed and held the bridge of his nose—one hand on his waist.

"...Come again?" Morgana gave her piercing death stare.

Kazuo reached his hand and put it in front of her, "Mona, just, just... it’s fine, let it go." He glanced to Tiffany, "Sorry kid, you’re just gonna have to wait outside."

"Come along," Peter ushered her out as well.

"I-" Tiffany looked to Fumeko and the rest.

"Don’t worry, just stay close," Fumeko told. With a nod, Tiffany left the office.

"Saved by the emergency, or you’d all be in deep trouble for sharing confidential information," Morgana glared.

"What’s the emergency?" Asobi queried.

"We heard something about a building needing to be looked at and magic?" Hotaru added.

Jotou took a guess, "Sounds like you know the next location of the cult."

"It’s all from the evidence last night. Alicia got the photographs back and," Kazuo handed on photo over.

Fumeko took it and examined the picture of the runes... However, "What the..." the runes were disappearing in the photo—live. They had disappeared to less than half the runes from the previous night.

Jotou peered over her shoulder, "Knew it." ’Well, not the disappearing part, I just thought it wouldn’t show up right.’

"Regardless, once we got the victim’s full name, it was easy to put it together. The runes are the full name of the victim—same goes for the previous victim’s runes.

We don’t have the letters to decipher them, but we have enough to make an educated guess."

"So you’d need their full name to take away their soul," Fumeko repeated. "Specifically, by using that pen."

"If you remember that Green-Fillet Johnes, we caught up with him and had a little chat we’ll say... He gave us a location where he admitted he had met up with what he thought was a cultist.

Now, after investigating that we came out of it nearly empty. It just seemed to be some old building in Mandrake that was in disuse—just a meeting spot," Kazuo continued.

"While dear Detective Namora here had the pictures of the scene, I decided to cross all the yellow tape and have a look at the scene myself, confirm all the details. The third victim’s hardly not worth looking into.

The details I could find was this; since the body was investigated immediately and the police pounced on it within hours, there’s a sparrow’s chance in hell that any cult member got any sort of message from it—there’s simply no way.

Which got me thinking of the second victim. Even then, not many cult members might’ve seen the second crime scene. Otherwise, the streets would overrun with those fellows outside that apartment.

That many of em’ relying on one corpse and a handful of nails? Unlikely. There’s some other method of communication between the cultists," Morgana supposed.

"But to go through all that and have the victims give clues to their operations..." Jotou thought aloud.

"It’s no coincidence. The cult planted it—they wanted clues to be at the scenes of the crime..." Fumeko added onto the thought.

Hotaru’s ears fell, "Why...? That doesn’t make any sense, surely you’d do everything to lead someone away from the truth. This makes it seem like the cult, wanted to be found out."

"Maybe it’s pride, maybe it’s procedure, maybe it’s some twisted game for fun. Name it whatever you’d like, but this is no doubt the behaviour of the Deuctus Cult," Kazuo groaned.

"Did these nails lead to a location in the end?" Asobi questioned.

"Four-two-six-three; and every other combination of it. It doesn’t seem likely that it’d lead to a location where they’d be operating. That is to say, we’ve already exhausted that possibility.

No combination made sense with any of the buildings in Dolpool. Some were just too in the middle of highly populated areas to be feasible as a hideout or base of operations," Kazuo shook his head.

"Call it a hunch, but that number might be for a lock of some sort," Morgana theorized.

"Wait, then how do you have a location of the cult right now?" Jotou glanced to them both.

Morgana answered, "If you noticed the body’s positioning, it seemed that the right hand was pinned in a way that it was pointing to something—a shelf."

"I don’t think I saw a lot of things in that room to begin with," Fumeko replied.

"It was high up. A single book was laid flat at the back of the shelf. I had to feel around for it and given your height, seeing it wasn’t the issue," Morgana replied and took the book from Kazuo’s desk to show.

Fumeko’s eyes glazed over.

"The book was a diary of the victim. Now, reasons to become a martyr for the cult can go any which way. I’m sure there’ll be time to delve deeper later, but her recent notes had the drop off location Green-Fillet Johnes had given. Also, the name Gratone was mentioned."

"Is that another name? Oh, maybe the name of the guy we saw that night?" a light bulb glowed brightly above Asobi.

"No, Gratone is a company that manufactures all sorts of furniture," Kazuo denied.

"Aw," the light bulb faded.

Kazuo held a hand to his chin, "Regardless, they have warehouses all over the country. Assuming another warehouse would be involved, we could narrow down the list of possible locations based on active use and proximity to populated areas.

A lot of digging later, we were left with only one location. One of their older warehouses in the far southeast of Mandrake. With the help of some friends up top, we were able to use some magic to trace and detect dips in mana around the location.

Whether that means magic is being used actively or spirit-magic may be at work, it’s worth looking into. Magical activity near an old warehouse building away from most people? There has to be something there."

Morgana’s eyes circled with green for a second and her focus was taken away from the conversation briefly. She turned back, "There is something there. A whole operation," her eyes continued to circle with a green glow.

"Well, there you go," Kazuo jerked his brows. "What else is there?"

"I’m sorry, what’s going on?" Hotaru asked, but she didn’t really get an answer as Morgana replied to Kazuo.

"Seems some transport and some of em’ are outside. I don’t think any closer’s a bright idea."

"So the cult is there. Right now," Jotou felt a few sparks at the ready along her fingers.

"The argument earlier was whether or not you’d go check it out, right?" Fumeko figured.

"You wanted us here for this then—the critical decision," Hotaru uttered.

Kazuo already felt the piercing glare coming from his side. He crossed his arms, "To be honest kid, I’m not convinced either way. I wanted you, all of you, to know this information; I thought that’d only be fair. But whether or not we let you go in is undecided."

"He’s putting it nicely, but I think we all know why it’s undecided," Morgana glared over to the four.

"Are we just stuck in limbo then? There has to be a choice," Jotou knitted her brows.

"Oh there is, it’s a no. I don’t think anyone should even attempt to engage, much less the four of you," Morgana restated. "Is the information there even worth it? We don’t know."

The dejected Hotaru pursed her lips and looked down. Asobi twiddled her wand in between her fingers.

"And as we figured out, it’s blatantly planted evidence. Hard to find maybe, but blatant. You’d be expected to arrive. Maybe you can surprise them initially, but they will be prepared for you," Kazuo articulated.

"He doesn’t want to see you dead kid, I think that’s easy to understand," Morgana looked directly at Fumeko.

...

Her friends stood behind her. She, stood right in front of the two towering figures filled with doubt. Fumeko contemplated for a moment; what is it that she truly wanted to accomplish?

...

As the room fell to silence, Fumeko spoke up, "Dad, Mrs Aetherton; please, listen," her voice grew a tad softer, but her expression all the more grave. Both of them looked down to the brunette.

She met both their gazes, "This is the best chance to get the most details before anyone else has to die. If you have the chance to stop more victims from popping up, wouldn’t you try your hardest?

Dad, you were a firefighter, surely you don’t think a life isn’t worth it. I’d even bet that you ran into buildings on fire to save a single person, even though it looked impossible. You even saved me, didn’t you?

I get it Mrs Aetherton, I’m reckless. But what part of this isn’t? I want to, need to, learn from my mistakes; I don’t intend to repeat them."

The word reckless lingered on Kazuo’s mind and he looked at his daughter with more lenience than before. Morgana kept her gaze, but her glare softened by the tiniest amount—not intending to repeat mistakes...

Fumeko never raised her voice, but it still carried much weight in this room, "A teenager was murdered at the best school in the country. Where do you think’s truly safe? It’s all an eventuality.

They’ve already set a quarter of Burnetrout on fire before. We’re gonna have to face them at some point or another. Our only choice is, at what point do we face them? When something like the great fire happens again?"

It was hard to argue back with such logic in mind.

"And who better to do it than us? We’ve now fought the new gods and know better ways to act. If you had to bet who’d have the best chance of dealing with this operation, who would you bet on?"

A silent stare came from both figures. It appeared the brunette was not done either.

"You’re the one who tried convincing dad for years to let me be free Mrs Aetherton. After all that, are you denying me that freedom now? That would just be what dad was doing for so long, wouldn’t it?"

Morgana took a deep breath... and closed her eyes.

"We’re not unprepared like last time. We expect the worst and Jotou has a plan, I can tell," Fumeko flashed a smirk to the blonde behind her.

’You can tell? Or are you just hoping I’m being paranoid? Well either way.’ "That’s right. There’s no chance we can defeat everything we face in there and escape alive. Getting information and escaping is the main priority."

Fumeko held her head high to the two figures, "We can do it, just believe in me. Please, don’t give up on me now," purplish-black shadows glimmered in her eyes...