The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 498 - Clues On The Cultists, Consequences On The Corpses

A recently decommissioned location for storing and guarding artifacts, stolen goods, and all manner of things related to governing cultivation miscellanea sat three tall mountains west of the Goltbred home city. Its windows had long since been boarded over after a combined task force of Continental Army and Void Defense Society members relocated the belongings within. Despite that, Sevra approached with the caution of someone who’d learned not to trust quiet buildings in her line of work.

If she had been alone, scouting with her Walk Astralism would have been the go to method before approaching this close. But the former body double of once young Qatrand er Yecine followed a few paces behind her. His Cloak Astralism made him nearly invisible despite being right there. Nearly, because while he was very good and effective for most... a certain assassin family born cultivator had sharpened her sixth sense on the Illusions of Elua er Goltbred.

’I wonder how she is doing. I’ll have to ask her father, he should be back soon. Maybe her mother will let me get a good meal from their cook...’

She’d finally traced a pattern here after weeks of dead ends. Confiscated artifacts that came from Teovar’s network of dealings had all been routed through this region before final disposition. The manifest showed three texts on Taboo Aspects and an assortment of other minor and unknown artifacts that should have been waiting to be catalogued last month. However, they’d never arrived at the new main depot.

’And that’s probably why.’ 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

The smell of death hit first after breaking inside. She found another door askew, this one from an inner courtyard they must have infiltrated through so that no one would have noticed anything off with the building by just glancing at the main door while passing by. The unlucky body lay in the center of what had once been one of the facility sorting rooms. Male, middle-aged, and dressed in nondescript traveler’s tunic and pants.

"What happened here?"

Not responding to the rhetorical question by the young man, Sevra began to play detective. Evidence of intentional destruction could be found in multiple places. A firepit of charred scrolls, half burned leather book bindings, and items shattered and tossed in the blaze like they were meant to be purified - or offered to some being, like in the ancient times where the Fire Divinity was said to bestow extra virility if things were ’sent’ to him.

One of many problems with that, Elua might have told others if she cared - or they asked, was that the Fire was a female cultivator to the best of her knowledge. And her knowledge was pretty good, considering she knew the identity of each of the three mandate invokers responsible for setting the Three Trials restriction. That woman elementalist was indeed one of the primeval ascendants and quite ironically... or in truth, intentionally infuriating and obfuscating of the very same playwright that twisted the tales of the Acid Tongued Villainess... was the fact that she was as lethargic and asexual of a being as any that has ever existed.

The reincarnator assumed much of the decline and falsehoods came from powerful people taking on roles and identities in between dark ages of mass Descent failures. But if she saw the scene that the scout was looking at, she might start connecting dots into a bigger picture of possibility. One which the woman with Thelassi’s knowledge and Memory of the Ouras was already pretty certain of, by now.

"He was destroying spiritual cultivation goods."

Sevra crouched beside the corpse as she studied the scene. While some of her training could help, piecing together a crime scene was not exactly an assassin’s usual motivation. Yet how to case a location, deciding on the best vulnerability of the target, and of course rapid confirmation of success before fleeing. All of that sort of thing could be gathered while on a job, so the same should be accomplishable if she looked at it all a little backwards.

No obvious wounds. No signs of struggle. The man’s face was as peaceful as sleep. Like he’d just suddenly fallen right over and died. There were slow acting poisons and fast acting ones. Even a few that left no obvious signs. But for the most part, those were more effective on a mortal than a cultivator... and unfortunately every member of this cult seemed to be one.

"What killed him?"

The voice came from near the doorway, the body double still keeping distance. She hadn’t told him to stay back this time, which was good. He was learning under her reluctant tutelage while making use of his ability. Having someone essentially invisible as support to watch her back while she was interrogating others had been nicer than she’d expected. Not that she expected much help, as the young man was a novice with almost every weapon she’d stuck in his hands between travel periods.

"Stupidity, probably. Make sure to cure yourself of it before it’s too late."

"...What did I do this time?"

Instead of answering, because sometimes it was good to make him question himself even if he WAS doing everything right for once, she stood and started to look at the firepit closer. Carefully moving the scattered debris, looking to see if she could identify exactly what kind of items had been destroyed. Certainly, after seeing a certain sigil mark on leather that was meant to be on one of the books, she was beyond sure that some of the melted, fused, and baked to ash material in this pile was exactly what they had come to search for.

"I can kind of understand destroying the tools. Teovar did it himself sometimes, and told me that increasing their rarity was worth more than selling another one. But why destroy knowledge?"

"That’s the question, isn’t it? The way they do it is like its part of a mission. To ruin the ability to cultivate spirit for others."

"Wouldn’t that just make everyone weaker?"

"Yes. That’s probably the point."

Sevra pulled out a small personal journal from beneath the body. Pages and pages of obsessive documentation were inside, listing locations of cities, libraries, names of scholars, and records of ’successful purifications to enable the Restoration’ going back three decades. With a rambling self-gratifying note on the first page that he was continuing the work of his grandfather, who had served the cult ideals for two-hundred years prior.

"You have a lot of growing still to do in other areas, but Elua claims that spiritualism is the best foundation to focus on because of its subtle links to what we are and what we can’t see. Our spiritual sense helps us focus on what our body is telling us better and allows us to manipulate our essence field. In short, it’s a force multiplier as good as any."

The journal’s final entries mentioned the depot specifically. Notes on which artifacts posed the greatest ’corruption risk’ to the faithful. They all seemed like things that could manipulate the spirit in all sorts of forms, like the Ouras feared a lack of autonomy... or a severance from something. Any sort of object that could promote others toward developing the skills or knowledge to create these cultivator tools were the primary target.

Now she just had to figure out which one killed him - and if the object was still here.