Ch.41Request Log #006 – Hunting the Hunter (6)

The Idealists’ Hive Mind was angry, but not in a way that would make me lose motivation. Rather, it seemed eager to prove something to me.

It wasn’t a bad thing for a client to behave that way. If they brought something truly useful, I’d be grateful; if not, I could coax them until they became useful.

I could leave the writer to him. At least the Idealists’ Hive Mind had terminals spread throughout America, so tracking was something they could attempt.

I put on a holster with suspenders and grabbed my coat. It was time to investigate another entrepreneur. The chances of finding two entrepreneurs with pride and honor were slim to none.

Today, I headed to the newspaper stand in front of my apartment and skimmed through it. Several front-page articles claimed the police were trying to frame Giuseppina Proci for Simon Proci’s death, which they called an “unfortunate accident.”

Let’s see what excuse they’re using. Death by shark attack while swimming… While Giuseppina’s jaws might be shark-sized, Italians didn’t particularly enjoy swimming.

If they ever immersed themselves in seawater, either the entire ocean would reek of their hair or they’d smell less pungent. Unfortunately, the sea only smelled of salt.

With no other articles worth my attention, I headed to the parking lot, got in my car, and drove to the company run by my target entrepreneur. If it was closed, it might actually be easier to break in.

It was a tent manufacturing factory that I’d never heard of before. It didn’t seem large enough to supply military contracts. If it had been that big, they would have threatened to kill all the Idealists and destroy the Hive Mind rather than running away. Before leaving, I studied the file again to firmly imprint the face in my mind.

Navigating through New York’s busy streets, I finally reached the factory district. But the road ahead was blocked. Several government officials were closing off the street.

Wondering what was happening, I stuck my head out the window. A civil servant approached, bowing his head apologetically.

“Sorry for the inconvenience. The Industrial Spirit King has complained of pain, saying underground pipes might be misaligned. Traffic will resume once we’ve completed our inspection.”

While Industrial Spirits were merely industrial machines with limbs, the Industrial Spirit King was the factory district itself.

The land where factories stood, the factories themselves, even every handful of cement used—all were the flesh and blood of the Spirit King. When the district was first built, it was ordinary land, but once the factories began operating with industrial vigor, the land could move, and we called it the Industrial Spirit King. It was one of America’s few kings.

It probably wouldn’t fully rise. If it did, the entire area would start shaking.

After waiting briefly, the street before me began to tremble. A giant arm buried in the ground lifted up. Using the Spirit King’s power, the pipes connected to it and their contents remained intact as the ground rose before us.

It was fascinating to see a cross-section of the city. Numerous pipes were exposed to the civil servants who gathered to look for problems.

But… I could see nothing wrong with the pipes. Various fluids that had been flowing well were simply suspended by the Spirit King’s magic.

Another civil servant in the same uniform called out to the raised ground:

“Nothing seems wrong, Industrial Spirit King! All pipes appear to be in good condition! We’ll conduct an internal inspection, so could you keep them raised a bit longer?”

I could hear the Industrial Spirit King’s voice. Lying deep in my car seat, I watched as more ground separated from the surface. A massive crater had formed in the road ahead.

Then the voice began to resonate—the sound of the Industrial Revolution spewing steam, the everyday sound of factories belching black smoke. The sound of human creativity and production became a voice.

“It hurts. It’s stiff… My entire body aches, but that spot is the worst. Are you sure everything is fine?”

The Industrial Spirit King’s pain couldn’t be a good sign, but fortunately, I wasn’t a factory worker.

Soon, a human jumped into the crater created by the rising ground. Must be a polymorphed dragon. Anyone else would break their legs jumping from that height, but they showed no signs of injury.

A uniformed civil servant approached, waving a baton up and down while shouting:

“Large-scale magic use imminent! Close your car doors and stay inside! If you can’t use magic, don’t stay in your car—go into a nearby building! I repeat! Large-scale magic use…”

The ozone smell of mana reacting with air was unpleasant but tolerable. I pulled my body back inside the car.

Soon, mana began spreading like a storm. The dragon who had gone down seemed to be using magic to examine the Industrial Spirit King’s body, but given the entity’s enormous size, it took quite some time.

After about three minutes of the unpleasant ozone smell filling the street, a refreshing wind conjured by the dragon swept through, blowing away the odor. The dragon leaped out of the deep crater.

The dragon spoke informally to the Spirit King, confirming my suspicion—dragons were generally older than America unless they were quite young.

“The magical non-destructive testing is complete. All internal pipes are fine, Spirit King. Could there have been some mistake?”

The Spirit King filled the crater with the body part it had raised. Its voice echoed across the street again—the sound of interlocking gears and the ticking of a clock’s second hand.

“It still hurts. Could it be phantom pain? Come to the central area. If this pain is psychological, I have something urgent to discuss…”

If the structure was intact, there shouldn’t be any problems. As soon as the civil servants reopened the road, I drove across the Industrial Spirit King’s back toward a closed factory in the district.

The door was locked, with a thick chain and padlock securing the iron gate. The barbed wire on top of the wall suggested they didn’t want outsiders entering.

But I wasn’t the type to honor everyone’s requests. I parked by the road, got out, and surveyed the factory grounds. I entered the narrow alley between the factory and its wall.

A 7-foot wall would have been nice, but to prevent orc-like races from easily peering inside, the walls on both sides stood nearly 4 yards high. Not a problem, though.

Being brick walls, they weren’t particularly difficult to climb. I inserted my gloved fingers between the bricks and climbed up. My cursed skin couldn’t be torn by the barbed wire.

Resting my shoulder on the wall, feeling the barbed wire graze but not cut my cheek, I took out binoculars to examine the factory grounds, looking for potential clues.

And I found a rather important one. In one corner of the factory grounds, behind the wall in a spot not easily visible, was a pile of garbage. Above the garbage pile was a window.

Judging by the splatter marks on the factory’s brick wall, someone had clearly thrown trash out that window into the yard.

It was household garbage, mostly tin cans. Common red and white canned goods that I often ate myself. The flies swarming around suggested it hadn’t been discarded long ago.

Could I catch three in two days? My skin was fine, but my clothes were ordinary, so I carefully climbed over the wall to avoid tearing them, then jumped down.

I landed without using any falling techniques or even bending my knees, yet my legs were fine. I often muttered about the cursed double vitality, but I relied on that cursed vigor for almost everything I did.

Drawing my pistol, I headed for the factory door. I pushed it carefully, but it wouldn’t open. If even the main entrance was locked, the owner/factory manager might be holed up inside. If so, he probably had accomplices.

As a detective, I knew roughly how much garbage one person produces daily. And that amount was at most a few days’ worth. Someone must be clearing the garbage every few days.

There was only one way to find out. Since the front door was locked, I circled around the building away from the wall where the garbage was dumped, looking for a back door. Someone might come out to dispose of trash.

Since the factory had high walls, whoever was inside couldn’t have seen me park my car outside. So not being detected was paramount. I moved quickly but silently toward the back of the factory.

At a reasonable distance, there were three back doors. The first one… was open. There was enough space between the hinge and the door to peek inside as I opened it, and it opened outward.

After checking, I hid right behind the door and slowly opened it. I wasn’t afraid of the creaking sound of the old iron door opening—I was just wary of someone hearing it.

Through the door crack, I could see no one inside the factory. Was it just homeless people eating in an abandoned factory rather than the owner? I entered with my gun drawn and quietly closed the iron door behind me.

I controlled the door’s momentum to close slowly, turning the handle beforehand so that when it fully closed, I could slowly release the handle without making any mechanical noise.

I carefully examined the dark factory interior. There was no sign of anyone.

I considered entering the main production area to check the machines, but if those machines were Industrial Spirits, they might wake up when I approached and try to greet me warmly as someone they hadn’t seen in a long time.

Quietly, I circled the factory perimeter and found stairs leading to the office area. The stair railing was covered in dust, but at the entrance, there were marks as if someone had grabbed the railing and quickly let go.

Not much dust had accumulated over those marks. Someone had recently held this railing and climbed these stairs. I was careful not to make the steps creak.

I headed to the office floor. The door separating the office from the factory interior was already open. I scanned inside but saw no one. I quickly walked to the manager’s office.

When I opened the manager’s office door, I wasn’t expecting much—I dreamed of focusing solely on the writer, but knew that dream was unlikely to come true.

Inside was an ogre who looked like he hadn’t changed clothes in a while. An ogre eating canned food? They were a race that didn’t even consider food not cooked by themselves to be proper food.

But he seemed rather unstable. As if afraid of the door opening, he looked at me with trembling eyes while waving his hands frantically.

“Don’t come in! Don’t come in! There’s a ritual! A ritual! If someone comes in looking for the boss…”

He quickly turned around, took off his shirt, and showed me his back. There was an unpleasant mark on his back that reminded me of Argonne.

Ritual patterns had been carved into his skin with a sharp blade. I could read them. Those cursed days of studying ritual texts to eliminate my double vitality and strength hadn’t been in vain.

Blood, intruder, conception, sacrifice, beast. Five symbolic patterns were arranged. Blood—looking down at the floor, I saw ritual patterns drawn with the ogre’s blood at the boundary between the office and the hallway.

Not writing, but a combination of meaningless patterns. The ritual would be triggered when this blood was disturbed. I interpreted it: if an intruder steps on the blood, a beast will be conceived in the sacrifice.

I’d seen similar things during the Great War. When Saxon dwarf warlock-soldiers carved similar patterns into allied prisoners… some former comrade would become a monstrosity with a dozen black eyes embedded in red flesh, screaming as they charged toward our trenches.

With this cursed strength and vitality, it wouldn’t be difficult to kill it alone, but I decided to be cautious.

Magic had principles, but rituals only had the sense of ominous transactions—if this cause occurs, this result follows. That’s why rituals were ominous.

That’s why so many people pointed fingers when everyone deployed warlock-soldiers during the Great War.

Taking a step forward, I tried to reassure the ogre.

“So if I step on this blood line, whatever’s on your back activates? Who carved it? Explain who you are and why you’re here.”

The ogre looked at me as if I were his savior. It would be good to know how many days he’d been here alone, and he would tell me.

“I-I’m a lawyer who worked at this factory… Who did it? Probably the boss… The factory had been closed for a while when I suddenly got a call last week. I came to the company and found the boss here. I tried to ask why the factory had suddenly closed, but my memory is hazy. I think I drank something…”

He lured an employee and drugged him? That wasn’t important. What mattered was the boss’s whereabouts.

“So where’s the boss? And what’s this ritual about?”

“Ah, when I came to my senses, this was already carved on me. The boss said if anyone came in, both the intruder and I would die together. He apologized several times and then fled. So…”

“Damn, outside the factory, where else? From the window here, you can only see that he left the factory grounds because of the wall. Right?”

The ogre slowly nodded. This was getting complicated. The fugitive entrepreneur had hired a ritualist when he could barely afford to hire a gang. I carefully stepped into the office, avoiding the blood pattern boundary.

Fortunately, the ritual pattern didn’t glow. Relieved, I took another step in and gestured for the ogre to move toward the wall.

Though the ogre had been trembling with his eyes closed as I entered, once he confirmed he was still fine, he didn’t resist and moved to the wall as I instructed.

“Didn’t you call for help?”

“H-how could I call anyone when I was told I’d die if someone came in… Fortunately, the boss left plenty of food, so I’ve been surviving on that…”

“You said last week, so you’ve been here for a week. Exactly how many days have you been here?”

The garbage outside was far too little for a week’s worth. Someone was clearly coming periodically to clean it up. At least three or four days ago.

If I could determine exactly how long he’d been trapped here, I might be able to figure out when the garbage collector would come.

“Exactly 8 days. Is that helpful…?”

Since rescuing him wasn’t my job, I cut him off and continued my questioning.

“Didn’t you hear any rustling sounds about four days ago? There’s no way that garbage outside is 8 days’ worth. Someone probably cleaned it up around that time.”

The ogre shook his head, saying he hadn’t heard anything. Perhaps they came while he was asleep. Still, it was hopeful that the garbage collector might come today.

Someone sent by a man who carved rituals on his employee’s back to keep him trapped would surely be trusted by the boss, and such a trusted person could help me find the entrepreneur.