Ch.96009 Investigation Record – Toward Gremory (3)

I couldn’t figure out what they were trying to do with the lockpick in the first place. Train doors aren’t locked—they’re just secured to prevent them from opening on their own during operation.

If you’re inside, you can easily open them by hand. If you want to open them from outside, all you need is something thin and firm like a business card. There wasn’t even a keyhole in the train door, yet they were still fiddling with a lockpick.

Willem, who had been waiting with determination, showed a smirk beneath his well-groomed beard. He spoke in a cheerful voice.

“Are you sure you’ve properly identified who’s outside? Because it seems to me we’re making the mistake of waiting here to kill comedians.”

Even as he said this, he continued fidgeting with the bulb in his thick fingertips, ready to inject mana and burst the flash bulb at any moment.

Soon the jiggling stopped. Either they realized there was no lock and the door simply needed to be lifted to open, or they figured it out by accident, but they opened the door to the train car.

Judging by the elf’s voice that followed, it seemed they had opened it by accident. Sometimes I feel ashamed to be an elf. Especially at times like this.

“Great! I told you it would open, you bastards! Get in! Get—”

The elf stepped through the doorway and couldn’t finish his sentence before a gunshot rang out. As I covered my long ears to endure the deafening sound, Willem smirked again.

“Ah, my apologies. I have no taste for waiting. When a person makes up their mind, they should have a worthy opponent—but this? What jumped out of the rustling night bushes was merely a rabbit.”

His bullet was strange. Could a human head be pierced so easily? From what I could see in the reflection of the small window in the open compartment door, it had gone straight through and lodged in the wall of the front car.

In just a moment, all strength vanished from that body, and the person collapsed. What had been a person until moments ago became a corpse incapable of thought or action. It was a sight I was becoming increasingly familiar with.

With those nerve-grating words, and the elf’s green mask becoming stained with pink and red as the bullet precisely pierced his temple, the Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn gathered behind began to go berserk.

“G-get in! Kill them all! Don’t worry about whether they’re elves or not! The Forest’s Firstborn desires it!”

“Fuck! Who cares about the Forest’s Firstborn when those bastards killed Gael? Hey! Everyone get in and kill them!”

They no longer seemed to refer to each other by numbers. They crashed into each other as they tried to push forward, stumbling awkwardly as they poured into the train.

Now’s the time. It would be perfect to throw it now. I remembered how the detective had waited to burst the bulb until after confirming the trolls in the living room when they invaded the editor’s house. Just then, Willem threw the bulb.

I think I’ve developed a bit of an eye for this now. One fallen follower shot a shotgun at the flying object, but it only punched holes in the train ceiling without coming anywhere near Paulina’s shield.

Confirming the bulb hadn’t been shot down, Willem prepared to fire while hiding behind Paulina’s shield. He was definitely a reliable person.

The magnesium bulb, injected with mana instead of electricity and made hyper-reactive, fell among them as they poured into the train. I tightly covered both ears again and turned my back, burying myself in the corner.

Even with my ears covered, the mana-enhanced explosion left a ringing sound in my ears, but thanks to closing my eyes and turning away, my vision remained intact. Though it was difficult to maintain balance, I turned around.

“What the—fuck, fuck! What is this! I can’t see! Hey, hey! Just shoot!”

An elf’s sensitive senses are temporarily blinded by the flash and deafened by the explosion. Not just deafened—their bodies convulse, unable to move properly.

“What are you saying! Shoot! I said shoot! They must be right in front of us! There!”

Most were crawling on the floor, waving their hands in the air as if they thought they still held guns, while those who actually had guns in hand were pressing the trigger guard instead of the trigger.

One follower who somehow found the trigger squeezed it, but he only hit the door that another follower had shot and failed to open. It was pathetically incompetent.

Even through my muffled hearing, I could hear the gunshots. Willem pulled the trigger five times in rapid succession, making me wonder if he was even aiming properly, and with each shot, another follower fell.

The acrid smell of gunpowder spread, numbing my nose with its sharpness, but that wasn’t all. A disgustingly fishy smell was permeating the air. I looked up at the reflective surface.

All headshots. Those green masks they wore so proudly were stained with pink and red splotches, and the followers lay on the floor without even having time to leave final words. They became corpses in an instant. It was a sight I was becoming increasingly familiar with.

The foul smell was so nauseating that I breathed only through my mouth. The remaining Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn were in chaos—those at the front tried to resist entering, while those at the back, having only heard the gunshots, kept pushing forward, pouring into the train car.

Willem had fired all six shots and tapped Paulina on the shoulder before starting to reload.

It seemed better to have two reliable people than fifteen idiots. While Willem reloaded, Paulina extended just her hand from beside the shield and pulled the trigger.

Though quieter than Willem’s gun, the sound still struck my muffled ears. Unlike Willem’s bullets that cleanly pierced heads, Paulina’s bullets hit the followers’ bodies to subdue them. She didn’t seem to be firing a gun for the first time either. She looked quite natural shooting with one hand while holding the shield.

Two followers who had been standing at the very back, forcibly pushing other followers into the train, fled backward, leaving only one follower who had fallen forward.

There were no more comrades. Six followers lay on the floor moaning, and six more with cleanly pierced heads were dead… The eyes of the last follower who had been pushed in and fallen trembled pitifully.

Still, to me, the phrase “merciful detective” was as awkward as “evil goblin.” Willem quickly finished reloading with some kind of pre-loaded cylinder and aimed his gun.

He didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. But there was only a single click… and no bullet fired. The elf, who had been hyperventilating with his gun lowered, had a shallow hope in his eyes.

But that shallow, naive hope was shattered just as shallowly and naively. Looking down at the follower whose face was contorted in what could have been either crying or laughing, Willem gave a friendly smile.

If you only saw his smile, you might think he was a nice neighborhood gentleman, but his gun remained firmly aimed at the follower’s head.

“I always leave out the seventh shot—it’s always unlucky. Well then, farewell.”

Willem pulled the trigger once more without hesitation, and the last follower’s forehead was pierced by a bullet. Whatever final words he tried to utter were drowned out by the muffled sound of the gunshot.

He fell backward, his body twitching momentarily as if malfunctioning before going still. Today must not have been his lucky day.

The era of cowboys and outlaws has long passed. Clinging to old methods naturally led to failure in the current flow of things. While a cowboy’s death might be sad, the death of these creatures was not.

Willem tucked his gun away and approached me as I knelt in the compartment, extending his hand. It was a hand covered in calluses.

“That was an incredibly clever tactic. I never knew that injecting mana into a flash bulb would make it burst like that. Well, even though the enemies were subpar, I think we would have been fine even if they had been more organized. And I think I can understand a bit how the God-President felt when he proclaimed ‘Let there be light.’ If I felt like this, I might have created a world too. Really.”

Just as I was about to grasp his hand, he briefly withdrew it, wrapped his gunpowder-scented hand in a handkerchief, and extended it to me again. He was such a classic gentleman.

“What rudeness I almost committed to my lady. Here, take it. That’s right.”

He was just as ruthless as the detective, but unlike him, he was extremely polite. He had the same smirk as the detective, but unlike him, he was normally a bright person with a sense of humor. I smiled at him.

“Give your praise to Paulina! She’s the one who found you in the compartment, and if it had just been Paulina and me, we would have been in danger. Oh, this is my lawyer Paulina. So, you said your name was Willem?”

The hand that had held his now smelled of cologne used for handkerchief maintenance instead of gunpowder. The heavy musk scent was a bit much, but the nose quickly adapts to such intense smells.

“You remember, though I only introduced myself briefly. Willem Straessen. I’m a detective. I had retired, but it seems I’ve just made a comeback, now that the job is done. And the lawyer lady was as solid as a mountain. She didn’t seem afraid of bullets flying at all. A brilliant strategist with an excellent guardian. Quite the combination, like something out of a chivalric novel, wouldn’t you say?”

He had a talent for naturally bringing up topics about novels and folklore to keep the conversation from sinking. He seemed to emit the pleasant musty smell of old books.

A retired detective, huh. He probably had many stories like the detective novels that had piled up at home. Being a real-life detective, he likely had more sordid and dark stories too.

I decided to stop filling people with prejudice, dreams, and imagination. Still, enjoying the cheerful gentleman persona he presented wasn’t wrong.

“Well then, lawyer lady, please stay with this young lady. I’ll go to the rear car to bring back the passengers… and tell those Idealists to contact the police. I’ll be back. A detective’s responsibility extends until the train arrives at its destination. Well then.”

He was the complete opposite of the detective yet somehow overlapped with him. Paulina stared at him intently before returning to my side, placing her hand on my cheek and turning my head this way and that to check if I was alright.

“It seems you can see properly this time… That’s a relief. We’re fortunate to have such a capable person around. So, once they contact the police using the Idealists, angels will arrive soon, and we just need to wait until then. Ah, I might have to be questioned, but if that happens, I’ll assign another lawyer from our firm’s Pennsylvania branch, so don’t worry, Rose.”

“You’re the one who’s worried, Paulina. I’m not scared at all! They were idiots. They were so obviously Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn, weren’t they?”

The two followers who had escaped wouldn’t return. After pushing their comrades through the door, all they saw was a scene like a slaughterhouse—the kind I’d have nightmares about for a week if I’d seen it as a child.

Paulina got up briefly and drew the curtain between the compartment and the corridor where the intruders had died, hiding the bodies from view. Though the horrible fishy smell still lingered when the compartment passengers returned.

Still, they didn’t complain. They only cursed and condemned the outlaws who had suddenly attacked the train, sharing their relief that they had been killed so easily.

A couple of months ago, just seeing this would have shocked me, right? It didn’t take long to learn what people’s true faces looked like. I was generally a quick learner.

Willem, who had brought the people back, soon returned. After briefly checking himself in a mirror to ensure his clothes were properly balanced and even inspecting his scarf, he smiled pleasantly again.

“The angels will be here soon. An inspector and some angels will come on this train, and they’ll send officers to chase the escapees, so either way, it should be resolved well.”

As he said, the angels arrived soon. One angel with a round halo behind his head, perhaps of some rank, stopped in front of the train, clicked his tongue at the dead followers, and entered the compartment.

“Inspector Senoy from the New York State Police Department. So… huh. If I’d known it would be like this, I should have told the railway company to send a new engineer instead of flying here myself. Don’t worry about these masked men. Deer hunting is for autumn, and turkey hunting is for late summer, but hunting fools like these is fine year-round.”

The angel policeman didn’t even try to investigate properly when he saw they were Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn. He seemed to dismiss it with a bored expression, as if killing them all at once was good enough.

Still, when asked how they had stopped the train, he did send other angels to investigate. There were never police who would act on their own. If you needed something, you had to pry it out of them.

Apparently, they had stood on the tracks as a group, holding burning branches so the train could see them from a distance. They must have really disliked the idea of being hit by the train, because they lit such large branches that several of the intruders had burns on their hands. They were truly, truly… endlessly stupid. I felt even more ashamed to be an elf.

When they talked about the engineer they had killed, I closed my eyes, placed my hand on my chest, and bowed my head briefly in a moment of silence. Only the deaths of murderers and criminals deserve to be mocked.

But these Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn had said something strange. They said the Forest’s Firstborn had ordered them not to touch the train that was supposed to depart at 4:30. The train I was on was originally scheduled to depart at 4:30.

It seemed like there was an elf related to the Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn on this train. That’s why the Forest’s Firstborn had ordered them not to touch this train. Finding that person would help understand the reason for this attack.

I approached Inspector Senoy, who was leaning against the compartment wall, slacking off. I looked up at him, who didn’t seem to mind a citizen approaching.

“Inspector. I think there’s an elf on this train who’s connected to the Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn. Those attackers said that the Forest’s Firstborn ordered them not to touch the train departing from New York at 4:30. This train was supposed to depart at 4:30, but it was delayed due to circumstances and was passing through here now… They must be in here. Definitely.”

It seemed like time to strike back at the Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn, the shame of my kind. They probably never thought they’d be defeated by a fellow elf.