There were several things that police movies and television shows usually got wrong.
Granted, Hayato still watched them anyway, but he couldn't help but shake his head internally when he got to the more unrealistic parts.
One of such things were regarding interrogation techniques.
There were lots of ways the media showed the police finding out how a suspect was lying. Lie detectors, their body language, even voice analysis sometimes. There was even a company that was developing a special type of MRI that was supposed to be able to tell when a person was lying or not- but as of yet there was no conclusive evidence this actually worked.
In truth these methods were more or less useless. Lie detectors only worked because people believed they did, and in this modern age no one was that stupid. Torture, even if it was allowed, was also objectively rather poor at getting the truth out and was as equally likely to get you lies.
There was only one tested way that Hayato knew which worked- which he was using as Draudillon was spilling the beans about her story.
A liar wouldn't be able to keep their stories consistent. You would take that person's story one day, record it, and then grill them about the exact same incident several weeks later. You would focus on the small details, like what color shirt a person was wearing. You might even go ahead and tell them a false detail while repeating their story to them to see if they slip up and agree with you.
All of this took time. Days, even weeks perhaps. Time that Hayato really didn't have.
He did however hear Draudillon's entire story a total of three times from beginning to end. He frequently interrupted her, which was clearly beginning to annoy her, but a stern look from him whenever she was about to protest silenced her.
He would never have believed the story she was telling in normal circumstances were it not for the fact that she had transformed from a little girl to a grown woman right before his eyes.
She had even turned back into a little girl as well and back again.
"So tell me about this magic system again," Hayato said. "You're saying that you can't actually use magic?"
"Not Tier Magic," she said with an exasperated sigh. She had explained this particular thing twenty times over. "Just Wild Magic. But there are other people who can use Tier Magic."
It was this part that stuck out at Hayato. The magic system that she described was remarkably similar to the ones in Yggdrasil, though according to her magic beyond the eighth tier did not exist. Magic systems like that were not things that were unique to Yggdrasil though, so it was possible she was making it up.
However, the monsters that she described such as goblins and undead also were remarkably similar to those found within Yggdrasil and matched the lore given in the game as well, though once again, such things were hardly unique to Yggdrasil, a game which borrowed heavily from other games.
"So what you're telling me is that you're actually from another world," Hayato said. "A world where you were the Queen of a nation, a world where magic and dragons exist, and somehow you found yourself here suddenly?"
"Yes," Draudillon said. She had her own doubts- this man was telling her that magic didn't exist in this world.
But that was impossible. From what she could tell, this city was made up of at least a million people. If that were true, how could a city this city get its clean water and food without the use of magic?
In the end, Hayato was unsure of what he should think. On the one hand, if anyone told him such a story on the street he would assume they were addicted to crack or something. On the other hand he couldn't turn out of hand the evidence he saw with his eyes.
The more important question at hand was what he intended to do now with her.
He rummaged his shirt instinctively- a habit he had developed earlier when he was looking for a cigarette. Of course he didn't find any- he had quit a very long time ago. Even the stress of his divorce had not been able to tempt him back into that old habit, but this was just something out of this world.
Before he could make a decision though, his phone began ringing. With a jolt, he looked towards the window and saw that the sun was quite high up in the sky right now.
It must have been at least eight in the morning. How engrossed had he been with this woman's story? No doubt this must have been a call from work.
Oh wait- it was a video call from his soon to be ex-wife. And it was only half past seven, meaning there was still time to get ready for work, though no time for sleep at all.
"I need you to hide in another room," he said to Draudillon. He didn't want to explain to his soon to be ex-wife why there was a strange woman in his kitchen.
When he accepted the call what greeted him was the adorable face of his daughter. Despite his fatigue, he did his best to put on a smile.
In the corner of the screen there was a woman peering out towards him, though mostly hidden. And Hayato would prefer that it remained that way.
"Hello Papa!" she said.
"Hello!" he replied, smiling. "How're you doing?"
"I'm good," she said and pouted. "I wanted to see you though!"
"Yeah, me too," Hayato said and sighed.
"Are you okay?" she asked. "You look kind of tired."
"Uh, well, there's some work sweetie," he said with a smile. "You know."
"Oh, because of the qua-quack-uh," she said, struggling to say the word 'quarantine.'
"Yeah, because of that we're kind of busy," he said. "But you know what? The moment this is all over, we can go ahead and meet up."
"Promise?"
"I promise," he said.
At the moment, she moved into sight, and as gently as possible told his daughter that her father probably needed to get to work and ended the conversation.
Hayato let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding in, and then realized that right now his priority should be getting to work if he didn't want to get fired. On any other day he would've been able to call in sick, but with the quarantine going on he doubted something like that would be entertained unless he said he was sick with the virus going around.
He shuddered as he contemplated what would happen to him in such a case.
Anyway, losing his job was the last thing this week needed so he dragged himself together to get ready.
Meanwhile, Draudillon Oriculus had been in the next room with he ear pressed up against the wall. Although she was a Dragon Lord technically, her senses were only as good as that of a human's. As such, she only heard Hayato's side of the conversation as the volume of the replies was too low for her to catch anything regarding it. She briefly wondered why the man was talking to himself before realizing he must be communicating with someone.
"Ah, right," he said as he peered his head around the corner to glance at her. "I'm going to be honest- I do not believe in dragons and magic or whatever, but at this time I'm just too exhausted to even really bother doing anything about you. Just- just stay here if you want, we'll talk more in the evening."
He knew this was rather irresponsible, but he was too tired to argue at this point. Draudillon seemed to be quite relaxed at this. She was safe it seemed- at least for now.
"Please don't out me to the authorities though," she said. "Whoever brought me to this world- if it was a person they must be looking for me."
"Yeah, sure, whatever," Hayato said, stifling a yawn. It was going to be a long day- he had not pulled an all-nighter in years and he knew how brutal it was going to be. He was going to need lots of coffee.
As he pulled up to the station he noticed there was a lot more activity that there usually was.
While it was common for workers to be whipped within an inch of their lives while working for a Megacorp, working for the government was far more relaxing.
It looked like they had pulled in every single off-duty copper for the job today. He even saw some people he had never seen before.
Of course, he had heard rumors about them. Cops who had managed to fake their paperwork into showing they were disabled and so didn't bother showing up and still collected a paycheck. These were people who usually had connections to people in high places.
But it seems that didn't help them at all with whatever the government had gotten itself into. There were even trainees from the Police Academy there- what appeared to be those in their last months of training. Every single Badge in the city seemed to have been called in.
"Hey Hayato! You look sleepy!" one of his colleagues shouted out to him.
"She keep you up all night?" someone he didn't recognize added and the people near him roared with laughter.
For a second, Hayato thought that he had been found out and his heart skipped a beat before realizing that they must have been talking about his mistress. He just wore a tired smile and went on with his day.
Today it seemed he would be freed from his usual patrols and was assigned a desk job. He would have normally found this to be unbearable, but given his current state he couldn't have asked for anything better.
He got up almost every hour to refill his mug with coffee, and it was during one of these trips that an epiphany suddenly hit him.
Draudillon had not been the only one who had told him something crazy. There had also been the boss of that company- but he was dead now. What had he talked about again? Demons?
Draudillon had never mentioned demons, so he couldn't be sure that the two were connected somehow.
He would just have to ask her when he got back.
This wasn't the only thing that struck him as odd. He realized that none of the officers, at least those gathered here, were wearing protective equipment. They weren't even giving out hand sanitizer or cleaning solution. Plus, they had gone ahead and packed them all quite tightly in the morning.
If there really was a virus going around they seemed to be doing very little to combat it.
After Hachiman had dinner he briefly considered his position in the world. As he looked around as his army of demons, he had come to an idea: he was going to have to conquer the world.
It was only a natural conclusion to draw.
Eventually the government or someone else would catch wind of his powers and try to take them.
When that happened, he could either hide himself somewhere, far away from civilization. Either that, or he could form his own country. A nation of demons which would be able to protect him... would it be possible? He had no idea how effective some of mankind's more advanced weaponry were against his magic.
Perhaps you would think this was just his Eighth Grade Syndrome working up again- but no. This time, he was quite one hundred percent serious.
He had seen no evidence that anyone else had gotten any items from Yggdrasil. If they had, they would have certainly tried to stop him. He could only assume that for some reason, destiny itself had chosen him and him alone to wield the power of Yggdrasil.
In his mind's eye, he could see the utopia that he would build for himself and the chosen few he would let in his country. Mankind could live easily off the magic of demons as their ailments would be cured, food would be provided with, and security was guaranteed.
Surely, if he had the ability to construct such a world, he should? It was clearly his duty to do so.
He might even be able to conquer the rest of the world given enough time.
But enough of those thoughts for now, he reasoned as he went to his bed. It was time to sleep.
Normally he would have trouble falling asleep as he spent so much time obsessing over Bellriver's 'dissapearance' but this night he slept like a baby.
One thing that contributed to this was that he was quite exhausted after the day's events.
The more important thing was that he was being watched over by his army of demons- it was like sleeping under the watch of his own personal guardian angels.
This would-be world conquering dictator got up in the morning to make himself a cup of ramen. Hardly the breakfast of kings- but he didn't want to bother with actually making something.
Come to think of it, he probably didn't have anything besides that anyway in his apartment.
He remembered there were spells in Yggdrasil which allowed you to make food. He would've liked to try something of what his soldiers could make, but for now he would stick with what he knew.
As he got ready, he flipped through the channels on his television. Nothing new- there was no reports on him for that matter which made him frown. He would've loved to see a low resolution image of him in a mask on national television, but it was the same old message that the quarantine was ongoing.
Oh?
The Prime Minister was making an address to the nation, which he figured he might as well listen to.
Ten minutes in and he switched the television off. It was waffle, all of it.
Just generic stuff asking the people of Japan to stay strong against this new virus, telling people to stay indoors as long as possible, and more stuff that by now Hachiman was sure was a lie.
He had never, as a part of his inquisition, found any evidence of there actually being a virus. The so-called 'disease' hadn't even been named up till now and they were pretty vague on what the symptoms were. It was clearly a coverup, and the fact that it occurred on the very day he found the World Class Item did make him wonder if the two were connected somehow, or if the government was up to some completely different shenanigans.
As it was though, he had no time to listen to propaganda.
Only thing was that he had no idea where to go now. He had exhausted all leads, which all went to the company that had built Yggdrasil.
Only thing was that it appeared that everyone there was dead.
As for grabbing their data and running with it, he could do that. But then he'd need to find someone capable of breaking their encryption.
He was pretty sure that people such as that existed, but he had no way to get in contact with such people.
In that case, the only option would be for him to randomly go around to various criminal headquarters until one of them gave him a name of someone who could help him.
That certainly didn't seem appealing.
Or... he had not yet experimented with resurrection magic yet. Up till now, it appeared that all spells from Yggdrasil worked much like they did in the game. Even healing magic. If resurrection magic worked as well, he could try it on some of the dead employees.
He asked around once to see what the others knew about resurrection magic.
Using the eighth tier spell Soul-Bought Miracle they could replicate any eighth tier spell that they wanted. As such, resurrection was technically possible. However, they told him that if tried to use it on someone too weak they would burn to ash.
Still, this seemed to be a better plan than anything else he had on mind.
He teleported outside the building they had been in last night. It was sealed off, but one of his demons had a racial ability and could go invisible and scouted out the place. Hachiman sadly did not have an ability such as Necromantic Slave Sight and so couldn't see what his summons saw, but the demon reported that as of now, the bodies were still there and were guarded by only a few people.
There were a few armored vehicles in sight however. But, for now he and his army were well concealed thanks to magic. As such, he was rather confidant he could break in and out rather easily. But once they were inside, the alarm would be rung and then they would begin to have a problem.
In that case, they would only have a few minutes to act.
Hachiman sent a mental command to his summons. They would go in, and grab two corpses to take back with them. Meanwhile, Hachiman himself would look for any storage devices that they could take with them.
With the plan understood by all, the spell Gate was cast and they were once again inside the room.
Hachiman, out of the corner of his eye saw that there was someone taking photographs of the crime scene. But, he had no time for that.
Some of his demons formed a literal wall between him and the others, while he looked around and pointed to two people and told them to grab them.
These two people were both very old men, so Hachiman assumed that they were the most senior of the employees there and most likely to know something. There were a few storage devices he could see which were put into bags labelled as 'evidence' which he also told them to grab.
By the time anyone figured out what was going on they were already out of there.
Rather than go back to his apartment, he instead had them go to an abandoned building that was three streets away from his home address.
The way that summons worked was that they shared their knowledge with the summoner, as such they could teleport to any location that he knew about even if they had never visited it themselves.
As he glanced at the faces of the two people he had taken, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of pity for them. He was only human after all for now- he had asked his soldiers if there was a way for him to change his race into that of a demon, but they didn't know of any such spell. There were items that could change one's race but he didn't have access to them. Of course there were multiple sets of such items within the vaults of his guild base...
He paused what he was doing for a second. Did he obtain this item through chance- or was it because he knew about Yggdrasil? Could it be that maybe, one of his other guild members had also chanced upon an item such as this one?
In that case, he should definitely go and pay them a visit. He did know the address of a few of them, with Suzuki Satoru being one of them. However, just knowing an address was not good enough if one wanted to teleport to a location. But maybe Google Maps could help him with that? He wasn't sure if an aerial view was good enough.
But enough about that. Time for the moment of truth!
One of his demons first cast Soul-Bought Miracle to use the eighth tier spell Greater Resurrection while Hachiman waited with bated breath.
To his disappointment however, the body turned to ash.
He felt a slight pang of guilt- though the man was already dead, and if resurrection failed, that meant nothing could be done about it, there was still the point that this man might've had relatives who would've liked to perform the last rites on his body who would not get the chance now.
No matter though. It was only a minor grievance.
This was why he had grabbed two of them, after all.
"Do it on that one," he ordered.
Unfortunately, he got the same result. The body turned to ash.
"Shall we go back and get some more?" one of the demons asked him, sensing his displeasure and predicting what he was thinking.
"N-no," Hachiman said. "They'll be ready for us this time, and I'm not bulletproof. Maybe it just isn't possible."
If two people couldn't be brought back and burned to ashes, it was likely it would happen to the others as well. At least their trip wasn't totally in vain, he still had the bags of evidence.
Before randomly knocking on- or rather, knocking down people's doors however, he thought that now would be a good time to see how his other guild mates were handling things.
Even if they hadn't gotten supernatural powers like he had, he would still obviously want to let them join the paradise that he intended to make.
First stop then would be Suzuki Satoru's apartment.
Hayato thought that the day was going to come to a boring close- nothing he didn't mind- when his phone began ringing and he was told to move to an address as soon as possible.
What made him sit up straight was the fact that the word 'demons' had been said a couple of times in the conversation.
Funnily enough the address belonged to the game company that had designed Yggdrasil. They were calling in quite a lot of officers to the scene, he noticed.
So many as a matter of fact that they weren't even giving out Biohazard suits to all of them.
When the Platinum Dragon Lord, in his armor, got back to his base he immediately set back out.
The thing was that he was quite sure that these Americans were hiding something from him. He had no idea why or what exactly, but he couldn't exactly confront them directly.
He did however, need to go ahead and do some intelligence gathering of his own.
People who remained ignorant did not usually get information from the villains as stories often told- they usually just died while remaining ignorant.
He did not know if the Americans were keeping surveillance on his guild base- they had taken their machinery away but it was possible that they had access to powerful divination spells which he could not counter.
As such, he had to have a story as to why he was suddenly wandering throughout their territory.
Well, on the one hand, he could always point out that they had never explicitly forbidden him from venturing outside of the guild base.
But such behavior would no doubt look suspicious to even the most benevolent of eyes.
The only real excuse that he could find himself to muster up was that perhaps he would pretend that the guild base needed some resource, such as fresh water, and he had merely gone to fetch some. If they asked why they hadn't contacted the Americans, he would point out the fact that none of them were around and he didn't feel it necessary to trouble them with such a small request.
With that in mind, he kept teleporting to as far as he could see until he finally came across a large landmass. Large enough that he could not see the ocean on the other side of it, even with his keen vision.
Despite the height at which his armor was flying, with his keen senses including eyesight which would put that of a hawk's to shame, he could very easily make out nearly everything that was happening down below.
He saw a settlement and stopped to fly near it.
He was unable to use any magic that would conceal oneself without the use of magic items, and as such, he hid himself in the woods near the cottage.
It was a fairly unremarkable structure, but his attention was drawn to the two people who were talking to each other.
Though his vision somewhat was obstructed by the tree line, his hearing was unimpeded.
After ten minutes though it was clear that his spying was not going to actually yield anything. From the sounds of their voices, both of them were at most adolescents. They were talking about a certain boy that the two of them seemed to like.
He had no time for teenage drama and so flew off as stealthily as he could manage. It would be easy to teleport back, but he had not gotten any useful information yet, and it felt like a waste of time to go back without having anything to show for it.
He went further and further onwards until he came upon what looked to be a small town.
Here he had a bit of a different problem- namely now there were far too many people for him to possibly hone onto any conversation.
When he could, the majority of them were about mundane topics that he could find no interest it.
There was a rather more obvious solution in which he would go and talk to one of them- but how would he explain this strange suit of armor? No one was wearing anything even remotely like it.
Plus it would seem odd if he just started randomly asking basic questions.
He needed some sort of a lead- but where?
It was as he was contemplating this that he saw something in the distance which caught his eye. Was that- an Archangel Flame?
It was not too odd for there to be one if this was Yggdrasil. However, based on what their President had said, these were all people who had just gotten their powers.
The summoner appeared to be a young boy who was playing by himself, unattended, in an open field.
The Platinum Dragon Lord, in his armor, descended to meet the boy.
He seemed shocked and backed away a few paces. That was until he sized up the Platinum Dragon Lord and said, "Hey Mister! Great costume there!"
"Costume?"
Takeshi was now sleeping far more peacefully than any of the other humans being kept in Nazarick. He sort of knew what was going on- even if it made no real sense at all, so he was relatively calm.
In the morning, they had all be herded out of the places they were staying to once again meet the dog face maid. Right, her name was Pestonya. She was an NPC- and from what he knew, this was far from the weirdest NPC he had ever seen in Yggdrasil. He assumed that the dog face probably was modeled after someone's actual dog.
Some of the people, understandably, did a double-take when they saw that there were some more people with them.
Even Takeshi recognized the girl who had been shot dead and he shuddered.
"Greetings," Pestonya said. "With us here are some new guests- these fellow humans of yours had been killed off, but thankfully with the approval of the Supreme Beings of Nazarick they have been brought back to life."
Several panicked voices emerged, though Takeshi was not one of them. He had been expecting this to an extent- so ressuruction also worked in this world?
As one might understand, the other people being... well, 'held hostage' was a bit of a an exaggeration, even if that was how a good portion of them felt- were rather horrified that something such as resurruction could exist.
It was easier for a lot of them to simply believe that they were being lied to, but Takeshi could tell that they were going to break soon.
He hadn't told anyone what had happened last night, no matter how much they asked, as he didn't want to risk worsening the situation.
Unless Suzuki came to calm things down, tensions were most likely going to escalate.
While they had not been treated terribly, it was highly unlikely, in Takeshi's opinion, that the others would stand for a situation like this to persist for more than a few more days.