After a long, heavy silence, Inspector Nana finally approached them. Even the deaf girl had begun to regain her composure. She sat quietly on a bench outside, still pale and shaken. The horror she'd witnessed would have broken most grown men—but she had handled it far better than anyone expected.
"It looks like we're done here. The rest will be handled by others," Nana said as he reached them.
Jin glanced up. "Who's taking over the case?"
"The Holy Knights. You're lucky. If not for them, we'd be stuck here all night, watching to see if the corpse awakens."
Jin stood without another word. "Then let's move."
Without waiting for further explanation, he turned and walked away, the weight of the scene still lingering in the air behind him.
***
They rode the public carriage in silence once more, bound for the Military Police base. No one uttered a word—least of all the girl who couldn't speak. But this time, even her silence felt heavier, unnatural, as if something unseen had stolen her voice entirely.
By the time they arrived, it was already lunchtime. The station cafeteria served free meals to all officers—and, of course, to applicants. Inspector Nana had even remarked that the food was surprisingly decent for a government facility. There was no need to waste money eating elsewhere.
Not that Jin cared.
He had seen how rare food was in the Forbidden Lands. Back then, his body hadn't needed sustenance. But now, in his current feeble state—barely stronger than an average human—he had to eat, sleep, and, regretfully, defecate.
He usually skipped the group dinners in the Nameless Domain, choosing instead to bring his food back to his room. But ever since he'd become like this, he often forgot to eat—only reminded when his stomach growled in protest. Fortunately, Luke often brought him something when he remembered.
Jin stepped into the cafeteria. Jay and the mute girl—whose name he had already forgotten—followed him, though he would have preferred to dine alone.
To his dismay, the trio from the other group were already seated at a table for six. Worse, they were waving them over.
'What a pain.'
Jin instinctively donned a mask—one worn only by protagonists in well-crafted novels. The silver-tongued charmer. The affable stranger. The social butterfly.
He had no genuine interest in such idiocy. But without his powers, he'd come to understand the value of allies. Pawns, really. Useful pawns that could protect him—or die if the situation demand.
A wide, artificial smile spread across his usually blank face. Luke noticed immediately. He had heard this performance before—Jin slipping into character, mimicking personalities like a marionette dancing on strings. Albedo had warned them of his fractured condition, but seeing it in action was something else entirely.
Jin pulled out an empty chair, adjusted his coat with a gentleman's poise, and sat down.
"Well now," he said, tone theatrically warm, "how's your day been, gentlemen?"
"It... was alright," Luke replied with a hesitant smile. "Yours?"
Jin paused, as though the question had struck something deep. The fake smile faltered, darkening into a haunted grimace. His voice lowered, trembling with feigned—or perhaps not so feigned—terror.
"It was awful. A nightmare. A truly terrible one. I don't think I'll ever forget it, no matter how much I try."
"Why? What happened?" asked the boy with the ponytail. Even the green-haired kid leaned in, curiosity breaking through his caution.
Jin gave them a moment to wait, a pause to let dread settle into their bones. Jay and the mute girl sat down beside him as he drained a full glass of water in a single gulp.
"It was a murder scene," he finally said, his voice soft, yet heavy. "Straight out of hell. Grotesque. Tragic."
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper that made the others draw closer.
"It happened in the Church of the Merciful Mother. Two pregnant women—murdered in the most depraved way imaginable. Their corpses were skinned. Arranged in a mockery of intercourse. Their eyeballs stolen. Their bare breasts left exposed to the stained-glass saints above."
A chilling silence settled over the table. No one breathed. Jin let the pause stretch like a blade being drawn.
"And the most horrific thing?" he said finally, his voice barely audible.
"There were no shadows beneath the corpses."
************************
Everyone's expression shifted to horror—even the deaf girl. Though she could not hear, she instinctively sensed the sudden disturbance in the air.
"Shadowless corpses?! What do you mean?" The question came from the green-haired boy—whose name Jin had, of course, already forgotten.
Jin's mask of mimicry almost slipped. He briefly wondered who was truly deaf—the girl or this imbecile. But he kept to his role.
"Yes. That's precisely what I witnessed," Jin replied smoothly.
Luke's gaze turned to Jay, silently asking for confirmation.
"How strange…" murmured the ponytailed boy, his voice colored by a thick northeastern accent. "Corpse with no shadow… D-do ya think… it's those creatures from th' Shadow Realm, maybe?"
His Orashil was stilted, fragmented—as if mimicked by a child learning to speak for the first time. He had mentioned before that he hailed from one of the northeast kingdoms, and now it was apparent in his strange phrasing and cadence.
The words hit Jay like a slap. 'Creatures from the Shadow Realm… That was exactly what had slaughtered Mr. Hank.'
His body tensed, eyes wide with memory.
Luke caught on quickly. Jay was clearly shaken by the mention of the shadow creatures. Without missing a beat, he stepped in.
"I doubt it," he said firmly. "They're not common monsters. Besides, this occurred inside a consecrated church—protected by advanced corruption-detection formations. Even the Moon's symbol has shadow-banishing properties."
"No."
The single word cut through the room like a blade.
All eyes turned toward the green-haired boy, whose expression had twisted into something grim—ghastly, even. He rose suddenly, knocking his chair over, his fists clenched, his voice shaking with rage.
"They do exist… inside the city. I—I saw it with my own eyes. I was there when the fortress fell. I saw that thing kill the Gatekeepers. I saw it. With my own eyes!"
The previously noisy cafeteria fell into an eerie silence. Every officer their turned toward him.
No one had expected such an outburst from the quiet boy. Jin himself had assumed he was mute like the girl.
But what disturbed Jin wasn't the story—it was the sudden attention.
It wasn't embarrassment. In fact, he felt nothing at all. But life in the Forbidden Lands had taught him to crave silence and detest attention. This moment, this spotlight, was the opposite of comfort.
Worse still, they were surrounded by Military Police. Dangerous men in a dangerous place. One misstep could ruin everything.
So, Jin leaned into his role.
His face twisted into a mask of sorrow and empathy—pain he had never truly felt, but expertly mimicked from all those novels. His voice softened as he stepped toward the boy.
"I see… You must have lost someone dear. I understand your grief. I've lost someone too. Don't carry the blame alone. It's not your fault. Things… will be alright."
The boy broke.
Tears streamed down his cheeks. It had been weeks since he'd cried—weeks of bottling emotions, pretending to be strong. He had watched his father die and done nothing to stop it. That memory had eaten away at him, hollowing him from the inside.
And now, with one whisper of false kindness, he shattered.
Jin approached, placing a hand on his shoulder. The warmth in his expression was pure fiction.
'People are so easy to control,' he mused. 'Find the right string… and they unravel themselves.'
He pressed deeper into the manipulation. The ponytailed boy—naive and soft-hearted—joined in, offering his own clumsy comfort, making Jin's job even simpler. Jay and Luke knew what he was doing, but they joined anyway. It was just who they were.
In the end, Jin got what he came for: information.
The creature the boy spoke of had to be the same one Jin had killed that day. But there was a discrepancy—the boy believed it to be a shadow creature. In truth, it had been an Abyssal entity.
The events surrounding that day were too strange. Someone from the fortress must had clearly seen more than they should have.
And so, the boy told them everything.
Most of it matched the reports in the newspapers—except for one crucial detail. A creature had appeared seemingly out of thin air, like smoke born from darkness. Almost like a shadow. It had watched the chaos unfold, allowing the monsters to devour the Gatekeepers before making its move.
"It emerged from the shadows… So that's why you believe it was from the Shadow Realm?" Jin asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Yes," the boy replied, voice still trembling. "It didn't attack. It just stood there, motionless… until everything was clear. Then it moved."
'How strange,' Jin thought. 'The creature that attacked me also was a Shadowless. I remember the feeling of a strange gaze watching me afterward. But why would a creature from the Shadow Realm obey an Abyssal lord? And now, today's murder… again, no shadow left behind. Something was happening.'