Taking "there can never be a perfect crime" as my motto, I personally looked into these murders.
Behind every crime, there has to be a motive. Nobody kills another without some benefit or profit—except psychopaths, of course.
Since the murderer killed them, it meant he gained something valuable. Taking all four victims as a base and combining my knowledge from fabrics and novels, I formed a hypothesis: killing them would benefit a traveler in many ways.
He could have a system—or something similar—that works by altering the plot or siphoning some kind of luck or origin energy from them, since they are important characters from the anime.
According to forensic reports, he murdered them with a knife. That means he's proficient in assassination—nobody saw him do it, even in broad daylight.
I have to say, he's quite arrogant: murdering the heirs to a giant conglomerate in broad daylight takes courage. But killing a completely harmless 12-year-old boy shows just how ruthless he is in achieving his motives.
He must be a delusional, harem-seeking individual, since he murdered the MCs of the original anime but left behind the heroines and Miko Yotsuya. Maybe he intends to conquer them—perhaps his system requires conquering the heroines to gain power.
There are countless possibilities, but for him to succeed, he must fulfill one condition: make them his harem. By now, he must have approached them in some way to begin his plan. While I was deducing this train of logic… who knows?
I immediately opened the Akashic Records to check for any potential energy loss. I got an answer: apparently, it lost some core energy. I asked about side effects; it replied that the energy can recover naturally over time and that the loss isn't dangerous, since the culprit cannot use it in excess.
Returning to logic: if he wants to conquer them and have a harem, he must have the necessary power—or wealth—to ignore laws and other complications. He likely has considerable freedom, perhaps inheriting wealth after his parents' death… wait, why am I getting déjà vu?
Shit. Isn't this like me? That narrows the list considerably. I immediately called Sebas and asked if he knew of any wealthy people who had died in Tokyo within the past year.
You may wonder why only a year: the first murder (Aki Tomoya) happened eight months ago. He must have just arrived, and killing Tomoya might have been his first mission—or his personal choice.
Aki Tomoya was killed in the convenience store where he worked part-time, in the employee room. No footage exists of the murder. But if I check the entrance and mall footage that day, I can identify a sole heir who recently lost parents and arrived alone without security—a prime suspect.
I trusted my gut and hired professionals to investigate. Boom. I found the culprit.
Now, all that remains is to eliminate the traveler—uh, I mean, for the sake of justice.
Instead of confronting him directly, I connected with the World Core and set up fail-safe protocols using my talent. After preparations, I closed my room and told the servants not to disturb me unless necessary, claiming I'd be meditating to cultivate inner peace.
I called upon my shadow soldiers to locate the culprit, Kanazaki Chenhao. His name already says a lot. I'm not racist, but his parents are Japanese, and his name… screams out of place. At least my full name is American, not this mixed-up mess.
The shadow soldiers found him in five minutes. I ordered them to take me there through the Underworld—my creation, a parallel realm inspired by Jackie Chan Adventures' Shadow World. Currently, it covers a million square kilometers, about 1/500th of Earth's surface, but it's expanding by digesting evil spirits and excess origin energy until it reaches equilibrium with the universe.
Heaven works similarly, but it depends solely on origin energy and expands much slower—currently 1/5000th of Earth's area and 1/10th of the Underworld. My Underworld already reaches parts of China, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, etc., defining my teleportation range.
I can also teleport via Space Mastery from my Elemental Mastery talent, but that requires coordinates. For energy, I extract chaos energy from the void and use my Forge talent to convert it to any type I need.
After locating him, I traveled there via the Underworld. He was already on alert—he couldn't sense me due to my Anonymous talent. His cheat system seems either aloof or non-sentient; it didn't react to shadow soldiers, probably because they're composed of the world's origin energy.
He is fairly powerful—currently 8-C tier, capable of destroying a building. He turned invisible, which explains how he murdered the Shinomiya heirs unnoticed. Likely a skill or superpower from his cheat system.
I sent a shadow soldier to test him. He immediately appeared next to it and decapitated it—a backstab skill that works on spiritual entities, probably powered by energy coating his blade. He also seems to generate a silent domain enveloping the apartment.
I analyzed his attack patterns and sensed a new type of energy—mana, I think. He panicked, calling his system outwardly, which detached from him when I used my Forge talent to trap it in a small cube. The system is imperceivable in its fused state with the host, likely an innate ability.
The traveler went into a coma due to soul trauma from the violent detachment. I accomplished my goal, though it's anticlimactic—I was ready for an epic showdown and aura-farming battle. I guess I'll have to lower my expectations if all other travelers are like this one.