The Shield of Miracles

by Sakon Kaidou

  Ironically, the man’s status and the unknown extent of the power that came with it actually worked against him, keeping him as the prime suspect.

  Truth Discernment was one of the most important factors in this world’s judicial system, yet even that was considered inadequate against a Superior.

  Additionally, there was circumstantial evidence that suggested that he was the culprit.

  First, of course, the card implied the connection. Second, his Mythical special reward, Kim-un-Kamuy, had camouflage and presence manipulation skills powerful enough to fool the alarm systems.

  As for motive... he was currently short on money, so it was not unreasonable to believe he would commit burglary.

  Due to all that together, he continued to be held as a suspect.

  I had received all that information directly from Ray’s brother by using Telepathy Cuffs. Thankfully, they hadn’t confiscated his possessions.

  “Considering the motive, means, and opportunity, Shu happens to be the only suspect the investigators have,” I muttered. “Which makes him the prime suspect.”

  “But Mr. Bear wouldn’t do that, right?” Babi asked. “Don’t you think so?”

  “Babi, detectives are human, too, and yes, we do have our share of preferences when it comes to people, but those shouldn’t be incorporated into our investigative deductions.”

  In both reality and fiction, there had been countless cases of detectives believing that a suspect was too good a person to be the culprit, and then gone on to have that belief betrayed.

  “Then... what’s your deduction?” she asked.

  “Shu isn’t the culprit,” I said. “That’s far too obvious.”

  Indeed, I could take it for granted that him being the one who did it was downright impossible.

  “If all he needed was money, then there was no need for him to kill anyone,” I explained. “Not to mention that he wouldn’t leave a card saying that he did it. He is not some phantom thief you’d find in fiction.”

  In fact, not even my mother would do work this... trifling, I thought.

  “This is definitely a crime committed by a person who’s trying to make it seem like it’s Shu. The true culprit... is someone else.”

  The unknown murderer was still at large, laughing after having transferred the blame to someone else.

  It was in my nature — in my genes from my father — to want to expose his identity and close this case for good.

  I knew exactly what I had to do now.

  Shu might’ve had told me all that information because he’d guessed what course of action I would take. In that case, this might be part of the training.

  Regardless, for the first time in a while, I once again had an objective.

  When it came to using my parents’ lessons, the only thing I’d been doing recently was teaching Elizabeth my mother’s thieving techniques. But now, I would put into practice what my father had taught me.

  “I’ll expose the culprit... and bring him to light.” I swear that upon my father’s honor.

  “Rook... That line is a biiit...”

  “I know. I regret saying it now.”

  Anyway, I began the investigation.

  “First we have to find out how the culprit got in, right?” Babi asked.

  “No, actually. The ‘how’ is thoroughly meaningless here.”

  This world had an awful lot of skills, including ones from Embryos that were unique to each Master, so the means of passing the alarm system were far too many. Even I personally knew of two people who could do it — Shu and Marie.

  “So we will look into the method last,” I said. “First, we have to work out the culprit’s mentality.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “I’m thinking on it now while I’m recovering my detective’s intuition.”

  I sat on a bench in front of the knight offices in the first district, observing the people passing by. It was both preparation for my first detective work in a long time, and part of the investigation.

  On the nearby notice board, the authorities had left a brief explanation regarding the murders.

  This was true for many other incidents, and the text on them followed the format of “This and that happened, and this and that person was caught.”

  I was observing the reactions of the people looking at the board.

  If the culprit was interested in how the case was proceeding, he might come to take a gander at it, and depending on his reaction, I might find my target early in the investigation. Still, it wasn’t too likely that the culprit would come here, so my hopes weren’t high, and most of my focus was on recovering my intuition and gathering my thoughts.

  “’Male suspect,’ eh?” I muttered, still on the bench, looking at the notice board several meters ahead.

  The explanation for the murders described what had happened and ended it with just a “We arrested a male suspect.”

  Shu’s name was nowhere to be seen, partly because it wasn’t certain that he was the culprit yet, but mostly because the news of one of the kingdom’s Superiors getting arrested would be far too shocking.

  During the incident started by the Giga Professor, Shu had revealed his identity as the King of Destruction and destroyed Pandemonium and the horde of monsters attacking Gideon.

  The significance of those feats couldn’t be taken lightly. Just like the moment of Ray defeating the RSK, Shu’s feats had given hope to the people of this declining kingdom.

  In fact, that might very well be the reason why the culprit was framing him.

  Arrest alone wasn’t enough to send a Master to the gaol, and if they had save points in other countries, they could come back through those. According to Shu, he had marked save points in all seven countries, so that wasn’t a problem.

  However, if he was put on Altar’s wanted list and lost his nationality, he would obviously disappear from the country’s rankings, making it impossible for the King of Destruction, the top of Altar’s kill rankings, to participate in the war.

  And with him being the hope of the kingdom, his exit would mean far more than just a severe loss of war potential. It would be a severe blow to morale.

  Then... was this another strategical move by the Giga Professor?

  “...No,” I murmured.

  It didn’t make sense for these murders to be part of a plot to remove Shu from the war.

  If someone truly wanted to achieve that, they would have framed him for a crime grave enough to get him on all the wanted lists.

  If that had been my objective, and I’d had the means to do it... I would have killed Elizabeth, who happened to still be here in Gideon.

  If I framed Shu for that, he would instantly become wanted everywhere — no two ways about it.

  His next death penalty would send him to the gaol, and the fact that their own Superior had killed their princess would drop Altarian morale to an all-time low, giving Dryfe a great advantage in the war.

  “But as things are now...” I murmured.

  Since this was just a case of two merchants being murdered and having their possessions stolen, it was likely that the country would suppress this whole event. The crime was certainly severe, but it was nothing compared to the future that would come if they lost their greatest force in the upcoming war. As the idiom goes, “desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  From Shu’s standpoint, it would be quite disgraceful to be released despite not being proven innocent, but even if it made him feel bad, he would become free nonetheless.

  I found it hard to believe that the true culprit would be unaware of that, so I still couldn’t tell what the culprit’s goal was.

  I needed more information, and quite a lot of it, as well, so I made my way to a place that could give me what I wanted: the local DIN branch.

  I went inside and bought copies of the documents relating to the murders and the cards found on the crime scenes. The fact that the DIN had documents for an ongoing investigation as thoug
h it was nothing made me somewhat wary of their organization, but for now, I decided to use it to my advantage.

  Besides, not even they seemed to know who the real culprit was, and they said they would pay a lot for that information.

  It was pretty evident that they didn’t believe Shu was the culprit, and according to the documents, many of the knights seemed to feel the same way.

  Due to the incident’s prime suspect being a Superior, and due to the crime having happened in Gideon, which was currently hosting the second princess, the Royal Guard were also taking part in the investigation.

  Liliana and a number of other Paladins in the group were strongly asserting that Shu wasn’t the culprit.

  “Is this an example of that?” Babi asked. “That thing you said was bad?”

  “Yes and no, Babi,” I replied. “What I said was bad was for detectives to let their preferences warp their deductions. Everyone else should believe in whoever they want, so Liliana and her knights aren’t mistaken to do so.”

  And that was why I’d taken it upon myself to find the culprit. I knew enough to assume that Shu wasn’t the one who’d done it, but I would do my best to not let my investigation become warped if I discovered proof to the contrary.

  “Rook, will you be on the lookout tonight?” she asked.

  “No. I haven’t the slightest clue where to go on the lookout. Not to mention that no murder would happen with things as they are now.”

  “Why? Shouldn’t it happen tonight, too?”

  “No. Because Shu is currently in jail.”

  If I was the culprit, I would never do anything while he was still arrested, for that would greatly reinforce his innocence.

  The next murder would surely happen the next time he was released, or if he logged out and disappeared from jail. Shu was almost certainly staying inside because he was thoroughly aware of that.

  “Instead, tonight, I will focus entirely on deciphering these cryptograms,” I said as I looked at the cards in my hand — the copies of the ones left behind by the culprit.

  They had cryptograms on their backs, and I would spend the night solving them to see if they had any hints.

  Let’s see what secrets you hold, I thought while eyeing the characters.

  ◇

  And so came the next morning.

  Just as I’d expected, nothing special had happened during the night. I’d spent the whole time deciphering the cryptograms on the cards and, well... my silence as I looked at the results said all that had to be said.

  “Rook, you look so displeased,” Babi commented. “How rare.”

  Of course I’m displeased, I thought.

  The cryptograms were basically sets of words written with their characters randomly switching between different languages. While the one making it had only needed to type it down into some dictionary app, I, as the solver, had to use all the possible combinations for every character.

  The base was clearly the alphabet, and he replaced a lot of the letters with the corresponding characters from other writing systems, but every now and then, the rules of conversion changed, and there were some actual mistakes.

  For example, despite using readings or order until that point, he eventually equated “E” with the Japanese hiragana for “i.” Going by the rules used for the other letters, it had to be either the Japanese “ii,” the “e” in their transliteration of Latin characters, “o” — their fifth character overall, or “ho” — the fifth character in the Iroha.

  It’d taken me far too long to understand that part was nothing but a mistake by the culprit.

  It wasn’t the only mistake, either, and I’d spent a lot of time racking my brain trying to figure out if there was any meaning to those things, only to finally realize that they were nothing but pointless errors. Honestly, it made me more vexed than I had been facing that young lady back during the incident.

  This person was highly insincere when it came to making cryptograms. He’d clearly intended to have someone solve them, but he’d also neglected to check how solvable they were, and that, in my eyes, made them some of the most abysmal cryptograms I’d ever encountered.

  Insincere as these cryptograms were, however, I’d still solved them, which made me aware of an even more annoying fact: the culprit didn’t care about them at all.

  That was the reason for both the mistakes and for the actual content:

  Card 1: “Today’s lunch is a hamburg steak at Tricellas.”

  Card 2: “Today’s dessert is a pudding parfait at Café White Sugar Peach.”

  And that was it.

  Those establishments did exist here in Gideon, but the lines were clearly just some basic social network posts, turned into cryptograms for seemingly no reason at all. They had nothing to do with the incident, and all they did was irritate the one who solved them... but that was exactly what made me realize something.

  Since these cryptograms used Earth’s languages, a tian could never, ever solve them, and if there was any non-tian who might lay his eyes on the cards, it would be none other than Shu.

  The criminal had figured he might try to prove his innocence by solving them, only to get these meaningless words... and that would surely get on his nerves.

  If there was any sort of purpose for these cryptograms, that was exactly it — to anger Shu after having framed him. That was the only real damage being done to him by this whole situation.

  And, assuming that was the culprit’s intent, it led me to another realization.

  The fact that Shu was the prime suspect was being kept hidden from the public, and the only ones who knew that he was in jail were he himself, the authorities, personal acquaintances such as me and Marie, the DIN, and the real culprit.

  That knowledge would never have stayed contained if the reason for it was a personal grudge.

  For example, if Franklin had successfully framed one of the Starling brothers, who were his sworn enemies, he would have made sure that all of Gideon and Altar knew about it. Then he would have followed it up by spreading vile rumors about them, both here and on the Internet, in order to make sure they never recovered.

  If this was personal, the culprit would’ve done at least that much, and yet he hadn’t.

  The framing, the disgraceful release that was sure to come, and the cryptogram wasn’t quite enough to ruin Shu. It seemed as though all the culprit was doing was playing around with society and Shu in order to upset them.

  “But what does he gain from all this?” I murmured.

  Money was the first thing that came to mind, but if that was all the culprit wanted, he wouldn’t have left the cards. They’d made Shu into the prime suspect, but if he hadn’t left anything, there wouldn’t have been any suspects at all, and the case would never have been solved.

  Due to that, it was safe to assume that there was meaning in the very act of playing around with Shu — that the culprit’s desire was to toy with the King of Destruction.

  “It’s as if he wants to show that the KoD is an entity so meager that he can get him to dance on his palm,” I muttered. “Or perhaps it’s the other way around? This whole plot would never come into fruition if Shu hadn’t been powerful and famous. The framing itself would have failed.”

  In that case, this could be the culprit’s way of asserting that he was above Shu.

  “Is he merely trying to show someone who knows that he’s the culprit that he can lead the KoD around by the nose?”

  Is it a strange sort of sales promotion? I thought.

  It wasn’t certain if this assumption of mine was correct. With all the mental leaps I was making here, that deduction wasn’t all too reliable.

  However, it fit all the details I knew so far... not to mention that my intuition was telling me that I was on the right track, so I decided to search for the culprit from that particular perspective.

  “Currently, the only clues I have are these cards,” I said, looking at them.

  The cryptograms on them had been wri
tten by the culprit, no two ways about it. I momentarily considered that he could’ve made a tian write this and then killed them to hide the evidence, but I quickly dismissed that idea.

  The cryptograms used many Earth languages, so tians would find it extremely difficult to copy them properly, and I didn’t see a single bit of hesitation in the writing. Despite the errors, this had been written with confidence.

  Then perhaps the culprit had another Master partner-in-crime?

  No, that couldn’t be the case, either. After all, this culprit seemed to feel a dark sort of exhilaration due to playing around with someone as strong as Shu, so I found it unlikely that he would share this “great deed” with another Master.

  Not to mention that Masters couldn’t be silenced, and due to the risk of them revealing the truth on the Internet and the like, the culprit was most possibly a solo criminal.

  Additionally, with these cryptograms, the culprit was both hiding and asserting his existence. That might seem contradictory, but it was evident due to the fact that the hidden text revealed what he was doing.

  It seemed to me that he wanted to show that he was here while at the same time avoid being exposed.

  Honestly, I could probably find him by waiting for a few more cryptograms and deciphering them, but it wouldn’t be good to let the number of victims increase, so I needed to find the culprit before that happened.

  “Sooo... will you analyze his handwriting?” asked Babi.

  “Babi, that’s only effective if you have handwriting you can compare it to.”

  Without any writing by the culprit, I couldn’t match it to what I had on the cards. People had to give signatures whenever they took quests from the adventurers’ guild, but if the person in question hadn’t taken any quests here in Altar, that wouldn’t mean much to us.

  All I knew at the moment was that the handwriting on both cards was a perfect match.

  “This would be far easier if there was an Embryo that could trace a person just by looking at their handwriting,” I said.

  “But Rook, wouldn’t that be boring?”