Explorer of Edregon

The moment Vin woke up, he grabbed a quick bite to eat before shutting himself away in his room and getting to work. The longer this murder went unsolved, the more chances this mysterious killer would have to strike again.

Luckily, it seemed Lumel's assessment of the spell was correct. After looking over the runic formation for a bit, Vin realized while it still contained a lot of little parts, the overall foundation of the spell was fairly straightforward.

According to what Alka had told him in the past, undead were a common enough occurrence in her world. Corpses naturally gave off death mana, and unless properly dealt with, that mana could eventually cause the bodies to reanimate, forming undead that would need to be taken care of. In fact, Vin already had all the tools he needed to make an undead monster. All he needed to do was find a dead body and pump it full of death mana with Decay.

However, that would create a mindless monster that would attack him the moment it awoke.

False Life solved this problem two ways. First, it ensured that all of the death mana he was channeling would be contained entirely within the target's head. And second, he would be actively channeling his mana the entire time. That was the part that confused him slightly, as he didn't really have any other spells that functioned the same way. Tremorsense was close, as the spell continued to rapidly bounce his mana back and forth so long as the spell was active, but it looked like False Life would cycle his mana in some sort of loop, keeping the death mana that he was pumping out his own at all times, and ensuring that the target would answer his questions.

Vin managed to get the first half of the runic formation figured out fairly quickly, but the cycling bit proved to be far more complicated. Thanks to his inability to tell time while in Introspection, he ended up working straight through lunch. After grabbing a quick dinner with Lumel, who sadly wasn't able to offer any advice toward his mana cycling problem, he went right back at it.

After a grand total of only four runic backlashes, which thankfully did little more than give him a searing headache for a couple of minutes, Vin finally figured it out.

New spell learned! Tier 2 Death Spell (False Life). 10,000 exp gained.

"Fantastic," he muttered, flopping back onto his bed and closing his eyes as he waited for his latest headache to dissipate. Despite his high focus, working on a new spell for practically an entire day was extremely draining. His mind felt like Jello, and he wanted nothing more than to go to bed and deal with everything in the morning.

But every minute mattered when a potential serial killer was on the loose.

Groaning, Vin pushed himself out of bed in an incredible display of willpower as he grabbed his staff and trudged outside to find Myers. He wanted someone he could trust to witness what he was about to do so that the rest of the council believed him when he explained his new spell, and he really didn't feel like dealing with Spur at the moment. The sun had long since set at this point, but unsurprisingly, he found the lieutenant hard at work in the command center.

All it took was for him to tell Myers he had an idea that might help them out for the lieutenant to follow him back to the scene of the crime, where she instructed the guards stationed outside not to allow anyone inside for any reason.

Spur had told him earlier they were going to leave Kyle's body untouched for a bit in case the Investigator leveled up enough to discover something from it, but Vin hadn't realized exactly what that meant.

After entering the now empty prison, Vin stared at Kyle's perfectly preserved body still slumped against the prison cot. If it weren't for the crossbow bolt sticking out of his head and lack of chest movement, he would have thought the man was simply sleeping.

"How hasn't he started to decompose yet?" Vin asked, looking over the body yet again, still in shock someone had killed him just like that.

"Frank has some method of preventing decomposition," Myers informed him, waiting patiently for him to finish his search. "We didn't want to risk losing any evidence due to the body rotting, so we've had him stop by a few times and use his ability. Though he's getting a bit annoyed with us, so I'm hopeful we catch a lead sooner than later."

Vin didn't miss the subtle note of hope in her voice, and he nodded as he walked around Kyle's corpse. All he'd told her was that he'd found a spell that might be able to help them, but he hadn't gone into any more detail than that.

"What happens in here stays between us and the council, right?" Vin asked, looking warily at Myers. He didn't mind any of the council knowing what he was about to do, but the last thing he wanted was to make people even more scared of him. He had a feeling if word got out that he could partially reanimate the dead, things would get even weirder than they already were.

"Of course," Myers nodded. "…Though I feel I should ask, what exactly are you intending to do?"

"I'm going to make a copy of his memories and get some answers straight from the horse's mouth," Vin answered, taking up a position beside Kyle's head. Just as he was about to get started however, he paused, choosing to send out a wide pulse of Sense Life to double check the number of people currently surrounding the prison. Once he'd confirmed that there weren't any Spies sneaking about and poking their noses into where they shouldn't, he turned his attention back to Kyle.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Here goes nothing," he said, holding out both hands and mentally preparing himself. "False Life."

Vin didn't miss how even the unshakable Myers flinched back slightly as Kyle's dead body suddenly gasped, and the man's one remaining eye shot open. The organ immediately turned to stare directly into Vin's own, and Vin shuddered at the look of absolute emptiness that was held in his gaze.

"Kyle? Can you hear me?" Vin asked, making sure he was channeling a slow but constant stream of mana in a loop through the man's head. The spell was a rather mana-intensive one, but Vin had mana to spare at this point.

"Yes," Kyle answered without so much as a shred of emotion.

"Vin. What are you doing?" Myers finally asked, her knuckles white as she gripped the top of her crossbow holster. From her uncertain tone, it would seem he'd finally discovered something that could unnerve the lieutenant.

"It's not actually him," Vin said, repeating the words Alka had told him for his benefit as much as Myers'. "Like I said, it's a copy of his memories. Notice how he's not screaming about how much he hates and wants to kill all of us? This copy will listen to me."

Myers was silent for a few seconds, and Vin waited to see if she had anything else she wanted to add before he continued. Slowly, she let her hand fall from her crossbow, motioning for him to get started.

Thankful that he wasn't about to get a crossbow shot through his own eye, Vin cracked his neck, returning his attention to Kyle. All this time, the man hadn't blinked once, and his dead gaze remained locked on Vin as though he existed solely to follow Vin's orders.

Which… He did.

"Kyle, who killed you?" Vin asked, deciding to get right to the point. He didn't exactly want to keep this spell up any longer than he had to after all.

"I don't know," Kyle answered, his gaze unwavering. Vin waited a moment to see if he would continue, but the corpse was silent once more.

"Can you… tell us anything about the person who killed you?" he ventured.

"Yes."

Rolling his eyes at the fact that Kyle was proving to be just as much of a pain dead as he had been alive, Vin decided to get specific. "Did you see their face? Do you know if they were a man or a woman? Did they have any other weapons besides the crossbow on them?"

"They covered their face with strips of cloth. They were a woman. She had no other weapons on her," Kyle answered his questions one after another.

"They were a woman? How do you know for sure?" Vin repeated, happy that they'd at least gotten something from this entire ordeal.

"Yes," Kyle repeated. "She had breasts."

Figures Kyle would notice a woman's breasts, but can't give us any details about her face. Well, I guess that narrows down the list of suspects by about fifty percent at the very least, he thought, glancing over toward Myers. It seemed she'd recovered enough to realize what he was thinking, because she frowned.

"I told you, Vin, I wasn't the one that killed him. I'll repeat myself under truth-gem if that would make you feel better."

"Sorry, you're just the first person that comes to mind when I think crossbows," Vin shrugged. "Any ideas for what else I should ask him? I'll admit, I don't know why I didn't expect the murderer to cover up their face. Seems obvious in hindsight."

"No, even that much is huge," Myers said, shaking her head. "The fact that she covered her face confirms that she went into the prison with the sole intention of killing Kyle. We'd suspected that of course, but it's good to know for certain. Let's see if we can't learn any more identifying features."

The two of them spent the next thirty minutes grilling Kyle's corpse with as many detail-oriented questions they could think of. Unfortunately, they didn't end up learning much more for all their efforts.

Kyle didn't see their eye color, the murderer never spoke, and she didn't linger either. It seemed only moments after Kyle realized she was even there, she shot him through the bars point blank, killing him almost instantly. The killer clearly had it all planned out, and it sounded like they were in and out of the prison in under a minute.

"How did the killer get past the guards?" Vin asked Myers. He felt like he should have asked that earlier, but the thought just hadn't occurred to him until now. His flesh and blood arm was beginning to grow tired after keeping the spell going for so long, and his mana was running dangerously low.

"We don't know," Myers admitted, staring intensely at Kyle as if trying to think of more questions to ask. "We interrogated them under truth-gem, but neither of the two guards that were on duty that night saw anything. They never left their post, and they certainly didn't notice anyone slip past them. It wasn't until one went in on his hourly check up that he spotted Kyle's body. We're working under the assumption the killer has Rogue-related skills to assist with stealth."

"And your Investigator was a dead end?"

"Unfortunately," she grimaced. "She… Is a bit difficult to work with. Our hope is that after she gains some levels she will be a great asset. But at the moment, she's little more than an annoyance, to be honest. She did confirm that no portion of the prison was altered during the murder, meaning there weren't any tunnels dug and filled in or walls destroyed and rebuilt during that time."

Vin took that information and filed it away, narrowing down what had happened even further. He was surprised to hear the lieutenant actually talk bad about someone. If this Investigator had managed to get Myers to describe her like that, she had to be something else. And not in a good way.

"I'm just about out of mana," he finally admitted, nodding toward Kyle's patiently waiting corpse. Even in all this time, the man had never bothered blinking. "Any last minute questions?"

"No, I can't think of anything," Myers sighed, motioning for him to let the spell end. Doing just that, Vin let his arms fall to his side, letting out a sigh of relief. Immediately, Kyle's head dropped back to the cot with a thud, lifeless once more.

As the two of them made to leave, Myers suddenly stopped, her head snapping up as if she'd just remembered something.

"Does the brain have to be intact?" Myers asked, turning and giving him a weird look that Vin couldn't place. "Does the state of deterioration matter regarding the accuracy of your spell?"

"From what I understand, the brain doesn't actually matter at all," Vin shrugged, rubbing his aching shoulders. "I won't pretend to understand that aspect of the spell, but so long as I even have a mostly intact skull, the spell will work fine. It will just be a hell of a lot creepier."

Myers was silent for a moment, clearly thinking over something in her head. After a few seconds, she slowly nodded, coming to some sort of decision.

"Follow me," she finally said, turning around and heading toward the prison entrance.

"And don't tell anyone what we're about to do."