WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Haruto

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◈ The Martial Alliance Rulebook Archives ◈

Chapter 15: The Records Officer's First Mission (2)

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Before setting out on the assignment, Peng Juhyeok urged me to read the booklet we had been issued. With a sigh, I focused my internal energy into my eyes.

My blurred vision sharpened, and the book's contents gradually came into focus.

Still, it was nowhere near as thick as the rulebook I had seen at Soul-Severing Mountain Villa. It was thin enough that calling it a report would be more accurate than calling it a book.

『Mysterious Deaths in Azurewater Village』

"Azurewater Village?"

"Well, at the pace of ordinary Escort Masters, it'd take three or four days from here. It's not exactly a remote mountain ravine, but the terrain is rough enough that Escort Agencies do not usually favor the route."

He went on to explain that the mountain path greatly shortened the distance, making it a sort of shortcut used when the cargo was expensive and valuable, or when an escort delivery had to arrive very quickly.

"Hauling heavy cargo through the mountains isn't easy, so no one goes there unless the extra pay is substantial. The water there was exceptionally good, though, so the liquor tasted fine..."

"It sounds like the village makes its living from Traveller's Inns catering to Escort Masters."

"That's right. But what could have happened there...?"

"Didn't you receive a booklet too, Brother Peng? Aren't you going to read it?"

Peng Juhyeok laughed heartily.

"My eyes hurt."

"Pardon?"

"The good thing about being the senior is that, on the pretext of supervising your junior, you can have them read it aloud to you. Come on, keep reading."

...Like Byeolui, he had a strangely eccentric side to him. Scratching my head, I read the rest of the booklet.

It described a strange incident in Azurewater Village.

A woman who had worked at an inn in Azurewater Village suddenly disappeared, only to be found hanging from a peach tree on the outskirts of the village.

What made it even stranger was that she had been pregnant and had continued working at the inn until the day before her body was found.

"Could she have been struggling financially?"

"No. According to the record, the inn had been fairly..."

As I slowly read through the lines, something felt off.

"No, why is this written in such detail? It's not as though they copied the magistrate's investigation records word for word."

"That's probably exactly what they did."

Peng Juhyeok answered simply.

"Pardon?"

"Ah, the Anomaly Records Office has ways of obtaining incident reports filed with the magistrate's office. I once asked Elder Byeolui how that was possible, but he only told me that knowing would get me hurt."

'Of course it would get you hurt.'

They had openly stolen the government's confidential records. Unless the magistrate's office and the Martial Alliance had some kind of connection, no one could blame the emperor for drawing his sword if this ever came to light.

Amazed by the martial artists' security awareness, I turned the page.

The day after the first woman hanged herself, another woman working at the inn had also hanged herself from the peach tree.

Azurewater Village's village chief had been horrified by the consecutive deaths and reported them to the magistrate's office, but they had discovered nothing beyond the fact that neither woman had any reason to die.

Since no one had witnessed the victims' movements, neither victim had a reason to die, and all the victims were women, the string of hangings was assumed to be the work of a crazed lecher.

Yet the booklet's conclusion was that the magistrate's office had uncovered no further facts.

I looked at the final paragraph.

『Note: Since the Director did not hear any death cries, the likelihood of Anomaly involvement is low. However, personnel have been dispatched in case of exceptional circumstances.』

'Death cries?'

Did the Director have the ability to hear the voices of the dead?

Was there even a martial art like that? Even if it were some sorcery of the unorthodox ways, it was hard to comprehend.

"I think I've got the gist of it."

Peng Juhyeok nodded.

"Pardon?"

He'd figured it out already? What did he mean?

Until I read the last paragraph stating that Anomaly involvement was unlikely, I had been imagining something like a walking tree demon.

Like the man-eating trees inside Ghost Valley Master's formation array, perhaps some grotesquely warped tree demon had harmed people.

"The first victim was a woman, wasn't she? The child she was carrying likely belonged to the person in charge of an escort delivery, or someone of similar standing."

"...?"

This had taken a turn far removed from Anomalies and into a romantic scandal. Confused, I asked again.

"If he was important enough to accompany an urgent delivery, he was probably the third young master of an Escort Agency or something of the sort."

"Ah, so when the woman he saw as a one-night fling said she was pregnant and asked him to take her to his family home, he murdered her and staged it as suicide?"

That sounded more like a motive from a drama or detective novel than a martial arts story. Peng Juhyeok shook his head.

"You're quick to notice things about Anomalies, but a little slow when it comes to matters between people. Why would he kill someone for no reason and make an enemy of Azurewater Village?"

A mere threat telling her not to even dream of such things would have been enough.

Why were there no signs that she had been abducted by force? Because she had gone to meet him herself.

Why had she seemed happy until midday that day? Because she had dreamed of escaping that backwater village.

"His cold rejection drove her to suicide."

"And the reason it had to be a peach tree was probably because that young master's name contained the character do, meaning bamboo stalk. When the character is split apart, it becomes juk, bamboo, and do, peach."

"Oh, was that the reason? I had only guessed it was because peach blossoms were pretty."

I ignored Peng Juhyeok's absurd remark.

"Then what about the second death?"

"I think you just gave the answer."

"Pardon?"

"That young master must've realized the victim had left a clue through character decomposition and hanged another woman, don't you think?"

"..."

"If a pregnant woman died on a peach tree, he might eventually become a suspect. But if someone else died too, he'd fall off the list of suspects."

Peng Juhyeok nodded after presenting that thoroughly unsettling explanation.

"So it was a message through character decomposition. I couldn't understand why someone would sink even deeper by killing another person when they could preserve their reputation by simply denying everything. But if she had identified the target so clearly, I suppose he could make such a foolish choice..."

It was ridiculous. He had guessed the course of events and the motive while sitting there, yet had not even suspected a dying message.

"You said you hadn't considered a message through character decomposition. How were you so certain about everything else?"

"Ah, well. Whenever a body turns up dead under strange circumstances, nine times out of ten it's connected to a romantic scandal. I thought of similar cases I'd seen while investigating."

I looked up at the sky.

For some reason, I resented the martial world all over again, where such things happened often enough to become routine.

"Well, don't be so upset that the secret was exposed ahead of time. It's only my guess."

"Why would I be upset over something like that?"

Just as Byeolui was practically an Anomaly himself, Peng Juhyeok clearly had an eccentric temperament too.

I wondered if the Anomaly Records Office's hiring standards favored Anomaly-like personalities, then was struck by a horrifying realization.

As part of their work, Records Officers had no choice but to face Anomalies often. And according to Byeolui, Anomalies disturbed the Essence, Qi, and Spirit of everyone who encountered them, inflicting shock upon both body and mind.

The longer one served, the worse one's temperament naturally became. That was simply the working environment!

'Good heavens. Peng Juhyeok, my immediate senior, has already turned into the sort of supporting character in a detective comic who's far too accustomed to murder.'

I began to worry deeply about what kind of person the Director might be.

"Hm? That wasn't it? Then that's good."

Unaware of my concerns, Peng Juhyeok nodded and explained the next step.

"When you infer the truth of a case like this and it seems to be human work rather than an Anomaly, you only need to find evidence of that and return."

"Then this time, we should go to Azurewater Village, investigate the Escort Agencies that mainly use that route, and look for someone among their personnel whose name contains the character do. It would be even more accurate if we looked into rumors of womanizing."

"You don't need to find the culprit quite that thoroughly. Usually, it's enough to write that no Anomaly aura could be sensed at the scene."

* * *

"It feels oddly chilly."

"You're right. The sunlight has been harsh lately, so I planned to walk at dawn. If I'd known the mountain shade would be this cool, we could've eaten breakfast before leaving."

Peng Juhyeok and I traveled at a run for several days toward Azurewater Village. Though he belonged to a collateral branch of one of the Five Great Clans, he knew plenty of cheap, delicious restaurants.

Of course, Peng Juhyeok didn't know every restaurant across the Central Plains, so there were times when we had to consider where to eat.

That was when I stepped in. Having absorbed an Anomaly's essence blood, my sense of smell had become much sharper, allowing me to instinctively pick up the scent of good food.

Azurewater Village, which we were approaching, carried that delicious scent as well.

"Oh, that smells good. I think we can look forward to the meals we'll have while making inquiries."

"Really? I can't smell anything like that. Isn't it getting even colder now..."

The moment we left the forest shade and entered a small but maintained road, Peng Juhyeok abruptly fell silent.

I followed his gaze and turned my head.

Untimely snow had fallen over Azurewater Village.

The source of that delicious smell was the white snow piled thickly on the ground.

It was the scent of an Anomaly.

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