"Why don't you cast a healing spell on the sore spots? How much mana can it cost to relieve a slight pain at most?" Yu said as he rubbed the wrist of his right hand.
Last night, after dinner, they had spent the whole time at Marino's company writing letters. Their initial goal was to write a hundred thousand letters, and although they didn't reach their goal in one night, they managed to write a considerable number of letters.
The price was the pain in his wrist. The last time he took pen and paper and wrote long texts was in high school, in college he started taking notes on his phone and used a keyboard for all his daily writing.
When he was learning the alphabet of Rolderhelm, he had to write, but because he was a fast learner, it hadn't been as difficult as yesterday.
"If it was about spending mana, I would say that all the mana I spent to heal you was wasted."
"Can I infer from this that your effort was not wasted?"
Yu replied Yurine's robotic, emotionless voice jokingly. Yurine took a deep breath and judged Yu with accusing eyes. Then she took the same deep breath again and continued speaking.
"Huh... It's not just about that. You can't use a superior being like a low level spell for useless things. And don't blame me for not relieving your pain, but blame that stupid person who tried to write tens of thousands of letters with a few men."
"It's like she's back to normal. It's good that she's starting to talk like nothing happened."
Yu was trying to act as if nothing had happened, and it was a relief that Yurine was starting to talk as if nothing had happened.
Besides, Yurine really didn't want to use her magic unnecessarily, as he had realized when he healed his bleeding hand yesterday.
"It's better this way. What we are doing is risky and Marino's share will diminish as the number of people grows, he has only brought in the people he trusts the most. They will finish the first week's letters by the time we get back, after that it gets easier."
"Will those people still be trustworthy when they find out that their deal was a fake?" Yurine made a point that Yu was also worried about.
They scared Marino's associates with the magical pact game and secured their loyalty, just as they had done with team owners, Marino and Barney Loyd.
"There is no such thing as a magical deal, and if there is, it's not something I know how to do. When they find out you tricked them, they may refuse to honor the deal."
"The team owners I deal with and Barney can do that, but Marino would be stupid to do that. We can expose him or take revenge in other ways." Marino must have realized that Yurine were strong enough to kill him. "Still, I took precautions to prevent him from doing such a foolish thing."
In their agreement, they forbade talking about their agreement. If no one mentioned it, it was only by chance that they would find out whether it was real or fake.
Silence fell as Yurine did not continue the conversation. After a few seconds of background noise of other people talking on the deck, Yu decided it would be uncomfortable to stop talking.
"Writing and distributing the letters for the first two weeks is the hardest part. It will get easier as we go along." The final number of letters to be distributed was six thousand two hundred and fifty. Writing and distributing six thousand letters was nothing compared to a hundred thousand. "When we get there, we're going to inspect the Redchapel so that we can help with the hard parts."
Their goal was to determine the location of the houses where the letters would be distributed. Details such as a certain distance between the addresses, the orderly distribution of the same letters to certain areas rather than a mix of letters, etc. had to be decided, noted down and the next distribution adjusted accordingly.
If adjustments were not made, letters could be sent again to people to whom the results of the match were incorrectly communicated, or they could send letters to locations close to each other, making the letters known to the general public.
The problems did not end once the locations of the letters were set. One hundred thousand letters had to be distributed and people had to be able to avoid being caught in the distribution process.
The number of people Marino had in common with him could be counted on one hand and it was impossible to distribute a hundred thousand letters with them in one night.
They had no intention of distributing all the letters in one night. One hundred thousand was still a high number and they had to finish in a week.
"Even if we drop off the first letters the day before, it won't be a problem. With me and Yurine on board, it's not impossible."
One of the two remaining problems was secrecy. Being discovered while distributing the letters could jeopardize the plan.
One of Marino's employees had offered to bribe them in case they were caught, but Marino had already spent all his available resources on paper, ink and travel expenses, so there was no way he could afford a bribe.
The money Yu had was barely enough to support himself, let alone bribe him. The bribe offer was rejected as presented, not because bribery was bad business, but because they lacked the resources. They would certainly distribute the letters without anyone getting caught.
The last problem was that towns and villages could be dangerous at night.
The city of Rolderhelm was safer for ordinary citizens than most places in the world, even though you could walk at night and be cornered and beaten by someone, or walk at night and the road you were walking on collapsed and you were killed by a beautiful witch.
Villages and towns, however, might not be as peaceful as the city. The few stories he heard from Lucia were about murderers and monsters. The world beyond the city walls could be terrifying.
"I never thought a coward like you would go to Redchapel."
"I'm not afraid because I know you will protect me, Yurine."
"Hmph."
Since there were no ports in the vicinity of the Wizarding Academy, they had to stop at the port of Redchapel before going there. In short, it was a connecting journey.
Yurine had been to the Wizarding Academy with her mother before, so she must have used the Redchapel route too.
"The Redchapel Killer is a psychopath who kills people in horrible ways. He considered himself an artist."
Yu was astonished by the marginality of the people of the Second World. First he had encountered killer clowns and now he was hearing rumors of another killer who called himself an artist.
He prayed that neither he nor Marino's employees would encounter him.
"His name is known, he must be in the vicinity of the town as most of the murders take place in Redchapel, but still, all those knights and adventurers can't catch him."
The killer of Redchapel was a middle-aged man named William Berry. Everything was known about him, from what he looked like to his past life.
This was not because of the success of the detectives, knights or adventurers who pursued the killer, but because of the killer's own choice.
William was the eldest son of the merchant Berry family and heir to a large fortune. But he had disappeared a few years earlier and at the time of his disappearance, a series of murders, known as the Redchapel murders, had begun.
Most of his murders were in Redchapel, but he also committed murders in other parts of the country.
In his first murder, he left no name behind, so it was assumed that he had killed an old man who lived alone in Rolderhelm. The killer had no other murders in the capital.
"Anyway, we're not going there to talk about Redchapel. We have a more important matter to discuss."
Sitting in the middle of the deck, away from the edge of the ship, he began to hold his stomach. He was not good with the sea and he was talking to forget the nausea, but his technique was no longer working.
"What are we going to talk about?"
"Rie."
Yurine narrowed her eyes and made direct eye contact with Yu when her mother's name fell from his lips, and her usually emotionless expression turned serious.
"Why did she want to go to Sigma Tower? What was she trying to achieve there?"
They had never discussed anything about Rie before, both because they had different priorities and because he didn't feel ready.
Even if they had, they would have gotten nowhere, they would have only played themselves, without meeting the needs that needed to be met.
They had to find money to support themselves, to feed themselves, to buy clothes because they could not go naked. And beyond money to support themselves, they had to find money to realize the plans they had made.
They hadn't found that money yet, but they had a plan to find it. Now they could slowly start to take care of their real goals.
"And if I'm lucky, Yurine will quickly realize that time can't be turned back, and we'll spend the rest of our lives in a mansion, rich and peaceful, with our lives safe."
If Yurine never realized this, Yu would continue to chase an impossible dream as a prisoner.
"Yurine is right, I'm an asshole. I pretend to believe when I don't. I use it as an excuse for my crimes. I deceive a little girl."
He was using her to ease his conscience and try to lighten the burden of his crimes.
Ostensibly they would go to the Wizarding Academy, follow the clues and solve, or come close to solving, Rie's murder.
Then, with the money from the scam, they would go to Mora, assemble a team and resume their work. Maybe they would turn back time.
One part of Yu's heart told him this, but the other part knew it was a lie.
When he stopped trying to ease his conscience, which was in a constant state of contradiction, he really wondered what had happened to Rie.
"I don't know, she didn't tell me."
"She didn't tell her own daughter? Oh, no, I see."
Yu's confusion didn't last long. In Rie's eyes Yurine was a little child and adults didn't tell little children everything.
In Yu's eyes, Yurine was also a child, but Yurine was technically his employer or partner. The style of their relationship led Yu to tell Yurine about his plans.
"I wish Sherlock Holmes was here to help me. I'm sure it would be a fun adventure for him."
"It's not fun, watch what you say!"
"I didn't mean it like that..."
He was not going to try to explain a character from the First World to Yurine, who was doubtful that she even believed that world existed. If one day Yurine believed in Yu and wanted to know, of course he would tell her, but now it was a different matter.
"I'm sorry," he continued. "Do you have any idea why he might have gone there?"
"I don't know." Yurine shook her head. "Maybe to become stronger. That's why we entered the Wizarding Academy."
"Was it greed for power that led him to his death?"
Rie hadn't given him the impression of a person with a greed for power. Besides, Rie had talked about taking something. What could it have been?
"Clowns? Did she mention them? As if they knew each other."
The clowns had called Rie young lady. And Rie had made it clear that she recognized the clowns when she met them. They must have had some hostility from the past.
"I don't know," Yurine said again. "She didn't say anything about them either."
After a deep sigh, he lay down on the deck to think and looked up at the dark sky covered with gray clouds.
"What am I doing?"
In a murder with no clues, they could only proceed with assumptions. At least if they could recognize that it was a murder and not an unfortunate encounter, it was possible to develop a perspective.
"Maybe it would help to create a road map."