After the whole incident yesterday, I got a call from home this morning. My mother wanted to see me as soon as possible. So instead of me spending the weekend lousing about, I had to leave the school grounds and head home.
Though Gomas City was the grandest among the three cities humans established, not all parts of it were upstanding and prim. Settlements were segregated among human orders.
While Gomas Academy was built upon the heart of Gomas City, Hunters lived in the east, mercenaries took the west, Inquisitors dominated the north, and the south was left for regular people who weren't interested in attacking Dungeons, Towers, and corrupted entities. But among the normal people who lived in the south were criminals and illegal operators of a lot of things.
Though that didn't mean Hunters couldn't go to the west or mercenaries couldn't visit the south. Each division of settlements were free to move around, on the condition of not causing trouble in a different territory. In fact, the south was the base location where Hunters, Inquisitors, and mercenaries linked up.
It had the black market that dominated the movement of monsters, weapons, and peculiar Special Skills. While growing up, I spent a lot of time in the south. I might be well-known there but not well-liked.
I used the central teleportation portal gate at the academy to get to the estate where my family lived. My family's house wasn't too far from the gate so I walked there. The sun wasn't fully out yet, but the streets here were already so busy.
There were a lot of people outside their homes carrying out their morning training routines with their family, kids playing with swords, spars here and there. It was a typical scenery in an Inquisitor environment.
The front door to my house was wide open when I arrived. I could hear chatter from the inside and I frowned. This was a full-on meeting. When my mother asked me to come home, she didn't mention other people were going to be there too.
But I should've known. This was the kind of thing she liked to do. I looked down at my outfit — a gray hoodie with matching sweats and a pair of furry slippers. I could've done better with my appearance. Oh well.
"I'm heeeeere!" I yelled, walking inside the house and navigating my way from the front door to the living room.
There were three other people here excluding my parents. I have known them for years but remembering their names was always a drag, so I liked to call them by the colors of their hair.
There was Red. He was my father's best friend who was an ugly drunk with a bad aim. Black, who was standing next to my mother, was two years younger than me and just graduated top of his class from Inquisitor Training. Purple was supposed to be a fellow student of Gomas academy but she was a mute third year.
"Oh, you're here! And early too!" Mother's tone was laced with sarcasm.
"Don't nag me, Agnes."
"Don't call your mother Agnes," father scolded me.
"What should I call her, Logan?" I narrowed my eyes on him.
"Would being respectful kill you?" Black glowered at me, and I tilted my head to one side, watching him.
"Did you grow taller?" I teased.
His face burned with embarrassment. His height was a sore topic. His skills were incomparable to anyone else's but that 4'8 height of his was an unfixable flaw.
"Don't bully the k-kid," Red slurred. The man looked like he wasn't even aware of what was happening around him. How foolishly incompetent.
I hoped his retirement letter came early. The Inquisitor division could do without him.
"Falling into that ditch didn't kill you, huh?"
"Autumn, don't be rude," mother chided me.
"You find everything that comes out of my mouth rude. I was just asking a question." I shamelessly defended myself.
"..."
We both stared at each other for a while before mother sighed and gave up trying to set me on the right path.
"Autumn, it's too early for this. Have a seat," Mother said in resolve, gesticulating at the empty space beside her on the longest couch.
I let out a sigh and decided to give in, walking over to my mother and settling next to her.
"Good boy," she cooed at me. I frowned. She smiled in response.
"Now, that we're all here. Let's begin." Agnes's tone became severe as all the warmth on her face withered away.
Switching off emotions when it came to work was my mother's specialty. It was what made me trust her decisions during work. Her level of professionalism was at its peak. She wasn't the Chief of Inquisitors in Gomas City for nothing.
She clapped twice. All the windows and doors in the house closed automatically and a metal veil fell over the house as the center of the living room dropped five kilometers into the ground at ultra speed.
The new location of the center of my home's living room was the underground base of the Inquisitor division of Gomas City. Everyone was fast at work here, moving from place to place with important tasks at hand.
I stood up from the couch along with my mother as she began leading us to her office. The four of us followed her quietly till we got to her office and took our positions inside it while she sat behind her oval glass desk.
"There is a new group of humans who have begun worshiping the Monster Emperor as their god," Agnes began saying.
I had to hold in the sigh that almost came out from my mouth. Almost every year, a bunch of people would start a religion dedicated to serving the Monster Emperor and doing his bidding, by leading innocent humans to corrupted areas and mutating them.
Members of the groups, or should I say cults, would in turn begin worshiping the corrupted humans as embodiments of the Monster Emperor. Such activities dwindled humanity's population even more than monsters.
"This new group goes by the name Respondents. Unlike the other religious cult groups that have risen over the years, these ones are more of sane minds and act with precision. They also seem to have brilliant knowledge of the Purification Power source and ways to manipulate its use."
I began listening intently from there on. The way Agnes spoke about this group made it seem like they were a big issue.
"They've mostly been targeting teenagers for now. We have about five cases. They've found a way to corrupt citizens without leading them to corrupted areas. We're not yet sure of the technology in which they are using but it seems to be very effective.
"Distinguishing between corrupted entities and non-corrupted entities has become a little difficult. From our intel, they've found a way to make a corrupted entity seem humanoid with an aware and sane mind. What we know now is that they are using weapons similar to an Inquisitor Gun to target normal human beings, shooting them with Purification Powered bullets.
"The procedure after that which turns humans into corrupted entities isn't clear to us yet. If you people come across any being who has been shot with Purification Powered bullets and is not yet corrupted, stay away from them. Do not engage." Agnes completed her report.
Something came to mind.
"Yesterday…" I began saying. Everyone turned their attention to me. "I'm not sure if the information has been revealed to the public yet but there was a murder in the dorms. The kid was shot with Purification Powered bullets and slashed all over with a sword. I didn't see him but that was what everyone said.
"There was silly evidence at the crime scene pointing to me as the killer. I'm trying to figure out if this has anything to do with the report you just gave." I stared at my mother.
"What has the school done with the body?" she asked.
"I don't know. Everything happened in a blur. I thought it was just someone trying to frame me and get me kicked out."
Shit. That sounded stupid just now. Why have I been thinking someone would commit murder in such a way just to toy with me? I forgot about the student being killed with a Purification Powered bullet. Only Inquisitors had access to those. They weren't even sold on the black market.
And did the killer actually need to slash the body in several places and spill so much blood? Even stepping on the blood and walking to my room to make it seem like I was the one. The mystery ran deeper and more complicated the more I tried to understand it.
"Logan, contact the school," my mother instructed my father. "Find out what they did to the body. It is now part of an Inquisitor investigation. Have them deliver the body to our lab."
Father went out of the office with his phone in his hand after that.
"Do you think the Respondents have anything to do with this dead kid and the killer who might be targeting me?" I asked Agnes.
She shrugged. "I can't be sure of that for now."
"The first person who found the body was missing. When I tried asking to see who had first stumbled upon the scene, there was no one who took credit." I said.
"We'll have to run an interrogation in that case," was the only thing Agnes said and a shiver ran down my spine.
They would have to interrogate everyone living in that building. If no one 'fessed up, things would be blown into immeasurable proportions.
"But—"
"They said the body is missing." Logan walked into the office, bearing unexpected news and cutting the rest of my sentence off.
"It's been missing for over six hours now. Even if we were to begin a search, they would already be miles away. What should we do?" Logan said.
"We run an interrogation. Have the school round up all the students living in that dorm. Everyone is a suspect." Mother said.
I knew it.
"Including you." Agnes was looking at me.
Huh? Me?