Labyrinth Exploration 101 - Chapter 112
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Labyrinth Exploration 101 Episode 112
BLACK(2)
In the blowing wind, two eyes meet.
I couldn’t understand. Even while looking at Kim Yoon-jun in the portrait photo, even while looking at his mother, father, and younger sibling with their swollen faces, I couldn’t understand.
Why did he suddenly die?
My heart isn’t that heavy. It’s just sudden shock.
He had said we might be able to become close, but there wasn’t time for that.
To me, he was just someone who could be described as an acquaintance, someone with whom there was potential to grow closer, who was suddenly murdered.
“…”
I stared at Kim Yoon-jun smiling while trapped in the frame.
What did he know?
What did he find out that got him killed?
This development is too different from before the regression.
The only difference is Seol Ha-woon.
Perhaps he died because of me…
“Hyung. There are many people waiting.”
Im Hae-jun grabbed my sleeve. I belatedly became aware of the situation.
“…Oh. Right.”
The funeral hall was packed with people. It was chaotic in many ways.
“What kind of situation is this really…”
While Im Hae-jun muttered, I looked around the funeral hall. Kim A-rang, Yoon Sa-hyuk, Seo Ji-woo, Lee Jun-ho, Kate, Lee Jong-soo, Yoon Hwa-rim wearing black clothes… and even Kang Hyeon.
Everyone related to Mitamnan had come.
I looked at them then turned away. I grabbed my walking stick, pretending to go to the bathroom.
“Mr. Seol Ha-woon.”
Someone called out to me.
It was a plainclothes police officer.
“If you have time now, could you come with us for a moment? It’s nothing serious, just a witness interview…”
* * *
Seoul Gangnam Police Station.
“…As I mentioned, it’s nothing serious.”
The inspector who introduced himself as Lee Young-ho, also a ranker, offered me coffee.
This inspector was familiar. The ranker who had investigated me during the Kim Du-gyeom incident.
“So Mr. Seol Ha-woon, you met the victim at the Maze Exploration Difficulty Site around 9 AM on July 9th, and received a DM the night before he was killed – is that all?”
I hid the dinner meeting. Kim Yoon-jun probably chose that kind of restaurant because he didn’t want it to be known either.
“Yes.”
“Sigh… this is really. Yes. Thank you.”
“Is that it?”
This time I asked back. Lee Young-ho smiled bitterly.
“Yes. You don’t think we’d suspect you, Mr. Seol Ha-woon. Your alibi is solid, and the victim was killed by a swordsman anyway.”
When Kim Yoon-jun was murdered, I was at the dormitory.
More precisely, ‘only I’ was at the dormitory. Since all Mitamnan personnel had received a 3-night, 4-day vacation.
CCTV covers the entire dormitory grounds except for personal rooms, and teleport is a miracle beyond magic that no mage can achieve.
That’s probably why Lee Young-ho specifically called me out from the funeral hall.
“You can go now.”
Lee Young-ho smiled with a sigh. I could quite predict their difficult path ahead.
Kim Yoon-jun is a high ranker. A swordsman from Mount Hua Sect. He even has tremendous popular appeal.
All kinds of media bombardment will pour down.
“Um…”
I asked Lee Young-ho.
“Could I possibly see the investigation materials?”
It’s probably too much to ask, but I had to try saying it.
“Investigation… materials?”
“Yes.”
I was curious. How Kim Yoon-jun died. How he, a four-digit high ranker, was murdered in one night.
“Hmm…”
Inspector Lee Young-ho made a troubled expression.
It’s indeed impossible. If he leaked information about such a case to an ordinary outsider, he’d receive severe disciplinary action.
“No, never mind. I’m sorry.”
“…Tsk. No. It’s not impossible.”
Lee Young-ho sat back down.
“Anyway, you were also in a position of eating the country’s salary like me, Mr. Seol Ha-woon.”
Then he placed a file on the table.
“Actually, we can’t get a feel for it either.”
He continued with a hollow laugh.
“That Kim Yoon-jun died. And in the city back mountain too. Does this make sense?”
Even with an explorer license, carrying weapons in urban residential areas is illegal. Using magic power is the same.
Since magic detection devices similar to CCTV exist everywhere, if you openly use magic power, the ‘Association’ will dispatch.
The Explorer Association arrests and suppresses them much more roughly than public authority.
Like this, our society has residential areas and magic-usable areas thoroughly separated.
Some people compare it to smoking areas.
All areas except smoking areas are non-smoking areas, and legal smoking is only possible with a smoking area designation, but customary smoking areas exist, and quite a few people don’t follow such laws.
Of course, it’s just an analogy – enforcement and punishment are much stricter than street smoking.
“Instead, read it here. Never tell anyone anywhere that you read this.”
“Of course.”
I picked up the file.
“Then let me get some help too~”
Lee Young-ho looked around and closed the blinds.
At the top of the file, Kim Yoon-jun’s corpse first caught my eye. A sword wound was vivid from his right shoulder to his lower left pelvis.
“Cut clean in half.”
“Yes. Cut with a single stroke. That Kim Yoon-jun. So we’re currently investigating focusing on rankers, but the problem is no one went near the area, absolutely no one.”
A master who could cut down Kim Yoon-jun with a single stroke is at least a three-digit ranker. A level called Three Figure worldwide.
As such, they’d stand out wherever they go…
“Kim Yoon-jun shows no signs of drawing his sword.”
“Yes.”
Kim Yoon-jun had hidden his weapon inside his clothes. It meant he was prepared for any possible situation.
“It must have been a trap.”
The culprit created a situation, or a trap.
They didn’t win by fighting, but fought after already winning.
I imprinted this file with ‘Sequence’.
“…I couldn’t examine the body, could I?”
“You mean the autopsy report?”
“No. Me. Directly.”
Lee Young-ho let out a troubled sigh.
“As expected, that’s a bit much for me too… The funeral is ongoing right now. But why? I saw you use Blood Magic Technique in World. Perhaps?”
“No. The eyes.”
Kim Yoon-jun. The eyes of the friend who was said to have been covered in aberrant magic power.
There was definitely something in those eyeballs.
“…Ah! Here, according to what the coroner said, there were traces of eyeball transplantation!”
Lee Young-ho grabbed his hair as if he got goosebumps, but soon calmed down.
“But what does this have to do with anything?”
“Inspector.”
I looked at Inspector Lee Young-ho seriously.
“…Yes?”
“Inspector, you seem like a very good person. The way you fulfill your duties and do your best to apprehend criminals makes you appear that way.”
“…Suddenly?”
It’s not baseless lip service. From what I can see, Inspector Lee Young-ho is someone who leans toward the truth.
“If possible, could you stop the cremation?”
With my current connections, doing something crazy like stealing a corpse is impossible.
So, until the day I can analyze his eyes, the corpse must be preserved.
“Well… Yes. I’ll speak well with the family members. Preserving the body should be possible. A tree burial or something-”
“No. Tree burial won’t work either. In cold storage. For a long time.”
The important thing is decay. As long as the body doesn’t rot, magic power surprisingly lingers for a long time. Post-death magic, a technique like something from manga, doesn’t exist for nothing.
“…Cold storage might be a bit difficult. But I’ll try my best.”
“Yes.”
“But… you two must have been quite close?”
Inspector Lee Young-ho asked while organizing the files. I pondered for a moment.
What should I say? What answer should I give?
“There was that possibility.”
When Kim Yoon-jun said we might become close, I had inwardly agreed.
For me, it had been quite a long time since something like that happened.
* * *
I opened my eyes in the bed at the dormitory. It had become dawn before I knew it.
I don’t dream. Thanks to keeping the Dream Bubble on, I always sleep deeply.
Instead, from before sleeping until now when I woke up, I only thought about Kim Yoon-jun.
“…”
4:30 AM.
As usual, I shower, roughly stuff down breakfast, then go outside.
There was no real evidence in Kim Yoon-jun’s file that Inspector Lee Young-ho showed me.
He was simply struck by a sword. It was a blade of magic power.
However.
“The sword wound is too large.”
An inefficiently thick blade, as if it was deliberately made that way.
Sword Force, which concentrates magic power into a sword, becomes more inefficient the larger it gets.
Spreading the same amount of force widely versus gathering it densely. Which would be stronger is obvious without even testing.
Yet the culprit inflated the thickness of the magic power.
Either they were confident of winning, or it was a situation where they had to win.
…Those things aren’t important.
What’s important is the reason.
In tracking cause and effect, the most crucial clues are hidden in actions that seem unnecessary.
Because very clear intentions are inscribed in acts that were done despite not needing to be done.
“To avoid having the weapon discovered?”
Swords also have fingerprints. Not just the way they’re swung, but the characteristics of the sword itself.
In other words, the type of sword can be identified from just the stab wound.
But this logic also has flaws.
If the swordsman didn’t want their sword identified, they could have used a different weapon from the start.
If the culprit was strong enough to kill Kim Yoon-jun in one blow, or if they had set up such a situation in advance, the type of sword wouldn’t have mattered at all.
The culprit didn’t do that.
I’ve seen cases like this before.
Situations that can’t be understood with logic at first glance. Mysteries that can’t be tracked with just common sense thinking.
Usually, it’s due to a specific individual’s unique obsession.
Something where they must stick to their routine, jinx, or rules in any situation.
Therefore, the reason for going through the trouble of hiding sword marks while still insisting on using that sword is because it’s a weapon closely tied to their talent.
Or because it’s such an important object that it acts as their own obsession…
‘…The weapon I use is a broadsword’
Suddenly, someone’s voice echoes in my ears. Like a cool breeze tickling the back of my neck.
‘It’s a treasured sword my father gave me as a gift.’
A line I’ve heard somewhere before.
A tone that’s now familiar.
The guy who smiles like an idiot while showing off his sword.
‘Here, the blade is sharp, right? Both sides are sharp.’
A sword so distinctive that its wounds would be easy to identify,
yet precious enough to proudly boast about.
‘The good thing about having both sides sharp is attack flexibility. Both slashing and thrusting are effective…’
Again, there’s no real evidence.
My reasoning has too many gaps, and the logic is greatly flawed.
I couldn’t possibly be certain.
──However.
On the path going up to Back Mountain, I lowered my eyes. I looked down at the not-so-distant ground.
He was there.
A swordsman who, like me, always comes out at this time. A man who, as if sensing my gaze, turns his head diagonally to look up at me.
Kang Hyeon.
Meeting his glass-like eyes, I think quietly.
Did you kill him.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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