Chapter 233 - The Slums

Eiro climbed through the window of the merchant's home and looked around. It really wasn't all that hard to figure out what exactly this 'evidence' was, and it also wasn't hard to even figure out what place was broken into in the first place. After all, the guy that broke in here was an obvious amateur. He left more than just a single piece of evidence.

A piece of his clothes got stuck to the broken window together with a few drops of blood, some hair was scattered around the room, and there was literally a hand-imprint in the dust on one of the shelves. So, Eiro basically just quickly used air magic to gather all the hair up, get rid of all the dust alltogether, and grabbed the shard of glass that some of the blood was stuck to while also gathering up the piece of cloth that was hanging onto it before. 

Immediately, Eiro made his way outside before proceeding to use fire magic to burn the cloth and hair and buried the glass ten feet underground using earth magic. And the moment that he did so, another new notification appeared in front of Eiro.

[You completed one of the ' Quests]

[ Quest completed]

[You have received 5 large Silver coins]

At the same moment, Eiro felt something change on his tag that he kept in his pocket, so he slowly grabbed it. First things first, Eiro noticed that it changed to Rank 22, so it went up by one.

"Wasn't a hard one, so fair enough." The Demon sighed, and at the same time, as if out of nowhere, a bundle of 5 large silver coins appeared in Eiro's hand. He had seen the process in which these coins were 'created', which just strengthened the idea that the organization had a few more cards than Eiro thought they did at first. Although this obviously wasn't something that others were really aware of, since they didn't particularly have all the information that Eiro did. They wouldn't be able to notice these small differences and things that were literally wrong about all of this. The more that Eiro saw it, the more he was just annoyed by everything.

"Anyway, next one..." Eiro muttered to himself. He would just try to finish these as quickly as he could. It shouldn't hurt in trying to increase his rank to finish everything as quickly as he could. And on top of that, it would mean that he would be able to take new quests on pretty soon.

"...I can detach now, right?" Bavet asked, and Eiro slowly looked down at his chest before nodding his head, "Go ahead." 

Eiro already put on his mask again, and he would be able to quickly react with magic to make sure that his clothes wouldn't be ripped up by the 'reappearance' of his tail, wings and horns. Soon, they were all pressed back onto his body with the help of shadow magic, while a small, bead-sized crystal core slipped out of Eiro's clothes. The moment it hit the ground, the core took over a little bit of dirt and turned into a small, lower-arm-sized monkey as it climbed up Eiro's leg.

"So, what we doing next?" Bavet asked, which was rather confusing while he was in the literal form of a monkey made of dirt. Bavet couldn't change the texture or material like this all too well, so it really was just like a doll made of rock and dirt, not much else.

"As I said, we'll head to the next one." Eiro replied as he properly placed his mask onto his face, while Bavet the rock-monkey seemingly rolled his eyes, "You know, why didn't you just take John with you? Or rather, why didn't you let me stay at home when you went to bring him back before?" Bavet asked annoyedly, but Eiro just grabbed the rock-monkey by the head and used earth magic to make the whole body crumble to dust before he caught the marble in his hand.

"Because I might need you. And John is far, far more annoying than you, so I'd rather have you around to keep me company than him." The Demon explained, and the slime core itself slowly transformed and changed back into its 'normal' jelly-like form. But of course, due to the small mass, the 'Transformation Slime' couldn't do much else. But amongst the things that Bavet could do was to attach to Eiro's hand and turn into a small mouth so that he could properly speak.

"Don't say that and then basically kill me, you piece of garbage."

"Shut it before I feed you actual garbage." Eiro replied immediately, and Bavet soon stayed silent again, "Let's go for the murderer one first. We still need to figure out where that guy is even hiding..." The Demon sighed.

"Well, there's not directly a small amount of death happening in the slums, even considering how peaceful it generally is in this town, so are you sure you'll be able to figure out which death-scene is the right one when you're lookin' for it?" Bavet asked, and that was a question that Eiro himself wasn't entirely sure about either at first, but it shouldn't be too bad.

After all, the victim was apparently literally gutted last night, meaning that it clearly wasn't just some drug-overdose or petty-murder, but instead something with completely vicious intent. And since this happened in the slums, obviously the ones that had to find the victim were people actually living in the slums, so it should have become a bit of a rumor by now. At the very least, he should be able to find a single person speaking about it.

On his way to the slums as Eiro headed to the organization's place in this town, he already faintly overheard someone speaking about a woman being gutted, but he didn't pursue it yet because he didn't know that it would become important to him yet. Either way, he knew that there were people speaking about it, so it was fine. 

Either way, now that Eiro made his way into the slums again, he chose to take a direct look around, and tried to spread his perception out toward any living person that he could find.

But to the Demon's surprise... when he actually did that, he didn't find a single person talking about it to someone else, or even muttering about it in their sleep or drug-filled delusions. It was weird, really, this shouldn't be something that happened quite often, after all.

And so, Eiro figured that if he couldn't hear anything, he may have just had bad luck and simply nobody in the area was thinking about the situation for whatever reason. With that in mind, Eiro stepped up toward a random person that seemed to be living here in the slums while still being of a semi-sane mind. There certainly were quite a few people around that weren't sane.

"Excuse me, could you answer a question for a second?" The Demon inquired with one man, who was sitting at the side of the road, just staring down at the ground while holding onto an old, rusty sword with a half-broken blade. Even the sheath was slowly falling apart. This man was missing a leg, so most likely, he was a former adventurer that simply became physically incapable of continuing their work. It was a sad sight, but it didn't matter too much to Eiro.

"D'ya have a coin to spare? Cause if ya do, I might be able to answer ye..." The exhausted, weakly man muttered quietly, and Eiro just nodded his head as he dropped one of the five large silver coins he got from that quest just now into the lap of the man, "I have a little change, yes. Now, please answer me. Have you heard of anyone being killed around here last night?"

"Last night? Ya mean two nights ago? There was that kid, ya know, and some other brat came in here ridin' on a horse in the middle of this part of town, and swung heavy hammers 'round. Split that kid's head right open, two other were knocked out. One of'em was that kid's mother. What a shame, t'was a bright kid. Might've made it outta here sooner or la-"

"Sorry, that's not directly what I mean. Last night, a young woman was killed here in the slums and was literally gutted. You haven't heard anything about that?" Eiro asked, and the man thought about it for a second.

"Dun' think so... Heard of a guy wakin' up without his arms one day though, just cut off while he was asleep. Includin' the shoulders, even. T'was a horrible sight, and he was a good craftsman too..." The man slowly stared down at the ground, glancing at his own stump, "Can't imagine what'd be like to lose everythin' from one moment to 'nother. At least I could've continued if I tried hard'nuff..."

The Demon started to frown deeply in response to hearing this man's words. What was going on in a place like this? This was unbelievable. Sure, he came here to find out something about that gutted woman, but he would be able to find the killer within the time-limit anyway, so Eiro may be able to try and go slow about this to figure out what else was happening in this part of the town.

"Solomon may want to hear this..." Eiro muttered, although Nelli had a fitting comment for even this situation, "Wow... one moment you torture a guy and make him literally commit to a lifetime of cannibalism, and in the other, you feel bad for random people. Can't you choose if you want to be the good or the bad guy already?" 

"That's different." Eiro sighed as he dropped another large silver coin onto the man's lap, "John is infuriating. These guys didn't do anything to me. And Jura did teach me to be neutral and help whoever I think may need it with my craft. So if I hear something where I can do just that, I will try and hear more about it."

"Still kind of weird." Nelli pointed out, not really caring for Eiro's response all too much. The Demon grumbled to himself and looked back down at the man.

"Tell me about anyone you know that has been treated in this way. Tell me about whoever is doing this to you. Tell me about who needs a hand or two during these times." Eiro said, and the man slowly looked up, "Why? So that ya can make fun of us too?"

"No, so that I can help." Eiro said bluntly, "And you'll be amongst the first."