414 Gathering clues

After the nonsensical meeting was done, Baiyi shooed the Voidwalkers away, leaving only himself and Lady Assassin Walker behind. Should one forget that Soul Armatures were armor sets, without reproductive organs, they would have expected something naughty to go down between the pair. 

Baiyi sat at his desk, flipping through files as he began mapping out a plan. Lady Assassin Walker sat beside him, resting her head on her propped knees, which had her arms wrapped around them, as she watched Baiyi scribble on his papers. 

Every time Baiyi stopped for a bit to check on her, she would chuckle. The laugh sounded so dumb, it seemed capable of lowering the IQs of whoever heard it. 

A hyperactive girl like Lady Assassin Walker did not have the patience to bear such boredom, unlike her bestie ⁠— the Warrior Walker. She soon began to poke Baiyi consistently, and when the Fifth Walker could ignore it no longer, he turned to glare at her only to realize that her supple thighs, which were now visible because her long shirt had ridden up, were covered by a pair of suggestive, thigh-high, black stockings. 

With a (°_°) expression on his face armor, Baiyi turned back to his work, ignoring her completely. Lady Assassin Walker pondered for a moment before poking Baiyi once more. The Fifth Walker glanced at her and realized that the black stockings had turned white, while her hair had become ponytails ⁠— which many coined 'the most adorable hairstyle'. 

'Are you cosplaying as Mia now?' Baiyi slowly shook his head sideways in amusement.

This went on the whole night. Baiyi would get interrupted by the Assassin Walker, and when he looked at her, he would her cosplaying as his students, or the waifus he had back on Earth ⁠— fictional and non-fictional. When dawn arrived, Lady Assassin Walker had transformed her clothes into a white swimsuit, and her hair had become pink, with a pink rabbit-ear hairband over it. 

She was about to transform her swimsuit into a nun's habit, which had a large cross imprinted behind it, when Baiyi stopped her. "Are you index now? We have to move. An important lead awaits us."

The Assassin Walker nodded and reverted back to her original appearance, after which she locked her arms around Baiyi's. 

Baiyi was not bothered by her antics. However, he was not willing to tell Lady Assassin Walker that she was cute enough by herself, so there was no need to cosplay as someone else. 

With Lady Assassin Walker's arms locked around Baiyi's, the pair walked to the Sorcerers' Association building, where they found the young guard waiting for them. The young guard could not help but notice steely, black-haired beauty from the night before had been replaced with a cute Genki girl. This made him wonder if Baiyi was like other nobles, who were not against having multiple partners. These kinds of nobles did this to show off their status, and knowing this, the young guard decided to keep his thoughts to himself.

"Alright, let's go. We'll talk somewhere else," Baiyi said. He did not use hypnosis on the young guard this time.

The trio walked into the building. Using his privilege as the Association's High-level Advisor, Baiyi acquired a room all to himself. When the three walked into the room, Baiyi asked the young guard to take a seat. After making a cup of coffee for the young guard, using magic, Baiyi said, "Now, let us start from your name."

The young guard nodded. "My name is Matt. I'm a twenty years old single man—"

Baiyi stopped him in midsentence. "Your name alone is good enough. Okay, now tell me again about what happened and when it happened; leave no details out. This means even the unimportant details, such as weather and the behavior of the creatures, should be made known to me. The more detailed you are, the better; so, please, try to recall everything. Are you literate? No? I see..."

Baiyi refrained from using Hypnosis this time, as it disrupted the thoughts and memories of the person under it. Now that the young man was calm, Hypnosis would hinder his ability of the young guard. [1]

Matt scratched his head and thought as hard as he could. As the events he was being asked to recall happened a long time ago, his memories of it were blurred. He could only remember bits and pieces, and this made it hard for the Assassin Walker to write down he said. 

"Write everything down," Baiyi had whispered to her earlier.

It was at times like these that he appreciated the great ingenuity of the Archmage, who invented Memory Anamnesis and Memory Exchanging Technique. The former allowed a person to perfectly recall everything that has happened to them, while the latter allowed two individuals to share their memories. How Baiyi wished he could use either of them right now! 

Naturally, it was not feasible to expect this young guard to know how to perform such advanced secret techniques. 

'Maybe I should add these techniques into Da Xue's curriculum. It will certainly help in situations like these,' Baiyi thought to himself [2]. Soon, Matt was unable to remember any more than he already had.

Everything Matt could recollect was not much use to Baiyi. His memories of the undead, especially their appearance, were so vague, and Baiyi was unable was not yet able to rule out the possibility of a Lich being behind the attack on his village. Two sentences were all Baiyi considered noteworthy in the entire recollection: "The night was pitch-black. I couldn't see the stars."

"Was it raining that night?" Baiyi asked.

"No. It was dry."

This was odd; according to astrology and theology, the stars and the sun of this world were 'God's most gracious gifts to the realms in existence'. This being the case, only two reasons would prevent a person from seeing the stars: first, because of a cloudy sky, which could be caused by rain; second, if someone had cast a barrier over an area, which prevented the inhabitants of that area from seeing the stars. 

However, barriers like that would prevent those inside it from seeing anything outside it. Matt remembered escaping the village in a panic, without a torch, relying only on weak lights from the village to make out the outermost banks of the Wasteland, outside his village. He had only managed to escape by fleeing in that direction. 

Matt's ability to flee from the village proved that there were no barriers around it. However, if there were no barriers over the village, why was Matt unable to see the stars that night? 

There was something else Baiyi did not understand: why the undead did had not chased Matt far; they did not follow him into the desert! This was uncharacteristic of undead creatures in general. Normally, these creatures would not give up on chasing a target that moved faster than they did. 

As for the undead that attacked Matt's village, where had they gone to after the attack? According to Matt, when he finished setting up a home in the desert for the zombified members of his village, he had visited other villages in the vicinity; none of them had been attacked by undead. 

Why would an army of undead attack a village of only a hundred people whilst sparing more crowded villages in the vicinity? Why had they not assimilated the undead villagers into their ranks? 

Having listened to Matt, these were the questions Baiyi had. He compared Matt's story with the video that the General's secretary had given him earlier. The latter lacked the point of view of a survivor, as no one in the village seen in the video survived the undead army's attack. Matt's story had left Baiyi feeling even more confused. There was nothing in Matt's story that linked the undead that attacked his village to the undead Baiyi saw in the video. Baiyi himself could not tell if the undead in both cases were related. 

The General's secretary had shown Baiyi two videos. The first video seemed to have originated from a yet to be identified village, and the identity of the person that recorded it remained a mystery. As for the second video, it had been sent to the Church, along with a letter. The letter contained a threat from the writer, stating that they would 'avenge their fallen comrades by raining down blood and fire on the scum that persecuted them!'

Attached to the letter was the black flame crest of the Godsfall cult; hence, the authority assumed that the cult was planning a terrorist attack. The Empire and the Church's countermeasure, on top of any sort of military fortifications of their own, was Baiyi.Index Librorum Prohibitorum, from A Certain Magical Index.