Chapter 66: Hell is empty ...

Chapter 66: Hell is empty ...

“Oh, and if you could sign this real quick, I can give you the casefile to study.” the driver said, blindly waiving a clipboard in Isaac’s direction as he fixed his eyes on the road.

“Sure.” he replied, grabbing it “What is it?”

“The ‘I promise won’t go running to the nearest journalist the moment I leave the station’ form you have to sign as a civilian consultant. Case information is a little sensitive, you see.” the driver said.

“Uh-hu.” Isaac signed it “So, do I give this back to you? I mean, you’re driving and all ...”

A brief conversation between the driver and the guy in the passenger seat erupted, involving the driver saying where to put the signed document and where to find the actual file, accompanied by a lot of rummaging around.

And then, after a couple of minutes, the file was in Isaac’s hands. It was pretty similar to the one currently buried at the bottom of his storage space, but a hell of a lot thicker.

The real question was how to quickly go through it without the car full of police officers catching on to the fact that he was familiar with it. The solution? Skim read and lie his ass off.

He flipped through it until he came to the autopsy reports, then let his eyes roam over them for five minutes.

“You got something, doc?” the officer sitting in the back with him asked.

“Maybe.” Isaac hummed softly, rubbing his chin with his free hand “But I’m no Doctor, just a researcher.”

“Is it something you’re willing to share with the group?” she asked.

“Talking to people here about the stuff in the casefile is fine, right?” Isaac asked. He really couldn’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be, but the rules and arcane regulations of any bureaucratical system often deviated from such expectations.

“Sure.” this time, it was the driver who spoke “So, whatcha got?”

“It’s the wounds, they’re ... odd. The coroner’s report says the victims were alive and awake while those ‘monster’ wounds were being inflicted and trashing around accordingly. But you wouldn’t know that from looking at the injuries themselves. Someone managed to make perfectly straight cuts, all nice and parallel, in such a way that it looked like, say a claw wound or bite. That’s probably hard enough to do under normal circumstances, but if the victim is moving all over the place, it should be impossible.”

“The point?” the mountain of a man sitting in the passenger seat asked.

“The point is that this is clearly a [System] given ability and while I can think of several different things that might allow for something like this, all of them have bad implications. A high Agility, for example, would let this guy dodge bullets at close range. A high Level weapon handling [Skill] would basically make them a god of their chosen weapon, in addition to the bonuses obtained at [Skill] Levels 10 and 20, respectively. Or maybe it’s a [Skill] that makes blows functionally undodgeable. Any of those would be bad.” Isaac explained.

“Let me guess, you moonlight as a horror writer?” the woman next him asked, the grimace clearly audible in her voice.

“I wish.” Isaac shook his head “I’m afraid I’m quite serious.”

“How strong are those Level 10 bonuses?” the man in the passenger seat asked.

“I can demonstrate, if someone had a pen they don’t mind losing.” Isaac replied.

“Sure.”

Isaac casually caught the ballpoint pen tossed his way, held in up by its back end and announced “This is myLevel 10 Bonus.”

Plastic bent and twisted, compressing itself into a thin sheet until a slim stiletto was pointing towards the sky, edge glinting dangerously.

“Anything I touch can be turned into a deadly weapon.”

It was a reasonable thing to let people know about, especially as that little trick was made completely redundant by having a soulbound weapon.

Then, he pressed the pen’s clip against the rest of the handle, hard, venomous green light faintly glinting away from the point of contact. A few moments later, the pen-turned-knife disintegrated into flakes of plastic that further fell apart before they ever reached the ground.

“What did you do that for?” the male officer asked.

“It’s a razor sharp blade that’s almost as tough as a proper steel combat knife. It’s not something we want lying around the car. Imagine someone sits on it ...”

“I think we’re all adult enough to not accidentally stab ourselves.” the driver commented dryly.

“We probably are.” Isaac shrugged “But I figured it was better to be safe than sorry. Besides, all I need to make another one is a fifty cent ballpoint pen.”

“I think the scary part is what that kind of power would look like if focused on actual combat.” the officer next to Isaac added.

“Good point.” the guy in the passenger seat said, turning around in his seat to face Isaac “There’ll be a short conference in Leipzig in ten minutes. Apparently, basically none of the experts they called in are there yet, but they want to gather as much information as possible now in case they need to engage before everyone else arrives. Should I see if I can teleconference you in via tablet?”Ñøv€lRapture marked the initial hosting of this chapter on Ñôv€lß¡n.

“Sure. Just give me a bit more time with the case file until then, please.” Isaac replied and busied himself with the autopsy reports.

The killer had been thorough, and clearly gotten a hell of a lot stronger than she’d been the first time he’d gotten his hands on a casefile. Blades were now shearing straight through bone and the abductions were happening in more and more risky places, without the police able to get any additional information.

People would give a decent amount of experience, so combined whatever bonus she got from acting accordingly to her [Class], she’d be levelling up pretty damn quickly. And not only that, her entire kit would be based around killing humans. One day soon, she might be pretty close to unstoppable, at least by people who mostly knew how to fight monsters. And at that point, stopping her would be incredibly difficult. So if she suddenly decided all summoners needed to die ... yeah, this situation was shifting from bad to worse.

The worst-case scenario his mind had ever so helpfully thrown up couldn’t come to pass for a while yet, maybe even a year or two, but still, this needed dealing with.

While Isaac was busy internally doomsaying and looking through a folder detailing the worst of humanity, the car sped down the highway at truly ludicrous speeds. Some kind of [Skill] was being used upon the car, flowing into it and reducing air resistance, fuel consumption and the damage driving the car at speeds higher than it was meant to was inflicting upon the engine.

The effect was subtle, and the only reason Isaac was able to notice it in use at all was that he could see the [Skill] itself using [Hunter’s Gaze], but someone familiar with this kind of car would have noticed the difference in performance without having to lean on any [Skills].

Still, it was an interesting sign. People were beginning to integrate [Skills] into their everyday life, not just something they grabbed so they could fight monster, but actually, properly, use them.

All three of the officers in here were at Level 9, but that was the only similarity. The driver had grabbed a bunch of different [Skills], all low Level. He had almost certainly been levelled up via summoning monsters for others to kill, all the way up to one Level shy of Evolution, then stayed there to improve his [Skills] and his eventual evolved [Class].

The other two had a series of higher Level [Skills] focused on combat, as well as several other, more general [Skills] that any police officer should have, but at a very low level. Clearly, they had been levelling up the traditional way, with summoning.

They were members of the SEK, Germany’s equivalent of the American SWAT, elites of the police force. They were the ones who’d be doing most of the fighting, so they needed the serious firepower. In all likelihood, the rest of the police force were the ones providing the mana for the summoning circles so they didn’t have to

Of course, that they were only Level 9 was a little ... weird. Isaac could think of several reasons for that, but was unable to determine which one was correct merely based on the information he currently had. Which left him with only one good way to get to the bottom of this.

“Hey, quick question, is there a particular reason you two are only Level 9? Everything else about you says you’ve been working to increase your power, yet you’ve stopped just one Level short of evolving. Is that something you can tell me about?” he asked, making sure to not force the issue. He doubted the details of the levelling program, which he had had a large part in creating, by the way, were considered a secret, but taking for granted that they’d talk about it might sound rude.

“Just waiting for some prerequisites to be met before evolving.” the man in the passenger seat grunted.

“And I’m guessing those are considered a secret?” Isaac suggested. it certainly wasn’t the [Skill] Levels, those were already high enough to get a good Evolution, a rare one. Epic and, gods forbid, Legendary required more than mere [Skill] Levels to get, at least unless you went really overboard. Ten Level thirty [Skills] before the first Evolution kind of overboard. To put into perspective how hard that was, Isaac didn’t have a single [Skill] at that Level despite all the crazy stunts he’d been pulling and gaining [Skill] Levels accordingly.

“Nah, not really. I don’t suppose you have any Aspects you’d be willing to give up?” the man asked, sounding half sarcastic, half hopeful. Now things started to make sense. Research had shown that Aspects guaranteed a minimum rare Evolution, and it overall added enough to [Class] quality to make it a good idea to slot at least one prior to evolving.

... if you could get one, that was. Buying them was expensive as hell, even if the price had somewhat fallen from the ludicrous heights it had been at when the first Aspects had been sold on the open market.

“As it just so happens, I was planning on dropping by the Uni for a quick second and drop off some Aspects with Professor Chandler to see what craziness he could come up to with them.” Isaac reached down into the bottom of his Aspect and made some clearly visible searching motions, grabbing an inscribed Core and accessing his storage, causing half a dozen different Aspects to pour into the backpack. He withdrew his hand, clutching an Aspect of the Hydra within.

“That is all I can tell based on the information I currently have available, but if I can ever get a good look at them, directly, not through a photo or over a video feed, I’ll be able to tell you nearly all their [Skills], as well as details of their Stat distribution.” Isaac finished his exhaustive explanation.

“Thank you.” Schmied replied sourly, though Isaac was certain that feeling wasn’t aimed at him, but rather the messy situation he was currently in charge of.

“Dr. Sarai, you have the floor.”

And with that, Schmied stepped off to the side, to allow the profiler to present his findings.

“The suspect in question is what is known as a ‘moral crusader’, a mission oriented killer who seeks to stamp out behavior that they personally find morally objectionable but which is either not illegal or only lightly punished.

“The victims are all summoners who have summoned creatures more powerful than what your average, casually summoning civilian might call upon, indicating that the suspect has a method of identifying them. As Mr. Thoma said earlier, this is likely the work of a [Skill].

“The first victim in each area of activity is always a famous summoner with some degree of online presence. This ranged from YouTube channels to someone who posts the occasional TikTok video. However, each of them had a substantial following and at least some of their content involved a degree of risky behavior. It is conceivable that the suspect found each of their initial victims with a casual google search.

“None of their initial victims was a part of an official or large scale organized summoning effort, they were, without exception, working with very few precautions or contingencies.

“Subsequent victims, however, were occasionally part of such organizations, which would indicate that whatever [Skill] is used primarily evaluates Level and monsters killed, rather than a broader scope of information.”

The projected image behind Sarai changed from various crime scene photos to a series of graphs and pie charts, describing methods of killing or various motives a serial killer might have.

“Were this a normal case prior to the [System], the evidence would indicate we are looking for a large, physically powerful male suspect, but with the [System], one’s physical build is no longer an indication of physical strength.

“The preferred method of killing, almost always involving weapons, also indicates a male killer, given that they are extremely rare in female killers.

“In addition, the fact that the victims are killed in such a way the suspect can see them from up close and while they are still alive suggests that the suspect craves a sense of power and control, which once again indicates we are looking for a man.

“Given the timing of the first murder, as well as their choice of target, the suspect’s trigger event was likely the loss of a loved one to a [System] monster, prompting them to need to ‘punish’ people whose actions run the risk of causing a similar event while reclaiming their own sense of power and agency, which they lost during the original monster encounter.

“We have gathered a collection of some of the most vocal anti-summoner advocates whose known locations do not rule out them being the suspect and will be running them through facial recognition, but there is a significant risk that this suspect has not made any public statements other than their crimes.

“Based on our profile, we are likely looking for a male suspect between 18 and sixty years old, who has recently lost a family member to a summoned monster while they were nearby and physically unable to help.

“However, due to the fact that we are unable to narrow down their geographical origin, locating them via that profile requires searching through too many records to make this not viable in the short term.

“While on the streets, you are looking for someone wearing average clothing that would let them conceal at least some weapons. This is someone who knows that they need to avoid standing out, but also not someone who will naturally try to blend into the background. They hide when they have to, but only as far as is necessary. I’m fully aware of the fact that this description will only be of limited usefulness, but I’m afraid this is as far as I’m willing to go with confident statements.”

“But you are certain the suspect is a man?” came a question out of the audience.

“No.” Sarai said, bluntly “The available signs point towards a male perpetrator, but exceptions do exist. Missing an obvious suspect because they do not match the profile to some small degree is something we should endeavor to avoid at all costs.”

The meeting slowly came to a close and Isaac was about to shut off the tablet when Wirt waved frantically at him from the front seat, motioning for Isaac to not hang up and instead pass it along to him. Of course, Isaac did so.

“Herr Polizeirat, I’m Polizeiobermeister Wirt from the Sondereinsatzkommando. I was wondering how many officers with an Aspect and evolved [Class] will be present? There are several Aspects that are available for purchase, and I believe buying all of them would significantly increase our chances at success. I myself have recently gained an Aspect and evolved [Class] and it is a difference like night and day.”

“I see. How many?” Schmied asked immediately, prompting Wirt turn to Isaac who immediately phased his arm through the other man’s back and stole the tablet straight out of his hands.

“In order to expedite this, I believe it would be best to put all the cards on the table. I was heading over to the campus to drop off a few Aspects with Professor Chandler when I got the call, so I’m currently sitting on several Aspects that belong to me, personally, and I can part with.”

Isaac had decided to lie about the fact that he could access an extradimensional storage space because he didn’t want to make that known to the police force. Because if they knew, everyone else would soon after, and then people would try to go after Lesser Space Elementals, which could be devastating unless someone was nearby and powerful enough to stop it. The damn things were pretty slow, so they couldn’t, say, depopulate a city in a couple of hours, but they’d still wreak holy havoc upon their immediate surroundings.

“I don’t require immediate payment, I’m perfectly willing to discus that after the fact, the important thing is catching that damn serial killer.”

“That’s very generous, but I do believe we need to have some kind of agreement in place prior to the exchange, otherwise, there is a risk of massive disagreements, someone feeling cheated, etc.” Schmied cautiously replied, as if already hating himself for potentially jeopardizing the sale.

“Call it 50% percent market rate for any that gets used immediately, market rate for any that do not get used to help resolve the current situation. I’m not opposed to selling Aspects to the state, but I’m not willing to give the ‘this is about to help catch a serial killer’ discount.”

“That’s ...” Schmied moved to wipe some sweat from his brow “That’s very generous, thank you. Pulling together those kinds of funds and approving the transaction will take a bit, especially given that I’ve got my hands full with the current situation and might even have to draw on federal funds, which is its own arduous labor.”

“We’re having this conversation in front of a bunch of other people, I’m willing to make this sale over a verbal agreement of payment at a later date. Like I said, catching the so called ‘monster-killer’ is the priority.”

“Alright.” Schmied nodded, straightened up, cleared his throat and formally stated “I, Polizeirat Johan Schmied of the Leipzig police department promise to give render payment in exchange for Aspects as soon as it is feasible to spare the time needed to do so.”

“Thank you.” Isaac nodded “See you in a couple of hours.”

“Actually, we’ll be there in one hour.” Sanner called from the driver’s seat. Right, they were being chauffeured around by a wannabe stunt driver.

“Ah, I’ve just been told we’ll arrive in an hour.” Isaac corrected himself and hung up.

The rest of the drive passed in a blur of shop talk, with the two newly aspected SEK officers asking countless questions about proper levelling and [Skill] point allocation. It made sense, given that Isaac was not only the foremost expert on the topic, in the world, but people actually knew about that.

And while he wasn’t being practically interrogated, he was asking in depth questions in turn. He’d occasionally worked with the police in the other timeline. However, the rules had been pretty lose back then, generally consisting of ‘don’t kill the suspect unless you absolutely can’t avoid it’ and ‘watch out for collateral damage’, but that had been near the end.

Right now, they were in the first ‘Era’ of the [System], where people were only beginning to use the many things it offered, and people often needed to call on ‘professional’ summoners to help with [System] stuff because only they actually had the necessary [Skills].

... even if they were difficult people, like the interrupter from earlier.

Then had come the second ‘Era’, where people had taken full advantage of the [System], integrating it and the [Skills] it offered into their lives and the number of ‘professional’ summoners had skyrocketed. This meant that people and the police could often handle the situations they’d had to call in a summoner for in the past on their own. And when a summoner’s touch was required, they had plenty to choose from and could pick someone agreeable, like Isaac.

In the end, the third ‘Era’, however, professional summoners had eclipsed all the ‘casuals’ and when they were needed, they were needed. At that point, difficult personalities and a lack of professionalism were the least of anyone’s worries. As long as they showed the bare minimum of caution and willingness to follow orders, they were hired.

If Isaac had his way, the world would not reach the third Era for a second time.

And then they arrived, the SEK officers and Isaac jumping out of the car and hurrying towards the precinct’s main entrance while Sanner parked.

Raised voices could be heard as they closed, making Isaac grimace.

“... -n what world could we conduct a manhunt for a civilian who has not committed a crime? He chose to run around town and toss insults at any police officer he saw. We can’t deploy airships and put everyone on high alert to track a man who might need police protection, but doesn’t want it.” a voice Isaac could identify as Polizeirat Schmied argued.

“The man got kidnapped by a serial killer, couldn’t you have just arrested him?” an extremely angry man yelled.

“For what? Terminal stupidity isn’t a crime and I don’t fabricate charges, if that is what you’re suggesting.” Schmied growled back “You might be the deputy major and Till Herbig is your nephew, but there are limits to what I can do and what you can demand of me.”

Then Wirt’s phone rang.

“Where are you? The influencer just got kidnapped and we’re about to go searching.” a voice crackled out of the loudspeaker.

“We heard, Schmied is yelling at the deputy major in the lobby.” Wirt replied grimly “We’ll be right in, let’s just hope we’re not too late.”

“Well, fuck.” Isaac muttered. This had just gotten a hell of a lot more complicated.