Chapter 138: Too Obvious!

The moment the door shut, Mana suddenly moved beneath his feet.

It did not explode outward or flood the room with some ridiculous amount of light. The circles simply began glowing one after another, the first beneath him and the next spreading farther until the formation reached the walls.

And the stone around him lost its shape.

For a brief moment, Zishan felt as though his eyes had failed to focus. Then, cold air brushed against his face, followed by the smell of damp earth, burned wood, and blood.

Without warning, he appeared in the middle of a forest. He turned once, taking in the trees rising beyond a small clearing, and the room he had entered was completely out of sight.

He was like transported to another world again, and the recreation capabilities of this specific Echo Room somehow reminded him of 3D simulations back on Earth, except this one had gone far beyond anything he had ever seen.

There was no screen, no headset, no artificial-looking texture that would remind him the place was fake.

Zishan looked around for several seconds. ’This is basically a full sensory simulation...’

Wind moved through the leaves. Soil shifted beneath his boots when he stepped forward. Somewhere deeper among the trees, insects produced a continuous low noise that made the clearing feel far less artificial than it should have.

Then, his eyes settled on the camp.

The place looked like something had torn through it.

One tent had collapsed, another had been ripped open, and supplies were scattered across the ground around a fire that had already burned out. A crate lay on its side near the edge of the clearing with rope, dried food, and several tools spilling from it.

More than that, he could see three bodies.

The first man lay near the collapsed tent with several long wounds across his chest. A woman had fallen beside an overturned crate farther away, while another man was lying near the fire with one arm extended toward a broken sword.

Other than them, there was also a humungous Magic Beast that somehow occupied the middle of the camp.

It looked somewhat like a wolf until Zishan noticed the additional pair of limbs tucked beneath its body and the dark horn-like growths along its skull. Blood covered part of its mouth, and one of its claws rested close to the first corpse.

For a few seconds, he did not react and was just trying to take in everything. He was not new to seeing dead people, but seeing them again, in another world, made him want to puke. However, he knew he couldn’t do that. Moreover, the test here... he must understand what all of this was about. Otherwise, he’d fail.

Zishan sorted out his thoughts. ’There were probably at least four people who had been here. Although there were only three bodies, someone must have killed the beast in the middle, and the trail of blood that could be seen from the beast’s body to another side of the forest made it conspicuous. After killing the beast, one or perhaps two from their group escaped and left them right there. However, something doesn’t sit right. If this were the test, there’s no fucking way it’s this easy, right?’

He composed himself and began with the beast.

The creature had suffered a deep wound across the neck, and judging from the angle, somebody knowledgeable about Magic Beasts would know where to strike. There was very little struggle around its body compared with what he expected from something that size, although that alone meant little. A sufficiently strong Guild member could probably end a fight like this before the beast had time to destroy half the forest.

Zishan crouched beside its head and studied the dried blood around the jaw before moving toward the nearest corpse.

Four deep slashes crossed the man’s chest. From several steps away, they looked exactly like what the beast’s claws should have caused.

Closer inspection made him uncomfortable.

Inspecting it closely somehow made him more uncomfortable. Having no choice, he still leaned. Then, he frowned. ’Something about the torn skin around the wounds did not look right.’

His medical knowledge from Earth worked wonders in this world, even when looking at this type of wound. Although he had never worked on someone mauled by a six-limbed magical wolf, dead tissue would not suddenly stop behaving like tissue just because it was something foreign to what he knew as normal on Earth.

’There should have been more reaction around wounds this large if they were inflicted while the man was still alive.’ Zishan shifted his position, inspecting the deeper sections.

The bleeding pattern bothered him more the longer he looked. ’Were these done after he died?’

He stood up and walked toward the dead woman. Her wounds were different, but the same problem appeared. The claw marks looked convincing until he paid attention to what was beneath them. The third corpse carried another set across the back.

These three people were supposedly mauled by the same Beast. And these three sets of wounds looked more like somebody wanted them to appear mauled.

Zishan returned to the creature in the middle of the camp. This time, he looked at the blood rather than the wound.

The blood around the beast’s mouth had dried differently from what he had seen near the human bodies. He touched the fur with two fingers, rubbed the thick residue between them, then crossed toward one of the larger stains beside the collapsed tent.

The difference wasn’t subtle anymore once he compared them directly.

The beast died first before any of them did.

Zishan went back to its forelimb and lifted one claw enough to examine the underside. Blood covered the exposed surface, yet the grooves closer to the base were strangely clean. He found no fabric trapped there and none of the tissue he would expect after claws this size had ripped through three people.

He stared at the paw. ’Somebody must’ve put the blood here. Also, somebody must have somehow used this dead beast’s claws on these people’s dead bodies.’

Zishan remained crouched for a while before looking across the camp again. The entire clearing became different once he stopped believing what it wanted him to believe.

The torn tent could have been staged. The same could be said of the scattered supplies around the camp. And for some reason, he believed that the beast in the middle of everything was certainly planned out.

’Like a premeditated murder?’

Then, he stood and looked at the blood trail marks. Alongside it, he also found shallow lines beneath the leaves and soil. These continued away from the camp before disappearing among the trees. ’Someone had brought the Beast here after it died...’

Zishan’s attention shifted toward the outer edge of the clearing where several human tracks overlapped around the campsite. Most were impossible to separate, though one trail led away from the scene.

There was one person; one specific trail led him to this conclusion. ’There you are. So one person definitely left this place. But there’s something wrong... Something still doesn’t sit right.’

The answer rearranged itself in his head.

The missing fourth member had killed the other three and staged a Beast attack to cover the murders.

It was clean. It explained why one person had left and why the Beast was moved. It also explained the fake claw marks. For a few seconds, Zishan believed it.

Then, he looked toward the bodies again.

’If the fourth person murdered all three, why hide their actual wounds beneath fake ones? Unless the real injuries could identify how they died? More than that, no murderer would be that stupid to leave tracks of himself at the scene. It’s really strange.’