[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Chapter 68: Bittering Part 2

Bors grunted in reply and glared at men by the door.

"Where the hell are they!? Get them in here already!" He demanded, and the pair went scurrying from the door.

I raised an eyebrow at that and then looked around to confirm that I was, in fact, the only person who didn't know what was going on.

"Status Thief?" I asked when no one else seemed confused.

"Have you never heard of it?" Finn asked. "I suppose that's not surprising, seeing as it's illegal to have on the surface. But Rivira's not a place that cares much about rules."

"It's an item created with the Developmental Ability Mystery, using a god's blood—and like a god's blood, it can reveal a person's Status, even if it's been locked by their god," Riveria explained. "That's why it's forbidden to have on the surface."

...Was it wrong that my first reaction to that was to wonder what would happen if you used a demigod's blood, instead? Or what else could be done with such a thing? If it was something you could make with Mystery, I could probably make that myself, not that I had much reason to want to see someone else's Status; if anything, I should probably be more worried about someone potentially using that on me. But if Status Thief could reveal a locked Status using a god's blood, could other things be done to it with the same material? Could I update my own Status, maybe?

Questions for later, I reminded myself. And curiosity aside, maybe I should be more worried about the way they brought it up...but no, they wouldn't.

I stood aside in silence as the men returned, escorting between them a hooded animal person who carried a vial in his hands. Wordlessly—as in, the man seemed either disinterested in or incapable of talking—he spilt the liquid on the man's back, and a pattern began to rise to the surface. The man slide his fingers across it, fumbled around almost blindly, like he was picking a lock by feel alone, his fingers moving this way and that as he seemingly tried to unlock the status. But why do that when he—

Oh, I though, looking at the faint pattern. He probably couldn't see it.

Demigod thing. Right.

After a few minutes, the Status was unlocked and rose to full visibility, revealed for all to see. But not necessarily for all to read.

"Ugh," Bors said, staring at it. "Can't understand a word. Oi, go outside and grab one of those smart looking elves and drag them back here!"

"There's no need," Riveria said. "I can read it."

"As can I," Aiz murmured, staring at the man's back.

I could read it, too...sort of. It was similar to how Hestia and Hephaestus wrote, but...not. Like, the whole style was different, but the words still made sense in my brain somehow, like I was still reading ancient Greek but wavier—or like the actual words and letters were almost secondary. But I didn't bother saying that, figuring I'd drawn enough attention already.

"Riveria..." Aiz said after a moment.

"Hashana Dorlia, just as he said," the elf replied. "Level 4."

With the confirmation that I was telling the truth, the atmosphere in the room seemed to change, at once tensing and relaxing. On one hand, they were sure I wasn't lying, now, but on the other...they were sure I wasn't lying now.

Good news and bad news, that.

"Then certainly, the killer must have been a First Class Adventurer to do such a thing. A Level 5...or maybe someone with even more power," Finn said, reducing the list of suspects to a very short list of very dangerous people.

"Shall we work together, then?" I asked and did my best not to react when Finn stared at me for a long, long moment, before the man lifted his hand and licked the base of his thumb—and then smiled at me like nothing had been wrong to begin with.

"Seems like the quickest way," he said. "We'll be relying on you and that skill of yours, then."

"No problem," I said with a shrug. "Have you found out anything else, by the way?"

"He arrived with a woman wearing a robe, who'd apparently covered her face as well," Finn said.

"Wow, that's...not suspicious at all," I replied.

Bors just grunted.

"Hashana covered himself in armor, too," he said, gesturing at the completely naked body. "Part of why we had no idea who he was. They rented out the entire inn with a big sack of magic stones, too, so we didn't have a Familia emblem to go off of."

I was about to ask why they'd rent out the whole inn before stopping myself; the walls in this place are thin enough that even normal people would probably hear any noise a couple made and among adventurers, well...I could hear people talking in the street outside.

So they showed up hidden, paid basically in cash, and made sure no one was around...yesh.

"And then the woman in question disappeared, too," I muttered.

"No doubt about it, then; she must have been the killer," Bors said, frowning severely.

"Not necessarily," Finn said just as fast. "Since we couldn't identify her, she could also have been this Lulune. And since the inn was otherwise empty, it's not impossible that a third party was involved. But...at the very least, whoever it was probably knows a great deal more than we do."

A thought occurred to me, then.

"What about whoever owns the inn?" I asked. "You said they paid someone, right? Did they—"

"They got depressed after they saw someone come in with such an attractive woman," Bors said with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. "They couldn't handle it so they went straight to the bar."

...Wow. I guess when you went to a lawless Dungeon town for your hidden rendezvous, you got what you paid for.

Still, note to self; don't pick up girls in a Dungeon.

"Wait," I said. "How'd they know they were attractive if they kept themselves hidden?"

Bors made a large cupping gesture in front of his chest and I nearly rolled my eyes as the women in the room just gave him a flat stare.

"Guess we do this the hard way, after all," I said, not sure why I even bothered trying to do anything but kick down my problems with my superpowers. "If I can get a good look at everyone, I can separate the big fish from the little ones, at least."

"Seems the quickest way," Finn repeated, standing and taking another look around, face speculative before shaking it away. "Bors, can you arrange it?"

The larger man said something back, but I ignored him for the moment to cast a look back at the room, feeling as if I were forgetting something.

XxXXxX​

Credit where it was due, it didn't take long to gather everyone in Rivera together—Bors just threatened to ban those who didn't cooperate from the city, and in short order everyone was lining up. The Loki Familia, big a presence as they were, stood at the front and were the center of everyone's attention—which suited me just fine, because I was free to stand off to the side, milling about with the rest of the guards and look everyone over. And—

"Mr. Jackson," Ryuu murmured, and I very carefully didn't react in the slightest.

—And it gave Ryuu a can to do her ninja thing. Not sure if there was much point in doing so, granted, but it seemed to make her happy.

"Hey," I replied casually.

"Did you manage to catch their scent?" She asked.

"It's a little hard to crush someone's head without smelling of blood," I said. "But I'm thinking I'll see them before I smell them. And...something tells me that hiding isn't their priority. What about you? Find anything while I was playing Private Eye?"

Ryuu looked at me like I was speaking in tongues, but seemed willing to put that aside for the sake of our friendship.

"There's been word that the twenty-fourth floor is experiencing an Irregularity," she said. "A sudden, massive influx of monsters has been causing more and more trouble for adventurers, making it increasingly harder to enter the lower floors."

"Do you think it's related?" I asked, furrowing my eyebrows, still looking at the crowd.

"Perhaps," Ryuu said. "Regardless, the timing is intriguing. Few adventures have been willing to venture below the twentieth floor as a result. And there were rumors that something similar happened recently, on the thirtieth."

"Where Hashana was," I murmured, remembering what Fels had said. I filed that away in my Mystery Box and frowned, still feeling like there was something I was missing. "Then—"

I fell silent as Ryuu was very abruptly gone, slipping away into the shadows once more. A dozen heartbeats later, someone else approached—Aiz, who cast a glance in the direction Ryuu went but said nothing before looking my way.

"...Anything?" She asked, though with Aiz, I wasn't sure if she'd been told to come ask me or if she was just growing impatient.

I shook my head silently, not bothering to mention any of the difficulties with sorting through several hundred agitated adventurers or the fact that I had only a rough grasp of where on Level started and another ended. The crowd in Rivera was mostly made of Level 1s and 2s, so picking out anything 4 or above should be easy once I found the source—but Level 3s could sometimes blend into the existing mass. Still, the fact remained that I hadn't found our killer.

Another minute went by in silence before Aiz spoke, apparently mulling over her words carefully.

"...You can sense people's Levels?" She said, which I assumed was her way of opening a conversation. I waited for a moment to see if she'd continue and then nodded, waiting for her to continue. "And, before...you looked at Hashana's Falna...you could read it, too..."

I was surprised she'd even seen me looking, honestly—but, well, it wasn't really something I was trying to hide that hard, I guess, and I more or less trusted Aiz. Maybe not enough to go telling my secrets, but I figured she could probably be trusted with them. So I just nodded again, still on the lookout.

"And you're magic..." She said.

Ah, I thought. Here we go.

"Are you—" Aiz began and cut herself off abruptly. I glanced at her once to see her staring into the distance, and then followed her gaze towards a small figure that was breaking off from the crowd despite what she'd been instructed to do.

"Level 3," I said after a moment, hackles rising until I narrowed my eyes, squinting to get a better look. "...Wait, is that Lulune? Aiz, that's the girl Hashana was—and she's gone."

The last part came out a bit incredulously as Aiz tore away, rushing after the girl without waiting for me to finish or even suggest telling Finn. I paused and shook my head at her general awkwardness, but then turned to go tell him myself, figuring Lulune would be safer with Aiz regardless. Oddities aside, she was a powerful Level 5 and could take care of herself, I thought.

And then the last of the stragglers wandered into the town square and the pieces clicked together as I realized what I'd missed.

It was the armor. Bors had said that Hashana had been wearing armor that covered him completely—but there hadn't been any armor in the room. Hashana had been naked and the room empty of his cloths, meaning someone had taken it—and I was looking right at them. There was someone in the crowd who I'd bet anything was wearing Hashana's armor. And if I had to point to a reason why...

Well. I guess I just thought it was a bit suspicious that there was another Level 6 running around here unaccounted for.

The man—no, the woman, I thought, catching the faintest hint of blood under the smell of near-antiseptic and rot—seemed to catch sight of either Aiz or Lulune and began to pursue them, and I swore and began to run.

That, I realized later, was right about the time that everything went straight to hell.