The Nova Ranker - The Sword Almighty

Chapter 16. Investigation Start!

I was very upset that I didn't dream that night. I was so interested in seeing why that room was locked. I wondered if it meant someone was having a dream. I didn't know. But it was so disappointing to wake up feeling calm and refreshed, with a dreamless sleep, that I almost wanted to try and sleep again. Almost. The heat of Israel's early morning was making it very hard to want to lay in my bed.

I went to one of the conference rooms that was indicated by a map Calev had given me last night. Most of the facilities were closed, due to the guild being undermanned. Breakfast was already served by the time I was there. It was just me and Calev though. And from his serious posture I could tell that he wanted to tell me something.

"I'm usually the last to wake up." I mused to myself as I sat down and started to chow down on whatever it was Calev had made for me.

"You are. I kept all your friends in magical sleep so we could talk." He looked around a little and sighed. "... The rest of the guild are out already. It's just you and me, my boy."

"... It's about the artifact you want to give to Mr. Rose, isn't it?" My mind tried to project itself into Calev's, but again, I was faced by overgrowth so thick I could see nothing inside. "... What is it?"

"... A sword made entirely from pure blood iron." The implication of that almost made me stop eating. Almost. Calev rolled his fingers together a little bit and sighed. "It was made hundreds of years ago, in the times where only a few people had magic. A king had it created from the bodies of his enemies."

That was enough to actually get me to stop eating. I had to set down my fork for a moment, and just stare at Calev. "... It's currently... dormant. A rusted hunk of useless metal sitting inside of a cave in the middle of the desert. But... if someone were to find it, I fear they could awaken the blade's latent magic.."

"And you're giving that sword to our guild? Why? Why not use it to save your guild?"

"If I used it, it would turn my guild into even more of a target than it already is. If I used it to tear down the entirety of Black Reaper, then it'd call the attention of every other guild. We are in no position to paint an even bigger target on our back. Nova Ranker is a bigger guild. More protected. Stronger. Plus, I trust Mitchell. He saved my life a long time ago."

I felt a soft wistfulness coming from Calev's mind. A remembrance of better times. He genuinely thought the world of Mr. Rose. "That... answers that question. I wanted to ask something else... Why does Avi always wear that armor?"

"It's how he uses magic. He uses the metal to create weapons. Like what he used to stop the shark yesterday."

Someone ran into the room, yelling something in Hebrew that I didn't understand. But I could understand the general gist of it through mindreading. "We found another body, sir!"

"Well, Elias. Get ready. It's time for our investigation."

It was midday when we all gathered at the crime scene. It was a large warehouse near the port and the death had happened to a worker, the father of one of the Guild's younger members. The body had already been taken away. From the report we were given, the body had been found last night by a group of workers. When they found the corpse, he was missing a large chunk of his torso, his left arm, half of his chest cavity, and most of his hip. It looked like a messy cut, nothing that could be done with a bladed weapon. Gruesome, is what it was.

"Why were we brought here?" Carmen spoke up. I could feel something weird in her voice, like she was under some sort of physical strain. Was she tired? Was she just disgusted by the smell of blood that still lingered in the air?