Chapter 72: The Fourth 'Self' Killed by Amamiya Ryunosuke (Patreon)

After the dark faction member finished speaking, the scene suddenly went quiet.

It was a good while before a snicker finally slipped out of Thanatos.

"Hahahahahaha..."

"How interesting. This is simply too interesting!"

"Control magic, healing magic, and on top of that a spell that's either invisibility or some kind of spatial displacement..."

"How is it that I never knew Orario had a high-level adventurer like this?"

Thanatos looked utterly delighted as he spoke, but to the dark faction member standing beside him, it only made the cold sweat pour down his back.

The man didn't hesitate. He lowered his head at once. "I'm sorry, Lord Thanatos. My intelligence work wasn't carried out properly."

Thanatos might be an Evil God who looked like a lunatic, but that was only because he held the post of the god of death in Heaven.

Now, with a single glance at his own Familia member, he read a great deal from the man's expression.

At the very least, one thing was certain.

The unknown adventurer who had barged in and stopped their operation most likely hadn't reported his real circumstances to the Guild. He might even have concealed his level, and in the Guild's records he could well be listed as a Lv2, or even a Lv1.

Otherwise, with the moles the dark factions had planted in the Guild over the years, they should have been able to work backward from the way he fought and deduce his name and his Familia.

"We'll leave this matter here for now," Thanatos said, raising a hand to give his ruling.

The member exhaled in relief, but the next second, the stone in his chest was hoisted back up high by his patron god's order.

"I don't care how you do it. Find that adventurer."

"...Yes, my lord!"

Thanatos nodded at the reply. He had plenty of confidence in his Familia's abilities. "Aside from that intruder, did anything else out of the ordinary happen in the meantime?"

"Oh, now that you mention it, there is one thing I really couldn't make sense of. That's the Elephant God's Staff..."

...

Back on Renan's side, the black-haired boy had no idea that his sudden intrusion had drawn the attention of the Evil God Thanatos.

Not that it would have bothered him in the slightest if he had known.

On the afternoon of the next day, Rivira's adventurers finally cleared the tunnel connecting to Floor 17 again. Renan, who had been waiting for some time, kept the Disillusionment Charm up the whole way, went completely unnoticed, and returned to the surface alone.

He didn't hurry off to see Astraea and update his Falna. Instead, he lay down on the bed in the villa's bedroom, closed his eyes halfway, and let his consciousness sink.

The familiar dizziness washed over him.

When the strange sensation faded, Renan had entered his own shared space for the fourth time.

About five meters ahead of him, as he'd expected, lay the corpse of a man roughly 1.75 meters tall.

The corpse's abdomen had been cut open with a sharp tool, and the intestines, flesh, and other tissue inside had all vanished.

The face still held an expression of sheer agony and ferocity. Barring some mistake, the man had been tortured quite badly before he died.

Since he'd seen it coming, Renan only sighed.

He walked up to the corpse and knelt on one knee. Then he extended the index finger of his right hand and lightly touched the dead man's forehead.

About three seconds later, having received the memories, he narrowed his eyes and spoke a name. "Ryuunosuke Uryuu."

The fourth self should have been the happiest of all the Renans who had entered the shared space so far.

His parents had him late in life, in their forties, and raised him wrapped in honey. His grades in primary school, middle school, and university were nothing special, but he was never a bad student either. After graduation he found a reasonably stable job, putting in nine-to-five hours for a monthly salary of a little over 4,000, not quite 5,000.

But fate can be unreasonable. A month ago, his father passed away peacefully at seventy-three, and his mother, overcome with grief, followed him soon after.

That left the fourth self alone in the world.

His superior saw how low he was feeling, and since he was one of the man's own protégés, assigned him to the Sakura Empire branch. It would give him a chance to clear his head and keep him from being reminded of his parents by every object around him.

It should have been a good thing.

Provided the fourth self hadn't run into Ryuunosuke Uryuu, a deranged serial killer.

Other people killed for profit or for revenge.

But Ryuunosuke Uryuu, to put it elegantly, had risen above base tastes. To put it bluntly, he was a complete and utter madman.

He killed purely for his own amusement, or rather, to satisfy a so-called aesthetic that had long since been warped.

For that very reason, even after several murders, the Sakura Empire police couldn't even pin down a suspect.

All they could do was repeat on the local TV news that people should not linger outside after school or work and should get home as early as possible.

The fourth self was nearly thirty and steady by nature, and he was a small-time boss at the branch. Ever since the serial killings began, he'd avoided making his people work overtime unless absolutely necessary. When someone did have to stay late, he simply kept them until the next morning and had the company driver take each of them home one by one.

But sometimes, when a person's luck turns sour, there's no reasoning with it.

After all, who could have imagined that the killer lived right next door to the apartment he was renting?

That's right. Ryuunosuke Uryuu, Caster's Master in the Fourth Holy Grail War of the Type-Moon world, was the fourth self's neighbor. They had run into each other on the way to work before, and they would even nod and say hello.

Yet who knew what the bastard was thinking, because he chose to prey right on his own doorstep. Using a broken shower as an excuse, he lured the fourth self into his home, knocked him unconscious, and dragged him into the workshop where he made his "works of art"!

Then, amid the searing agony of a knife cutting into his abdomen and a living creature's instinctive terror of death, the fourth self finally awakened the memories he had carried for over twenty years and realized that he had actually transmigrated into the Type-Moon world.

And it was all for nothing!

With his intestines completely hollowed out and his hands bound, he had no strength left to fight back, let alone to cry for help.

In the end, without a single stroke of luck, the fourth self died in a sewer somewhere that no one knew about, consumed by bitterness and resentment.

His body was sensed by the shared space and transported inside.

Renan looked at the fourth star hanging in midair, and a cold light flashed through his eyes.

Ryuunosuke Uryuu. When his consciousness crossed into the Type-Moon world later on, he would definitely kill him.

It was only that, given the relationships his counterpart had in the Type-Moon world, he couldn't do it too directly.

He'd need to take a slightly roundabout route.

Of course, that wasn't a big problem. Renan currently had hypnosis, the Confundus Charm, and the Memory Charm at his disposal. With a little preparation, he could make Ryuunosuke Uryuu die of nothing at all one day in the future.

What he really cared about right now was the Fourth Holy Grail War, which might begin in Fuyuki City before long. Would his sudden intrusion cause the Grail system to misjudge, and transfer the Master qualification that was originally meant for Ryuunosuke Uryuu over to him?