Chapter 22: The So-Called “Unknown Individual”

“I don’t think this was done by Gluttony cultists.”

“Huh? Why?”
Irene was startled and looked at Alberna. Compared to this kind of thinking work, Irene was much better at fighting.

“If this were a deliberate act by the Gluttony cultists, there should at least be some residual magic left here. If it were a declaration of war, they would definitely leave behind some distinctive magical traces—yet there’s nothing at all. And this place is far too clean, so clean that it feels like someone is trying to hide something.”

“Mmm… that makes sense…”
Just as Irene nodded, she was interrupted by a cultist who came running over in a hurry.

“We found it! About five hundred meters away, in an alley—we found traces of magic!”
The cultist held up a crystal ball emitting a faint, eerie glow.

“Five hundred meters away? That far?”
Irene took the crystal ball, stared at it for a long while, and still couldn’t tell what element it was.

“Pure black… could it be non-elemental magic?”
She studied the pitch-black energy reflected inside the crystal ball, her brows tightly furrowed.

“No, none of the other types of magic have this color. I think I’ve seen this somewhere before.”
Anna quickly flipped through the magic tome in her hands and finally stopped at a certain page.

“Ah, found it. Dark element—an element possessed only by races favored by the God of Night.”

“Dark element??”
Despite having lived so long, this was the first time Irene had ever heard of a dark element existing in the world.

“Yes. Because this element is extremely rare, not many people know about it. According to the records, the only beings that possess this element are the Blood Clan, and… witches.”

As soon as she finished speaking, the scene fell into deathly silence.

“Sss… so that means the one who appeared here was either a Blood Clan member, or a witch?!”
Irene looked at Anna uncertainly.

Nearby, Alberna’s face showed a trace of heaviness—and awkwardness.

She had just been planning to enjoy some gossip, only to stumble upon something this huge. What a headache. Matters involving other races were usually not handled by the Tuning Squad, but handed over to the Isaachsen family, the ducal house.

And at present, the only one in the Isaachsen family capable of handling this matter was her.

Did this count as gossip backfiring straight onto her own head?

“No… that’s not entirely accurate,” Anna said after reading the book for a while longer.

“That’s good.”
Irene let out a sigh of relief—only for Anna’s next words to send her heart back into her throat.

“Not all Blood Clan members can use the dark element. In fact, only those with the purest bloodline, the ‘Divine Lineage’ directly favored by the God of Night, can wield pure dark element. Ordinary Blood Clan members use derivative blood elements.”

Irene’s brows knitted tightly together.

How did a routine mission turn into running into something like this?

This was no different from investigating a homicide only to discover it was done by a ghost.

A Divine Lineage meant the tiny fraction of a race directly favored by a god—the very core of that race.

As such, every Divine Lineage individual was unquestionably powerful.

Witches went without saying. They had terrifyingly long lifespans and had lived among the elves for hundreds of years without any interference.

According to the current standard, magic power was divided into Starflare, Bright Moon, and Rising Sun, each further divided into five ranks.

At this point in time, it was likely that not a single witch was below Bright Moon Rank Three.

Even the weakest among these possibilities could dominate this city with ease. How were they supposed to fight this?

With that thought, Irene turned to look at Alberna.

“Oh my, Irene trusts me that much?”
Alberna laughed lightly. “To be honest, I’m not very confident either… well then, let’s do this. I’ll handle the witch.”

“But didn’t you say you still had a lot of things to take care of—”

“Right now, nothing is more important than a witch.”
Alberna interrupted her solemnly. The relaxed ease from before had completely vanished.

She knew very well that a Blood Clan Divine Lineage had no reason to sneak into the Human Empire unless they intended to provoke a war.

But that was impossible. Since the fall of the Blood Witch, the Blood Clan had remained silent for many years. The likelihood was minuscule.

That left only one answer—
A witch.

How absurd. Witches had originally been humanity’s Divine Lineage, yet were exiled because of the cowardice of certain people.

She wondered what kind of shock this news would bring to those old fossils in the cathedral.

“Have you found anything else nearby?”
She raised her gaze and looked at the cultist beside her.

“There’s a business card, but…”

“A business card? What use is that?”

“No—if it were an ordinary business card, then yes, it would be useless. But… this one belongs to Team Leader Irene.”

“Mine?”
Irene pointed at herself in disbelief.

“Yes. It was found in a nearby trash can.”
As he spoke, the cultist handed over the business card he had just wiped clean.

“Looks like Irene has her own matters to deal with as well. In that case, I won’t disturb you.”
With that, Alberna left, her expression grave.

Irene stared blankly at the business card in her hand.

She remembered clearly—over the past month, she had only given her business card to one person.

Peletti.

Why…

Why would it appear here…

Why here, of all places…

“Anna.”
She suddenly spoke, her voice cold as ice.

“Huh? T-Team Leader? I-is there something…?”
Anna was startled by the sudden drop in pressure.

Irene raised her eyes and issued her order word by word:
“Pass it down. Mobilize personnel. Search every inn in the surrounding area one by one. Any person of unknown identity is to be arrested immediately and subjected to investigation.”

High in the distance, in the sky, Caroline bit her finger and looked down at the humans scattering below, her head aching terribly.

“This is troublesome… this time, it’s really big trouble.”

She was starting to regret her decision back then. This was no newborn witch at all—this was clearly the God of Light deciding that witches had been living too peacefully and throwing trouble their way.

When she saw Peletti lying in Scarlet Night’s arms, suck—ing blood, she almost couldn’t hold herself back from rushing over and ending Peletti on the spot.

“A witch’s banquet is blood… tsk. Of all banquets, why did it have to be a Blood Banquet?”

Her strength was still so weak. Even with the Star Witch protecting her, Caroline couldn’t guarantee that other witches wouldn’t kill Peletti the moment they learned of her existence.

Peletti’s situation was almost identical to that of the Blood Witch back then—extremely frail when she had just become a witch, to the point of having virtually no combat ability.

At that time, the Blood Witch’s diet was still fairly broad, so the others weren’t too worried. But as her power grew stronger and stronger, she began feeding exclusively on the blood of Divine Lineages, even launching large-scale massacres against races including humans.

Caroline still remembered how multiple races fought wars for hundreds of years back then. Eventually, for the sake of preserving their Divine Lineages, those races had no choice but to put aside their hatred and temporarily join forces—just to kill the Blood Witch, who already had one foot in godhood.

In the end, two races were wiped out entirely. The dragon race was nearly annihilated before the Blood Witch was finally killed. The centuries-long wars among the races also had to end because of the Greedy Moon.

This was a war with no true victor.

After that, the Blood Banquet became a taboo among witches.

And now, this taboo had reappeared—on a Witch of Light, who possessed the strongest of all elements: the light element.

She could observe her for now. If she truly turned out to be like the Blood Witch, filled with a craving for blood and violent slaughter, then stepping in to end her herself wouldn’t be out of the question.

After all, the consequences were something she simply could not bear.

“By the way… this surname, Isaachsen—haven’t I heard it somewhere before?”