The First Clue

Our first official mission as the Royal Special Task Force for Arcane Anomalies began, appropriately, with me wanting to take a nap. We were standing in the eastern vault of the Royal Treasury, a place that was supposed to be awe-inspiring but was, in reality, just a very large, very cold, and very dusty room. It smelled of old money, parchment, and the faint, lingering scent of a thousand years of royal boredom.

I was being forced to do actual work. Before my first lunch. This was a violation of my fundamental human rights. Or, at least, my fundamental isekai-protagonist rights. My contract with the universe clearly stated "peaceful world," not "early-morning magical forensics."

My new "unit" was already a disaster. Sir Justus stood in the center of the room with his eyes closed, one hand on his sword, trying to "sense the foul taint of evil." So far, he’d identified a mildly cursed paperweight and a book of tax law he declared to be "unholy." Eliza was treating the vault like a crime scene, having already produced a roll of shimmering tape to create a "secure perimeter," which everyone was ignoring. Edgar was trying to sketch the room for his report, but his hands were shaking so badly it looked like he was drawing during an earthquake. And Marie was there, of course, observing us from a safe distance with a cup of tea in hand, offering the occasional unhelpful comment.

“The acoustics in here are simply dreadful, aren't they?” she’d said a moment ago.

The source of all our problems was a section of the far wall. It was covered in a series of intricate, orange runes that pulsed with a soft, rhythmic light. They weren't scary or ominous. They just looked… annoying. Like a complex math problem I had no intention of solving. A weird magical feedback loop emanated from them, causing minor, irritating effects. Every time Justus spoke, his voice would echo back a second later in a high-pitched squeak. My hair was standing on end from the static electricity. It was less of a national security crisis and more of a large-scale prank.

“I have concluded my preliminary analysis,” Eliza announced, tapping her black slate. “I have cross-referenced the glyphs against every known magical language in the royal archives, including ancient draconic, pre-empire Fae, and the forbidden demonic dialects of the abyss.”

“And?” I asked, leaning against a dusty crate.

“It’s gibberish,” she stated flatly. “The syntax is illogical. The structure is paradoxical. It’s the magical equivalent of a monkey banging on a keyboard. There is no meaning here.”

“Nonsense!” Justus declared, his voice followed by a tiny “Nonsense!” squeak. “Evil does not deal in gibberish! It deals in deception! By the sacred light of truth, I command you, runes, reveal your foul purpose!”

He held his sword aloft, and it began to glow with a brilliant white light. He pointed it at the wall. The orange runes on the wall seemed to pause their pulsing for a moment, and then they all flashed a cheerful, vibrant pink before returning to orange.

Look at them, I thought, taking a bite of a rice ball I’d smuggled in. The Holy Knight, the Super-Nerd, and the Scared Intern. It's the worst RPG party ever assembled. And I'm the leader. The gods are cruel.

After another hour of them achieving absolutely nothing, they all turned to look at me. The expectant silence was heavy. It was my turn. My turn to do something heroic and solve the problem so I could go home.

I sighed, a long, suffering sound. “Fine.”

I pushed myself off the crate and ambled over to the wall. I wasn't going to try and decipher the runes. That was way too much work. I was going to take the lazy route. The shortcut. I wasn't a cryptographer; I was a magical bloodhound.

I placed my palm flat against the cool stone, right next to one of the glowing orange glyphs. I closed my eyes and ignored the superficial layer of prank-level magic. I pushed my senses deeper, past the feedback loop, past the light show, searching for the source. I wasn't trying to read the message; I was trying to get a read on the person who sent it. Every magic user leaves a faint, residual fingerprint of their own mana on their work. I was looking for that.

Okay, focusing... getting past the orange glow... there's a residual trace here. Faint. Not demonic... not elemental... what is this?

I pushed deeper, analyzing the very "flavor" of the mana. It was strange. It felt clean. Disciplined. Almost… pious. There was a faint, almost imperceptible warmth to it, a signature of conviction and order. It was a type of magic I had felt before.

My eyes snapped open.

It felt like the aura of righteousness that had been stinking up my office for the past two weeks. It wasn't a perfect match for Justus himself—it was fainter, different somehow—but it was the same type of magic. Holy magic. The kind used by the paladins of the Holy Kingdom of Nazareth.

This wasn't a curse from a demon or a mischievous fae. This was an inside job. Or at least, an inside type of job.

This was the first real clue. The cursed loofah, the pathologically happy giggle curse, and now this. All strange, non-demonic magical incidents. And this one, the most serious of them all, was powered by holy energy.

I pulled my hand back from the wall as if it had been burned.

“Did you decipher it, Sir Hero?” Edgar asked, his pen poised hopefully.

Marie, Eliza, and Justus were all staring at me, waiting for the answer.

I couldn’t tell them. Not yet. This was too complicated. Announcing that our primary suspect was now basically "the church" in a room with a zealous paladin felt like a bad idea.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I said, my voice grim. I turned to leave the vault. “This isn’t a normal curse. The person who did this is more clever than we thought.”

They followed me out, confused but accepting my lead for now. I didn't say another word, my mind racing.

This is no longer just a series of annoying, random events. This is a pattern. A conspiracy. And the prime suspect is an organization that is supposed to be on the side of "good."

A conspiracy meant uncovering truths, following leads, confronting powerful figures. It meant meetings, and travel, and probably a dramatic final battle. It meant a whole lot of work.

Curse you, author, a familiar sense of dread washing over me. You just had to raise the stakes, didn't you?