Chapter 17 – Beginning our investigation

Turns out sharing your bed with an incubus has its perks.

Although probably I would have said that about every other person that would have shared a bed with me.

Wow, I really was starved for affection.

Anyway, being spooned by Raven made sleeping on this old sturdy mattress ten times more bearable. I really don’t get how Raynard was able to just pass out on his bed like that, fully clothed on top of that. And even more so, how he could wake up as soon as the sun rose.

His bed creaked as he sat up and stretched himself with a big yawn. I pretended to be still asleep while enjoying being hugged by a muscular arm from behind. Just laying in bed after having woken up and enjoying the comfiness of not having to do anything: the best.

“Rise and shine! We need to get to work!” Raynard said enthusiastically. Only farm boys could be this excited about waking up early. Though waking up with the first beams of sunlight had something oddly comforting to it.

“I am awake. I just refuse to move,” I replied.

“Okay, so, either you wake up and you get a coffee, or I’ll bring you the coffee, and pour it over you. Which one would please you more?”

My eyes opened in shock.

“Raynard! I did not know you had a sadistic side!”

“My mom always used to say that on the rare occasion that I wasn’t willing to wake up. After a couple times she would actually deliver on that threat.” This statement was followed by a bitter laugh.

“Oh.”

I lifted Raven’s arm off of my chest and got dressed before waking him up.

“Morning master,” he said, to which I ignored him.

I thought about going to the girls’ room and maybe getting into some ecchi situation, but I wasn’t in the mood for that. Instead, the three of us went downstairs and got ourselves some breakfast. Shelly and Aurelia followed a bit later.

“There you are!” Shelly exclaimed when she spotted us at the same table, we occupied the day before. “I thought you’d still be asleep, so I went to your room. Was really surprised to not find you in your beds.”

“Yeah, I thought about going over as well, but figured you might not be in an approachable state,” I told them.

“Good thing you did that,” she mumbled in my direction. “Turns out the princess isn’t really there yet without her hot brown morning potion.”

I took a look at the princess who was already seated. My mom used to say cold coffee makes you prettier, but she seemed like a lost case.

We ate our breakfast and occasionally talked. It consisted of basic bread, butter and jam. I realized that food seemed to have a rich variety no matter where you go. Was magic making trade easier in this world? I mean, how would they get coffee here? We don’t really seem to be in a tropical region.

[Magic fertilizer makes it possible to grow any crop anywhere.]

Magic fertilizer? What, you mean like unicorn poop?

[Exactly.]

...

Maybe I should just throw this book into a ditch and never question anything ever again?

I noticed Raven just sat there and stared at me. At first I wasn’t sure whether that was still the effect of the spell, until I again realized the disgusted stares some customers threw at his direction.

Now, if I was a nice person, I could stand up and call everyone out, but that wasn’t me. I always liked the fantasy of calling out someone’s negative behavior in front of everyone and getting lots of support and appreciation, but I also knew that it would probably never happen that way.

At least here.

I’d probably draw lots of negative attention towards us.

I was curious if Raven actually wasn’t aware of how his surroundings perceived him, or if he just chose to not give a shit. But, considering it was a century old being I talked about, I figured it would be the latter.

I instead decided to make some small talk with him, maybe that would at the very least help him.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” I decided to comment on how Raven never felt the need to eat or drink at all.

“Oh, I don’t need to,” he simply replied.

“What, because you feed on my soul?” I joked.

“That’s ... not how it works.”

“Succubi and Incubi mainly feed on man. Usually if an Incubus has a victim he can feast upon, he can last about a month without eating or drinking anything else.” Raynard again impressed me with his overwhelming knowledge. “And even if he doesn’t have a human to suck out, he can usually last a week before getting hungry ... is that correct ...?” he asked Raven sheepishly.

“Couldn’t have explained it any better, kid,” Raven confirmed with an acknowledging smile. “So yeah, there’s basically no need to worry.”

“Vampires are similar by the way,” Shelly explained. “They get most of their powers from blood and can live on that alone for quite a while.”

“I don’t get it though. Not wanting to eat must be terrible,” Raynard said while chewing on his bread. His remark earned a chuckle from the princess.

“Oh, you’re awake now princess?” I asked.

“Yes, I drank my coffee, ate breakfast, I’d say it’s time for some training!”

“Training?”

“Yes! Those babies didn’t just appear out of thin air,” she said, to which she flexed her right biceps.

Crush me.

Me and Raynard looked at her thick arm in awe, Raven only commented it with a barely audible “Mine’s bigger.”

“Actually, that sounds like an excellent idea,” Shelly exclaimed and made Aurelia seem more like a teacher’s pet now. “While we’re waiting for the pastor to show up and give us the result of his ‘digging’ we should do a bit of warm up. After all, this is still a school event, which means learning comes first.”

I cringed at the really inappropriate pun she made, but convinced myself it was the thought of physical exercise that made me feel this way.

I’m only fourteen years old, but I can barely run a 100 meters without desperately gasping for air and I had mild scoliosis, so the mere act of standing upright was a literal pain in the ass. This wasn’t going to end well.

Thankfully standing up was barely necessary, as the pastor nearly flew through the inn’s entrance a moment later.

“Misha! Marie! Sasha’s grave has been dug up!”

Misha who was just cleaning up a table after a customer did not seem to register what the pastor just had said, until her movement abruptly halted.

“What?”

She dropped and pushed past the pastor who was leaning against the door frame breathing heavily.

“Misha!” Her mother Marie exclaimed and pursued her daughter. The pastor moved outside the door to let the lady pass through.

I looked at the others, and they looked back at me, until Aurelia came up and said, “Let’s go!”

She jogged through the door, and we followed her.

Soon the other people from the inn followed and gathered at the nearby graveyard. We watched the scene from a little distance.

Misha stood atop a human-sized hole in the ground, staring down at an empty coffin. Next to the grave was a pile of dirt, that without a doubt was once inside that hole.

No-one said anything for a while until a faint “Oh no.” escaped Marie’s lips.

I could only see Misha’s expression from the side, but it was some mix of anger, confusion and frustration.

“What should we do?” I asked the others, because this peculiar situation started to get a bit overwhelming. I’ve lost people in the past, that was nothing new for me, but losing someone after thinking they were already gone took this to an entirely new level.

“Figuring out what’s going on,” Raynard said, his expression unusually grim for his usually cheerful attitude. He nodded towards the pastor, who was consoling Marie with a calming hand on her shoulder and looked at the princess and me waiting for our approval.

We nodded back and accompanied Raynard to the older man.

“Pastor?” Raynard said and waited for him to turn around. “I don’t want to rush you, but I think we should get started.”

“Of course.” The pastor turned back to Misha and her mother. “I am so sorry I let this happen again. You should go back to the inn for now, the Ataraxian magicians will handle this from here. If you need someone to talk to, you should find me in my office as per usual.”

He made a quick bow and then scurried off towards the church.

“Okay everyone, it is best if you got home now!” Shelly tried breaking off the commotion. “We will handle the situation from here on! For the time being you should avoid the graveyard, it might be dangerous around here! We’ll make sure to clear this situation up as soon as possible.”

The crowd of people started dissolving and I could hear different kinds of murmuring and chatter from different directions.

“Poor girl. Not only was her death a tragedy, now her family has even more reason to mourn.”

“Why can’t the pastor handle this himself? There’s a lot of talented magicians in our village apart from Misha.”

“Right? And to let this filthy incubus into our village ...”

I turned around to look for Raven, spotting him a distance away from the chattering people, and prompted him to come to me.

“Listen,” I already felt bad about what I was about to say, “I don’t mean to offend you, but I think it would be best if you stayed at our room.”

“Why? I don’t care what those people think about me. It’s always been this way.” He sounded bitter, even though he didn’t look like it.

“Yeah, but it kind of hurts seeing them trash talk you. And I wish I could help, but I think we’re the minority here.”

“I’m way stronger than them. I could kill them if I wanted to.”

“But I don’t want to! It would only prove their point.”

The sudden prospect of killing made me accidentally raise my voice. Why did that idea suddenly seem so foreign to me? He wanted to kill me like a week ago. And now that weird spell that hit him in the cave was messing with his mind. Maybe I should be thankful that this Deus ex Machina turned out to be in our favor, but ... this felt wrong.

“If that is the case then I don’t want to either,” he answered as I expected him to do.

“Also, I think Shelly would have a problem with you helping us with the mission. I really don’t want to be expelled from the academy before even being a proper student there.”

“Well then, since that is what you wish...” he said and turned in the direction of the inn. “Don’t hesitate to call me in case you need something.”

“I will.” I watched him as he walked away before turning back to the main event.

Aurelia was apparently consoling Misha and her mother, while Shelly and Raynard talked to some townspeople who seemed really concerned about basically everything. The pastor called out to Raynard with a stack of papers in his hands.

Well, that was awkward.

[I am yet about to learn your definition of the human emotion you call “awkward” but I can confirm.]

Say, you wouldn’t know anything about the spell that hit Raven, would you?

My brain was flooded with information in an instant.

[Name: >>Cupid’s arrow.<<]

[MP: >>777<<]

[>>A strong hypnotic spell, more commonly referred to as a spell of love that makes the enchanted submissive to the first person they see after the spell being cast.<<]

[>>It is strongest immediately after being chanted.<<]

[>>The duration of its effects vary depending on multiple factors such as how the enchanted perceived their object of desire before the spell took effect, as well as race.<<]

[>>Gender does not play a role.<<]

[>>Succubi and Incubi have shown to be affected by the spell for the longest time, ranging from weeks to months in certain instances.<<]

[I have filtered the information to what I perceived to be you biggest interest in regard to the effect.]

[Would you like to give me some feedback about my accuracy?]

P- Perfect! Actually, that’s pretty much everything I wanted to know ...

[That is good to hear.]

I wasn’t sure what to think about that. On the one hand I didn’t like the idea of ... well, mind control, on the other hand, I could not predict if he would become dangerous after the spell wore of.

Wow, I’m in a weird predicament.

But at least I knew I still had a couple more weeks of time to figure out how to deal with him.

With procraaastinaaaation!

Yeah.

No wonder I still haven’t bothered to find a way home.

I approached Raynard and asked if he had already found anything.

“Still digging through it,” he said, shuffling around the papers in his hand. “Everything seems pretty random, except that there might be a preference for younger people to be stolen. That was a weird sentence to say.”

“Yikes.”

“Don’t worry, we will figure this out, I promise,” I heard the princess tell Misha. She took her mother by the shoulder, and they got back to the inn.

“So, that was taken care of I guess.” Aurelia approached us while running her fingers through her hair. She appeared rather exhausted.

So much for morning workout.

Raynard repeated to her what he just told me.

“So, what’s next?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“Why are you whispering?” Aurelia asked in return.

“Isn’t that what you do at a cemetery?”

“It’s not like they’ll wake up or anything.”

“Well ...” Raynard muttered.

“Actually,” I had a weird thought, “could they wake up? I mean is that possible?”

“There are puppeteer spells if I recall correctly, but I have never heard of anyone actually using one on a human. That would be ... messed up and morally wrong on so many levels, I don’t want to talk about it. Though, to make sure we should check for a mana signature.”

“Mana signature?” I asked, to which Raynard and the Grimoire gave me a nearly simultaneous response.

“[When a spell is used it leaves traces of mana in the air, a unique signature of the caster, similar to a finger print.]”

“That’s also why unauthorized casting can get you in jail very easily,” Raynard expanded upon the knowledge provided by the Grimoire.

“There are a couple of spells that are able to make the signatures visible to the human eye,” Aurelia explained. “We haven’t learned them though, I think?”

“Yeah, I think it’s on the curriculum for year 4 for some reason,” Raynard confirmed.

“In that case, good thing you have a police officer in your group,” Shelly directed the attention towards herself, and slowly walked up to the grave.

We followed her, while she murmured some words I wasn’t able to pick up. After finishing her chant, she formed a circle with both her hands in front of her and blew through it, making her breath visible, as if we had temperatures below zero. The breath spread and dissipated after a couple seconds without anything happening.

I glanced at the other two next to me, hoping for any reaction telling me what to make of this situation, until Shelly said: “Well, this grave seems to have been dug up without the help of magic. Someone surely knows their craft.”

“That’s stupid. If they would have used their magic, they could have just closed the hole again. No one would have noticed, and we wouldn’t be investigating in the first place,” Aurelia exclaimed.

“Maybe the culprit was just stupid?” I shrugged to emphasize my opinion. “I mean, I wouldn’t probably think that far, ahahah...”

“Anyway, I think we should first try to find out where the corpses disappeared to, before making an assumption as to why and how,” Raynard stated. “The fact, that the grave has been dug up but not closed again must mean, that there is only one culprit behind all of this. They must have dug up the graves carried the corpse away but not have had enough time to close them properly again.”

“That’s also, what I thought,” Shelly confirmed.

“Isn’t it weird though, how really no-one saw or heard anything?” I voiced my opinion. “I mean, obviously this happened at night, but still isn’t it weird how there isn’t any witnesses?”

“Well, that’s because of the monsters, isn’t it?” Aurelia replied.

I remembered the conversation we had with Misha and the pastor the evening before.

“Well, isn’t that awfully convenient?”

“Anyway, seeing how there wasn’t enough time to close the graves, this could either mean, that the corpses were taken somewhere far away from here, and there was no time, or opening the graves took a really long time, and the corpses were taken somewhere close,” Raynard completed his train of thought.

“Well, the closest buildings to the graveyard are the inn and the church,” Aurelia reckoned.

“Ugh, having Aster and his gaze would be incredibly helpful now,” I sighed.

“Sorry, he sadly doesn’t have a teaching license,” Shelly explained. “Also, I’m pretty sure a lot of people are actually unaware of his existence ...”

Wow, being a good spy must be extremely lonely ...

“We can rule out the inn though, I think,” Shelly threw in. “We probably would have heard – and smelled – anything unusual, I guess.”

“Corpses in the church also seem unlikely,” I said and took a look around the area in hopes to get some input.

The forest.

... That couldn’t be it, or could it?

“What about the forest?” I asked, because there wasn’t anything else I could possibly do.

“Seems unlikely,” Raynard said.

“Exactly.”

“Aren’t there, like, monsters in there?” Aurelia asked.

“Yeah, but hear me out, no-one actually goes into the forest because of that, right?” I reasoned. “So, it would be easy and not exactly dangerous to hide a body on the edge of the forest at night, and then come back during day time to hide it somewhere else, which ideally would be further into the forest.”

“Is there any place inside the forest, where you could ... do anything?”

“I could help you find out.” Misha suddenly approached us from behind.

“Misha,” Aurelia exclaimed. “Don’t you work at the inn or something?”

“Around this time, we don’t have many customers, so I get a bit of free-time,” she exclaimed accompanied by a faint smile. “Also, my mother told me she needed a bit of alone time ... anyway did I get that right, that you are planning on checking out the forest?”

“Well ...” me and the princess replied in unison.

“I’d like to accompany you,” Misha offered. “I want to find to out what happened to my sister.”

“But isn’t it dangerous inside the forest?” Raynard voiced his concerns.

“Don’t worry, most dangerous monsters are nocturnal, it should be way safer than during night-time. In fact, I am one of the few people tasked regularly to go to the forest to gather firewood. So, I know my way around.” She again had this overly carefree smile that was kind of unfitting for the whole situation.

“Also, there is actually one unusual location inside the forest, I can help you find.”

“What would that be?” Raynard inquired.

“... I’ll best explain when we’re there,” Misha replied after searching for words for a while.

Our group looked at Shelly for approval.

“Well, there’s no helping it, I guess.” She shrugged and left her relaxed pose, to turn to Misha directly. “Please lead us through the forest.”

“With pleasure,” Misha said again with that smile.