Chapter 600
Dawn, the 3rd of the 12th Month.
The scene of the theft at the Holy Knights’ Tomb of the Saints was discovered.
On the same day, December 3rd, in the evening.
Suspicious activities, seemingly an attempted grave robbery, were discovered at the national cemetery. Since then, access control at the national cemetery had been strengthened to guard against grave robbers.
It couldn't be said that the two incidents were completely unrelated, but the coinciding dates seemed too suspicious.
If it were the work of the same culprit, was their attempt at the national cemetery a failure?
"So that's where we just went."
"Yes."
The four of them left the management office and were heading back to the cemetery.
But this time, they were not heading to Asher's tomb.
After confirming the location of the tomb where the grave robbery attempt took place with the manager, they were on their way there.
The manager offered to guide them personally, but Ellen declined.
They had to see everything for themselves.
Of course, with the snow falling and the passage of time since the incident, it was uncertain what they could learn by going there.
But, as they had discovered something in the underground mausoleum of the Holy Knights, they thought they might learn something by checking it out themselves.
"What on earth… What happened?"
Ludwig's head was about to explode from the complexity of the drastically changed case and its direction.
"Whatever happened, one thing is certain."
Heinrich bit his lip and spoke.
"I thought it was the crazy ramblings of a madman, but it turns out it wasn't."
Heinrich muttered, with a touch of self-mockery, as he wanted to slap himself for ignoring what Dettomorian had just said.
"There wasn't just one commonality, but two."
Louise quietly looked around the snow-covered national cemetery and spoke.
"Two, you say?"
In response to Ellen's question, Louise gave a short answer.
"The cemetery."
They had already left the management office and were walking quite a distance to enter the resting place of the fallen heroes.
"The places where those with extraordinary power were buried."
The commonality of the cemetery.
Beyond that, there was another commonality: the selected individuals who were buried there.
When there was only one crime scene, all problems originating from that scene had to be considered.
But now that another scene had been added, the intersection between the two scenes had to be considered.
The more likely clues were those that were common to both scenes.
Louise exhaled a white breath and murmured softly.
"If they tried to create undead here as well, and the same thing happened in both places… This wouldn't have happened due to a desire for revenge or hatred toward the Five Great Religions."
When the underground mausoleum of the Holy Knights was the crime scene, it had to be considered that the incident might have been caused by anger towards the Holy Knights or the Five Great Religions. The desecration of turning the remains of the saints into undead could itself be an act of revenge.
However, the additional scene was the National Cemetery, which had little to do with the Holy Knights.
In that case, the motive was not revenge.
And the intersection.
The tombs of the saints who possessed extraordinary powers during their lifetime.
The National Cemetery, where those who had distinguished themselves in the Great Demon War or in the aftermath of the Gate Incident were buried.
The commonality of being the resting place for the powerful.
"Putting aside all other reasons, if the same thing was attempted here, the criminals' motive would be surprisingly simple."
"…I see."
Ellen seemed to understand what Louise wanted to say even before she finished her sentence, nodding her head as Louise quietly murmured.
When there are too many clues, a case becomes confusing.
However, once you find the commonalities between the clues, the process of deduction becomes easier.
Through the increasingly vague connections between the case and the clues, they gradually drew closer to the truth.
"Perhaps, they just needed powerful undead."
Expressions of anger, revenge, and hatred all lost their power as clues.
For a moment, the direction of their deductions was lost amidst the complicated relationships and numerous forces involved.
It was certain that the criminals had been at the scene, and if their intentions matched those of the events in the underground of the Holy Knight's Order, the truth would become clearer.
The undead were not a means, but an objective.
They needed the undead.
A powerful undead.
Therefore, the criminals might have had a very simple intention: to find the tomb where the powerful were buried.
Louise von Schwarz made her judgment.
——
In front of a row of graves, no different from any other, Ellen stopped.
"This is it."
Among the nearby graves, a total of five were suspected to have been targeted for grave robbery. The grass covering the graves had been overturned, leading to this assumption, but the conclusion at the time was that an actual robbery had not taken place.
The cemetery management had no choice but to strengthen their access control based on the assumption that such an attempt had occurred, whether or not the graves had been robbed.
It was a national cemetery where war heroes were buried.
Although countless in number, each was the grave of a hero. Naturally, if even one grave had been robbed, the head of the cemetery and all related parties would have faced severe consequences.
Of course, it was impossible to tell with the naked eye whether or not a robbery attempt had occurred. The gravestones and the ground itself were buried in snow.
Ellen looked around.
Due to the weather, there were very few visitors.
"This place isn't very noticeable."
"Indeed, it isn't."
The area was tucked away in a corner and slightly inside the woods, making it difficult to see from the center of the cemetery due to the trees blocking the view.
Whether attempting a robbery, performing a suspicious ritual, or even during the night, no one would notice any strange activities in this secluded area.
Ellen brushed the snow off the gravestones, checked the names of the graves suspected to have been targeted, and then turned to Heinrich.
"Heinrich, melt the snow."
"Got it."
Up until now, they had refrained from using their abilities to avoid drawing attention, but this place was hidden from view, and there were no visitors nearby.
Furthermore, at this point, it wouldn't matter if someone saw them.
Woosh!
The flame summoned by Heinrich radiated heat, quickly melting the thick layer of snow.
Ellen, Louise, and Ludwig could all feel the scorching heat from the flame on their faces.
After a while, the snow had melted, revealing the bare ground of the cemetery.
The grass, withered and brown from winter, lay limp and soaked in the melted snow.
Five graves.
The flat ground behind the gravestones.
An attempted robbery would have involved digging up the ground.
Ellen felt the flat grass of the graves where the robbery attempts had occurred, and soon, after grabbing the ground a few times, she tore a chunk of grass from the earth.
"Ah, Ellen…!"
Ludwig was shocked to see Ellen desecrating the graveyard with her own hands, but she shook her head.
"It's not like I exerted much effort. It was already like this."
Grass is fundamentally intertwined at the roots. Even in winter, if the roots of the grass are severed, they won't reconnect with each other.
So Ellen had simply pulled out a portion of grass that had already been severed, along with a mound of dirt.
"It seems the caretakers have done their job quite thoroughly. They could have just ignored it."
Of course, after discovering the scene, they must have smoothed out the ground and made it look less suspicious. At a glance, it doesn't appear to have any problems.
If it weren't for a particularly sharp-eyed caretaker, they might have just passed by without noticing.
At Ellen's words, Louise nodded slowly.
"Visitors might have discovered it too. If it were the grave of a family member or friend, they would look more closely."
"I see."
Although the head caretaker said that it had caught the attention of the caretakers, it's also highly likely that one of the visitors had discovered it and reported it to the management office.
The reason they didn't mention the visitor's discovery is that the head caretaker could have lied, fearing backlash. And for Ellen, that level of lie is forgivable.
Visitors or caretakers noticed the unnatural mound of dirt and grass on the grave. They then suspected an attempted grave robbery.
And the scene was restored by the caretakers, making it look normal again.
Ellen carefully examined the ground and could see the shape of the unnatural mounds of dirt on the graves.
She saw it with her own eyes.
She came to see it.
And Ellen wasn't here just to look at the grass.
"Ellen…"
Ludwig muttered blankly.
"Is it okay to do this…?"
Heinrich also muttered blankly.
By now, they can guess what Ellen is going to do without her having to say it.
"It can't be helped."
Blue magic energy enveloped Ellen's hands.
There was only one thing to do if she wanted to know what happened here.
To verify with her own eyes.
-Thunk!
Ellen dug into the ground with her bare hands.
To check the grave.
Ellen began to exhume the grave.
——
The reason Ellen had firmly refused the offer of the management office head to accompany them was because there was a valid reason.
And while they didn't explicitly say what they had to do, everyone knew that they had to do this.
Even though they knew there had been an attempted grave robbery, the management office couldn't dig up the grave themselves to check – that would be madness.
However, Ellen had another possibility in mind, which is why she had to do it herself.
There was no need for anyone to help with what Ellen was doing.
Ludwig couldn't just stand idly by and tried to lend a hand, but Ellen told him to stay out of the way, saying it would hinder her.
The task, done without a shovel and using only bare hands, didn't take long.
She was a superhuman whose entire body was like a deadly weapon, having reached the master class. So when Ellen began digging with her entire body, she soon broke through the frozen earth and dug a deep pit.
"There's a body."
From below the pit, Ellen, covered in dirt, spoke.
Sure enough, there was a body. Ellen's eyes widened as she finally discovered the remains of a corpse at the bottom of the pit.
And above that pit, Ludwig, Heinrich, and Louise stared down at the scene with hardened expressions.
All of them had experienced death in all its gruesome forms and had seen their fair share of corpses.
They felt guilt, but they were no longer terrified or repulsed by the mere sight of a corpse.
If this were the underground cemetery of the Holy Knights, there should be no corpses.
Yet, the corpse remained.
"Wait, so… does that mean… this has nothing to do with the undead?"
As Heinrich pointed out, if this cemetery had no connection to the undead, the caretaker's words were true.
Someone had tried to rob the grave and failed.
In that case, Ellen had merely desecrated an innocent tomb.
She had only insulted the death of someone who should have been allowed to rest in peace.
"No, that's not it."
However, Ellen shook her head.
From the disturbed earth, she picked up a fragment.
"A piece of the coffin?"
Louise murmured, looking at what Ellen had picked up.
"…Yes, it seems so."
The buried coffin had been broken.
That was not something that could be done from the outside.
"If it were undead, they would have crawled out of the ground while breaking the coffin, and if it were grave robbers, they would have dug at least this far."
It would make sense for the undead to have broken the coffin while crawling out of the ground.
However, the grave robbers would have primarily aimed for the burial items inside the tomb.
Having dug the ground to expose the coffin, they wouldn't have bothered to noisily break it when they could have quietly taken the burial items.
Since the grave robbers wouldn't have intentionally caused a ruckus by breaking the coffin, it must have been the undead that broke the coffin while crawling out.
"…What is this corpse, then?"
But if the undead had broken the coffin themselves, it didn't make sense for the corpse that should have become an undead to remain as is.
In the Holy Knights' underground cemetery, the culprits left the scene undisturbed, but in this case, they concealed the scene and even buried the undead back into the ground without retrieving it.
It was clear that they had done something the grave robbers shouldn't have done, so it wasn't their work.
But if it were the work of someone with undead in mind, they didn't take the undead with them.
"Could it be someone else's corpse… or something like that?"
At Ludwig's question, Ellen furrowed her brow.
"I don't know. But even if that were the case, I can't think of any reason why they would do that. If they created an undead and placed another corpse in there, they should have done the same in the Holy Knights' underground cemetery. But why would they do that here and not there?"
It was strange to consider the possibility that they had turned the buried corpse into an undead, took it away, and then placed another corpse back into the tomb. It was an incredibly laborious and meaningless act.
There wouldn't be many people like Ellen who would actually dig up the ground to confirm the corpse.
And the moment they tried to confirm it, they would have to consider the possibility that the buried remains had been switched.
Therefore, resurrecting an undead and placing another corpse in the tomb would be a worthless and meaningless disguise.
It was strange if it was the work of the same perpetrator.
In the Holy Knights' underground cemetery, they showed no interest in concealing their actions, but they did so in this location.
They either didn't take the undead or switched the corpse.
"But… something's odd."
Heinrich expressed his doubts.
"What is it?"
"The person was buried this year… but the decay is so rapid?"
"…?"
Only then did Ellen take a closer look.
At Heinrich's question, Louise finally glanced at the tombstone.
"Gordon Shick, a high-ranking knight of Alskien. In the 10th month of this year… how…"
It was now the 12th.
"So it's been only two months?"
"Yes."
At Louise's sigh, Ellen furrowed her brows while standing in the pit.
The corpse in front of her had hollowed-out eye sockets.
The 10th month was when the weather began to get colder.
Ellen didn't have detailed knowledge about the rate of decomposition, but to her eyes, the buried corpse had already undergone significant decay.
There was still some flesh and muscle, but it seemed too far-fetched for a corpse that had been buried after the cold set in.
"It seems like it really is a different corpse."
"I see…"
At Louise's words, Ellen nodded, disheartened.
She thought there was no reason to go through the meaningless act of switching corpses, but the corpse had indeed been swapped.
So, it was clear that it wasn't the work of grave robbers.
Ludwig murmured, dumbfounded.
"Why on earth… would someone do this…?"
They took the undead.
But this time, after taking the undead, they left another corpse in its place.
What could be the reason for doing such a thing?
Unable to reach any other possibilities yet, Ellen and the others could only assume that the culprits had engaged in a disgusting act devoid of any meaning.
"We'll have to dig up all the other graves as well."
In the end, Ellen had no choice but to carry out the grave excavation work several more times.