In the small town that Raze had visited, something had occurred after he left. There were visitors who would come up to the door, see the closed sign, and leave without suspecting anything, with no trouble at all.
After all, nearly every shop was independently owned. It wasn't as if there was a big corporation behind the scenes. Although at times, shops did have multiple loans to pay, or in certain cities, they would have to pay a tax fee to those in charge, or even for protection against the clan.
Regardless, that was the reason no one had suspected a thing when the shop was closed. People took days off or had events that required them to be away.
However, there was a pair of people that approached the door, and regardless of the closed sign, they gave it a knock anyway. A fairly tall man wearing a large brown overcoat and a white shirt underneath approached the door. He used his fingers to twirl his light brown mustache before knocking with his other hand three times.
"It says it's closed, Himmy," Charlotte said, pointing to the sign hanging on the door.
Charlotte was a woman about half the size of the man next to her. Unlike Himmy, she was dressed much more like the locals, with a simple one-piece set of cloth clothing wrapped around her waist with a fabric band to hold it together.
The only thing that stood out was her barrier-type hat, which only revealed a sliver of orange-colored hair that reached her shoulders, while her friend's hair was tucked away under his hat.
"Do you think I can't read anymore?" Himmy replied. "We have an appointment, and not once has Han missed it."
Himmy proceeded to knock louder this time, shaking the wooden door, which creaked as if it might break.
"You're going to feel really bad if Han was just taking a sh*t, and now you've made him rush to the door," Charlotte commented, her expression unchanged.
The two stood there in silence, with neither of them saying a word for a while, until Himmy had enough.
"Can you just pick lock the door already so we can see what's up? It's clear that he isn't in the toilet," Himmy complained.
Charlotte did as he asked, reaching into the side of her clothing and pulling out a couple of small tools. It looked like a metal contraption with many different long metal pieces hanging from it.
Himmy then stood in front of her, using his body to block the view of any onlookers. In particular, he kept an eye on those in red armor, tracking their movements carefully, until a click sound was heard from behind.
"Ah, man!" Charlotte said. "It literally smells like sh*t in here."
She was wafting her hand and wanted to turn back, but before she could, Himmy pushed her with his body and closed the door behind him.
"Hey, don't trap me in here! Are you trying to kill me with this smell?" Charlotte started pounding her fists on his large stomach, but they just bounced off, seemingly doing nothing, not even causing him to flinch.
"It looks like we know what happened to Han now," Himmy said. "And what that smell is."
So disgusted by the smell, Charlotte was closing her eyes to stop them from watering, and she had failed to look at the scene properly while trying to get out. Now she could see it for herself: two dead bodies on the floor that were rotting away to the point where a few bugs were starting to eat them.
The buildings and houses weren't the best built, allowing them to get through the cracks here and there.
"How long do you think they've been dead for?" Charlotte asked, still covering her nose and mouth with her sleeve.
"It's hard to tell," Himmy replied as he moved closer to the bodies to have a look. "Han didn't really have any friends or family, so no one came to check up on him."
"I thought you said you were a police officer. Can't you just take one look at the scene and figure it out?" Charlotte imitated an explosion with her arms, then quickly covered her nose again.
"Based on the bodies' decomposition, I would say this had to have happened yesterday. Their muscles are still hardened from rigor mortis. What's confusing me is the scene itself."
"If you look at the wounds and the shop, things don't match up. The two of them are covered in wounds, as if they were both fighting for their lives, and yet the items on the shelves, the countless ornaments all over the place, have no signs that they've fallen off or anything of the sort. To me, it looks more like a staged scene."
"So you think someone came in here and put them like that. So then why did they kill them?" Charlotte asked.
Himmy had a smile on his face as he moved behind the counter, looking for other clues.
"You're asking the right questions, but there are more questions to be asked than that. What was their goal? No money was taken from the shop, and it doesn't look like anything was stolen from the shop either."
"I don't know, I mean, Han was a d*ck," Charlotte commented. "He had a lot of enemies, so there would be a lot of people who wanted to kill him."
"That's very true, but remember where we are," Himmy replied, pointing to the large man on the floor. "That man is around 120 kg. It would take a lot for any normal person to topple him down. And remember what I said before about there being no struggle."
"Someone was able to kill both of them with no struggle. The only people we know capable of that are Pagna warriors. But if we ignore all of the sword wounds on their bodies, there's no sign of martial art techniques being used on them, apart from a clean hole that goes through the heart and one that goes through the head."
At a glance, Charlotte didn't notice it, but now that Himmy had pointed it out and she went in for a closer look, she could see it. But she quickly pulled away before throwing up all over the place.
"Are you trying to imply what I think you're implying?" Charlotte asked.
"Yes, I am," Himmy replied with a large smile on his face. "I think we might have another otherworlder who has arrived, and I'm a detective, not a police officer."