Just a Dog

Lu Ji's house was turned upside down by Kaisai's Knights.

Kaisai stood outside, watching coldly. To be honest, he had already guessed the truth, but he still found it hard to believe—hard to believe that Ulu could have done such a thing.

So he waited here for evidence.

Before long, a Knight jogged out of Lu Ji's room and reported to Kaisai, "Knight Captain, a large amount of blood was indeed found in Father Luigi's room. Would you like to take a look?"

"Of course."

Kaisai impatiently pushed the Knight aside and strode straight into Lu Ji's room.

In this era, there was no way to identify a person through blood, but spells could reveal places that had been stained with blood—provided it had not been too long.

The moment he entered, Kaisai saw the scene before him.

With pale blue motes of magical dust drifting through the air, the crimson bloodstains stood out as starkly as if they had been spilled across pristine snow. They covered nearly the entire floor, as though every last drop of blood had been drained from someone's body.

There was no doubt that, without the aid of a specific spell or divine miracle, no one could have survived that much blood loss.

Kaisai narrowed his eyes and said softly, "It seems we have found Father Luigi's true place of death."

He thought of Lu Ji's corpse again. Its entire lower abdomen had been mangled, and there had been more than ten knife wounds across it. Those clearly were not normal injuries from a fight. The person who had killed Lu Ji seemed more likely to have been venting anger.

No matter what, they could at least confirm that Lu Ji had died here, rather than in the bar at the House of Pleasure.

That left only one final question.

Who had killed Lu Ji?

The answer to that question was obvious as well. Only two people lived in this courtyard, and the other person's room was less than fifty meters away from this one.

Lu Ji had been murdered, yet the other person fifty meters away knew nothing about it. Was that possible?

...It was not impossible, but the Rhine Knights had no need for evidence, especially when Visas' Corpse Pieces were involved.

Yet Kaisai resisted the possibility—the likely fact—that Ulu had killed Lu Ji. Deep down, he did not want to believe it.

It was not because he could not accept that "his old friend had done something so unforgivable." In terms of friendship, Lu Ji could be called Kaisai's friend more than Ulu ever could. If Lu Ji had been the one who betrayed Rhine, Kaisai would not have found it difficult to accept. He might even have thought it unsurprising that such a calculating bastard had done something like this. But it was Ulu.

Because in Kaisai's eyes, Ulu had merely been a dog raised by him and Lu Ji.

They had picked him up during that winter twenty years ago, fed him, taught him to read, made him a Father, and then...

That was what it meant to raise a dog. You fed it, clothed it, and let it grow bigger and stronger, not so it could stand as your equal, but only so it could continue pleasing you.

But now, this dog... had bitten back.

It had killed its master.

That filled Kaisai, another master, with boundless fury.

Thus, Kaisai would rather believe that cultists had used some special method to kill Lu Ji without Ulu's knowledge than believe that Ulu, that dog, had truly turned on his master.

Unfortunately, more evidence continued to point toward the answer Kaisai least wished to believe.

"Knight Captain! Bloodstains have also been found outside!" Before long, a Knight reported from outside.

Kaisai immediately walked out and saw the Knight pointing at a patch of freshly dug soil.

Before he even got close, Kaisai could already smell the faint stench of blood from the dirt.

"What is this?" Kaisai asked.

"By my estimation, Father Luigi's corpse was buried here for a time," the Knight said. "But not for long. It was dug up the next day."

Before Kaisai could speak, another Knight came jogging over from Ulu's house.

"Knight Captain!" The Knight held out a priest's robe drenched in blood before Kaisai. "This was found in Father Ulu's room."

Kaisai narrowed his eyes slightly.

Now it all fit. Every piece fit.

Kaisai could already reconstruct everything that had happened here.

Ulu had killed Lu Ji and buried the body. On the day Kaisai arrived, Lu Ji's corpse had been buried just fifty meters away from him!

The thought sent a chill down Kaisai's spine.

That man, that dog, that... toy he and Lu Ji had kept beneath them for twenty years, had actually done something like this!

He had actually dared to do something like this!

Kaisai's body trembled slightly, not from fear, but from rage.

It was the fury of a master threatened by the dog he had raised.

"That man," he said quietly. "Where is he?"

Though he had not shown it outright, the Knights who knew Kaisai understood that he was on the verge of erupting.

But they truly did not know where Ulu had gone, so they did not know how to answer Kaisai.

Just then, a Knight shoved three servants forward.

"Knight Captain!" The Knight forced the three trembling servants to their knees, then said, "These three were the last ones to see Father Ulu."

Kaisai's gaze swept over the three servants' faces, and he nodded faintly.

"Good," he said softly. "Tell me where he is."

Ulu stopped on a familiar yet unfamiliar dirt road.

He looked hesitantly at the road leading out of town.

It was familiar because he had walked it for many years.

But it was unfamiliar because he had not come here in twenty years.

Ever since he had personally lit that fire, he had never returned.

He had never imagined that one day, he would walk this road again.

"What is it?" Bai Wei's voice sounded in Ulu's mind. "Is there a problem?"

"No, Visas-sama." Ulu came back to his senses and shook his head. "No, there is no problem."

He took a deep breath. The chilly wind scraped painfully through his nostrils, just like... back then.

Then he lifted his foot and stepped onto the road that had once led home.