Another clue also supported this theory: the Silent Watcher's method of attack.
After their encounter, Colin was certain that it first used the eyes covering its body to launch a "mental attack." Then, once its prey had lost the ability to resist, it came over and smashed them to death with its candelabra.
If she had been hit by a "mental attack," there was no way she could have been sitting so "properly." She would have been clutching her head, wailing and screaming. But there wasn't a single sign of a struggle.
Aberrations had an overwhelming urge to kill humans. They would never leave you with a whole corpse just because you gave up resisting.
So it was safe to say that she had died at the hands of something else before the Lord-level Aberration got to her.
Since she was already dead, the Silent Watcher had only taken a quick look before losing its urge to attack.
These monsters had always been remarkably... forgiving toward corpses.
Then it had left.
That was precisely why Colin had assumed it was the killer.
Of course, those weren't the only things that had alerted Colin to a problem and led him to start drawing connections.
There was something else—the "Treasure Map fragments."
"Why did she have Treasure Map fragments?"
Based on the information he had so far...
Treasure Map fragments only appeared in Trigger Quests, and Trigger Quests...
Almost no one in the entire world had completed one.
Some people had completed "easy" Trigger Quests, but they'd died afterward, leaving behind warnings for those who came after them: "Don't do Trigger Quests."
Only a handful of lucky people—fewer than ten—had completed their quests and, like Colin, managed to escape the hunt of a Lord-level Aberration and survive.
Suppose she was one of