When night came, and Heldion showed up to take his shift, I told him that there was no need to bother and to just go home to his girlfriend–For extra efficiency in convincing him not to even try to argue that I should rest after a long day of work, I immediately implied what it was that he could possibly do with his beastfolk girlfriend, making him retreat in embarrassment… I wish there were someone waiting for me at home with whom I could do the same thing…

  Anyway! I had the entire restaurant all to myself to dispose of the remains. The trespasser’s body hadn’t even had the time to start making a mess when I pulled him out of the suit–It really was a good thing that Leton and I had bought off that restaurant in that Heldinotian city… I think it was called Randlac or something of the like.

  I carried the corpse to the kitchen, where I removed the clothes and shoved them in a firewood furnace, making sure that everything was properly burnt away without any chance of anyone finding even a piece of it. As for the corpse itself… I grabbed a cleaver and some other tools. The first thing I did was hang the body upside down to drain it of its blood. I didn’t want to make any more of a mess than was absolutely necessary.

  The sanguine substance was stocked into bottles that I was going to dispose of later. I could probably do it down one of the drains in the kitchen, or even perhaps in the employee-only area where workers were provided showers to use if they so desired–However, I did not trust that it would be good enough. What if someone came by and was able to smell that a great amount of blood had travelled down the restaurant’s drains?

  No. I was going to dump them outside the city. It was safer this way.

  Once the blood was dealt with, it was time to get to the cleaving. I chopped up the body into many pieces, scalping the heads and putting the scalp into a bag before separating the bones from the flesh… Then, I used a hammer to crush the bones into dust, shoving everything into the same bag the scalp was in.

  Then, I brought out a meat tenderiser to flatten the flesh, putting it all into a separate bag. After making sure that the bags didn’t have any holes in them or were otherwise compromised, I did some thorough cleaning of the kitchen and very casually exited the restaurant with the bags in my possession.

  For now, I only brought them to my house and hid them there before quickly returning to the restaurant to take care of the video footage. I deleted, replaced, and altered what the cameras had recorded just like I had done previously. I checked everything over several times, acted like I was patrolling and checking the restaurant when I really was just making sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.

  The suit was back in its spot after having been cleaned. The kitchen was spotless, and I hadn’t forgotten even a second of footage that required attention.

  I leaned back in the night watcher’s chair. Sighing with a smile on my face. To anyone who might end up investigating this man’s disappearance, my restaurant would not appear as a zone of interest at all. Quite the opposite, in fact…

  It didn’t matter if some eyewitnesses might have seen him come in. Who was more believable? A random person who thought they had seen the guy? Or my fine establishment’s cameras? No one but me should even be aware that footage could be manipulated to the extent that it had been. Neither I nor my business could possibly be blamed for this.

  Bad press had been avoided… Nonetheless, I needed to figure out what had happened.

  The steel skeletons had moved and killed this man before returning to normal, as if nothing had happened. I could know for certain, but it had to have been my fault somehow, right? Right as I decided that I was going to murder the intruder in the most painful way I could think of–The inanimate automatons had sprung to life and inflicted excruciating, but not immediately lethal damage.

  The man had had his arms snapped and shattered in several spots, and his neck had been damaged enough to ensure that his death would be a slow suffocation while in utter agony. It was like I had accidentally taken control of the automatons to make them do my bidding.

  It couldn’t be the case, though… Right? I was a dud when it came to energy manipulation or anything magic-related. I had no talent in any way of power, even when it came to knight skills, the few I had been able to pick up had been through excruciating training, and even then, I had only learned them with the skin of my teeth… And these had been normally ‘simple’ skills for trainee knights to pick up.

  I found it highly unlikely that I actually had some sort of special ability. It had been so long since I had been born, and it was only showing up now? It didn’t make sense to me, but all I could think of pointed to the fact that it was my will that had spurned the inactive steel skeletons to have a spark of life. A burst of a desire to kill, main, and harm…

  Could I… Could I control this? Did it have something to do with my sudden genius in all that is machine-related? Was this really some sort of innate ability or something like it? Had I inherited it from Leton following his death…? No, he definitely would have told me if he could freaking control non-powered automatons like this. It was way too brag-worthy an ability for him not to tell me about it. He literally told me everything. Why wouldn’t he mention such a nifty ability?

  There had to be something else about this. I should try to learn more about it–Huh?

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  I suddenly felt light and somewhat nauseous… I was able to keep it together until the day watcher arrived to take his shift. He didn’t seem to notice anything off about me, and while I was an excellent actress, I shouldn't have been able to hide an unusually pale face. Therefore, I assumed that I didn’t look sick despite feeling like it.

  I definitely need to go back home…

  The dark spectre was utterly and completely ignored as I made my way out the front door.

  I found a familiar face pacing in front of the restaurant, and he saw me as well, which startled him–So I could assume that he had been expecting to see me coming to the restaurant in the morning, not coming out of it.

  “Ah! Mara… Happy birthday!”

  Maarkus smiled as he handed me a wrapped-up present.

  I blinked for a moment. I had completely forgotten that today was my and Leton’s birthday… It wasn’t something on my mind anymore. We would never invite anyone over to party or anything like this. We would just eat good food and have a nice day together. Now that he was gone, the main point of celebrating my birthday was no longer here.

  The cleric scratched his face and swallowed his saliva.

  “I… I remembered that Leton had mentioned wanting to give you this… Huh… You can open it at home, I won’t hold your leg since it looks like you did the night shift!”

  Maarkus was obviously feeling embarrassed about giving me a gift and quickly made his escape. He probably felt like he was overstepping his boundaries since I had already rejected him in the past. What a silly little guy… A present Leton wanted to gift me, he said?

  I put it under my arm and continued walking onward, but it seemed like today was a special day, as I ran into a face I hadn’t seen in a while. Garbed in armour, the helm held in hand, and carrying large bags full of personal belongings–I recognised the redhead before I could even see her in full.

  She recognised me as well and ran up to me, her baggage seeming light in her grasp despite looking like they were about to burst with how packed they were…

  “Mara! Happy birthday! I think it is today? What a coincidence that I would finish my training right on this day!”

  “Well, it makes sense if you think about it… You are a beautiful gift, Elowen”

  “Ahah… You’re going to make me blush! But really, I must thank you again for recommending me to this knight establishment. I don’t know if I could have made it without your help”

  “No need to thank me. You’ve always had the talent for it, Sweetie. I just happened to be the one to find the diamond in the rough… What are you going to do now? Are you going to join the establishment as a knight? Enrol in the army? Or maybe aim higher as a knight in general?”

  “Actually… I am not exactly one who likes to travel or engage in… Politics. I didn’t realise, but they do politics in knight establishments! This is terrible. I can’t stay in one place with this going on. It isn’t for me. So, huh… I was wondering if maybe… I could offer my services in one of your businesses?”

  Elowen was visibly uncomfortable asking me for a favour when I had already done her one via the recommendations, but I wouldn’t get mad about something so benign. Actually, I was glad about this. I was quite fond of Elowen, so having her work for me would ensure that I would be able to see her often.

  I smiled even though my head felt like it was being split in half.

  “Funny you would mention this… I am planning on opening a new location. What do you think about working as a day guard there when it opens?”

  “It would be my honour!”

  I pulled her into a hug with my free arm, pressing her face against my chest as I ruffled her red hair. She had grown into a fine woman since I had first met her. She was still a head shorter than me, but was definitely still tall for a woman. Despite her tomboyish looks and knight training, age had only made her look more feminine and beautiful. Hopefully, she wouldn’t end up like me and would find herself a good man quickly.

  Elowen did not seem to have heard the news of my brother’s death. It wasn’t surprising. Knight establishments usually isolated themselves a fair bit, and knowing her, she had been training without rest during the entire duration of her stay.

  She would hear about it eventually, but there was no need to bring down the mood of our reunion. The tomboy hadn’t even been that familiar with Leton anyway, so it didn’t make much sense to mention it to her. As much as I loved my brother, I understood that his slightly antisocial tendencies meant that most people had only known him as the genius mechanist who worked in the background. The face of the restaurant had always been me.

  As such, few people actually felt deeply about his passing since few people had ever actually known him.

  Leton would have deserved to be mourned by many, though, that was for sure…

  …I was getting more and more nauseous. I accelerated my step and locked myself in my house. I placed the gift down on a table before letting myself fall face-first into my bed… I am fairly certain I fell asleep–Or perhaps unconscious–As soon as I hit the pillow.

  When I woke up, my headache and nausea were gone, but had been replaced by something else–I could feel my guts churning and my throat prickling… I rushed to the bathroom, puking down into the latrines for minutes on end to the point of feeling winded.

  It wasn’t food that I was vomiting, but a sort of filthy, squirming black tar.

  After a dozen minutes, it all stopped, and I felt myself getting better as I caught my breath.

  I sat against the wall, looking down at my hands in a daze.

  …I felt… I did not know how to describe it. My emotions had never felt clearer. My knuckles and fingers cracked as I clenched my fists. I had never realised the extent of the anger I had been burying deep within me.

  It was time to make her pay.

  She thinks it’s funny?

  I’ll show her.