The air was filled with a scent like rust, mixed with a musty, aged odor, instinctively making one feel uncomfortable.
The hallway was already quite narrow because of facilities like the power distribution room and fan room in the basement, but various discarded debris were piled up at the end of the aisle, making it even harder to move around.
But upon closer inspection, one could see that the debris was not truly piled up in a disorderly fashion; it was more like it had been intentionally placed there to obstruct one's vision and movement, making people as uninterested as possible in the space behind the hallway.
Asakura and the others pushed aside the debris and walked deep into the hallway.
The depths of the hallway led to the very edge of the basement, an open area sandwiched between various rooms, not very large in size.
On the ground in the center of the open space, a complex pattern had been outlined with black marks.
The lines were not neat, as if they had been traced repeatedly, crisscrossing and overlapping to form a closed and eerie structure.
The marks had already begun to dry and were dark in color, yet they remained clearly visible on the concrete floor—at this moment, Ruri suddenly realized that this was not black paint, but the color of dried and oxidized blood.
The space inside the pattern appeared exceptionally clean, forming an abrupt contrast with the dust around it, as if it had been deliberately preserved by some force.
In the very center of the magic circle, a body remained.
He lay on his back in an unnatural posture. His torso had split open from the inside out, the outline having lost its integrity as a 'human'. Organs were scattered all over the ground, limbs were rigidly extended, and his skin had a grayish-white hue, as if its warmth and vitality had been rapidly drained away.
Haruno's throat moved unnaturally, as if she were forcefully suppressing the urge to vomit.
Ruri's complexion also looked unhealthy—even though she was always spouting lines that sounded high-class, she was, after all, just a fourteen-year-old girl, and the scene before her was still too much of a shock.
Asakura, however, didn't feel much.
After all, compared to facing an Evil God directly, this level of grotesque scene was simply too childish. For Asakura, whose sanity was already as hard as iron, it had absolutely no impact.
To one side of the magic circle lay a thick book.
The cover was not leather, but a whole piece of treated skin; the texture was still discernible, and the touch seemed to retain its former suppleness.
The edges of the pages were uneven, glued together by some dark substance, with faint traces of age showing through.
It lay there quietly, without any protection, yet it was exceptionally eerie.
Asakura thought for a moment, cast the Magic Spell [Scale] on his hands, and then picked up the skin book from the ground, lightly flipping it open.
It was evident that this book had been around for some years; the pages were as brittle and thin as a cracker, and might shatter with the slightest bit of force.
The text on it was not within his range of knowledge, likely some obscure ancient script. However, as knowledge related to 'Magic', it was still parsed by the Nameless Magic Book in his mind and projected next to the skin book in the form of an item description.
"It is a type of black magic centered on sacrifice," Asakura gave a light hum. "Summoning and briefly trapping an Evil God to force it into a transaction... they really thought of everything."
"An Evil God..." Ruri, whose face was somewhat pale, furrowed her brows.
Admittedly, due to differences in knowledge, the 'Evil God' recorded in the skin book was likely just a monster like the Fox Monster, rather than a multi-dimensional Evil God like Kuri Tia in the true sense. However, even so, it was not something an ordinary person could mess with lightly.
The so-called 'magic' in this book was full of loopholes in Asakura's eyes.
To say nothing of the rest, the mere act of 'trapping an Evil God' was not something that could be accomplished by just casually drawing a few lines with blood and chanting a few meaningless incantations.
So, was the person in the center of the magic circle the poor sap who had been sacrificed? Asakura mused.
But soon, he discovered a notebook among the scattered organs.
Compared to the skin book, that notebook was much more normal, likely the type one could buy at a stationery store for a few hundred yen, about the size of a student ID, and portable. It was just that the binding was much more exquisite.
The notebook contained many words written in Japanese. Asakura flipped through it roughly. Most of the content was a translation of the ancient script from the skin book, and some parts even had notes, though it was unclear whether they were the notebook owner's own insights or copied from other books.
The more he read, the tighter Asakura's brow furrowed.
"What is it?" Haruno, who had never seen him—the one who always liked to crack jokes—wear such an expression, couldn't help but ask in a low voice.
"This guy had a lot of guts," Asakura clicked his tongue.
"How so?" asked Ruri, who was trying hard not to keep looking at the corpse, her complexion having improved slightly.
According to the research train of thought written by the notebook's owner, the other party's greed was even greater than what was in the skin book. He wasn't satisfied with briefly trapping an Evil God to exchange for a transaction (or rather, getting the other party to fulfill a wish), but was coveting the Evil God's power.
"He intended to improve the summoning of the Evil God and the trapping part... and then, through even more evil black magic, sew a part of the Evil God onto himself, making it his other half, in order to exchange it for a forced ascension of his life."
Asakura explained, "And the price for this was every life in this building, except for his own."
"Wait a second, if it was all the lives in this building... What? Not just people? Do rats and cockroaches count too?...Alright, anyway, if all life in this building was the sacrifice, then what about the grotesque corpse on the magic circle?" Haruno raised her doubts.
"It must be the practitioner himself," Ruri guessed. "This isn't a magic circle for sacrifice, but a magic circle for 'receiving power' or something similar, used after the sacrifice is completed to receive power from the Evil God. In the end, he split apart because that terrifying power was not something a human could withstand."
"Normally speaking, it should be just as Ruri guessed," Asakura nodded. "Normally speaking."
"What is the meaning of that meaningful tone..." Haruno retorted.
"I don't doubt that this matter was led by the poor sap in that magic circle. Even if we took this notebook to the police department's forensics division for examination, the final conclusion would likely be 'it is the owner's notebook'."
"Isn't that something to celebrate? A guy who regarded other people's lives as bargaining chips to be discarded at will ended up suffering the consequences, and the black magic that fed on human lives ended in failure and termination. It's a proper Happy End, is there any other problem?" Haruno asked, rubbing her temples.
"Because the thing that was summoned was wrong," Asakura said.
"Ah, come to think of it..." Haruno suddenly realized why she always felt something was a bit off when Asakura was explaining.
Whether it was the content in the skin book or the notebook, they all recorded summoning an Evil God and trading with it, but in reality, the things that appeared in the mist, whether it was Siren Head or The Birdwatcher, could not be considered Evil Gods by any stretch; they were just simple 'monsters'.
"What follows is just my speculation," Asakura continued. "This kind of massive spell is difficult for one person to control alone, and pure research also requires a considerable amount of time and money... If the poor sap on this magic circle could be identified, I suspect his relationship with this building wasn't very significant. And do you remember our initial deduction?"
"Someone who could use the entire building as a sacrifice would need to have a certain claim to the ownership of the building, or at least be 'managing' the building?" Haruno immediately recalled Asakura's previous words.
"That's right... so this poor sap needed help—whether it was financially, or in the selection of sacrifices..."
Asakura continued to organize his thoughts. "A qualified assistant could provide maximum convenience and help to his plan, and the price he needed to pay might just be a vague, ethereal promise, like health, like longevity, like power..."
Haruno, who had been a bit skeptical about how someone could be crazy enough to provide assistance to such a sociopathic guy, fell silent.
Only by being in this circle could she better understand how great a price some people, who already possessed enough wealth, were willing to pay for their health or a longer life.
A mere building and the lives of some people unrelated to them were simply insignificant.
"Then why did it end up like this in the end?" Ruri continued to ask.
"There are many possibilities. For example, being accidentally discovered midway, and then a young protagonist team, after an experience that could be called an action-adventure movie, risked their lives to destroy the evil villain's evil plan; or perhaps the poor sap's research was just a pile of crap, and the magic crashed before it even took off; or perhaps everything was going very smoothly, but the result was that they inexplicably summoned monsters, directly causing the magic to fail and backfire, making him split apart... and so on."
Asakura said casually. "However, I personally feel that perhaps when he was bluffing the investor, although he told the other party most of the plan truthfully, he deliberately withheld a portion—for example, that once this black magic was completed, he would be the only one in the entire building to survive, and even the investor watching from the side would be sacrificed as an offering—after all, only in this way can one count as an evil villain character."
"As a result, that investor also kept a wary eye, realized the truth he was hiding, and so backstabbed him at the last moment, causing the black magic to fail, which led to a deviation in the summoning, not bringing in the designated Evil God, but calling in a batch of inexplicable monsters. And the backlash of the magic made this poor sap split apart directly."
"Why does Asakura-san think so?" Haruno asked curiously.
She always felt that Asakura wouldn't say such things without reason.
"Because the amount of blood is wrong," Asakura pointed to the grotesque corpse on the ground.
For an average person, with this kind of death where the body splits open and turns inside out, there should be a massive amount of blood.
But the bloodstains on the ground were far from numerous, to the point that even the drawn magic circle looked very clear and was not covered by bloodstains.
Even more bizarrely, when walking into the basement, one could smell a fairly strong scent of rust. This smell was so strong that even the odor of the decomposing corpse was covered up quite a bit—this was clearly the smell of blood, but the bloodstains at the scene did not match this strong smell at all.
This means that after that poor sap died, his blood likely underwent some unknown changes.
Regardless, guessing randomly now is useless. Asakura glanced at Ruri, whose complexion was still very poor, and asked the girl, "Ruri, are you okay?"
"It's just a mere corpse... ugh..." Ruri just wanted to be stubborn, but couldn't help but dry heave. She could only mutter with a somewhat embarrassed, straight face, "The ventilation here is too poor."
"Otherwise, let's leave here first." Haruno's complexion was also not very good; clearly, the smell here was unbearable for her as well.
"Then let's move towards the first floor—although I would really like to say that, but how does that saying go again."
Asakura turned around with a smile and said towards the direction of the hallway, "The murderer... always returns to the scene of the crime. Right, Mr. Murderer?"
Haruno was startled and immediately turned back, only to see a shriveled old man standing in the hallway.
She felt this old man was subtly familiar, and then immediately remembered that this guy seemed to have a photo in the list of personnel in charge in the corner of the lobby; it seemed he was the security captain of the building?
No... it wasn't just that...
The girl's delicate mind raced, and she quickly found the true source of this familiarity from her memory.
"This guy... seems to have appeared outside the building just now." She reminded Asakura.
Before Asakura and the others quietly entered the building, there were already some figures outside, but at that time she thought they were all self-media bloggers or rescue personnel or something.
"I don't understand what you little brats are talking about, but this is a place where unauthorized personnel are prohibited from entering, and it is also a crime scene. I advise you to behave yourselves—" The old security guard narrowed his eyes and warned.
"Let's skip the boring debate session. I guess there is no blood of your own left in your veins."
But Asakura said to him a step earlier, "Anyway, it's just going to the hospital to test the blood. I think the police, who are eager to solve the case, shouldn't mind a little trouble, right?"
"..." The old man stared at him viciously.
"What are you looking at? We are three young people here. You don't think you, an old man, can stop the three of us here, do you!" Asakura continued to clamor like a street thug in an anime who would be easily taken care of by the big Boss.
"...This is what you asked for." The old security guard grinned, revealing jagged, yellow teeth.
Blood-red threads spread from his body, and then three figures hanging by red ropes descended from the ceiling.
The old man said: "I want their blood."
"—Kill them."