Chapter 130 – Karma

A blond young man stood outside a stone house, pinching a gemstone vial between his thumb and index finger. A turquoise liquid swirled inside, giving the onlookers pause. They all stood some distance from Jason, torn between their fear of the Divine Root and their curiosity over these new elixirs.

As for Jason himself, he wasn’t paying them any attention, focusing on the Aurora Dew itself. Gathering some mana in his eyes, he activated Karmic Vision, watching countless thin threads of all colours appear in the world. They branched out from every object and every person, stretching into the distance.

‘Too much.’ he squinted as the dizzying tapestry manifested all around him.

Unable to discern anything noteworthy through the tangled web, Jason lowered the intensity of mana in his eyes, dialling his magical sense down a notch. That filtered many of the threads out, leaving only the most prominent ones. Sadly, they were still way too many to make out anything important.

People who didn’t have a karma affinity would probably be surprised at just how many of these invisible connections existed in the world. Every time two objects interacted, a new thread formed. They did fade away slowly, and they could even disappear entirely given enough time, but they could also grow brighter if the objects in question continued to interact.

‘It was never going to work with just the elixir.’ he smiled bitterly.

Jason had already tried to locate the alchemist many times, but there were dozens if not hundreds of threads attached to the substance. Technically, he could filter out the ones connected to the vial if he moved the liquid to a different container. However, there were plenty fixed to the elixir itself. After all, it had been brewed from multiple materials, each of which had been harvested by somebody else, from various places across Remior. And each of them had probably been handled by many hands too, before eventually ending in the Alchemists’ Guild.

‘Luckily, we have more clues now.’ he grinned.

Taking some clothes from that Nesha girl’s house, he cross-referenced their threads with the ones attached to the Aurora Dew. There were too many to sift through, but he didn’t care about all of them. The only ones that mattered were the shared ones, as one of those would take him to the girl. This allowed him to cut the number down massively.

‘That’s only on the elixir… That one is only on the clothes… I tracked those three yesterday… Hmmm… Let’s see where this one leads.’

Suffice to say, investigating all the trails one by one was a time-consuming process. However, Jason wasn’t too bothered, having been trained for this job his whole life. It was his specialty – the role he had been assigned since a young age. Using his rare affinity to accomplish something only a handful of people on Remior were capable of filled him with pride and purpose. So, he hadn’t let his failures over the past few weeks get to him.

‘I’ll find that bitch soon enough.’

Eventually, the trail led him to another stone house in the settlement. Knocking on the door, he waited for a few seconds, until a young man in a yellow robed opened. Initially, the guy sported an annoyed expression. He looked like he was about to swear, though he quickly swallowed his words the very next moment, the colour draining from his face upon seeing Jason standing there.

“Do you know a Nesha Veritas?” Jason asked, cutting to the chase.

The man stared at him in confusion for a moment, before shaking his head.

“Are you an alchemist, or are you friends with one?” Jason asked again, getting the same answer back.

He frowned, unsure why the guy seemed so clueless. He didn’t look like he had the balls to lie to him, and the karmic threads never lied either. Nesha and the Aurora Dew both shared a connection to this place for some reason.

‘Maybe it’s just something tangential.’ he reasoned, guessing this was another dead-end.

Though he didn’t give up just yet.

“How long have you been living in this house?”

“I only moved in two weeks ago.” the man finally found the courage to speak, his answer causing Jason to raise an eyebrow.

If the previous owner left right around when they arrived at the Guild, he could very easily be Nesha’s collaborator – the very person they were after!

“Oh? Do you have any idea who lived here before you?”

Unfortunately, the young man hadn’t a clue. He merely directed Jason to the official building in charge of housing.

‘I’ll find you, whoever you are…’

***

“Well?” Deimos asked, waiting for his daily report.

Jason grimaced, the prospect of returning to his superior for the billionth time without any tangible results made his blood boil. Sadly, today’s investigation had failed again.

“I followed a new trail today. It took me to the house of some boy who was last spotted about a month ago, so I really thought he was the one.”

Deimos perked up at the sound of that, which only pissed Jason off more.

“And?”

“Nothing. He was just some Red-born runt from House Avalon. He was young and he’d only been in the Guild for a few years. I don’t know if he was one of Nesha’s regulars at the gambling den who happened to get close to the vial by accident, or if Nesha hired him at some point to deliver the elixirs somewhere. Either way, he couldn’t be our target.”

Deimos nodded, though Jason didn’t miss his boss’s clenched fists and gritted teeth.

“It would still be a good idea to interrogate him. He might know where the girl is, or he’ll at least help you locate her more easily. Where did he go?”

“Who knows?” Jason shrugged. “He couldn’t have escaped the Guild by himself, and I doubt Nesha was sentimental enough to bring him along. Since he isn’t in the settlement, they must’ve killed him and fed him to the wasps to cover their tracks.”

Deimos rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Jason. I’ve always considered you my most capable subordinate, but you’ve really let me down over the past few weeks.”

Hearing his boss chastise him, it was Jason’s turn to clench his fists.

“What do you want me to do?! I’ve busted my ass looking fo–”

Deimos raised a hand to stop him.

“Just shut up and listen. If we go back to my father empty-handed, we’re fucked. So, whatever it is you’re doing, do it faster. Use the boy’s possessions too. He’s clearly just a side-character, but he was still involved with them. If you can find his corpse, it’s going to accelerate your search.”

***

‘It’s easier said than done.’ Jason grimaced, standing in that Red-born’s house, having already kicked its new tenant out.

Unfortunately, that Percy hadn’t left any traces here before leaving. All his possessions were gone, even the last stain having been scrubbed from the floor by the time he had left. There was nothing to track him down with!

‘Strange. Even if Nesha killed him, why would she bother wiping his house clean but not her own?’

Maybe the boy had done it himself, paranoid about Nesha tracking him down. Not that it did him much good in the end…

‘Ugggghhhh!! What a fucking mess this is!’

Of course, there was the house itself and the furniture inside, but those weren’t Percy’s personal possessions. They had changed many owners before him, and even the new guy had filled them up with new threads by now. Trying to cross-reference them with the other clues was only going to complicate things more.

Their only option at this point was to fall back to the Aurora Dew and Nesha’s clothes, exhausting the remaining trails. Sadly, they’d already investigated most of the threads leading somewhere inside the settlement, so they’d have to start looking at the ones extending outside.

‘There’s over a dozen of those…’

The worst part was that they stretched all over Remior, so investigating each one could take several months. If they got lucky, they might find Nesha after the first one, but if not, their search could easily last years.

Realizing how precarious his situation was, Jason kicked the bed away in rage, splitting its frame in half. The pieces exploded to splinters and shreds of cloth as they slammed against the wall.

Rubbing his temples, Jason tried to calm himself down. It was ultimately a gamble – whether or not they could locate the culprits before the Order’s patience ran out. Still, one thing was for certain. At least one of those shared threads did lead to Nesha.

‘And if I do find you, I swear I’m going to rip your head off your shoulders and smash it to pieces.’