Chapter 111: Controlled Chaos

"Ugh, getting your throat slit doesn’t feel very good."

"You can say that again! We barely managed to stay in character, but it’s strange that the doppelgänger didn’t die instantly."

"Hmm, well, we don’t know how a doppelganger works. It’s something created by an artifact. Maybe it’s a being made mostly of mana, which is why it doesn’t have the vital points of living beings."

"Oh! That makes sense. It’s not like we actually checked, since we blew it up. Maybe next time!"

"Okay, this isn’t over yet—we have to sort things out with Amy."

Well, it looks like those two will handle what’s left—I’ve done my part.

Now that I’m without a body, I’m just a parallel thought waiting in the wings.

I just hope that the fact the doppelganger died doesn’t mean the artifact that created it gets damaged.

Still, what just happened... That was crazy.

And, to be honest, pretty exciting.

But the reason I had to do all that makes me angry every time I think about it.

Because I was able to confirm that the mana signature the investigators were looking for was Amy’s.

That meant someone was trying to frame her for Stella’s murder.

I was naive to think no one would touch her until her daughters became more prominent.

At some point, someone tricked Amy into imbuing an artifact with her mana, and when they committed the murder, they let it disperse.

Luckily, I was there.

I needed to find a way to throw the investigation off track, destroy any connection that might lead back to her, and, above all, give the investigators another target to pursue.

Many things played an important role in making that happen: the Jester’s and , Berserker’s Heart, the skills Morphogenesis, Storage, and Bomb Trick, the reward cards, the Unique Ascension Card, the Mimetic Card, and, of course, the system store, which seemed to have everything.

Originally, I planned to go to the homes of people close to Stella, plant several bombs, and create as much chaos as possible.

I would kill some of them if possible, leave various mana signatures at the crime scenes, and make everything seem much more confusing than it actually was.

And amid that chaos, find a scapegoat.

But then I discovered that they were all gathered at the restaurant.

So I had to improvise.

I took one of the maids working for my targets, killed her somewhere out of sight, and impersonated her.

I knew the general personalities of all the concubines present, especially Miyako’s.

Itsuki talks about her a lot. Mainly because she doesn’t like her at all.

Miyako was exactly the kind of person Itsuki described.

And she started hitting me with ease.

And, to be honest, it hurt like hell.

Luckily, my defense was one of my strongest points, so I was able to hold out while I did what I needed to do.

As she struck me, Miyako released mana.

This allowed me to use one of my most important resources: the Heart of Jester.

That artifact, shaped like a deck of cards, had four interesting functions, but the most useful one in that situation was that it allowed me to store a mana signature.

And it wasn’t as simple as storing mana to release it later, like many other artifacts.

Simply by storing the signature, I could generate more mana from it, and—more importantly—the card could be absorbed, making the bearer appear to possess the stored signature.

In other words, I could make someone appear to be someone else from the mana’s perspective.

And thanks to that, I was able to copy her signature without her noticing.

That was exactly what I needed for the next part. That’s where another important skill came into play.

Bomb Trick (2)

It was one of the skills I acquired when we fought that group of pursuers after the date.

It was one of the Jester’s skills and one of the few in that profession that was actually useful in combat.

The skill was simple.

Anything I infused with my mana could turn into a bomb.

Depending on my will, I could make it explode as a light bomb, a stun bomb, a pure damage bomb—and I even knew I could make a confetti bomb or combinations of the previous ones.

It was an interesting skill, but it had a clear limitation due to its limited rank.

And every time I thought about it, I couldn’t help but think of one of the cards I’d obtained during the same anomalous event where I got the Jester’s Heart and the Berserker’s Heart.

The Unique Ascension Card.

According to the system, that card could elevate any ability to the Unique rank.

And, for some reason, I felt with every fiber of my being that if there was one ability I should use it on, it had to be Bomb Trick.

So I did.

Next came the following piece.

I bought a cheap mana crystal at the store.

Mana stones were a kind of condensed, solid mana and were used primarily as batteries—both for magical artifacts and technologies, as well as for people.

However, for living beings to be able to use them directly, they had to undergo a refining process.

Over time, people took it even further and modified the process to turn them into a kind of stimulant.

Consuming a modified one could provide powerful enhancements or, at least temporarily, a second source of mana.

But I didn’t need any of that.

The important thing is that the mana crystals were, for the most part, pure mana.

And pure mana was extremely easy to influence with other mana.

As soon as I infused my mana into the crystal, it began to take on my mana signature.

That meant that, with a minimal amount of my own mana, I could turn an entire crystal into a bomb.

So my main self bought one of the cheapest, most rudimentary crystals for a hundred Myr.

I didn’t need them to be high quality.

I just needed them to explode.

During the first explosion, I memorized the positions of everyone present.

And, with my eyes closed, I did what I had to do.

I used the Heart of the Berserker; its original form was a large axe, but it had an interesting ability to transform into any type of weapon.

In that brief moment, I slit Miyako’s throat—she was standing right next to me.

I stashed her body in the storage.

I immediately copied her appearance, and during the beating, I had already obtained her mana signature and absorbed the card.

My main self sent me a set of clothes similar to hers that he’d bought at the store.

It wasn’t identical, but in the midst of all that chaos, no one had time to notice such details.

And on top of that, I was basically indistinguishable from the original.

From that moment on, I was Miyako.

My next target was Ayame, whom I killed just as quickly, and the one after that was Avelia.

However, during the beating, I’d noticed something strange in the gaze of Reina, the group’s supposed mascot.

And so I changed my target.

I attacked her.

And I confirmed that I hadn’t been mistaken. Reina wasn’t what she seemed.

It also meant I had to improvise again.

I wanted to get some information out of her, but acting as I usually did would risk her ratting me out later.

So I played the part of someone who enjoys doing everything just for fun—a crazy person.

I accused Reina. I said absurd things. I talked about conspiracies. I made up accusations and exaggerations.

I think the adrenaline of the moment made me get carried away.

But, oddly enough, it felt way too good.

It was fun.

Besides, some of those accusations didn’t come completely out of thin air.

A lot of it came from what Itsuki had told me and what I’d figured out on my own.

They were rumors, assumptions, comments.

But they were enough.

I didn’t know to what extent those things were true.

And, really, I didn’t need to know.

I just needed my words to sound reasonable enough.

I had to implicate bigwigs like the queens.

In the end, all of this still had the same goal.

To find the real culprit.

And, more importantly, to clear Amy of all blame.

And Miyako was perfect in every way.

Itsuki talked a lot about what a bunch of trash she and her maids were.

And most importantly:

Miyako was, along with Stella, one of the people who bullied Amy.

She was already on my blacklist.

So I thought:

Why not use her?

She was perfect.

She had a bad enough reputation.

She had enemies, a history of violence, and she was in the right place.

So by the time I left the restaurant, I’d already changed my plan again.

And I gave the maid—whose name I’d forgotten, or maybe never even heard—the card bearing Amy’s mana signature; she accepted it, believing it was a protective artifact given to her by her mistress.

I also gave her the mana crystals.

And they really were refined mana crystals.

Unlike the unrefined ones, these cost five hundred Myrr each.

This really cost me a lot of money, but for my lovely Amy, it was worth it.

The only modification those crystals had was that I’d infused them with my mana.

With all that taken care of, I led them straight to the research group.

I knew their location thanks to the card I’d left behind when I was verifying that the person they were looking for was Amy.

The Heart of Jester had a secondary function beyond its four main ones, which allowed me to sense the location of the cards.

The result of all that was brutal—or at least I think so, since I didn’t see the outcome because I was running away; I just heard the explosions and slimy sounds.

And to help me escape, one of my most powerful cards to date came into play.

The Mimetic Card.

I obtained it during the "Chains of Lethargy" mission.

Its function was quite simple.

It could replicate any other card I currently owned or had ever owned.

And I decided to use it to copy the most useful card I’d obtained during that first anomalous event.

The Card of Exchange.

It allowed me to get one item from the store, with no limit.

And what I traded for again was something from the unique items section.

Just like the Doppelganger Mirror, it was a unique-rank artifact.

Traveler’s Watch

It was a pocket watch that allowed me to set sixteen coordinates and instantly teleport to any of them.

There were certain restrictions.

For example, I couldn’t change the coordinates within a certain period of time.

But that wasn’t important right now.

Before all this started, I had already saved some coordinates, one of which was a quiet, secluded spot I happened to pass by.

So, when the explosions happened...

I used it.

With that, I’d accomplished my main goal: to steer Amy away from the investigation. Now the prime suspect, "Miyako," had disappeared.

And the investigators could only follow the trail of what had been said about the fourth queen.

..

I’d picked up on some interesting things, and if I waited, others might come to light on their own.

But I still wasn’t satisfied. I felt I could still cause more chaos and get more out of a situation that might never happen again.

Not to mention that I wanted to take down that old capybara, whom I’d planted one of my cards on.

But after teleporting—just a few seconds later, when I was about to erase any trace of my Miyako identity—I felt that strange sensation of being watched again.

It was the same feeling I’d had ever since I killed Ayame at the restaurant, and it felt so ambiguous that it could just as easily have been my imagination.

But once again, it seems my instincts are right.

There was someone there.

Someone watching me.

Someone meticulous.

Someone prepared.

Someone who had taken me seriously.

They had waited patiently.

They had let everything happen and unfold in order to understand me, to hunt me down.

And when they finally found the opportunity,

they snapped the trap shut and caught me before I could do anything else.

That brought me back down to earth and reminded me of something important.

Up until that moment, I’d only been playing in the minor leagues.

A bunch of concubines And maids.

People who hadn’t really fought in years.

With little tricks, it was possible to surprise, deceive, manipulate them.

But that didn’t mean those same tricks would work against someone truly powerful.

She had proven that to me.

And even though I blew up what was left of the doppelganger’s body...

I don’t think she’s dead.

It would have been an achievement if I’d at least managed to hurt her a little.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it was my loss—not only did it prevent me from continuing, but it also made obtaining that teleportation artifact to keep the doppelganger from dying a wasted effort.

I should have been upset.

Even frustrated.

But, for some reason...

it excited me.

There really was someone who wasn’t fooled...

Someone who waited patiently.

Someone who watched everything without intervening until she was completely sure of her moves.

And who, on top of that, possessed a power I couldn’t even begin to understand...

That was exciting.

It made me feel as if I’d found something to play with and have fun with.

I did whatever I wanted thanks to the element of surprise.

And she, by waiting patiently, did the same to me.

Someone who was also capable of responding to my move and launching her own offensive.

That’s what an opponent should be like.

That’s how a real game should work.

Hahaha! I hope next time you’re better prepared and have better tricks up your sleeve, haha! Otherwise, it won’t be interesting.

Ufff... yeah, I think I got a little too into the role.