It took them more than six hours to retrieve the remains of the night watcher in full–And they didn’t even bother to clean off the blood. It was too bothersome for them to do so up in the Vent System.

  Naturally, no one actually believed his death to have been a mere accident. After all, why would he have climbed into the vents in the first place? And the day watcher knew very well that the ventilation blades could only have been brought down, and then back up, by someone inside the office…

  Not to mention the door to the office had been kicked open from the outside. Everything pointed to a deliberate act of murder by a party the night watcher had clearly regarded as threatening ahead of time, since he had climbed into the vents and gotten quite far.

  Anyway… I was able to know all of this since the guards and day watcher spoke quite loudly inside the main dining hall, and since the door to the backstage area had been left open, I could hear everything clearly.

  They knew that the man had been murdered, but they had no idea what to do since no signs of a break-in were found anywhere.

  “Mmh… Actually, the CS, or Camera System, has a recording function. Everything it sees is stocked somewhere inside the screen-monitor thingy. We should be able to see what happened from the… What was it called inside the instruction booklet again? Footage?”

  “Do you know how to get access to it?”

  “It shouldn’t be too difficult…”

  Footage? What kind of god awful word is this? Foot age?! I probably need to do something if they can see what the eyes saw in the past. Otherwise, they’ll see me wearing the same costume I am wearing right now!

  Do not worry about this, Big Sis. Since you interacted with the machine, the footage you and my sisters appeared in will be completely corrupted. They won’t be able to find anything from the recorded videos

  By the way, ‘video’ can basically be explained as a series of images. For example, you could say that what you are seeing during a certain period of time would be a video if made into something viewable by others

  Thanks for the explanation… But I must ask, I couldn’t help but notice that the jargon Leton comes up with, and the words you sometimes use, are basically the same. What’s up with that? You once told me that you got certain things from other worlds… Does it mean that Leton is doing that as well?

  Apologies, I am prohibited from engaging in this topic. All I can say is that I do indeed get most of the mechanic-specific words I use from another world

  I see…

  “Sorry, it seems like the footage was tampered with, somehow? I don’t see how anyone could be capable of doing something like that. This is made by Leton Nebulo, as far as I am aware, even the best mechanists after him can barely graze the genius of his inventions…”

  For some reason, the restaurant was really prone to echoing. Not only that, but voices really carried far through its large rooms and wide halls. I could hear everything those guys were saying from all the way over there.

  “That is indeed quite curious…”

  One of the guards spoke up just as the front door was pushed open, causing a loud ‘ding’ to spread through the restaurant. This place really had everything for reasons that escaped my understanding… Was my brother so nice with his prices that the owner had thought it would be worth it to install so many things?

  I don’t know why I wonder about this. Leton had probably just wanted to install this because it was a recent invention of his. The little idiot might have done it for free! Just for the love of the game!

  I remember that he would make inventions all the time in the basement-turned-workshop back in the day… I had never really understood what this was all about before, and the stuff he would create was far less refined than what he made nowadays… He was making machines that could interact with ambient energy, powering machines with lightning, or even some sort of oil… And although I hadn’t checked it out much just yet, Nara had told me that his ‘monitor’ invention was an absolute revolution by itself.

  Regardless… Slowing down on my accelerated–And derailed–Thought process, the newly arrived person spoke loudly.

  “Did somebody call me?”

  It was a rough-voiced man who immediately coughed after shouting, and judging by his tone, he was probably intoxicated at the moment.

  The guards and day watcher soon arrived at the entrance.

  “Mister Mage, we are thankful that you freed some of your time for our sake today–We worry that the crime might have been committed by someone knowledgeable in magic, or a creature that should definitely not be allowed to stay within the city…”

  “Heh… Don’t worry about my time. All I do is stare down bottle after bottle these days… I have all the time in the world!”

  The ensuing silence was quite overbearing.

  “What’s with the long faces? Yep, I am not handling the fact that my whore of a wife ran away with her lover! Let’s not talk about that bitch… Hold that for me, I am going to focus”

  I couldn’t see what was happening, and I didn’t sense anything either, but Nara sensed it in my stead.

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  He extended his mana senses to the entire restaurant. Rather precisely at that. Not every mage could do it, and far less while drunk…Judging by the mana he used, however. He isn’t a mage specialised in offensive spellcasting at all

  The mage exhaled loudly.

  “Mmh… The ambient energies of this place are awfully stable… No wonder it felt like I was breathing better in here”

  “That is certainly because the VS’s function to control ambient energies within the building was on by the time I arrived. It had probably been running all night, so had the heating, actually…”

  The day watcher explained.

  I hadn’t bothered to turn anything off, and it wasn’t like I would have wanted to do it. Apparently, without me realising, I had absolutely flooded the building with negative energy, and caused the temperature to drop, amongst other things–I frankly noticed neither of those things happening until Nara pointed it out to me.

  I could absorb negative energy, but I hadn’t sensed it at all. Apparently, it was something new… Which made no sense. No upgrade could have led to this. I hadn’t evolved, and last I remember, consuming all of those curses wasn’t the cause of this. Otherwise, I would have realised it earlier, right?

  My assumption is that this is a similar situation to the ‘Nightmare Form’. A form you haven’t yet unlocked is manifesting itself… And I had to make a further guess, amongst all of the forms you have listed as on their way to being acquired…

  Mascot Form

  Nightmare Form

  Revenant Jack-Out-Of-The-Box

  Wire Mess Form

  Pure Spirit Form

  Rusted Plague Form

  Biobot Form

  Ghost In The Machine

  …I would say that the ‘Pure Spirit Form’ is the most likely candidate. Though I am uncertain what could have caused it to trigger last night

  Would be nice if I knew how to control this effect a little bit. It just showed up without announcing itself, or permission…

  “Welp… There is still something odd over this way. A big cluster of some dark-looking kind of energy. Let me go take a closer look”

  I knew what he was referring to, this time. I had noticed it myself–When my ghostly little sisters cooperated to take possession of the parrot automaton, they left quite a large bundle of negative energy in it.

  The negative energy hadn’t been going anywhere. In fact, it had seemed to be seeping further into the steel skeleton of the automaton. Being a bit curious, I left things as they were so that I could check out what would happen.

  The drunken mage was swift to notice the abnormal density of energy, however.

  “Yep. This pretty bird, right over here. It is absolutely stacked with some kind of energy… I fear I am not too familiar with it, but it doesn’t inspire sunshine and rainbows… Actually, it would probably be best not to let people near it”

  “...Is the energy dangerous?”

  “High-density energies of all kinds are dangerous. They can have different effects, but they all cause energy poisoning. Those who aren’t energy manipulators are especially susceptible. Children in particular. Just like with regular poison, their smaller bodies make them more easily affected”

  “Oh. I think I was told that there was a function to evacuate energy from the automatons. Let me try it…”

  The day watcher approached the parrot, reaching behind its back. There, a small portion of its fabric costume could be opened, allowing him to press a small button hidden inside a small compartment–So that the button couldn’t be pressed randomly.

  This button puts the automaton in a state of dormancy, which allowed him to tinker with the automaton safely–Normally.

  Uh oh. That was a mistake

  Nara, who seemed quite aware of the exact events taking place on the other side of the restaurant, seemed to sense it coming before anyone else.

  I heard an agonising scream following the distant echo of a crunch.

  The parrot had not entered a state of dormancy as it should have, and just as the day watcher was about to open it up and activate the protocol supposed to evacuate foreign energies from the automaton… The parrot activated and grabbed his arm.

  The steel creature wrapped in a soft exterior crushed the man’s arm with ease.

  “This zone is a no-no touch”

  It spoke in its normal tone, but proceeded to fling the man into the corner of a table like a ragdoll–I could tell the impact was severe, because I freaking received the day watcher’s soul immediately after the impact.

  The guards–The two of them–Took too long to react. A man was dead.

  Thankfully for them. The drunken mage reacted appropriately, pelting the automaton with mana bullets until the machine lay broken on the ground, its music box playing the same four notes repeatedly for several seconds before it stopped functioning.

  Damn… The negative energy coating hadn’t even been there for a full twenty-four hours, and it had already ‘broken’ the automaton? My little sisters are real geniuses!

  …Quite a few more guards showed up after this debacle, and they stuck around for a long time. Nonetheless, no one bothered to check the costume I was in, so once night came, I made my way back to the watcher’s office.

  No one was here to fill the job, and more importantly, no one wanted to be in the restaurant at night. That place might as well be cursed to everyone besides me.

  I wasn’t looking for a new victim, though. I crawled out of the costume and assumed my knightly form, sitting at the desk to snoop around the monitor with Nara’s invaluable assistance.

  On my own, I definitely would have struggled for hours. I did not have the correct instincts to operate this thing. It was unlike anything I knew, so my cute little sister served as my guide.

  Turns out this thing had a lot more functions than just controlling a bunch of so-called ‘systems’ in the restaurant. There were a bunch of files about how to use the monitor on something Nara called ‘the desktop’.

  We–Or rather, just Nara–Were trying to see if it was connected to other monitors, as apparently, this could be a thing. Unfortunately, Leton was not an idiot. This monitor is connected only to the restaurant itself.

  So I just ate the machine for its precious steel.

  When I left the restaurant, it had been cleaned of all its edible steel. I even emptied the kitchen of all the frozen flesh stocked there.

  It's a bit weird that they still use arrays. Did Leton not invent a mechanical method of keeping food fresh yet? It sounds like something he would come up with.

  Setting this aside… Where can I go to sow ‘Remember Me?’ curses to try and cover as much of the city as possible? I want this place to erupt into chaos.

  Speaking of curses, it might be time for me to cook a new one…