EPILOGUE WHODUNIT
Approximately eighty people and one god.
That was the number of casualties in this operation.
Loki Familia and Hermes Familia both suffered losses, but they had managed to keep their death toll down to zero. It could be said that they had minimized losses as best as possible when faced with an unforeseen Irregular—but that had been achieved only at the cost of abandoning Dionysus Familia . There was no helping the drop in morale. Though it was the first time that their familias had teamed up, losing an entire familia was far too heavy of a burden.
Though they took care not show it to the lower-tier members, the second-string members charged with command during the operation, including Anakity, were steeped in gloom.
And the one who had been hit particularly hard was Lefiya.
Seeing her fellow elf and friend perish before her eyes had ripped out the young girl’s heart. With a broken spirit, she did not react at all to the beckoning of Aiz or anyone, simply sitting in her room like a lifeless doll.
Out of consideration for her roommate, Elfie, who had been reduced to tears trying to cheer her up countless times, Lefiya had been moved to a different room.
All the preparations for taking on Knossos had been lined up. And right when they succeeded, it had all been undone in a single devilish act.
There was no denying it. Not for the adventurers and not for the gods.
They had underestimated Enyo, who had not once stepped out onto the main stage.
Their enemy was exceedingly crafty: a devil incarnate.
“…”
The morning after the operation, Loki was on Daedalus Street. By herself, without any guard atop a building’s roof in the central area of the Labyrinth District—looking out at Knossos.
The green flesh from before had overflowed aboveground through the openings made from Thanatos’s and Dionysus’s returns. It was being covered up with a giant tent that had been erected under the pretense of building a forest park in the reconstructed zone—to prevent normal residents from finding out about any disturbances.
Its corrosion of Knossos was total. With a few others, Bete had worked quickly to close the orichalcum doors connecting to the Dungeon, stopping the hemorrhaging. It had overflowed in only two places: the two holes where the gods had returned to heaven in the center of the Labyrinth District.
The green mass had fallen entirely silent now. Or perhaps it was better to say that its growth had stopped.
“When Leene died with the others, I guess I went out on a lookout then, too…” she let fall from her lips, the whisper disappearing in the morning breeze.
Ganesha Familia was stationed around the edges of the tent, the subject of Loki’s attention, to investigate and observe it. She could see their leader, Shakti, shooting off constant orders to the other familia members without any sleep or rest, and even their patron god, Ganesha. If anything were to happen to Loki, they would surely come running. They were on their toes, and anything could set them off.
“……” Gazing over the Labyrinth District from the roof, Loki finally took her hand off the rail.
She headed down the stairs, slipping around to the back alleys to get away from the bustle of the adventurers.
“Yo, Loki. What a coincidence. What a way to start off the morning.”
“…” She ran into Hermes.
Loki did not respond to the god who appeared as if he had been waiting for the chance to talk. She just silently looked back at him.
“Care for some small talk?”
“Fine, I’ll bite. Just get to the point.” She shrugged.
After Hermes finished distancing his following guards, the smile on his suave face melted away.
“I’d like to hear your opinion on the identity of Enyo.” He met her gaze with a serious look in his orange eyes.
“Same as what you’re thinking. Not like there was that much to go off.”
“True. We know way too little. No leads on Enyo. No way to guess at a motive. It’s all a blank.”
The only thing they did know was Enyo’s screwy name: the city destroyer.
Their enemy’s existence was a vague shadow, some indefinite being. They weren’t even sure whether Enyo actually existed. Because of that, they had not really tried to track down Enyo.
More accurately, they couldn’t.
But an actual enemy had now bared its fangs at them with malice, posing a real threat. As if loudly asserting its existence. As if cackling at them.
“All right, let’s say who we thought Enyo was on three?” Hermes suggested with a smile in an about-face.
But his eyes weren’t smiling. Loki nodded silently.
Without taking her eyes off Hermes’s lips as he counted down—“Three, two, one”—she answered.
““Dionysus.””
The same name hung in the air.
Their expressions didn’t falter at the fact that their guesses had been the same.
“Why him?” Loki asked.
“His timing was too perfect. His motive for getting wrapped up and involved with you…it all felt like an after-the-fact explanation. At the least, that’s how it looked to me,” Hermes answered without any hesitation. “Did you know? After the incident on the twenty-fourth floor, the very first person I contacted was Dionysus.”
“…You saying you suspected him from the start?”
“I wasn’t convinced by any means. But I poked around a bit.”
He was speaking with his usual nonchalance, but Loki had felt it, too.
Dionysus had been too active.
Before the Twenty-Seventh-Floor Nightmare, his faction had been one scrapping for the top spot in the city, but after, it was solid mid-tier, with its fairly numerous members as its only defining feature. He had apparently been very secretive with his familia and made a point of hiding their true strength, but he was still way out of his league to take on the remnants of the Evils and the creatures’ underground forces. That could be proven by the fact that he had the assistance of only the Level-3 Filvis Challia up until the assault operation itself.
“Dionysus and I come from the same homeland…sworn friends of Olympus. I probably know him better than you do.”
“You mean his sudden fits—getting into huge scuffles with folks?”
“Oh, you knew?”
There were other suspicious points, too: his extreme opposition to Ouranos that hindered their cooperation. They wouldn’t have been able to make a deal with Ouranos’s side while he was hiding the bombshell about the Xenos, but even then, Dionysus was stubbornly against them.
“Back in the old days, Dionysus had a volatile personality. If he had actually settled down once he came here, then he was in the middle of the uproars too often .”
The god concluded: that was why he had proposed an alliance—to observe Dionysus.
“Mind if I ask a question now? If you suspected him, why bring Dionysus along during the assault on Knossos?”
“…For one, he never let enough slip to give me a reason not to take him. Also, once he was in the enemy’s base, I figured he would try to pull something—even if he thought he was being careful and patient…and we could at least control the situation if he was with us.”
And she had told Gareth on the down low, in case of an emergency.
However, Dionysus had managed to pull away from Loki—of all things that he could have done.
“Plus…I couldn’t totally doubt him.”
“…”
“I’ve got a good nose for fishy business, too, but…I couldn’t smell it from him.”
That was Loki’s honest opinion. There was definitely something suspicious about his behavior. However, his determination and the divine will behind it were real—or at least that was how it had felt to Loki.
The decisive point had been the other day. She had not been able to find it in herself to doubt the vow that he’d sworn in front of his followers’ graves.
“Dionysus said the real deal…At least, it felt that way to me. If that really was just manipulation, then all I can say is he got me.”
“If it was enough to get you to say that…then I guess our suspicions about Dionysus were just bias and unfounded doubts?”
“There’s enough blame to go around. He acted pompous and shady, too.”
“True,” Hermes responded with an easy smile and looked up at the sky.
“Sorry for suspecting you…Dionysus.”
He cast his gaze up to the heavens to where the god had just ascended.
“Feeling guilty?”
“Ha-ha. As if.”
Hermes looked toward the ground and placed his finger on the brim of his hat, pulling it down to cover his eyes. Or so Loki thought, but then he leaned in close to Loki, and she could see his piercing gaze peeking out from just below the edge.
“You see, Loki…I’m mortified.”
“…”
“We were totally duped . That’s what this was. Dionysus was the scapegoat, drawing our attention and keeping us on each other’s cases while the mastermind bought time to move around in secret. Yeah. I don’t know which god it was yet, but I’m so mortified that I can barely stand it.”
Hermes certainly didn’t feel anything as cute as guilt. The eyes peering into Loki’s face brimmed with rage. Coming to terms with the reality that he had been manipulated, he was utterly chagrined.
“What about you, Loki? I’m just a phony, but…they even led you, the heavens’ ultimate trickster, around by the nose. Is there anything more shameful than that?”
Hermes backed away, lifting his hands palms up, as if it was all a joke.
She would be lying if she denied it. But even she was at a loss for how to describe the feeling that waxed and waned in her heart as though a dry wind blowing through its gaps.
“…Well, either way. Now I know you’re thinking along the same lines as I am. I’m going to try looking into things connected to Dionysus.”
“Another one of your investigations?”
“Yeah. Starting now, I’m looking for the ringleader.”
With that, Hermes walked off. As he passed, he slipped a chess piece into Loki’s hand—the black king.
“…”
After he disappeared, Loki leaned back against the wall of the alley, securing the black king, the piece that represented Enyo, before turning up her head. A blue sky spread above the city. It was clear, without a single cloud, as if nothing had happened.
“Why the hell’d you have to go and ascend for…?” Loki murmured suddenly as she looked at the sky, carved into shape by the buildings lining the alley—speaking to the god who had disappeared into it alongside so many of his followers.
“Were you really being manipulated, Dionysus…?”
There were no longer any fragments of the pillar in the blue sky, and even though she asked, no answer would be coming.
Was Dionysus looking down on Loki from the heavens? Or did all the gods up there peeping on the mortal realm see through everything?
Maybe they were pointing and having a good laugh at Loki of all people for being pathetic. Normally, she would get pissed at the thought of that, but for some reason, she just did not feel like that now.
“…”
That sentimentality was not like her. Shaking it off, she emulated Hermes: not looking back at things gone past but continuing to move forward. For the time being, she gave it a thought.
Was Dionysus played for a fool? In order to draw our attention, as Hermes was saying…? If so, why was Dionysus dancing to Enyo’s tune? Why did…? No, how did they manage that?
That was what was bothering Loki. If it was like that, then a theory where Dionysus was connected to Enyo made more sense.
Based on Hermes and the shrimp, Dionysus definitely had some extreme tendencies. Like how I used to be.
Gnawed by the poison of boredom, he had contracted the rare illness that afflicted gods. Loki had been the same, getting into knock-down, drag-out fights with gods.
“That time when he was about to get into it over that title…the Twelve Gods, I think? Was anyone other than those twelve involved in it—?”
Thinking that far, Loki suddenly changed her perspective.
What if…what if…Dionysus was being manipulated back then? What if he was being controlled to have extreme outbursts, set up to be scapegoated…to be a cover for Enyo to move around in secret?
Loki could not even laugh as she weaved together that speculation. She sunk into thought for a while when—Hmm?
“…Loki?”
“Wha—?! S-Soma?!”
Without any warning, a god with black hair loomed over her. Soma sluggishly tilted his head as Loki was taken by surprise. Soma was the God of Sake. An eccentric even among the gods, he had descended to the mortal realm to brew all sorts of flavorful alcohol. His familia had gotten into the business, to the point where they had a brewery apart from their home. Loki liked to brag that she and alcohol went together like a hand in a glove, and he was an acquaintance who she had interacted with a couple of times because she wanted to drink some of his homemade sake.
“What are you doing here…?”
“No other conclusion is possible.”
Fels’s head swayed once again in awe of the enemy’s cunning, by the figure of the god whose face none had yet seen.
“…I will continue the investigation on the progression of Knossos, but the problem is that we still don’t know the identity of Enyo—or even have any suspects.”
Ouranos shook his head.
“We have suspects,” the god announced as he looked up at the ceiling shrouded in darkness. “Every single god and goddess in this city.”
The city—no, the labyrinth that had been reborn as a demon’s castle—sneered, burbling with a giggle, asking a single question.
“Enyo! Who are yooou?”
Something chirped in the darkness.
Far removed from the mortal realm, only the heavens above had all the answers.
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