The Devil’s Cage - Chapter 122

Chapter 122

"I want all the information you have on Paul, the third victim of the beast attacks . As many details as possible!" Kieran said .

Among the five victims, Paul was the one that had caught Kieran’s attention and made him speculate about the incidents .

Of course, given the lack of accurate information, Kieran was not willing to speculate any further . He didn’t want his objective analysis to be influenced .

Being prejudiced was a scary thing, and Kieran knew it . It was actually even worse than habitual actions .

"Paul? Okay, please wait for a bit . " Mr . Big sounded doubtful about Kieran’s request .

All five victims had been investigated thoroughly by him, but nothing had seemed unusual about them . Still, that did not stop him from fulfilling Kieran’s request .

Ten minutes later, Mr . Big came back with two thick cowhide bags in his hands .

"Here’s all the information I have about Paul, from the moment he entered the orphanage to the moment of his death . Everything has been recorded here . This is all I have for now . Do you need to know anything about the rest of the victims?" Mr . Big said, patting the cowhide bags .

"Not right now, thank you," Kieran thanked Mr . Big with a smile before opening the bags right away .

The information inside was organized by date . All twenty years of Paul’s life had been arranged in chronological order .

One of the bags held the records of Paul entering the orphanage as a boy, and his life as a teenager and eventually a young adult . It included, but was not limited, to his school years, club activities and love life .

The other bag contained records of minor things about Paul, including his relationships outside school and the people he knew . Kieran went through both of them, but did not notice anything unusual .

Paul had not been the brightest student in class, but his grades had been quite decent . Other than being an orphan and a loner who’d had a hard time communicating with others, he had been no different from an ordinary guy .

He’d had idols that he had admired when he was young and a puppy love that had ended without a reason . After college, he had started to work two jobs to cover his ever-expanding expenses . Because of his good grades though, he had qualified for a school scholarship every year .

Other than the fact that he’d needed to support himself because he was an orphan, there was nothing that stood out about him . Kieran was not ready to give up though . He checked every page carefully, until the very last page, the full stop of Paul’s life . On the last page, there was a photo of a piece of his left arm . The arm was incomplete . There was no palm or upper arm, just a chewed forearm .

The forearm had been mutilated badly by the beast . Only a couple of torn-up tattooed letters could be seen clearly . It was the traces of that tattoo that had allowed the public to identify the forearm as Paul’s .

Kieran was not surprised that Paul’s forearm had a clear sign on it . That sign actually fit Kieran’s initial guess . However, when Kieran squinted his eyes to take a closer look at the letters, he realized something . He recognized those words . Not because of the temporary language pack, but because of his [Mystical Knowledge] .

Kieran could read the letters on the forearm by using his [Mystical Knowledge] . He was even able to pronounce them, but he could not understand what they meant, because the tattoo was incomplete . It was only a part of a bigger symbol or sign .

Every word made readable by [Mystical Knowledge] was complicated and tediously long . There weren’t just letters, but symbols as well, some of them unfamiliar to common people . Just like with other languages, the slightest change to the words could alter their meaning completely .

The words "burn" and "frozen" both had fourteen letters and only two small differences, meaning that their remaining twelve letters were exactly same . That was why words like the one on Paul’s forearm tattoo were mystical and hard to learn . Kieran felt a little strange about his new discovery .

"Could Paul be the person behind the beast attacks and the one who set up the magic circle?" Kieran speculated before eventually shaking his head .

He believed that Mr . Big’s information was accurate . If Mr . Big said that Paul was not related to Sphendix, then they were not related, neither openly nor secretly .

Unless Paul had been able to change his face completely, he would not have been able to fool Mr . Big’s source at Sphendix .

Most importantly, if Kieran’s guess was right, it meant that Paul must have had a certain level of [Mystical Knowledge] and known one or maybe even a couple of basic structures of magic circles .

It seemed quite impossible for an orphan of only twenty years of age . A slow person would have to work even harder in school in order to maintain good grades, and given the circumstances, the extra effort of learning [Mystical Knowledge] and working two jobs to survive already exceeded the average person’s mental and physical strength .

Kieran had a similar background, so he had experienced this as well . When he was young, he had been grateful just to be able to keep up with his homework, never mind get good grades .

Eventually, Kieran had quit school to work full time .

Learning [Mystical Knowledge] was even harder . Kieran’s Master Level of the skill allowed him to know quite well how hard it was for the common mind to learn it .

Mystical knowledge was complicated and tough to master . Even if someone was fully concentrated while learning, it would be extremely difficult to reach a certain level by Paul’s age, let alone know how to create magic circles . Creating magic circles was not something one could learn on his own . A mentor had to be there to guide them . Even Kieran’s Master Level included nothing related to incantations, which were necessary to activate a magic circle .

In other words, someone must have taught Paul .

"Did someone teach Paul everything? Or did Paul see someone and get influenced by them, and got a tattoo on his arm instead?"

The thought bloomed instinctively in Kieran’s mind as he quickly went over the details and looked at Pauls’ pictures again .

He wanted to find out who could have taught and influenced Paul and confirm what the letters on his arm meant .

The results were disappointing though . The collected information didn’t point at anyone that Paul had been close to, or someone who could have had the chance to teach Paul and influence him . Although there were a lot of pictures of Paul, in most of them he was wearing a suit and leather shoes . They all seemed official . None of them depicted him in his daily life .

Before this, Paul’s loner personality had seemed quite normal, considering that he was an orphan . However, the discovery of the words on Paul’s arm had changed everything .

"Was the tattoo covered up on purpose?" Kieran was not sure about his guess .

He rubbed his temple to ease his headache .

He thought he had been onto something, but all the clues had led him back to his starting point . More than that, they had even ruled out his previous speculations .

"Why did Paul do what he did?" Kieran asked himself in a low voice .