Inside the room, everything was in a state of utter chaos.
The pockmarked wooden floor had been smashed open to reveal a crater, exposing the silver-grey metal structure underneath. Beside the crater, there were also scratches left by a blade.
The walls were in a similar state. The pale white cement of the barrier revealed its skeleton; the tangled mess of rebar was so dense that not even the sunlight from outside could penetrate it.
Alain's gaze focused on that window. It appeared to be fragile glass, yet under the continuous slashing of his greatsword, he had only been able to leave a few shallow marks.
He walked toward the large, European-style bed and pulled open the curtains.
On the pristine white bedding, restraint straps were scattered to the side, twisted and turning like venomous snakes.
He picked up one of the restraint straps and rubbed it carefully... The leather touch was clearly cold, yet it forcibly brought him the sensation of residual warmth from the past.
Mila also walked into the room alongside Alain. She turned her head, looking at the door they had entered through.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk..." She marveled repeatedly at Alain's 'feat'.
"Did you do this?"
Alain, who was observing the restraint strap, was drawn by her words. He turned around and saw that bedroom door, which looked like a gate between worlds.
Even though the interior of the door appeared to be a wooden structure, it had been forcibly hacked by his greatsword, causing the internal metal structure to be completely exposed.
The sharp, jagged wooden gaps looked like the fangs of a demon, sufficient to show just how intense Alain's reaction had been at that time.
He smiled with a hint of 'nostalgia', as if looking at his younger, reckless self. "The me of that time... I even wanted to use the greatsword to break the door open from the inside."
"What a pity, that's impossible," Mila said, continuing to observe the heavy door leaf. "Those locks are all on the outside, and the quality is excellent. To destroy it, you can only do so from the outside. You being inside... you were merely chopping iron."
"Mn."
Alain responded simply. His gaze drifted from the door and landed on the handle of the back door.
He remembered very clearly that Yang Wanhua had been choked by him right there at the back door.
That lunatic... even in a situation of impending death, she could actually still laugh out loud... It was simply terrifying to the extreme.
His gaze returned to the present. There, not a trace of Yang Wanhua's figure could be found.
Alain walked slowly toward the back door, rubbing the tightly closed door handle.
This door was also very hard; it was far from something a cold weapon could destroy.
Perhaps Yang Wanhua realized he had a greatsword, and thus created such a hardened door—this kind of layout.
The coldness of the door handle seeped into Alain's fingerprints, flowing along his blood, transmitting the chill throughout his entire body.
So, the question arose.
Judging from every scene encountered within the room, every event and detail of the imprisonment back then was all real.
In that case, his killing of Yang Wanhua was also real.
So, where was Yang Wanhua?
Could it be that she really was just as Alain had speculated: a clone? But even if it were a clone, there should still be residual blood, right?
Alain recalled that when he dealt with Monika's clone, the greatsword had flown out of his hand—striking Monika's body directly, leaving dark red blood stains on the hilt.
Alain crouched down, carefully rubbing the wooden floor.
Alain hadn't destroyed much of this area by the back door. If he had destroyed it, it would have inevitably hindered his movements during his escape.
Rustle, rustle...
His fingertips swiped across the ground, his eyes grinding over every fraction of the brown wooden floor's surface and cracks.
"...?"
Very quickly, he touched something.
He placed that small black object in his palm, flicking it twice with his thumb. It spun roundly a few times, before lying quietly on the lines of Alain's palm.
"Hmm? What did you find?"
Having finished her check, Mila noticed Alain standing there in a daze and walked over curiously.
She focused her gaze and saw the button in Alain's palm.
"A button? Is this yours?"
"No." Alain shook his head. Most of his shirt buttons were white, with a small portion being light-colored—definitely not the black button in his palm.
Then, whose it was went without saying.
"Well then, you keep looking here first. I'll go check inside the bathroom," Mila said.
She lifted her foot and walked toward the bathroom.
Alain looked at her back and said, "You must be careful. The safety principle of splitting up—"
"I know, already!" Mila felt it was a bit funny. Clearly, this guy usually just lowered his head and charged forward when fighting viruses, yet at a time like this, he was cautious to a fault. "If I encounter danger, just scream, right? I know~"
With that, she walked toward the bathroom.
As the clack, clack, clack of her light footsteps drifted further away, Alain crouched down again, wanting to continue trying to see if he could find any clues.
People die when they are killed... that's a meaningless statement.
But when people are killed, they also leave behind a large amount of clues.
Although Alain wasn't a professional, relying on the meticulousness trained into him by Misha, he could still find some possible threads—
"Hmm?"
During his contemplation, the hand stroking the floor happened to touch a certain... strange sensation.
His gaze focused on that section of the wooden floor, narrowing his eyes.
After examining it carefully, he discovered that the color of this floorboard and the few surrounding it seemed somewhat deeper.
He stroked the other deep-colored areas of the ground again... and found the texture was the same.
While the texture of the other floorboards was soft and smooth, with bright, clear colors, the texture of these few blocks was rough, and even carried a slightly thick, sticky feeling.
The twilight from outside the window shone in, yet this wood did not reflect the light.
If he had to describe it, it was as if the wooden floor had been wrapped in a thin layer of wax; it must be the traces left behind after some kind of liquid had dried.
Click—
The sound of a door opening came from Mila's direction; she must have opened the bathroom door.
Alain continued to observe these few floorboards with total concentration. Very quickly, in the center of these floorboards, he discovered a small indentation.
The indentation was about the size of a quarter of a pinky fingernail; one wouldn't even see it without looking hard.
Alain looked at the specifications of the indentation, associating it with the matter of him killing the illusionary Yang Wanhua...
This small indentation was the mark left on the floor by the sword tip after the greatsword pierced through Yang Wanhua's body.
"..."
In that case, the nature of those dried liquids surrounding this indentation became clear.
He had indeed killed Yang Wanhua. At the same time, her fresh blood had flowed all over the floor.
But the corpse was gone.
Outside the window, the light of the setting sun penetrated the window glass, gathering into a beam of light that shone upon the wooden floor in his peripheral vision.
The look in Alain's eyes as he watched those floorboards gradually sank into darkness.
Because the dark-colored wooden floorboards—that is, the dried blood—seemed to have moved.
He turned on the room lights. This way, he could see the possible blood traces on the floor more clearly.
In the illumination of the white-yellow light, he seemed to be able to see the fresh blood dripping and flowing...
Flowing toward that bathroom.
____
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