Chapter 183: Another Murder
Chapter 183: Another Murder
It was almost midnight, and the Silent Hour was not too far away.
In the Young Ones dormitory, the doors started to close and the lights began to dim.
In the leftmost room, the final marble cracked, and laughter echoed throughout the room.
"I guess I won~" Ryan said with a grin.
"Cursed," Brady said, who became second in the match of the Mad Marbles.
Terry wryly smiled, finishing the podium in third place.
Glenn was fourth, and Roberto was fifth.
"Adam, you're really bad at this, aren't you?" Roberto said with a grin.
"And unlucky." Adam sighed with a tired smile. "Either way, its getting late."
"You're right." Ryan poured the broken pieces of the marbles into his pouch and stored them inside his inventory.
After bidding farewell, the young men left the room to get some sleep before tomorrow as Hunter's Month starts.
After going in their own separate ways, Brady used his Floor Orb and teleported straight to Middle Ones' secondary dormitory.
Since there were so many Middle Ones students, they had three different dormitories, more than any other student group.
As he walked through the door, he saw that all the doors there were already closed as everyone went to sleep early to be ready for the start of the Hunter's Month.
"Mm~" Brady hummed a song while juggling keys, and when he reached his room, he checked all the keys on his key chain to make sure he had the right one before unlocking his door.
Since all the keys looked pretty much the same, it took him some time to find the correct one. After some while, he was confident in his choice and inserted the key into the lock and was about to turn it, but then something sharp went through his back.
"Cough!" Brady coughed blood.
The crimson blood splattered across the white wooden door and dripped down to the floor, staining it red.
"What the fuck-"
He wanted to look behind him, but then his head was slammed against the bloody door, and then the knife on his back was twisted further into his spine.
"Ar-"
He wanted to scream, but then a black-gloved hand covered his mouth and muffled the sound.
"Haa, haa, haa."
Warm, heavy breathing sounded in his ears, making his body turn cold.
'I-I am getting killed? Why? Why? Why?'
Brady couldn't understand why someone would want to kill him. He'd been nothing but kind for everyone and was his class president.
Instead of spending his free time having fun, he often helped fellow classmates of his with their homework so they wouldn't get expelled.
At least he wanted to catch a glimpse of his killer, as he didn't want to live without knowing who had backstabbed him like this and why.
However, the knife then stabbed through his heart, and his vision quickly faded to black.
Then, like a tree, he collapsed at the doorsteps of his room, the blood pooling around him as the sound of footsteps faded away.
...
At the lounge of the Eldertree Institute, it had been transformed into a bustling marketplace with stalls built from ground up that lined the walls and made the spacious lounge a little bit more cramped than usual.
A long, red carpet stretched down the center aisle, and around the marketplace, the students of the institute checked every stall.
At the tall wall of the lounge, a leaderboard was put up, but it didn't show any names yet.
The stalls sold armor, weapons, and potions-the students could also sell stuff, and the grand stall at the end of the aisle was reserved for the Point Shop.
The students must give the stuff they had found in the forest to Point Stop so they could increase the total point count for their team in the leaderboard.
Currently, Adam and Terry checked the different stalls while enjoying the festivity of the event.
The start of the event was only an hour away.
However, they knew that they would have to drop one person from their team as the team had to have a total of five people. They were unsure of who to choose.
On the balcony, overseeing the festivity, Bertha leaned against the railing and when she saw Adam, her eyes brightened up and she waved her hand with a smile.
"Bertha seems to be fond of you nowadays." Terry said with a sly smile. "She seems to hate everyone else, I wonder what you did to make her like you."
Adam shrugged his shoulders.
"Yo, Adam, Terry!" Glenn, Roberto, and Ryan walked over to them after finally finding them.
They didn't share the looks of festivity as the rest of the students.
"Hey, where's Brady?" Terry asked, expecting him to be with them.
"Something happened." Ryan said with a serious look. "Brady was killed last night."
"What?!" Terry exclaimed in shock.
Adam's brows deepened in concern.
"When his roommate woke up today, he found dried-up blood in front of his doorsteps, and
for some odd reason the door was also splattered with blood.
"He thought, at first, that it was some sick prank, but then noticed that Brady was missing as
it looked like he didn't return to the room last night."
"I called Brady in real life, as we're living in the same town." Glenn said. "He told me
everything."
"When he was trying to open the door, that cowardly killer stabbed him in the back and killed him." Roberto said angrily. "He couldn't even catch a good look of the guy!"
"Wait," Terry frowned. "Doesn't that sound familiar to the murders about five months ago?"
"The murderer was expelled, wasn't he?" Glenn asked. "It was that Dylan guy, right?"
"What if they had the wrong guy?" Terry asked.
"Why would the murderer wait for another five months to kill again?" Ryan threw a question up in the air. "It doesn't make much sense, and why kill Brady? Everyone liked him."
"That sucks." Terry said. "Brady was looking forward to Hunter's Month."
"We can't do anything about it now." Ryan said with a sigh. "We've now five people by default. Let's focus on the Hunter's Month for now, and we'll hunt down the killer afterwards,
alright?"
Everyone nodded, still pissed about Brady's death.
"That killer will most likely kill again." Adam said, and eyeing the people present, they all nodded. "When the killer makes one mistake, we'll find him."
"Yeah, sounds good," Roberto said with a grin.
Brady had been helping greatly, and his death pissed him off greatly.
Adam stared at the four young men, a hidden suspicion creeping into his mind.
While he didn't really believe that any of them killed Brady, he didn't know who to trust
either.
Brady's death was so random.
'If this was the killer's first murder, why Brady? If this was the work of the same murderer as five months ago, which is very likely, then why Brady?
'From what I know, Brady mostly hangs out with us except when he is helping his classmates
with their homework.
'I don't think he has any enemies.
'Maybe this is really just random murder. However, the killer didn't leave any clues for Brady,
so I doubt this was just random murder.
'It seems very calculated, like he knew where Brady would be and where his room is.
'It could be Brady's classmate or someone from the same friend group as he is.
'It was late when he died. Almost Silent Hour. The killer must've waited near his dormitory
for the perfect moment to strike.
'I have a couple of scenarios. Maybe the killer was busy for the rest of the day and only had time to kill someone later in the day.
'Maybe the killer believed that killing someone before Silent Hour had the best chances of success. If I were the killer, I wouldn't have done that, especially in that busy dormitory, since someone could just suddenly go out of their rooms.
'Brady could've also made some sounds that could've alerted someone. It was a risky place to
kill someone, so it was either random murder done by some clumsy idiot who was extremely lucky that he wasn't discovered.
'Or, the killer was smart and knew what the hell he was doing. I am leading further into this
theory.
'I really think it is the doings of the same murderer from five months ago.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om
'I'll need to investigate further.'