Certainly, Ciel Elesia was more proficient in information concealment and manipulation than the independently operating Arcueid Brunestud.
Even though Kiritsugu Emiya was tracking her with a predatory focus, he couldn't even catch a glimpse of her tail; it was only through the messages passed by Sister Yuika Suse that I managed to secure some intel.
To begin with, Ciel wasn't coming here on an official mission to hunt Dead Apostles, but strictly on vacation. It was only proper for her to send a notice to Sister Yuika, who was in charge of this particular parish… although the fact that the notice arrived only a week before her scheduled arrival was a bit of a problem.
"To not even notify the responsible parish until a week before arrival… Is it always like this?"
"The Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament and the Executors belong to different departments, so it can't be helped, Karma-kun. Especially since the Burial Agency is involved in so many Black Ops… Their default manual is to not give notification at all, and even if problems arise, the Holy Church usually just ignores them. Of course, telling us only a week in advance even when it's for a vacation is a bit much."
Fortunately, the one who arrived in Misaki City first was not Ciel, but Arcueid. She produced an astronomical amount of cash from a trunk—Heaven knows where she got it—and began setting up a base of operations inside a pension she had purchased in its entirety.
Since Arcueid had already arrived, I had to properly implant a Suggestion into Shiki Tohno, separate from the measures I had been taking. I tried to approach him by infiltrating the high school before Ciel's arrival or loitering around the marketplace I used to frequent since I was a child.
However, approaching Shiki Tohno… or rather, Shiki Nanaya, while bypassing the inherent Demon-Hunting Impulse he possessed was an arduous task.
He was already unable to steady himself properly due to that impulse. When I moved a puppet of the Six Paths of Pain close to him, he projected an uncontrolled murderous intent in all directions. I couldn't simply reveal myself and cast a Suggestion right in front of his eyes; after all, if the target identifies the source of the Suggestion, the Mystery itself begins to lose its meaning.
In the end, I had to enlist the help of Soujuurou-ani, who was still working part-time for money, to successfully cast the Suggestion I had prepared.
"This kid, he's really no joke."
That was the evaluation from Soujuurou-ani after he used various methods to put Shiki Tohno to sleep.
"…Is he that impressive?"
"Yeah. I don't know the details, but his muscles have been trained since childhood, though they're currently in a state of rest. Looking at how he fainted from my strike, it seems his mind has forgotten, but his body definitely remembers."
It seemed the successor of the Nanaya family, a lineage of exorcists, possessed skills that even Soujuurou-ani found noteworthy.
But! At last, I had successfully planted the Suggestion in Shiki Tohno, and with that, the preparations were complete.
Just one day after I planted the Suggestion, Ciel appeared at the school as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and the once ordinary, vibrant city began to take on a dangerous atmosphere.
While Roa and Nero hadn't surfaced to wreak havoc just yet, stray dogs with strange appearances were roaming the streets, and people looking drained of life were wandering about. The stray dogs were clearly familiars born from the Beast Factors Nero possessed, and when Alice-san investigated the lethargic people, she confirmed they had already been converted into Ghouls.
"Is there any way to revert a person who has become a Ghoul?"
"…No, they are already no different from corpses. A normal Ghoul is a slave that follows the orders of a vampire, but those are low-grade Ghouls with orders simply carved into their dead bodies."
Alice-san looked as if she wanted to storm into the Tohno residence that very instant, search the place top to bottom, and root out Roa even if it meant turning the entire city upside down, but I objected.
"If we try to catch him now, Roa will flee. We won't be able to catch Nero either… We would only suffer losses without gaining anything. It won't be long before things truly begin, so let's just wait a little longer."
"…Fine. But those reinforcements of yours better be useful."
Oh, they would certainly be useful.
After all, they are a superior version of those Mystic Eyes of Death Perception and a Root Connector who can rewrite the world.
"Anyway, don't forget to move the moment Shiki Tohno awakens his impulses."
*
Shiki Tohno was a student who simply happened to be in poor health. His only peculiar trait… was perhaps the fact that he could see the lines of death.
Since he woke up in a hospital as a child, those lines had plagued his eyes and brain until a certain Magician gave him a pair of glasses that made them invisible. Had he not received those glasses, he surely would have gone mad and died in a fit of lunacy.
Recently, however, a certain sensation had begun to torment him again. Every time he walked under the sun, he felt an overwhelming fatigue, and every time he saw Ciel-senpai, he felt an impulse to lung forward and drive a blade into her throat.
On that day as well, he was on his way home from school, unable to overcome the heat and exhaustion, when a woman suddenly appeared before him.
The moment he saw her short blonde hair and those captivating crimson eyes, the urge to approach her and sink a knife into her flesh began to awaken.
With practiced ease, he removed his glasses and drew a knife from his pocket, slowly beginning to approach the woman.
His throat was parched and his breathing ragged; his memories of the Magician had long since drifted to the back of his mind.
Blade in hand, he first severed her arm.
When the arm grew back from the initial cut, he severed that part again, and as he slashed and carved, she was suddenly in five pieces. No, Shiki Tohno thought even that would be insufficient.
He meticulously pierced her entire body, cutting along the lines until he had made the seventeenth incision…
"Gasp—haah!"
Only then did Shiki Tohno become aware of the scene before his eyes.
Hot blood and bits of flesh were on his hands. On the ground lay the tall woman, sliced into seventeen pieces… and in his hand was the small, MacGyver-like pocketknife.
"No, no. This wasn't… this isn't me!"
In that instant, Shiki Tohno realized what he had done.
He had dismantled an innocent woman—a stranger he had never even met—into fragments with his own knife.
"Aaaaaaaargh!!!"
Unable to bear the weight of his actions, the weight of murder, he fled the scene immediately. In that moment, he didn't even understand the logic behind why he had swung the knife…
And he fled without realizing that the woman he thought he had killed had, in truth, only suffered a cut to her wrist and was currently watching his retreating form with an utterly bewildered expression as she staggered along.