"Isaac!"
"Ralph!"
Lin quickly approached Ralph's body. He didn't touch the cadaver for the fear of disturbing the crime scene and making the historian's job difficult.
But Lin observed the clothes and skeletal structure closely, confirming the body's identity for good. He did the same for Isaac's body. And only then did he stop in his tracks and close his eyes.
Lin's party members and Nina could see Lin getting emotional over the bodies. They figured he knew them personally. So they didn't disturb him.
Sometimes all a man needs to deal with his grief is some uninterrupted quiet time!
***************
Lin Karr was not a regular party leader of the party he was currently leading. He had a close connection with Osan Braveheart Hunters' Association. That's why he was given free reins to act within the association serving as a regulatory officer. In exchange, he would take up the association's sensitive missions, ensuring they reach their ideal conclusions. Likes of which he was currently involved in.
Lin Karr served as a regular lecturer at the LA academy. He just had taken a break from that profession to look for opportunities that would allow him to continue his ranking journey.
But Lin wasn't the only one that belonged to the LA academy, the academy Eren was soon going to get enrolled in. There were a few students of the academy as well, currently serving as fast food for the vultures.
That's right. Isaac's party was made by last year students of the LA academy. They had come here to complete their on-field experience program.
Ralph Karr was the son of Lin's elder sister. His sister had divorced her husband and retained her family name. Ralph carried the name Karr as a result of being with her. He was Lin's family.
Ralph was a very bright man. He was smarter than most people his age. His IQ and EQ both were top notch. And his ranking journey had started smoothly. In short, he had all the qualities that were needed for someone to keep on breaking through their ranks.
Ralph was the one Eren referred to as the smartass. He was also the last one to get killed by the latter.
Isaac was the reason the group had come to the city of Osan to complete their on-field experience program. Isaac Osan was the grandson of Isen Osan, the current city lord of the city of Osan.
Isen also served as a baron in the kingdom of Edenberg. Therefore the city lord's title became hereditary to his family.
Why would you look for some other place when you have your grandfather helping you out with your assignment? Isaac, therefore, had come home and brought his friends along to make their life easier as well.
But this only lasted until Lin came to the city of Osan for his work. When Lin saw that his academy's students were just lazing around under the guise of the on-field experience program, he was just inches away from requesting for the involved students' expulsion.
Lin would have proceeded further to apply for an expulsion even when he knew the group had his nephew Ralph within it. But Isen intervened and put some pressure on him. In the end, both the parties had to settle for a compromise.
Isaac and his friends would have their grades lowered for the program by Lin. They will also have to take the program seriously and serve as regular hunters in the Osan Braveheart Hunters' association.
Lin served as a regulatory officer in the Hunters' association. So it was easy for him to keep an eye on these brats who were looking to skip hard work.
Then the Osan woods disturbance started. The city and kingdom sanctioned missions were starting to get distributed. Isaac's party was allowed to select the simplest mission they could find. Lin wanted them to work hard but not die doing it, after all.
Isaac's party was only supposed to enter the woods from the northern side, trace the map that they had been given, and reach Simar lake while observing the altered patterns of demon beasts population that they found in their way. The northern side of the forest was relatively less chaotic than other parts during the disturbance.
It was the simplest form of on-site data collection mission. No big deal right?
But Isaac managed to f*ck that up too. He was the party's ranger. He led his friends to a different route, and eventually to their deaths.
**************
Coming back to the present.
When Lin realized who these corpses belonged to, he was feeling multiple emotions at the time. First, he felt guilty for making the students take their experience program seriously.
Second, Lin felt extreme grief for the death of his highly talented nephew.
Third, he cursed Isaac and his whole family for being so careless and incompetent. That birdbrain was the party's ranger. He had one f*cking job. But he had led his friends to this site, in the middle of b*tt f*ck nowhere.
Lin had seen the route the party was assigned to. They were nowhere near that route when they decided to come here.
How un-ranger-like a ranger has to be to choose this route? Lin thought the world should now have a scale from Isaac 1 to Isaac 10 to describe the worst lot of rangers, with Isacc 10 being the guy's replica!
And finally, fourth, Lin felt some repercussions coming his way and the back of his neck felt cold at the thought of it.
Lin was the one who had insisted on the group completing their program sincerely. But he never thought that Isaac's party would manage to die even on the simplest of missions in the whole disturbance. Not just die. This was a complete party wipeout.
Even if it was the ranger's mistake, Lin will be blamed now for all their deaths at this stage. And no matter what explanation he gave and how logical they sounded, it wouldn't lessen the amount of sh*t that was heading his way.
'I shouldn't have let Ralph mix with this birdbrain. This was all my fault for not intervening in their friendship sooner.
Ralphy, no matter how smart you were in other aspects, you were f*cking terrible in choosing good friends.'
Lin thought all that when he had his eyes closed. When he opened them up, the D Rank hunter had gained his clarity back. He made his way back to his party and told them about the bodies' identities.
Lin's party and Nina were shocked by Lin's revelation. Isaac Osan had died in this area. They had heard about the city lord's grandkid attending the LA academy. They weren't aware the kid was taking part in missions related to Osan wood's disturbance.
The party first secured the area. Then they let the historian find clues about the incident with his skills. They were sure that the unknown person who came with Dom might have had something to do with this. It was through following his trail did they come across the gruesome sight.
The historians had some of the weirdest spells. It was thanks to one such spell, the party was able to see the condition of the bodies right after they died if the bodies are not older than a certain period. The spell would simply project the visuals right over their dead bodies.
The party members could now see the bodies' immediate conditions postmortem. But when the group got to Selena's visuals, they had goosebumps.
Selena died with her larynx in her hand. But in the end, she smiled!
Each member thought that she was looking at them when she smiled. Like she was peeping into the future and mirthlessly smiling at them, ridiculing their efforts of finding the one responsible for this event.
"Which vile creature kills in this way? Handing the larynx of its victims to their hands!"
Nina couldn't help but ask this question, to nobody in particular. Another from the team continued that line of thought:
"And this Ralph kid also died a horrible death. He must have died last, judging his position away from the rest of the bodies.
I think the killer had a score to settle with Ralph. He killed the kid by making him experience his head getting crushed right after witnessing his friends getting killed in front of him. That too when the kid was clearly in a begging position to make them spare his life."
"Peter, why don't you shut your mouth for a while and keep the analysis to yourself. We have a historian in our team. Let him finish his work first."
One of the ladies in the group named Ela admonished Peter for saying those things out in the open about Ralph whose uncle was now present among them at the time. Peter immediately shut his mouth after that.
"No point mincing words at this point…"
The historian finally said while looking in the air and thinking about something:
"Peter's analysis is right. It is almost spot-on. But I'm not sure if a person killed these guys!"
"What do you mean?" Lin couldn't help ask this the historian!
"Well, I can't see most of the details. But… what I AM sure about is that there's a demon beast involved at the crime scene!"
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Author's Note: Hi. You did it. You inspired me with your support to make me release additional chapters. Here are the extra two chapters for today. The regular chapters will be published after a few hours. Thanks for donating your power stones. Keep investing in VEH and make it grow into something big! ;)