Chapter 3: The Trial

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Chapter 3

The Trial
^{The Murder of Pierrick}

As you investigate the death of Pierrick you all hear a voice echo throughout the Area, you recognize it as Cessair's.

Cessair: "I reckon that is enough time to investigate this case. Everyone, come to the Casino! This is an order from your Starless Overlord!"

Recognizing that disobedience means death, everyone heads down to the Casino and heads over to the third of the room with the large roulette wheel. Nearby you see Cessair, Silver Mask, and Itriot in their robes from before. They stand near the roulette and point everyone to a spot around it as they arrive. You take your place in front of your respective picture and wait for Cessair to signal for the trial to begin.

Before long, everyone has arrived and is situated around the Roulette Table. Cessair steps forward.



Cessair: "Welcome Clash Participants. You all find yourselves here due to the attempts of one of you to ascend. That one now seeks to end all of your lives to take up their place as Starless Lord. The darkness encroaches upon you all. If you should seek to survive the darkness, you must find the one who summoned it and cast them into the fire! This is the Trial for the Murder of Pierrick!"

Cessair: "It is time to deduce or die! Let us see how your luck holds out!"

-Cessair spins the roulette table and it spins rapidly around, never seeming to slow down.-

Cessair: "When the roulette stops, its time to vote! Show me what you have uncovered in this Darkest Clash!"

-With the image of Pierrick dead in your mind, you prepare to determine who among you killed him so that you won't die in a place like this!-

[Daiwa Scarlet]

Satone glances at all the silent individuals around the room and sighs, "So, Pierrick was... found impaled by stakes in the central sewer. There does not appear to be wounds other than the stake wounds on his body. The stakes are made of a similar material to the barricades, I suspect they were crafted from the barricades in the black market. Two guns had been left around the scene, one near Pierrick in the central sewers and one in a western corner of the sewer tunnels. The one near Pierrick was missing four bullets and the one in the sewer tunnels was missing three. I could not find where they had been used, so perhaps the bullet casings had been discarded into the pit in central. The black cloth near him has some small holes and tears on it, likely from the stakes. The holes are larger and more clustered in a certain section of the cloth. It also has traces of blood, but most of that had washed off. A spot of blood was found in the sewer tunnels, south of the central sewers. The main puddle is smaller than my palm, with splatters going around it for a yard or so. The southern grate of the central sewer had been bent outward toward the bowl and snapped. I believe someone had been hanging from it, likely Pierrick. However, it would take a sudden force to break the grate, unless the person was heavyset. The tool used to hang from the grate was probably the soggy rope that had been discarded in the sewer apartments. There are cracks and holes around the manholes of the black market, although I cannot tell their significance to this case."

[King V]

"This witness has no interest in this murder, however... can someone tell this witness something? This witness fired a pistol yesterday to test if it worked, then put it back in the black market. According to Cessair, guns are not automatically reloaded unless the entire stock of ammunition is expended, therefore the gun that this witness shot should still have 1 bullet missing. However, this witness could not find such a gun with 1 bullet missing."

"The reasonable assumption is that the culprit took this gun and used it in the murder. However, this witness distinctly heard 7 gunshots in rapid succession last night while trying to sleep, and there are only 7 bullets missing from all guns found so far. So where is the gun that this witness shot yesterday? This fact very much bothers this witness."

[Daiwa Scarlet]

"It is possible that they reloaded the gun before use or someone else had taken the gun you fired and has it on their person."

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Lloyd: Is it not possible that whomever came to take the gun just made sure it was fully loaded before they took it? Perhaps Rin's behavior is in fact indicative of that. Naturally whomever came to get a gun would test it to make sure it worked. Perhaps they grabbed the weapon Rin used and fired it to test it themselves. After they confirmed it was a working weapon they went to reload their test round and found the gun missing extra ammo, so they reloaded it all the way. Sadly, I was unable to hear any gunshots, so I can't confirm or deny the 7 presumed gunshots.



Yuuta: I also heard 7 gunshots ring through the night. Based on memory, I believe that occurred between 4:00 and 4:30 AM.

[Exusiai]

"If someone took the gun RIN used, then that'd be a big coincidence.
. . .
I guess that's not the major problem of this situation."


In contrast to what Lloyd suggested, though, if someone was testing the gun, then RIN would have never heard seven shots in a row.
If the weapon wasn't fired in the sewers, then I'd imagine more than RIN and Yuuta would have heard it, but if it was, then there'd definitely be a pause between those seven shots, whether it's from reloading or getting more bullets.

To expand on what Satone had mentioned earlier, I believe that the large holes in the blanket were also caused by the stakes.
There's only trace amounts of blood on both sides of the blanket, so it's difficult to tell whether the blood belongs to the culprit or Pierrick.
Most of the blood probably got washed away by the water down in the sewers, but what's left of it on the blanket appears to be around the larger holes."


"Ah, I almost forgot to talk about the wooden stakes and their relation to the blanket!
Satone already said that the smaller holes could have been caused by the stakes.
This is definitely a possibility, but I would re-phrase the statement to: 'The small holes found in the blanket could have been made by slight punctures from the wooden pieces.'
If you dig a quarter of the stake into the blanket, then you'd probably get a hole similar in size.
The large holes in the blanket could have been made by driving the stake further in.
I never tested it myself, though.

M-My conclusion is that the blanket was once on the stakes—during or after Pierrick was impaled on them.
I imagine that, in desperation, the culprit threw the blanket at Pierrick to obscure his vision.
This gave the culprit the perfect opportunity to push Pierrick onto the stakes that were likely set up beforehand.
Th-That should explain the holes and traces of blood found on the blanket!

For some reason, someone removed the blanket, though, causing a lot of the blood that was on the blanket to fade away."


"Something still seems off, though.
I tried aligning the stakes to the openings in the blanket, but only a few of them matched.
I even took a few pictures for comparison, but none of the stakes that are currently impaling Pierrick, nor any of the ones found north of the grate, match the arrangement of holes in the blanket.

There's also the question of how did the culprit get their hands on the blanket?
I mean—yes, they could have gotten it from one of the rooms, but I thought I saw Pierrick carrying something large last night into the sewers.
He was holding something dark, so I assumed he was using the blanket as a makeshift sack.
I couldn't tell much else about what he was slugging around, and when I went to check his possessions during investigation, he only had his numbered dagger.
I didn't bother following him since it was past eleven at night and I only saw him from a window on the sixth floor."

[Daiwa Scarlet]

"There are similar blankets in the Lord's Blessing."

"It is possible that the black market is too far from the Clash Complex to be heard, while gunshots in the central sewers and nearby tunnels are close enough. This could explain why the test shots were not heard."

"Oh, I should also say that something strange happened at 3 AM. I was having a girl's night with Mori Summer when a crinkled note was slipped under my door. '[Yuusha] will be killed in the sewers tonight' was scrawled on it. Mori Summer convinced me that it was a trap, so we did not investigate further. Then an hour and half later... well... you can all see what happened... I have a very strong feeling that Yuusha is not involved, but it would be nice to hear what happened to you."

"Otherwise, the day was uneventful. I spent the morning searching for the kidnapper angel, but it never appeared..."

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Shinka: That's right! I was with Satone all night up until the announcement. I asked around about the note afterwards and found out we weren't the only ones to receive a note! Yuuta and Rikka both got one as well! Rikka told me hers said the exact same thing as the one Satone and I saw. Yuuta said his was the same except it specified Rikka instead of Yuuta.


Day: Notes all over the place this time. This probably won't lead anywhere, but have we compared handwriting on the notes to see if there is any pattern?

On a separate note, Nanashi, you said that blanket matched up with some of the stakes, but not the ones by Pierrick, did you happen to check and see if any of the patterns matched up with the wounds on Pierrick's body?

[King V]

"This witness has also thought about the culprit reloading the gun, but has found that this is not possible. The type of gun this witness fired yesterday is the type that reloads through a magazine, bullets must be reloaded by magazine instead of being reloaded individually. There are 12 bullets in a pistol magazine. And, while it is possible to reload the magazine itself, this witness has found the process to be very difficult and time consuming. This witness has also found no spare magazines among the ammunition in the black market, so it would be quite difficult to reload exactly 1 bullet into the gun that this witness fired, especially during the murder itself."

"This witness has information on the rest of this murder, but... I'm reluctant to share such information until all inconsistencies have been ironed out."

-RIN shudders-

"Therefore, this witness will not share any more information until a proper explanation has been given to the gun dilemma."

[John Dark Souls]

Mishy looks absolutely terrified and confused but finally works up courage to say just few words.

"Mshy is... Mishy is so sorry... Mishy must confess that... Mishy doesn't quite understand what's going on... Last thing Mishy remembers is everyone discussing Owen's murder but then while Mishy was lost in thought suddenly two people disappeared before Mishy noticed and everyone is talking about completely different murder and some strange places and things Mishy haven't seen... Mishy might've lost memory of everything that happened since last day..."

[King V]

-RIN stares at Mishy very suspiciously. You get the feeling that RIN has something to say, but is still withholding information due to the gun dilemma she mentioned-

[Daiwa Scarlet]

"If the cloth had been wrapped around Pierrick, then the stake pattern would have two or more holes for some of the stakes. Considering how there are larger holes in one section, they were most likely around Pierrick's back while the others are elsewhere on his body. Pierrick may have been moved off the spikes to remove the blanket, thus why some of the holes on him do not have a stake through them."

"As for patterns on the notes..."

Satone pulls out her note and shows it to the others to see if they notice anything.

[Exusiai]

"Did no one really go into the sewers while those test shots were being fired, though?
I know I went to the sewers earlier yesterday, but I visited early in the day and never had the chance to hear anything vaguely suspicious."


"As for what Day inquired, it turns out Pierrick's other wounds match the biggest holes in the fabric better than some of the stakes do.
Err- the other wounds are the ones that presently don't have stakes in them.
It's an unpleasant sight, but would anyone like to see the photo I took?

If we put stakes in those other wounds, then the pattern of holes in the blanket would be nearly identical to the arrangement of stakes protruding from the grate.
I said 'nearly,' because there's two other pieces that don't add up with the others.
These two extra stakes are also protruding out of the body—particularly, the lower torso.
This should conclude my report."

[Daiwa Scarlet]

"I would like to know when and where the ones who heard the shots heard them. The plan being carried out at 3 AM, assuming that the notes were the first step toward luring a victim, might indicate that they had been trying to reduce the chance of anyone being around to hear the test shots. I was not able to find any bullet casings around, so they had probably been discarded. It would be difficult to retrieve them if they are in the central sewer. Perhaps the magazine is small enough to fit through the grate as well."

[King V]

"Please give this witness some information about the missing gun with 1 bullet used, and this witness will provide their opinion on how the murder was done."