Chapter 3: The Trial

[King V]

"We only have 4 uses of the elevator confirmed, 2 by delusional quartet no.1 and no.4, 1 by nanashi, and 1 by pierrick. All other uses are unaccounted for, which means they must have been made by the culprit. Of the other uses, there are 3 which come before the knock on the door, and 2 which come afterwards."

"This witness theorizes that the culprit first went down to set up all of their murder tools, and then came back up to the player apartments. Seeing as nobody has any testimony of hearing a knock on their door, the knock must have been for pierrick. The culprit, Pierrick, and the 2 delusional quartet members all used the elevator afterwards. However, this theory still leaves 2 elevator uses unaccounted for. The culprit could have had multiple elevator uses, but this witness finds that very unlikely."

[John Dark Souls]

"Mishy doesn't think that is right. After all, the knock has been made by someone knocking on Pier's door. While Mishy? was sleeping or more like lying motionless on the bed, Mishy was awakened by a sound of the knock, which resounded as if it was coming from a nearby room followed by somebody calling out Pierrick's name 2 times. As you know, Mishy's room is located between Pierrick's and Yoff's rooms, so it could have only been one of the two. Combined with little boy's information, Mishy is pretty certain that Pierrick never used elevator to go up to apartments after evening when Mishy and witness girl returned to their rooms. And because nobody has revealed themselves to be the owner of wet note, Mishy thinks that a to-be culprit who received the note that Pierrick will be killed in sewers, came searching for him in his room, before they proceeded down to sewers to find him, there, things happened and as result, they ended up killing Pierrick."

[Daiwa Scarlet]

"When were the elevators heard? Were they heard shortly before notes were slipped under the doors? It could indicate that the culprit came up to the apartments once per note, assuming that the time it takes to place a note is enough for the elevator to stop and count as two movements."

[King V]

"This witness finds the unwillingness of all of you to spit out your information becoming extremely dull. This witness will present their own theory and cut out all of these unnecessary excursions."

"The culprit begins their plan after everyone has gone up to their apartments and is presumably asleep. The culprit sneaks downstairs and sets everything up, the spikes, the guns, etc. Pierrick at some point left his room and went downstairs of his own volition, for some unknown reason. He was seen carrying something, most likely the blanket, and left to do whatever he wanted.

After several other people randomly used the elevator for no adequately explained reason, the culprit came back upstairs to try and find their victim. However, Pierrick had already left the apartment and so the culprit knocking on their door didn't accomplish anything, and the culprit went back down to find Pierrick. If Pierrick was carrying the blanket, this would not have been difficult, as the blanket left many traces of cloth snagged against various objects. So the culprit found Pierrick and baited, lured, or convinced him to follow them down into the sewers.

The culprit would've had to time this event at the same time that the members of the delusional quartet were in the sewers. They did this in order to create the perception that 7 gunshots occurred, and would correspond to the number of missing bullets from the pistols that had been previously set up. And they wanted to use the pistols to conceal the fact that a rifle had been used in order to commit the murder

The culprit fired at Pierrick 7 times and pierced him along with the blanket. Pierrick must've fallen into the water along with the blanket at this point, and then the culprit fished him out and threw him over to the spikes where they impaled him and covered up the gunshot wounds. The culprit then threw their rifle into the water, where it snagged on a rock and was difficult to get. They got out of the sewers using their escape rope that had been prepared beforehand, and came back to the apartment using the elevator."

"As for who the culprit is, this witness will go ahead and accuse the most obvious person. It was clearly Caster who committed the murder. This is because the number of times the elevator was used does not match with the number of times that people traveled between the 1st and 6th floors. Caster would have been the only person capable of traveling to the 6th floor through the portal in the elevator, thus he would've been able to leave all the notes without causing any further noise."

"This witness recognizes their own bias, but doesn't really care. Please kill Caster so we don't have to deal with these portals anymore."

[Xaniks]

"What? I'm the only person capable of using a portal that was clearly there in the open since the day before? You really have it out for me, lady. If you must know, my alibi is that I returned to my room at 21:00 and went to bed. I awoke when the body discovery announcement played at 4:30."

[King V]

"As far as we know, Caster is the only player who can create portals, therefore Caster's alibi should present when the portal was created. Your alibi lacks detail, Caster. Amend it immediately."

[Xaniks]

"Of course. The portal came into existence the day before. ((Aka pre-Murderous Execution)) When the daylight shone and the night of the murder had yet to pass. Are you satisfied?"

[King V]

"Before this witness goes any further, additional information is necessary. Pierrick was supposedly carrying something very large down into the sewers when he went down there. This information is most likely unnecessary, but this could tie into why Pierrick might've went down into the sewers in the first place."

"No blunt force trauma was found on the body, and no signs of a struggle, therefore Pierrick went down into the sewers of his own volition, or was manipulated by the culprit. The reason why this happened is critical to my understanding of this case."

[King V]

"This murder can be accurately expressed in one phrase. There is a lack of any traces of gunshot wounds anywhere."

"The culprit's intent can be traced using the discarded guns. The pistols were obviously set up to make it look like a fake gunfight occurred. This would've been done to hide the fact that the rifle was used. However, there are no locations where the rifle could've feasibly wounded a victim due to a lack of any bullet markings and lack of a large enough blood splatter for rifle rounds. Therefore, the rifle must also be a diversion."

"The murder basically goes like this. The culprit had everything set up beforehand, the spikes, the guns, the blanket, and the rope. For some reason, Pierrick was also intent on entering the sewers late at night, and here the culprit murdered him by stabbing him with one or more stakes they had prepared. This both matches the extra stab wounds on Pierrick's body as well as the small blood splatter found in the sewers."

"The culprit then went ahead to set up the entire crime scene. They used a blanket to cover up Pierrick's body and carry him around to avoid spilling further blood, and carried him over to the center bowl of the sewers where they set up his body on the spikes. However, handrail of the walkway above the bowl couldn't withstand the weight of both the culprit and the body, and it broke, which caused both the culprit and the body to fall into the watery area of the bowl and become soaking wet. The culprit was able to escape after a tedious effort of climbing the very slippery watery slope of the bowl, and returned to the apartments."

"Back at the apartments, the culprit went around each floor looking for a way to dry themselves off. They most likely found one, but no evidence of such has been mentioned as of yet. The culprit then went upstairs to Pierrick's room and knocked, knowing that Pierrick had already been killed. The note stating that Pierrick would be killed was most likely prepared as a way to justify this action. The culprit then prepared a few other notes and distributed them to delusional quartet no.1 and no.4, intending for them to arrive at the sewers later on."

"After the 2 members of the delusional quartet had arrived, the culprit grabbed a rifle from the black market and shot at the ceiling several times, knowing that there would be witnesses present. The culprit then threw the rifle into the water near the black market and fled the scene, returning to the apartment."

"You might ask why the culprit would go through the trouble of doing all of this. It's most likely so that the culprit could create the impression that Pierrick was killed several hours later than he had actually been killed and falsify the time of death. For what reason, this witness cannot explain. Constructing an alibi is pointless because nobody has any alibi so late at night, so this witness can only conclude that all of this setup was a random pointless distraction to waste our time on this case. Most of the evidence can, and should, be ignored as they are all red herrings."

"That being said, this witness still has no idea why Pierrick would willingly enter the sewers. The most logical reason would be that the culprit manipulated Pierrick into doing so somehow, but there is no written evidence of collusion. Therefore, the culprit must have convinced Pierrick into doing so before night fell, during the day. If anyone saw Pierrick spending an unusual amount of time with anyone else during the day, then please speak up."

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Day: "Hmm...I fear that I have a potential reason for Pierrick heading down to the sewers, but it does mess with your theory somewhat. Specifically an item on Pierrick's body, his numbered dagger. If you examine his dagger you can clearly see its edges have been worn down and the blade itself seems dirty, like it was used and the blade got scuff marks. I do not believe any other item was found which could have been used to break up the wooden barricades and sharpen the pieces into stakes. I don't think Pierrick would allow someone to take his dagger or risk it being lost after Monika's proved to be her downfall previously so I think its unlikely someone would have been able to take his dagger and use it prior to his death."

Day: "I propose that Pierrick came down here to setup the stakes and was carrying the blanket to conceal them, similar to how his body and the stakes were concealed when Yuuta and Rikka claim to have found him. If he intended to set them up like that, it would explain him going down alone. However, if Pierrick setup the stakes, how would the culprit know about them to end up using them on Pierrick?"

[John Dark Souls]

"Hmmm, Mishy thinks the murder happened a bit differently. Rather than a reason for Pierrick to go down to sewers to get murder it was the other way. Pierrick prepared a way to murder somebody and called them out using a note about self being murdered, finding which, culprit proceeded to search for Pierrick in sewers and ended up murdering him. This is sort of supported by the way Mishy thinks elevator moved. The movements of elevator are counted after you went to bed, from around 9:45pm. 4 trips happened between then and knock.

1st trip Lloyd, Days and Nanashi went back to their room around 10:00pm as Days said.
2nd trip is Nanashi deciding to go down to 3rd floor for whatever reason at around 10:45pm.
3rd trip that Nanashi heard while on 3rd floor around 11:00pm was Pierrick leaving a note to culprit and going down to start preparing the stakes in the grate.
4th trip was Nanashi going back to his room, not sure at what time though.

Some amount of time passed before culprit decided to finally act on the note they received and go knock on Pierrick's room to see if they were in their room. After the said knock, 5 trips happened.

1st trip was culprit going down to sewers to find Pierrick, that's when things happened, and Pierrick ended up being murdered. Culprit got an idea to use guns and notes to fake murder time and confuse everyone and proceeded to act on it.
2nd trip was culprit returning to apartments to put the notes into rooms of all chhuni kids. This happened around 3:00am judging by Satone and Shinka's alibi.
3rd trip was culprit rushing back down into sewers and to black market to prepare to shoot the rifle right afterwards.
4th trip was Rikka acting on note and heading down around... 3:30am... Wait a moment...
5th trip was Yuuta acting on note and heading down around 3:45am..?
This doesn't add up...? Okay, this must've went this way.
On 2nd trip culprit returned to apartments with 4 notes to all chuunis. They put first one to Shinka's or Satone's room unknowing that both partied together. Culprit waited on the floor 15 minutes seeing if room owner will leave before proceeding to send next note to the room of the other one. Then after they didn't leave for another 15 minutes, culprit proceeded to send note to Rikka's room around 3:30am.
3rd trip was Rikka rushing out on a note and going to sewers at 3:30am. Culprit still stayed up for 15 minutes and then sent last note to Yuuta at 3:45am.
4th trip was Yuuta acting on that note and going down as well.
5th trip was culprit finally going down themselves and heading to sewers and black market to shoot the rifle.

With 7 gunshots done:

Culprit did 1 last trip to return to their room afterwards.

And this is how Mishy thinks the murder transpired"

[John Dark Souls]

"Seeing as nobody has any objections to the order of how it happened, Mishy will continue. Based on order Mishy just described, we can rule out a good deal of suspects: First, Shinka and Satone had an alibi for each other throughout the night and neither could be culprit. Secondly, Witness girl could not be culprit either because culprit can't be completely sure just how many times elevator moved up or down in total so talking about elevator sequences would be a way too risky of a move that Mishy can't expect somebody like her to do. Mishy knows more than anyone with memory back that he isn't culprit. Rikka and Yuuta are also unlikely, because for one to be a culprit, they'd have to go down shoot guns for other one, immediately go up, open elevator doors of elevator on first floor, go through portal, call elevator from top, use it to go back down and only then appear there to meet up with the other one as if nothing happened which would take too much time and on top of that mess up the elevator usages after the knock."

"With all that in mind, we are left with only Ryo, Caster, Days and Lloyd as possible culprit. Personally, Mishy finds Ryo most suspicious. But none of them have a sound alibi, so I suppose our only option is to use this casino like it is meant to. To gamble our lives on 25%. The odds are certainly in culprit's favor, but its not impossible odds."

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

-Ryo massages his temples-

Ryo: "Huh? You find me to be the most suspicious? Sorry, My alibi isn't any better than Caster's. I had a particularly nasty headache so I went to bed around 8:45 PM and didn't leave my room or hear anything up until the body announcement. Besides, you missed someone."

-Ryo points at Satone-

Ryo: "I bet the culprit is the person who keeps mysteriously kidnapping Satone. This whole murder transpires in the middle of the night outside our knowledge and the first note luring someone to the crime scene goes to Satone? I don't think that is a coincidence. I bet the culprit just wanted to hide Satone in a trash can somewhere soaked in blood so she went another trial without an alibi. After all, there was no need to create the illusion of the gunfight, as Rin said, since no one had an alibi that night. Culprit probably intended to hide her somewhere and then do something to get us all to gather up, giving them an alibi for when Satone would be 'shooting' Pierrick. After that didn't play out they panicked and decided to cause the fake gun battle to make us suspect Rikka or Yuuta."

-Day nods-

Day: "That is true. The fact that the cloaked person who has shown up every murder is supposedly absent in this one is concerning. Based on previous crimes I believe we can conclude the cloaked person was not anyone who died up to this point based on their various sightings so I can't believe they somehow died. The only motive for the culprit to send those notes was to create the false gunfight which had the sole goal of messing with the supposed time of death, which was completely unnecessary, so I bet the culprit's main objective was different as Ryo suggests."

-Lloyd shakes his head-

Lloyd: "But is the cloaked figure one of us or a someone separate from this whole group? If we go down this path we aren't going to have any better idea who the culprit is!"

-Yuuta steps forward-

Yuuta: "Nothing about the notes makes any sense. If the culprit didn't know Shinka and Satone were together, why did the culprit decide to not put a note in Shinka's room? If they truly wanted people down in the sewers, wouldn't more people be effective? It seems odd to go for two. One may have worked due to it breaking an alibi, while more than two would have confused alibis even in the sewers. Why would the culprit send specifically 3 notes?"

[John Dark Souls]

Mishy looks at the 3 suspects and Yuuta suspiciously.

"So you are suggesting that notes are in fact not made by the culprit luring out people to create a gunfight to mess up alibis and is in fact the strange cloaked person trying to lure out Satone out of her room to kidnap Satone again? Mishy is sure if that person really tried to kidnap Satone they'd manage to find a way through the locked apartment room and kidnap her even with Shinka in there. So there definitely might be a reason for them not doing it, but Mishy can't think of exactly it would help us find out who the culprit is, unless you are thinking that the person in question is the culprit or is victim and culprit knew of it and used that as a motive to murder them. In which case, the whole reason to create the gunfight would be to create an alibi for self, or in other words... Are you 3 thinking culprit is either Rikka or Yuuta?"

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Yuuta: "The cloaked person can't be Rikka or myself, as the two of us and Shinka encountered the cloaked figure during the second murder. Unless the cloaked figure is more than one person, it can't have been one of us. Plus we almost prevented the cloaked person from 'kidnapping' Satone in the second murder. All they did was toss Satone into a dark corner before we chased them off."

-Shinka nods-

Shinka: "I chose to stay with Satone to protect her from the cloaked person. Hence why I forced spending the night together. I think what they are trying to say is because the culprit targeted Satone, its likely whoever the culprit is would be whomever has been the cloaked figure in previous cases."

-Day speaks up in agreement-

Day: "Correct. From the Second Murder, all of the people you listed can't be the cloaked figure. I was in the Lord's Blessing and witnessed the chase scene. Ryo and Lloyd were stuck on the 6th floor due to Rin's elevator stand. And of course Yuuta was seen in the presence of the cloaked person so that can't be it. Caster's testimony from the 2nd Trial comes into question as he was supposedly watching the portal the entire time and no one can confirm that, but he would have to pass by the body of Owen to have escaped the 6th floor and returned via the portal to have the chase with the others, which I find unlikely."

-Lloyd chimes in-

Lloyd: "Indeed. As long as the motive for giving the note to Satone can only be to lure them and remove their alibi then its likely the cloaked individual is the culprit. That doesn't remove us from the suspect list, but it makes is significantly more unlikely as none of us have any motive to send those notes or start the fake gunfight."