PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

The cynicism involved in that particular case was even more controversial than the crimes the corrupt politician was accused of, Desmond remembered his parents talking about it, so it seemed strange to him to be the protagonist of a similar event.

In the middle of the road connecting Kars city with Green Seed Town, Desmond and his squad along with some minions were securing an area of ??the road where a terrible attack took place.

Watching the forensic team remove human remains from the two destroyed vehicles, Desmond had a slight moment of nervousness that quickly subsided as he retraced his footsteps in his mind.

So far everything was going according to plan, with regards to the first vehicle this was too damaged to recover any evidence not to mention that the fire almost completely engulfed the bodies of the people inside.

The arrow that destroyed the vehicle was pulverized to such a degree that not even shards of it were left, any titanium or carbon left behind by the arrow could very well belong to some part of the vehicle that was made of mostly the same materials.

It was the second vehicle that brought Desmond the most pressure, he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure that he did a flawless job. Desmond had marked each of the bullets he fired with a fine touch of mana that he traced back to recover each of the bullets after the incident, something made possible by his enormous affinity and control over metallic mana which allowed him to act like a giant magnet that attracted bullets marked by his mana.

In addition to recovering the ballistic evidence, Desmond had used Athena’s help in conjunction with his efforts to wreck the vehicle making it appear as if it had been attacked by wild beasts; making sure to destroy any shot marks in the process.

As for the corpses, none died with a full-body, due to the massive damage caused by the sniper rifle and Athena’s efforts to attract some small carnivorous mutated beasts to feed on the remains; by the time Desmond’s squad arrived on the scene only the bones of a few bodies remained.

.....

Between those and other efforts, Desmond had gone to great lengths to clean any trace of an attack from him on the spot, even picking up some feathers that fell from Athena’s wings fearing these might be tracked by espers.

Beyond that, there was little Desmond could do, as far as he knew the only way to link him to the incident would be with the help of an esper who can see into the past similar to how the magical artifact works in Desmond’s hands, but even that had time constraints; That’s not even taking into account how ridiculously rare espers were able to do that.

As far as Desmond knew, no esper with that ability existed in Country F, and even if they are, time constraints would have made it impossible for Desmond to be tracked that way; after all the news that the squad was missing took nearly three hours to reach Green Seed Town.

Adding the almost two hours it took to prepare all the staff to come here and the two hours it had taken for the forensic team to check the scene, it had been almost seven hours since the incident; even the magical artifact in Desmond’s hands could only look a couple of hours into the past so it would be impossible for an esper to do the same even if he was magically teleported to the location to investigate.

Desmond’s biggest concern right now wasn’t an esper intervening but rather that he feared he had made a mistake leaving something behind for the forensic team, the irony being that it was Desmond who requested the forensic staff and the help of another first lieutenant with field experience.

Of course, Desmond didn’t do this for no reason and instead did it so that by the end of the investigation there would be no suspicion of himself for the way he handled the case.

Whether or not the commander suspected Desmond in the past, as soon as Commander Rundert learned of the death of the expert he called in to investigate that incident months ago he would have his guard up on everything related to Ulrick’s death.

By extension once Desmond’s report came in stating that it was nothing more than a terrible coincidence where mutated beasts attacked the convoy, it was inevitable that the commander’s suspicions of Desmond would increase; That was why Desmond needed the forensics team’s backup as well as the name of another lieutenant to back up his report.

Desmond’s move might be reckless, but he needed to tie up as many loose ends as possible, and to do so he needed to take risks, he also had the confidence that even if he left something behind it still wouldn’t be conclusive evidence of anything.

In any case, as long as the finding wasn’t significant enough, Desmond could erase it from the report before turning it over to the commander, and the lieutenant who came with the forensic team wouldn’t bother to confirm the information.

As if that wasn’t enough, Desmond had arranged for the forensics team not to have all the time in the world to thoroughly investigate the crime scene, and judging by the position of the sun; It was time for some countermeasures to make an appearance under the careful guidance of a certain naive harpy.

GROOOW*

A roar reverberated along the road as a pack of mutated wolves emerged from the grove near the road, vicious and bloodthirsty, the bear-sized wolves sprinting in the direction of the coroner’s staff that was still checking one of the bodies in the second vehicle.

“Take cover!” Desmond didn’t hesitate to yell as he used unrivaled dexterity to grab his Mk 556 Haenel assault rifle and open fire in the direction of the wolves, taking down the one leading the charge, buying enough time for the rest of his squad to take cover and set up a defensive perimeter to open fire.

Because the number of wolves was not too great and they had to run at least 50m in open ground before reaching the defensive barrier, the wolves were quickly annihilated but all remaining evidence in the incident area could be considered contaminated now so the lieutenant in charge of the forensic staff determined that there was no point in continuing to check since they believed they already had everything they needed.

In the report that said lieutenant gave to Desmond, it was explained that from the evidence collected, it was almost certain to affirm that the incident had been caused by mutant beasts, probably of the flying type, which is why the convoy did not see them coming.

Details aside, the report roughly matched what Desmond expected so he didn’t even need to edit the report and passed it directly to the commander along with his report.

At first, Commander Rundert had a skeptical expression as he read Desmond’s report being very suspicious of the circumstances surrounding Ulrick’s death but after reading the forensic report and hearing that it was Desmond who requested the presence of the forensic department even before leaving At the base, the commander had no choice but to accept that Desmond had exceptionally handled the incident without any irregularities to justify his suspicions.

“Damn, was it really an accident?” As soon as Desmond left the office, Commander Rundert couldn’t help but curse out loud, now that he had spent so much of his funds to hire Ulrick to investigate the masked man; the commander had run out of options to continue investigating the incident.

Little did Commander Rundert know that even if he wanted to investigate further he couldn’t because based on what Ulrick had told Desmond about his mission, Desmond had sought out the piece of evidence he left behind that day and destroyed it after falsifying the log-in records of the evidence room.

If Commander Rundert finds out, he will surely curse the lack of budget that prevented them from having security cameras at important points like that, in any case, the commander will never find out because he had decided to leave that cursed incident in the past.

Even with all the measures Desmond had taken, he decided it was best to wait at least a couple of days for things to settle down to be completely sure the whole incident went according to plan.

In this way almost a week passed during which Commander Rundert had been in a bad mood, before everything returned to normal, though some of his connections Desmond discovered that the frustrated commander had ordered the files of both these incidents to be sealed; apparently wanting to bury his shame.

Of course, Desmond couldn’t be happier about it, now that that hidden danger was finally gone, it was time for Desmond to start on some of the plans he had been putting off until now for lack of a proper opportunity to employ them.

Due to the premonition that Katya had shown him, Desmond realized that some things couldn’t be put off when concerned with his safety so no matter if the time was right or not; Desmond would make a trip to Kars City once more.