Some things aren't difficult to explain to the police. Your apartment being full of fresh bodies isn't one of them.

To make my mood even worse, I now had confirmation that my least favorite bastard was here as well.

He had definitely done this on purpose.

Despite his madness, I had still seen him as my brother, once. I don't make the same mistake twice.

If I ever had the chance, I would kill him.

But back to far more pressing matters, I had two options. I could flee the country, or I could waste a bunch of time getting out of this mess.

Currently, the latter was looking more appealing, although not by much.

It wouldn't take long for someone to notice and run to the police. They might've even done so already.

I quickly made my way to Valentine's quarters. Normally, Delaney would be working at this hour, but he had just gotten married the day before.

I knocked on the door. There were some scrambling noises. Apparently, they had been... preoccupied.

Valentine opened the door and stuck her head out. Upon seeing me, she raised an eyebrow.

"It's you? How did you get past the guards?"

"Walked past them," I shrugged. She'd probably want me to elaborate more on that later, but I didn't have the time.

Her eyebrow raised even further.

"And why are you here? Do you want to join us or something?"

"No! No, I actually came because I have a major problem involving a home invasion by a serial killer from another world who slaughtered my entire apartment block."

Now she looked concerned.

"That does sound like quite the issue. Alright, give us a moment."

The door closed, then opened again a few minutes later. Valentine and Delaney were in highly informal clothing, but it covered everything important.

I sat across from them.

"I think you should explain from the beginning," Delaney said.

I did. Well, from the beginning after I was summoned by the priestess, and it was the short version, but good enough.

I wasn't as weak as back then. I might not be able to fight Valentine and Delaney, but I was pretty sure I could at least escape. I would also be a lot more likely to notice any sketchy rituals they might try to cast on me.

It wasn't entirely safe, but I thought it was worth the risk to gain strong allies.

The two of them listened intently.

Delaney spoke first.

"I'd wanted to find a more auspicious occasion to make this proposal, but are you willing to become my disciple?"

He was offering to protect me. I didn't know if it was because I was an incredibly valuable talent or if he actually liked me, but it was the same to me either way.

If I wanted to avoid being branded at least partially responsible for Johan's crimes, I would need to go through extensive interrogation. It would be extremely suspicious if I continued to try to hide that I was the hero summoned by the Temple of Light.

Once that came out, major powers would take a vested interest in me. It would be much easier if I had backing.

Professor Delaney was one of the most knowledgeable and experienced mages on the continent, and I found his specialization fascinating. I wouldn't be taking a loss.

"It would be my pleasure."

I accepted his offer.

Formal teacher-disciple relationships were cemented with an exchange of vows.

Like most important vows between mages, we made them first in front of witnesses, and then again, with our true names, inside an impenetrable sphere. The ritual had been perfected by generations of extremely paranoid people, so I wasn't worried.

They were pretty reasonable. In essence, the teacher vowed to provide the disciple with what they needed to learn and the disciple vowed to not betray the teacher. There were enough escape clauses in cases of contingencies to satisfy me, while still being secure enough to be functional.

There were consequences to breaking them, but it wasn't any sort of mind control.

Valentine was our witness.

Inside the sphere, Delaney told me his name. It sounded a lot more suitable for an archmage than "Delaney," and I questioned his taste in choosing such a downgrade.

In exchange, I told him mine, my true name, the first words which I recognized as uniquely identifying me.

His eyes widened in shock, then concern, and maybe a trace of pity.

It would be a violation of trust for him to ask about it, so he didn't.

Then, I headed down to the police station to turn myself in.

As my mentor, Delaney would find a legal representative for me, but it seemed that I would be spending a few nights in jail while they investigated.

If enough time passed without any signs of my outlook improving, I'd break out. Not being wanted in another huge country would be nice, though, so I'd give legal cooperation a shot first.

While truth circles aren't foolproof, my extremely solid alibi, the traces of Johan's light mana and the images from my recording formations would hopefully be enough to back my story.

A female police officer cuffed me roughly and tried to shove me into a cell. I let her.

"I don't care who you are, you're not getting away with this, you criminal scum," she said.

Ah, the sweet sounds of the justice system. I appreciated the enthusiasm, but it seemed really sloppy and unethical to just assume like that simply because my apartment was full of corpses. Hopefully it was just an intimidation tactic.

I don't think I had the right to remain silent, but I exercised it anyway.

"Are you ignoring me?"

I wondered idly if she'd believe me if I wrote on a piece of paper that I was religious and had taken a vow of silence. Lying to a cop in this context was probably illegal, though, so I didn't test it.

I wrenched myself free from her grasp and moved deeper into the cell. There were other criminals in it, so she didn't follow me.

Thank god for small mercies.

I found a dry place to sit against the wall. It wasn't too uncomfortable.

I was wearing cuffs to restrict my mana usage, but I'd lived almost my entire life without magic. It didn't bother me.

Besides, if I really wanted to, I could get them off if I dislocated my thumb and stripped off some skin. They were snug, so it would hurt like hell, but magic would heal it after.

As I settled in, a large man with a shaven head asked, "What are you in here for?"

I shrugged.

"Mass murder."

"Ah. Yeah, that'll do it. I can't say you look the sort, but it's hard to tell with you mages."

"It wasn't actually me," I informed him. I mean, it could've been, but in this case, it wasn't.

"That's disappointing. And here I thought I'd finally got an interesting roommate, for once."

At his words, an image of what Johan would do for entertainment in this place came to mind.

"Interesting, yeah... That's one way to put it. Well, I can guarantee that if you did room with the guy who did do it, you wouldn't be bored, at least."

Our third cellmate decided to join the conversation completely uninvited by walking over and grabbing my shoulder.

"Don't worry about being bored," he said with a nasty smile, "I can think of plenty of things for a delicate mage to do with a pretty face like yours."

That was fast. And I'm nowhere near delicate, if I do say so myself.

My buddy with the shaved head looked at our cellmate with an expression of resigned disapproval.

Nasty had a strong grip and was trying to drag me with him.

I stood up, grabbed his wrist, and pulled his hand down off my shoulder. Then I kneed him in the groin and rapidly hit him in the head and torso until his strength started to flag.

I threw him on his face, followed him to the ground, put his arm in a lock, and snapped it.

I did the other arm too, for good measure. The less I had to worry about getting shanked in my sleep, the better.

At this point, he was screaming in pain and rolling around. I caught one of his hands under my foot and stomped on it hard enough to break bone.

At least my shaved head buddy seemed to be enjoying the show.

I stomped on Nasty's other hand. The surprise was starting to wear off.

He tried to pull back and I grabbed him by the hair, pulling his head up so that I could see his face. Then, I slammed it into the stone wall several times before looking at it again.

He looked angry and scared. I slammed his face into the stone wall a few times more, then dragged him over to a rather deep puddle in the corner and started to drown him.

This time, when I pulled him up, he looked terrified.

"How about you stay out of my way from now on, hmm?"

Nasty nodded, his mouth full of blood and broken teeth.

You might say this was an overreaction, and it might've been. I probably could've stopped after crushing both of his hands. But without magic, I was only a skilled human. I could fight off at most a few people simultaneously. A knife to the carotid would be more than enough to kill me.

I'd rather people were too scared to try it.

The prison guards separated us and threw me in solitary.

Not the most pleasant of places. On the bright side, at least nobody would bother me for a while.

It was pretty cramped, but fortunately, there was enough space to do handstand push-ups.

Miranda grit her teeth. According to her boss, the new prisoner had a rather important friend in the mage tower, so they should be careful with him.

It wasn't right.

She had been one of the first responders who found his residence. It looked like something straight out of hell.

What happened there hadn't been just mindless slaughter. Whoever did it had enjoyed it. Among the victims were men, women, and children; many of them had struggled and bled for a long time before they died.

She could tell from their expressions, from their positions, from the trails of blood they left while desperately trying to escape: the perpetrator was a monster.

The mage said it wasn't him, but even though he had just seen such a tragic and horrifying scene in his own home, he seemed completely unaffected. At most, he was irritated by the inconvenience.

No good person could possibly be so indifferent to something so awful.

So, she had 'accidentally' thrown him into a cell with the most notorious serial rapist in the prison. With a face like his, the outcome was inevitable.

As a mana-dependant mage, he'd be too disoriented to even fight back.

It was the least she could do to teach him a lesson that he'd been unjustly escaping due to his status.

Miranda heard a commotion coming from the direction of the mage's cellblock. They seemed to be taking someone to the infirmary.

Had the mage tried to resist? It seemed fitting for an inhuman bastard, who thought nothing of violence, to suffer a fraction of what his victims probably had.

He'd finally understand how it felt to be helpless.

She headed towards the infirmary. This was something she wanted to see.

But the man on the stetcher wasn't the one she'd been expecting. His face was so torn up it was barely recognizable, but from his build, she could tell it was the rapist.

She wouldn't say he didn't deserve it, but his condition was ghastly. Bone was exposed in several locations along with tissue that almost looked minced.

For the mage to be capable of such brutality even without mana, he was even worse than she imagined.

"Where is he?"

"We just threw him into solitary."

Miranda strode towards the solitary block. No matter who he was, he wouldn't get away with this.