"So, you're saying you can't sleep because of whispers?"
Sehborn hesitated before nodding. "…Yes."
It took us a while to reach his manor. The place was isolated, standing alone in the middle of a town. No servants. No visitors. Not even a single maid.
"Why did you kick out the maids?" Monday asked.
Sehborn flinched. "I—I thought I could get rid of the whispers."
"That so?" I leaned back in my chair. "Then… do you hear them during the day?"
"N-No."
"In the dark?"
"…Only at night."
"I see." I stood up. "Alright. You can go back to your room. Monday, take him."
Monday hesitated before nodding. He had been nervous when we first arrived—understandable, considering we were meeting a noble. But after seeing the state Sehborn was in, all that nervousness faded. The man was skin and bones, his eyes hollowed out with dark circles so deep they looked painted on.
Once they were gone, I started walking through the hallways. Memories of Gramps' lessons surfaced in my mind.
This world is full of unknown mysteries—so many that thousands remain undiscovered, unsolved, or completely beyond comprehension.
Clarion was the same.
Gramps had explained it in his usual, overly complicated way. But I'd long since simplified it.
Clarion was like gear in an RPG. But instead of just equipping it, you had to level it up. The stronger the Clarion, the better the benefits and the more skills unlocked.
But skills weren't level-locked. You could unlock them early. It just required concentration. Creativity. Imagination. Clarion worked the way you imagined it to.
But where did it come from?
If mana was something you were born with—some people had more, some had less—Clarion was similar. But it didn't run on mana.
It ran on nerval concentration.
I had learned about it in a visual novel, but the concept wasn't hard to grasp. If you had nerves, you had nerval concentration. As you grew older, your NC increased—slightly, but enough to make a difference. But like anything else, people wanted more power.
And so, they discovered a rather disgusting method to obtain it.
Amputation.
It worked like this: if a person lost a limb, their nerves were suddenly… missing. But the mind didn't understand that. The brain, in its endless stupidity, projected imaginary nerves where the limb used to be.
The result? More NC.
Since there was no physical limb stopping the nerves from growing, the imaginary nerves extended far beyond normal. In cases of accidents, it was a convenient way for people to maintain their abilities.
But greed made it worse.
People started cutting off their limbs willingly—for power.
Sehborn was the same. Missing his entire left arm. He covered it well, but phantom pain didn't care for coverings. Pain that seeped into the brain, rewiring it, making it hear things that weren't there. That was Monday's theory. That was what he was checking.
Monday's Clarion—taste-based, seemingly useless to most—was anything but. He could read a person through their blood, trace the smallest details in a potion by tasting its dust. The right application could turn something dismissed as weak into an unparalleled weapon. And if there was an artifact in play here, that could change everything.
Artifacts weren't just relics. They were catalysts, amplifiers. Some enhanced a Clarion, some bestowed abilities unrelated to the user's talent. The Eyes of Ruin, for example, distorted vision to the point that faces became indistinguishable. Even a taste-based Clarion user could harness an artifact like that.
And if an artifact was responsible for this, it would explain a lot.
The manor's library was the largest room in the estate, untouched by human hands for who knew how long. The air was thick with the scent of dust and aging paper. I stepped in, brushing my fingers against the spines of books. Touch was enough. A real artifact felt different, had a density that set it apart from the ordinary.
Eight hundred forty-two books in two hours. I had read them all. A vision user would have been faster, but my method worked. The ink's weight, the texture of the pages—it told me everything. Noble etiquette, general knowledge, Clarion-based studies. Nothing useful. No artifacts.
And still, about ten thousand books remained.
A convenient excuse, really. Knowledge like this didn't come easily. It was almost night when Monday walked in, and by then, I had reached book 4,986. My head throbbed from exhaustion.
"What's up?" I rubbed my temple as he approached.
He leaned against a desk. "Checked most of the house. No artifacts. The guy's a hearing-based Clarion user."
I sighed. "That just makes his whispering problem worse. We'll check if we can hear anything ourselves. Did you taste his blood?"
Monday shook his head.
"Fine. Keep an ear on him. If his breathing turns uneven, wake him up."
Monday gave a lazy salute before heading out. I sank back into the chair, staring at the endless rows of books. No artifacts, no cursed books—yet.
Something was off.
The books were divided neatly by genre: politics, general knowledge, children's stories, fantasy, romance, and... other things. If he was hearing whispers, it could mean a spirit—unlikely—or an artifact dictating a book's contents.
He claimed he couldn't understand the words.
Maybe that was true.
Or maybe he was just too embarrassed to say what they were.