The diary mentioned the ruined mural upstairs and the unaccessible rooms, plus a few important sounding names like White Order and Night Crunchers. Even by consulting the system, it only gave her the knowledge she just learned.

  To be fair, it did give her some flavour details, but nothing too big.

  Surprisingly, the completion percentage of the quest went all the way up to 20%. Maybe finding major clues are the secret to finish the quest quickly.

  Following what was written in the notebook, grandma Tacha took a closer look to the murals in the room. Seven walls had quite elaborate murals on them, excluding the one with the stairs.

  The most eye-catching one was the one at the center: a man with a wolf mask and a feathered hat was facing the stairs, arms opend wide and palms facing upwards. Seven weird symbols surrounded him, though she could see some similarities to some objects she knew. Going clock-wise: a horned skull, a tree, a spyral encased in a triangle, a crown, a spyre, a wing, and a bird.

  On his chest, a medallion similar to the broken one she picked up earlier, was hanging down. There were seven hollow round carvings and if what was written in the diary was true, then all of them were supposed to be holding gems. Why would they be missing?

  Thinking that they might still be somewhere on the floor, Tacha started looking around.

  She didn’t find any gems. Instead she found something more interesting. On the side, not far from the stairs, a silver brooch was laying on the ground. On the front, the engraving of a sprouting leaf was accompanied by a small bird. Meanwhile, on the back, the pin was on the verge of breaking.

  Moreover at the center of the basement, where no lines converged on the floor, she had found some bloodstains. They were all contained within the lineless center, some of which were smeared in a straight line. A thing to be noted was that they couldn’t be found anywhere else, only there in the middle of the room.

  As granny Tacha was searching around for more bloodstains, she found inscribed on the ground three more mechanisms. They all had some kind of wear on most of their mechanical parts, some of the gears were even at their breaking point.

  The emblems were positioned where most of the lines converged, as the crow flies right in the middle between two of the contraptions embedded in the walls. Between the metal and the ice one was a colorful mechanism; vials with liquids of different colors could be seen beyond a sturdy glass pannel on the ground.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Between the ice and wind emblems, a contraption with multiple revolving mirrors could be seen from beyond a glass pannel, similar to the one found on the other two mechanisms. Lastly, between the wind and metal emblems lay the last contraption. More than one colorful gem could be seen from beyond the glass, however this one had scratch marks all over its dials, with an hollow cavity at their center.

  When Tacha looked closer, she could see some faint traces of blood all around the hollow part. Tracing her finger along the marks, she could get an idea or two about what happened there.

  Still feeling like she could find some more clues laying around, she scurried the ground as if she was a dog sniffing around. Not noticing the weird glances Fr?st was sending her way, she was overjoyed when she found a gold coin featuring a garland of wheat on one side, and a wind rose on the other side.

  It was located not far from the central mural. It was weird too, as none of the coins that were used ingame had those motifs.

  Then, a notification appeared with a loud ting!

  Granny Tacha wasn’t expecting the investigation quest to have another part. She thought that she would have to explain what happened at most. Considering that she couldn’t find any more clues, it would be faster to simply advance with the quest.

  With the confirmation, the space all around her became illuminated in blue, the clues and related phrases floating all around her. Before she could read the floating windows, a new system prompt came up in front of her eyes, the sound following it weirdly melodic.

  In short, she had to be careful to not make too many mistakes. A bad score would mean abysmal rewards. Even if she was on a rush, that was simply unacceptable!

  With a spin of her hand, she circled between the various windows, reading the description carefully.

  After messing around for a bit with the window matching, Tacha found the combination that sounded mostly right. It wasn’t that difficult, only with a couple of definitions she had a bit of trouble.

  Now sure of her answers, she pressed the confirm button and awaited with trepidation for the system’s evaluation.