NOVPUBEven someone like Ludger, who seemed to fear nothing in this world, had people he preferred not to meet.
And in that list, the absolute and unshakable number one was his master.
The person who had fed and raised him—practically like a parent.
But on the flip side, their personality was so eccentric and unpredictable that living with them meant inevitably getting swept up in chaos, like being caught in a typhoon.
That was why Ludger declared his independence and separated from his master.
In truth, it was closer to having run away.
And while fleeing, he had even taken several of his master's cherished items—some magic books and alchemical reagents, no less.
To be honest, he didn’t just feel uncomfortable at the thought of seeing them again—it scared him.
But putting aside his master, there were still others Ludger was reluctant to meet.
And if he had to name just one among them without hesitation, it would be the detective standing right in front of him—Casey Selmore.
‘What on earth is she doing here?’
Was she just sightseeing because of Seorn’s festival?
She was a spontaneous person, the type who moved according to her whims unless there was a case involved, so her being here wasn’t strange.
It was just that he hadn’t expected to run into her so suddenly.
‘Casey Selmore didn’t recognize me and strike up a conversation. This is purely a coincidental overlap of circumstances.’
Ludger finished assessing the situation quickly and pointed toward the stadium.
“The stadium is that way.”
That was all he said.
He wasn’t the type to talk much anyway, and even more so, he had no desire to engage in conversation with the woman in front of him.
Casey had such an uncanny talent for deduction that she might extract something from even the smallest words or gestures.
Caution was necessary at every step.
“Ah, that way. Thanks for the info.”
“Not at all.”
“Oh, right. But, hey.”
Casey, just as she was about to leave, suddenly stopped and stared directly at Ludger.
“Haven’t we met somewhere before?”
“......”
Ludger didn’t answer.
Instead, he calmly looked at her as if to ask what nonsense she was spouting.
“I’m not saying it with any strange intentions. It’s just... I suddenly had that feeling, you know? Déjà vu, or whatever they call it.”
“This is the first time we’ve met.”
Ludger cut in decisively.
As in, this was their first meeting—right here and now.
His firm voice still left Casey looking puzzled.
‘Something’s not right.’
Yes, it was true they were meeting for the first time.
But the more she looked at him, the more Casey couldn’t shake the strange familiarity she felt.
It wasn’t suspicion.
It was closer to curiosity.
The only reason she’d spoken to him in the first place was because of that odd atmosphere he gave off just by standing still.
“Hm-hm. Nice to meet you. Since we’ve run into each other like this, why don’t we at least exchange names? I’m Casey Selmore. I work as a detective.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not in the mood to chat.”
“...Excuse me?”
Contrary to her expectation that he might react with recognition, Ludger’s response was cold.
Casey quickly wondered if she’d perhaps offended him somehow.
But no matter how much she thought about it, she hadn’t done anything to warrant anger.
‘Usually people are desperate to get a word in with me.’
Some were charmed by her appearance.
Others, drawn to her fame, tried to get excessively close.
But Ludger was the opposite.
As Casey hesitated in mild confusion, Ludger decided that since he’d already given directions, his business here was done and started to walk away.
But Casey was quicker to speak up than he was to leave.
“You’re a teacher here, aren’t you?”
Ludger hesitated slightly, wondering how to respond to that question.
He had already made it clear he didn’t want to converse, but Casey showed no intention of backing down.
If he tried to push her away more overtly now, she might grow suspicious. At least, that was likely based on what he knew of her.
Since he’d already pushed once...
‘I should back off this time.’
Ludger thought so and spoke.
“What made you think that?”
“I could tell just by looking at you.”
“You could tell just by looking?”
“First off, your clothing. Very luxurious. No visible seams or loose threads—it’s all finely tailored. That wave pattern on the shoulder? That’s from <Perilton>, isn’t it? Their coats are high-end.”
It was accurate, so Ludger nodded.
“That’s correct.”
“But clothes of that level aren’t something a commoner would buy so easily. Even if they could splurge, it’s hardly practical to wear something so nice at a festival. Too easy for it to get stained or smell like food. Especially here in the golem activation yard—who knows when grease might splatter?”
She raised a finger.
“So that narrows it down to someone who doesn’t worry about money. But are you a merchant? No. Merchants always carry coin purses. You, on the other hand, don’t have anything in your pockets. Not even the sound of coins. Merchants also care about time. But the pocket watch on your chest? Looks barely used. Which means you’re not obsessed with punctuality. Then what are you? A noble.”
“Hoh.”
“But you’re a noble with no family emblem. No ring, either. That means you don’t want to show your lineage—or you can’t. That leaves only one conclusion: you’re from a fallen noble house. And a fallen noble wouldn’t visit Seorn just for the festival, so you must live or work here.”
Each clue, each deduction, built upon the next.
Eventually, all the puzzle pieces came together to form a single, unavoidable conclusion.
“Eliminate the impossible, and only one fact remains. You’re a teacher at Seorn. A fallen noble, but still a man of presence—so I’ve heard the name. Ludger Cherish, right?”
She’d only seen him for a moment, and yet she’d made it that far.
She hadn’t been easy to deal with in the past, but now her skill had clearly reached another level.
Her impossible deductions and sharp insight had elevated her to even greater heights.
“That’s correct. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
“W-wait! Just a second!”
“What more do you want?”
When Ludger asked, Casey was briefly at a loss for words.
“Wait, uh... you’re not surprised?”
“About what?”
“Most people are amazed when I start deducing things like that.”
Casey had grown used to a certain pattern of reactions.
She’d analyze and deduce a stranger’s occupation upon first meeting, and most people would be stunned.
Some, after realizing her insight went beyond the ordinary, even felt fear.
To Casey, that was natural. She was well aware of how special she was.
To be honest, she even enjoyed those reactions—just a little.
To someone like her, the world could feel like a dull and unstimulating place.
The noble duty of guiding the world toward a better path still burned in her heart, providing purpose.
But every so often, she couldn’t help but feel bored.
Analyzing people and discerning their essence was her own private way of escaping that dullness.
But the man before her reacted in a way she hadn’t expected at all.
He wasn’t surprised in the slightest. He accepted everything she said with a calm so natural it was unsettling.
“That’s something to be surprised about?”
And even his reply was something else.
Casey was genuinely taken aback by his response.
‘What is this? Why isn’t he even a little shocked?’
She’d tried to fluster him by being so blunt in their first encounter, but she’d failed.
In fact, the man was all but shouting ‘we’re done here, I’m leaving,’ as he turned to go—which even hurt her pride a little.
“Other people... they’re always so amazed.”
“There are all kinds of people in the world. Deducing someone’s job at a glance? It’s a perfectly doable thing.”
In fact, Casey’s habit of analyzing people and striking up conversations wasn’t new to Ludger. It had happened plenty back when he was [James Moriarty].
And he himself had done similar things back when he was working as a “private detective.”
It would’ve been foolish to be surprised when he already knew how someone would act.
But Casey took his response a different way.
‘So that’s it... This guy thinks even this behavior of mine is just normal.’
Most people thought Casey’s behavior was strange.
However, Casey had always questioned the idea of “Is that really such strange behavior?”
And then she came to understand—
That she was significantly different from most people in the world.
Being different and being strange were not inherently the same thing.
But she was far too exceptional.
So much so that others couldn’t accept that difference and simply labeled it as “strange.” That was why people called Casey Selmore a weirdo.
But Ludger had accepted her behavior as if it were completely natural.
It wasn’t a forced comment made while trying to read the room.
And at that moment, Casey realized what Ludger truly was.
‘This man... he’s the same kind as me.’
She had heard the name Ludger Cherish before.
A fallen noble who became a teacher at Seorn, he had recently demonstrated a groundbreaking new magic called “Source Code” to his students.
To teach a magic that had never existed before as if it were ordinary...
Could any normal mage even think to do such a thing?
‘Judging by his personality after this short encounter, there’s no way he revealed that magic for some shallow motive.’
Casey’s appraisal of Ludger changed.
In her judgment, Ludger Cherish was the same type of person as her—
Someone whose definition of “normal” was wildly misaligned with that of ordinary people, someone fundamentally disconnected from the world.
‘I knew it. Even from the moment I spotted him from afar, there was something about him...’
In truth, Casey hadn’t approached Ludger just to ask for directions. There had been another motive mixed in.
The sight of Ludger in passing had suddenly overlapped with someone she had known in the past.
‘He was like that, too.’
Casey recalled a man she had met in the Kingdom of Delica.
James Moriarty.
Now, the two of them would probably kill each other if they could, but their first encounter hadn’t been hostile.
‘Back then, ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) he also seemed like someone for whom everything was meaningless, like a man completely cut off from the world.’
She hadn’t gone to meet that man with any particular reason.
It was just curiosity.
She had heard there was an outstanding young mathematician and went to see for herself, out of idle interest.
But that simple visit had ended up shaking her entire life to its core.
‘And at first, things weren’t even that bad between us.’
Though they didn’t get along well, it wasn’t like they were enemies either.
From the very beginning, they clashed like oil and water, never mixing—always bickering and snapping at each other.
Their clashing egos were inevitable given their equally immense talent, but it wasn’t because they genuinely hated each other.
In truth, they both subconsciously acknowledged the other’s skill.
Casey, too, had felt a quiet joy in meeting someone she could finally consider a peer.
‘But the reason things fell apart between us...’
It was that incident.
A string of disappearances.
And for some reason, even the police were dragging their feet and letting the investigation stall.
Unable to watch that pathetic display any longer, she took matters into her own hands.
‘And what I saw then was... that man. James Moriarty.’
Standing silently before the corpse of the missing child.
The blood flowing from his hands clearly came from the child—and the bodies of the policemen strewn around.
That was the moment Casey realized what kind of man James Moriarty truly was.
A villain.
So talented that his fate was to inevitably sever ties with the world.
—Why did you do it! Why would you do something like this!
At first, she had tried to talk to him.
She’d hoped maybe it had been a misunderstanding. That there was some other explanation.
She had genuinely wanted to believe that.
—I thought you were smarter than this, but that’s an awfully naive question. Have you been spending too much time among the masses? Started mistaking yourself for one of them?
But the man shattered her hope with a voice as cold as ice.
—How can a man live according to those beneath him, Casey Selmore? You know the truth, don’t you?
—Know... the truth?
—The world is suffocatingly dull. Boring. And the people in it are so utterly insignificant...
Even as he turned his back to her, the faint gleam in his eye as he looked over his shoulder was chilling.
—It makes me feel like I’m going to go mad from the sheer lack of air.
—Then... are you saying you did all this just to feel something? You killed all these people just to shake off your boredom?!
—And what if I did?
Maybe he didn’t even recognize that what he had done was wrong.
To him, wrongdoing could only be committed against someone on his level.
And since he didn’t consider others to be his equals, then what James Moriarty had done didn’t qualify as “evil” in his eyes.
—You know it too. Deep in your heart, there’s a voice like mine whispering inside you.
Those words of James Moriarty stirred the shadows buried deep within Casey’s soul—
The nerve she had carried for so long and tried to ignore.
Casey lowered her head.
—You know... I really hoped you weren’t a bad person.
—......
—I hoped all of this was just... yes, just a misunderstanding. That if we talked things through, we could find some way to understand each other. That it would be something simple like that.
—......
—Because we’re different from others. I believed that if we really spoke, we could understand one another.
James Moriarty offered no response.
He simply gazed at her with a cold, unwavering look.
Yes. That was it.
In the end, you made your choice.
Casey looked like she might cry for a moment, but then she bit her lip, steeled her resolve, and drew her cane.
—James Moriarty. I’m placing you under arrest!
The gesture carried a noble resolve—to punish the evil before her without fail.
And James Moriarty, standing across from her, responded—
—As you wish.
With a smile on his face.
