Chapter 1: Wayne’s Detective Agency

March 13th, 1938 CE.

Londan, Kingdom of Windsor.

The passing winter brought in little warmth. Citizens hustled about under the lingering influence of the great depression and the looming threat of war. It was a city shrouded in gloom.

Wayne’s Detective Agency, Belker Street[1], Eastern Region.

A two-story apartment with a basement stood by the street. It was a rare sight of affluence in the underdeveloped Eastern Region. It was, however, the landlord’s affluence and had nothing to do with Wayne. If he failed to make rent, he would have to look for riches in the sewer.

In his office on the first floor, Wayne smiled at his client. Two investigation reports lay on the desk before him.

“Dr. Reiner, I have both good news and bad news regarding your two requests. Which would you like to hear first?”

“I’ve had a streak of bad luck recently. Tell me the good news first.”

Reiner shrugged. He was middle-aged, and time had ruthlessly mowed across his head and left behind nothing but furrows. As a doctor, he couldn’t even grow his beard out in protest.

“The good news is that the secondhand car you’ve set your eyes on was in an accident. You can lower the price with this report.”

Wayne handed over the first report. The inspection showed that a spirit from forty years ago was haunting the car. Driving at night was inadvisable—the previous owner might take over the wheel.

“This isn’t good news. I’m buying a car for my kid. I’ll have to look for another one.” Reiner spoke in a wry tone. “Now the bad news. Let’s hope I can take it.”

“The bad news is that your wife is having an affair—”

Reiner cut him off. “Who is it? The imbecile harbor worker, or the damn art student who failed to get into school?”

“Both, actually.”

...What do you mean ‘both’?

Reiner wondered if he had lived to this age without learning the correct definition of the word.

Noting his confusion, Wayne patiently explained, “During the past week, Mrs. Reiner met the harbor worker thrice and the failed art student thrice. Every time, she visited the latter first, and then—”

“Alright. Enough already. Just give me the report. I’ll read it myself.”

Reiner interrupted Wayne once more and picked up the report. It was expertly drafted, with detailed times and locations, complete with photographic evidence. There was no denying the truth.

A moment later, Reiner sighed. He managed to calm himself from the bout of anger.

“Your reports are solid, Wayne, but you got something wrong.”

“Which is?”

“

This

is the good news.”

“You’re right. More coffee?”

“Much obliged.”

Dr. Reiner made the rest of the payment without delay and gulped down coffee as if it were beer while complaining to Wayne about his unhappy marriage. Wayne didn’t feel like being the sympathetic ear, perhaps because Reiner had paid and was no longer a client. He interrupted the doctor brashly, bringing up other services the agency provided.

For example, family feuds.

“Haven’t you completed the investigation?”

“Yes, but this concerns

you

.”

Wayne took a third report from his desk drawer. It detailed the evidence of Dr. Reiner’s affair with a female nurse. Reiner broke into a cold sweat. With trembling hands, he picked up his cup of coffee in an attempt to hide his panic. The report was expertly drafted, with detailed times and locations, and also supported by photographs. There was no denying the truth.

“Way-Wayne, how could you do this to your client?”

“Well, I am doing this

for

my client. This is a request from your wife. To be frank, she was much more generous than you were.”

“Dammit, it’s

my

money,” Reiner growled. As an elite member of society, he quickly realized the game Wayne was playing. “She hasn’t seen this report, has she?”

“Dr. Reiner, as a private eye, I cannot break client confidentiality. I can’t give you an answer.” Wayne rejected the doctor seriously.

“Give me the report. I’ll pay you twice.”

“...”

“Thrice!”

“Haha.”

“I’ll pay you five times! Five! Happy now? With that much money, I could’ve hired a contract killer at the harbor.”

“Deal.”

“Damn you. You’re a poor excuse for a detective.”

Reiner left with the report, cursing as he walked out the door. If he ever needed such service again, he swore... to seek out Wayne again.

The bastard was damn good at his job.

More importantly, Wayne would do whatever he was paid to do with impressive efficiency, which was a rare trait in Windsor, a city built on bureaucratic delays.

Wayne counted the paper bills once he was alone. He murmured, “Oh my, how could I forget to warn you, Dr. Reiner? Your wife isn’t going to give up when she doesn’t get what she wants from me. She’ll surely hire another detective. Good luck with that.”

“...Tsk, you sure left quickly!”

After confirming the payment, Wayne recorded the day’s work. He took out his diary and wrote down the praises his client had showered him with, painting a flattering image of a successful young man who was charitable, generous, and passionate in life.

He didn’t feel bad about the cash he earned through unethical conduct. Although the opportunistic route he had taken had earned him good money, he did suffer a great loss as well.

He would have to return half of Mrs. Reiner’s down payment. The failure would be a stain on the agency’s record. It was with a heavy heart that he had chosen the hush money, five times the commission fee, at the risk of having his competency questioned and his life threatened by a killer. He’d gotten the short end of the stick in this deal.

In other words, he had earned the money fair and square. They’d both made their choices. He didn’t have to feel guilty.

When Wayne finished the day’s work, the sun was already setting. Darkness fell upon the city, and silence quickly spread across the streets, followed by a thin layer of mist.

Wayne calculated how much more he would need for rent as he ambled into the kitchen to make dinner. He said with genuine feelings, “My sincere gratitude, Mr. and Mrs. Reiner. Thanks to your reciprocal marriage, I can stop living off potatoes starting tomorrow.”

But not today. Tonight, dinner would still consist of a massacre of potatoes. Potato wedges, deep-fried potatoes, pan-fried potatoes, potato salad, mashed potatoes...

It seemed like a real feast with multiple dishes.

Wayne forked a potato wedge from his plate and caught his reflection in the mirror on the bookshelf. A man with black hair and black eyes looked back at him, a real snack to go with... potatoes!

To illustrate his good looks, Wayne would’ve received long-term financial support like the failed art student had he not turned Mrs. Reiner down vehemently.

This was his third month in the Chosen Land. He had inherited everything from the unfortunate man named Wayne, including the detective agency, the rent, and the baskets of potatoes in the kitchen.

When he first arrived, he quickly accepted his new reality upon seeing that he had a building in the business area with an attic and a basement. Money was everything.

But then the landlord came demanding rent and took the radio. Learning about his debt, Wayne lost his smile. Remembering how much he owed the bank in his past life, though, this new life didn’t seem so bad.

However, he changed his mind again soon after.

It was the year 1938. He found himself in the city of Londan, Kingdom of Windsor. Although there were differences in details, it was quite clear that a bombardment was in his near future.

Just wait for one particular nation to raise the flag.

To make things worse, Wayne hadn’t transmigrated through time, but space. This Earth consisted of only two continents: the Chosen Land and the Frozen Land.

His home country didn’t even exist.

The Frozen Land was essentially Antarctica. Centuries ago, it was known as the Dark Land or the Abandoned Land. Parts of the Chosen Land stretched to the North Pole, where the land was covered in ice year-round, and life was a struggle.

Other than the two continents, the Earth was mostly blue water.

It took a long time for Wayne to reconcile with his reality. Life was always going to be a struggle. He just had to keep his head high and his eyes on the road ahead. If that didn’t work, it wouldn’t be too late to give up then.

Wayne’s gaze lowered to the table.

“I hate potatoes!”

Wayne butchered the potato wedges on the plate and thought back to the past three months of misery. The original owner of this body was a real dreamer—or just a fool.

Although he was an amateur, he started the detective agency with gusto. Although he had an agency to run, he wasted his money at social functions rather than working. And although he didn’t have any clients, he hired a secretary for appearance’s sake.

Wayne didn’t understand. It was a real shock, actually. When he first took over, the place was covered in posters featuring a female celebrity. The original Wayne was not only brainless, but also a brainless fanboy.

It was out of respect for the woman’s large blonde curls that Wayne didn’t toss all the posters into the trash can after peeling them off the walls, but instead stored them in his bedroom on the second floor.

Wayne hadn’t inherited much of the original Wayne’s memories, most likely a side effect of his transmigration. The snippets he did inherit were too disjointed to combine into a clear narrative. He pushed them aside after a perfunctory scan.

His most vivid memory was being locked in a small, dark room. There was a lamp on the desk. He was cursed at and even interrogated as murmurs and whispered threats filled his head. Clearly, the original Wayne was an ex-convict.

Moreover, the original Wayne kept a future diary that read like a teenager’s summer vacation assignment, consisting of word vomit lacking in any sense or logic. He mostly wrote about his fantasy of marrying the female celebrity and leading a life of newlyweds with her.

Three times a day, sometimes five.

The artistic liberty taken compelled Wayne to hide the diary in his nightstand. Sometimes, on lonely nights, he would take it out to study its literary techniques.

The original Wayne was undoubtedly a failure. In Wayne’s eyes, he was a foil that made the other detectives in the city look better by not doing his job. He was less of a dark horse who solved one case after another as soon as he entered the field, and more of a dark sheep.

There was no denying that the original Wayne was hard working, though. He worked hard at

not

doing his job. If he had simply done nothing, he wouldn’t have gotten to this point.

At first, Wayne had considered abandoning the detective route. The original Wayne was an amateur, but so was he. He planned to take shortcuts and lead a life of abundance by applying for patents. The plan didn’t go smoothly, though. He was also an amateur inventor, and whatever he could think of, be it rubber bands, paper clips, mosquito repellent, zippers, or band-aids, had all been patented.

Ridiculous. Why were the natives of this world so smart?

He was thus left with no choice. To fill his wallet and avoid starvation, he had to learn to become a proper detective.

At the end of the day, the original Wayne deserved praise for the complete selection of detective gear he had acquired, and his bookshelves were filled to the brim with helpful books, ranging from Investigation 101 to Crime 101. There was also quite the collection of well-known detective novels.

While Wayne had limited expertise, one should always commit to their job. Fueled by his hatred for potatoes, he threw himself into work.

Thankfully, he was blessed with amazing learning ability and a quick mind, enabling him to conduct simple investigations without trouble. He suspected that to be a benefit granted by his transmigration. And he was agile enough to easily vault over walls and sneak into backyards in order to snap photos from outside the balconies.

That, though, had nothing to do with the transmigration, but everything to do with the original Wayne’s muscle memory. Clearly, the police hadn’t caught the wrong guy. Their only mistake was not keeping the original Wayne in prison longer.

There was another bonus from the transmigration: a book!

He could vaguely sense it hovering in a part of his body. It could be his brain, heart, or one of his internal organs.

The Book of Greed

, it was called.

To explain the book’s origin, he would have to start from that fateful stormy night in his past life.

Before transmigrating to this world, he had been a software engineer. He had seen fellow engineers meeting great success after quitting their jobs before thirty-five, so he and a colleague agreed to resign together and develop a game.

As his dear partner Jose had said, “

Start-ups should be started early. It’s better to fire our boss and make a game rather than wait for our boss to fire us.”

“

Makes sense,”

Wayne had replied.

The Book of Greed was an item in their game. They had a wicked idea for an easter egg—the two of them put extensive work into writing contradictory codes to purposefully create bugs while keeping it functional.

A bug in isolation was a bug. A lot of bugs made a feature.

After completing their masterpiece, the two men cheered and made calls while waiting for the game to go on sale. They dreamed of becoming the directors of their own company and scamming players out of money.

Whether Jose would live out that dream, Wayne didn’t know, but he himself certainly never would. There was a lightning—or perhaps a power outage—and between one blink and the next, he had transmigrated to the Chosen Land.

“Jose, oh, dear Jose. A dog won’t forget its fellow stray after finding a rich owner. Remember to burn money for me in the afterlife on the holidays... or I’ll do it.”

Wayne closed his eyes. With a thought, he summoned the

Book of Greed

. It had a pure-black cover with crimson veins. The mysterious material had a strange texture; it was bumpy and slightly slimy, like a toad’s back.

“It didn’t start out like this. Did it mutate?”

Wayne tried to open the book, but couldn’t. Just like his previous attempts, the only reaction was the big eye etched into the cover slowly focusing on him.

There were many eyes on the book, densely occupying the cover, but all were shut. Only the big one in the center reacted to his gaze. All it did was meet his eyes, though.

He had transmigrated with a cheat, but he couldn’t activate it!

Wayne found himself more and more irritated. He smashed the potato wedge he had slaughtered into mashed potatoes.

Damn it, now he had one less dish!

Wayne lowered the fork and sighed. “Why is my life fraught with ups and downs, with no end to hard work and struggle for survival? Why is Mrs. Reiner the only one offering me long-term financial support? Why hasn’t a young lady of noble family gotten lost and knocked on my door for accommodation, offering a fortune in exchange?”

Rat-a-tat!

As if on cue, someone knocked on the door to the office. Through the dark, matte glass, Wayne could see a dark shadow outside.

Wayne gulped, feeling a shudder run down his spine. He popped a spoonful of mashed potato into his mouth to calm his nerves.

He had closed and locked the front gate.

1. For this parallel version of Britain, the author has referenced many real-life proper nouns but with slight tweaks, Londan and Belker Street being two of the many examples. ☜