Jump 356: Umineko, The Rokkenjima Murders

Jump #356: Umineko, The Rokkenjima Murders
>The Tower, reversed: Catastrophe survived or narrowly avoided.
>Location: Rokkenjima Island, October 5, 1986
>Identity: No One
It doesn't matter who I am here, not really.
>Drawbacks: (+800) Game Piece, Theory Herd, Trust between Reader and Writer, Afterwards, Jumper was torn to pieces and eaten by the demons, and went to hell.
Well, no one ever said I didn't like a challenge. May as well go all-in and see what I can do to chase a full victory.
>Golden Butterflies (700)
Well, let it not be said that I lack a sense for the dramatic.
>The Great Detective Knows Best (500)
This may be a murder mystery, on the surface, but there is much underneath.
>Why Are Closed Room Murders So Beautiful? (100)
"Beautiful" is not a word I would use to describe such an event. There is no such thing as a locked room murder.
>The Witch's Letter (0, No One)
This is what I'm here for. I have less than twenty-four hours to figure out who or what is responsible for all of this.

You know, I made an honest effort to save people. I really, truly did. But I didn't belong, and there's little enough that can be done - especially when seemingly encyclopedic knowledge proves unreliable. I lurked. I used my skill at blending in to look like the hired help when I wasn't a part of them, and I spent what time I could poking around, exploring, trying to figure things out, trying to derail the inevitable only to see things happen in ways I did not and could not expect.

The old man, himself? Dead, of course, but not at anyone's hand. And rather perplexing at that.

His children imploded. Embroiled in paranoia. Betrayed by their supposed servants, betraying each other, it does not matter.

When the course of events so clearly went off the rails... there was little I could do without being detected and making myself a blatant target. But I had the letter, and if I was to get to the bottom of it, I would have to figure it out.

And so I returned to zero. My knowledge did not include the solving of that riddle, or indeed even the existence of the riddle, but... Knowledge of the old man's background filled in the blanks. Being a polyglot from the years of experience gave me a leg up - but the long and short of it was, it came down to a play on words and misdirection. While everyone else was going insane in the mansion, I elected to go a different route and leave them to their own devices. They were already lost, either way. Instead I went to the chapel, built at the same time as the mansion. That was where the key was, or rather keys, and with a small bit of interpretation, the letter told me exactly what I was supposed to do to unlock the way to my destination.

The entrance to the "golden land" was nothing more than an elaborate disguise, leading into a bunker dating back to the second world war. And the "golden land" itself? The bunker, filled with corpses rotted to skeletons, with gold bullion, with abandoned ordinance rigged to another elaborate trigger that led to parts unknown. Despite the knowledge I'd picked up over the years, I wasn't confident enough to disarm it without triggering it.

(And just how the hell would one use gold bullion as collateral if it's been on the island all this time, anyway?)

I would have simply taken one of the tunnels away from there if I hadn't been struck from behind. Apparently I'd been followed by someone else with the same idea, and she was kind enough to let me do the heavy lifting. Any man would have been staggered when something heavy struck them in the temple, and I tried to stagger away, begging her to stop. She shrieked about how it wasn't supposed to be me, but someone else, how I didn't belong, and swung at me again. And again. And again. Everything went mercifully black, though I was still semiconscious.

In the distance, clocks chimed midnight as the witch awoke, her resurrection carried out in a baptism of blood.