Meister Hora's Challenge to the Reader

As your guide to the story, I would like to present a challenge to all readers.

Among the victims killed on Kakuriyo Island... We already know that the first victim, Unno, was killed by a Visitor, at the time in the form of a black cat.

This leaves three mysteries I would like you to solve, not by guessing, but through the use of logic.

① What form did the Visitor which killed Koga have while committing the murder?

② What form did the Visitor which killed Kikyo have while committing the murder?

③ How were the crimes committed?

All of the information necessary for these deductions has already been presented to you. If you analyze all of the information you have been given and place it in the proper order, you will be able to deduce the truth.

In the interest of fairness, I will state that all forms taken are among those whose names appear in the “Cast of Characters”. Furthermore, the contents of the notes written by Mikumo Eiko and the Visitor's Monologue sections of the story are all accurate and contain no lies. Of course, no human or animal served as accomplice to any Visitor.

However, this “Mystery of the Ambush”... is a special type of mystery which requires two levels of deduction to unravel. For that reason, it may be difficult to make deductions using such vague information.

The following fourteen characteristics of the Visitor will be important to uncovering the truth:

• One Visitor appears in the Divine Land every 45 years.
• A Visitor cannot pass through a gap smaller than 5 cm.
• A Visitor cannot penetrate a bolted door.
• A Visitor can mimic a creature by consuming its skin and flesh.
• A Visitor's weight is 20 kilograms, and it cannot mimic anything smaller than a cat.
• It cannot mimic the skin or flesh of a corpse.
• It takes 2 minutes to mimic a creature the size of a cat, and between 14 and 15 minutes to mimic an adult human.
• A disguised Visitor is skilled at feigning injury.
• Upon deviating from its mimicked form, the skin and flesh used in the mimicry will be ejected, and the Visitor will return to its original form.
• Once a form has been discarded, it can never be regained.
• In addition to its sensory organs for observing the outside world, it has highly observant internal sensory organs used specifically for mimicry.
• The Visitor's needles have a range of 50 cm.
• It can release poison from its needles, which place any animal injected in a state of suspended animation.
• Dogs can see through a Visitor's disguise and will bark at it without fail.

Finally, I assure you that this incident does not involve time travel.

With that, I wish you luck in your battle for the truth.

 

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