Chapter 88 88

Chapter 88 88


The three detectives returned to the house Caroline had arranged for Athena, carrying the corpse of their companion. The employer was waiting for them.

"We failed."

"I know."

Athena Baluge showed no surprise when she saw the Hook detectives returning in a sorry state with their comrade's body. She knew that accidents were inevitable. The more rigorous the plan, the more corresponding accidents there would be—much like how she had created two semi-finished products to investigate Joe Money's situation, only to unexpectedly run into a wild werewolf. As long as a grain of sand is embedded in the operating structure, the gears within the clock will deviate from their trajectory and fail to show the correct time.

Therefore, she had other arrangements. She believed the trusted dwarf would give the thin detective a surprise. Athena briefly recalled her backup plan and quickly moved past it.

"Forget about him. You have a new mission. There is an antique shop in the Saint-Moray parish called 'Rusty Silver Coin.' Investigate its owner thoroughly. That guy is a werewolf who can track scents. If you decide to search the shop or his home, do it all at once. Don't waste the wetland potion I gave you, and don't leave any traces for him to know someone was there. Diesel?"

She noticed that the bald Hook detective carrying the corpse did not seem to be listening; he was the second-in-command of this squad and was currently distracted. Athena understood this; faithless people always exhibit such pathetic ugliness. All the suffering in life will be settled after death, and everyone's position is already destined by their own actions—there is no place between heaven and hell. The reason the Hook detectives were helping the Holy Grail Society was purely for money, so all of them had the potential to go to hell.

Diesel's pupils refocused on Athena, giving a response she did not want to hear:
"Sorry, ma'am, we refuse this action."

"Just because one person died?" Athena frowned, raising her hand to look at her palm, clenching and unclenching it in the air; the sensitivity was unsatisfying.

"No, it's because of your lack of trust." Diesel raised his hand and slowly shifted the corpse on his back to a less strenuous angle, his hands covered in blood. "You paid the money, so it is only natural for us to risk our lives for it. But the contract also stipulates that you should provide existing intelligence to minimize our casualties. Before this operation, you didn't tell us the background of the owner of the Bruno Detective Agency, even though you clearly knew."

The Hook detectives were no fools; they now understood their role clearly: living tools whose deaths didn't require any pity. During their days under Caroline, they found that while he was arrogant, he was also a very careful person. If he wanted to hire detectives to privately investigate Athena's bottom line, he would never conduct the conversation near Athena, who possessed incredible magic. Magic is not omnipotent, and Diesel had the ability to identify traces of magic; he was certain there was no latent spell on Caroline. To coordinate with the Holy Grail Society's actions, the agency had assigned three extraordinary individuals to join the mission, and he was one of them.

Athena could only know about Caroline recruiting people to investigate her by planting a pawn in that detective agency in advance. If there had been a pre-operation plan, they could have easily solved the agency through internal and external cooperation rather than a direct assault. Because the information Athena provided was insufficient, they instead had a companion killed by the agency owner's counterattack.

None of them expected Bruno to live in his office, assuming he chose a residential area because he couldn't afford a plot of land on the commercial street. The man was even poorer than they had imagined.

Faced with the detective's pressure, the Spider Priestess had to let out a sigh. She loathed facing this situation; as a weaver of the hidden network, she detested having to "explain the limits of her abilities to others." This was one of the reasons she didn't have a particularly good impression of Clayton.

Athena lowered her palm and put on a look of grievance toward the detective: "Diesel, I cannot control a person's spirit for long, so the person you are thinking of could not cooperate with you. To make others obey my instructions requires relatively complex steps; otherwise, everything has to rely on induction."

"I hope what you are saying is true."

"We should trust each other." The blue-eyed, golden-haired monster revealed a perfect smile.

If she weren't in a hurry and constrained by the Holy Grail Society, she would have wanted to kill them all—with a calm attitude.

Diesel was moved by that smile; he bowed his head slightly, putting on his hat to cover his bald head: "We will report these problems. This is the last proactive combat action. Once your things arrive, we will part ways."

Another mission for the agency was to build a base in Sasha City, which required someone to act as a foreman.

"Of course. Now let me tell you what you need to pay attention to..."

Athena knew the advantages of her appearance and used them frequently; she was now very skilled in these techniques. While smiling and talking to him, she was thinking about how to handle Clayton Belio. This werewolf seemed to question the Holy Grail Society's code of conduct, but he had his own value to offset the price of disrespect. Werewolves are a group with relatively strong fertility among the dark-born, and they are shapeshifters with concealment abilities. Clayton's quality was especially good; if he could be persuaded to believe in the faith and his physical condition utilized, in less than a hundred years, he could create hundreds of descendants with wolf blood to serve the Holy Grail Society.

Most inherited werewolves are druids and difficult to assimilate; wild werewolves only appear during the unstable period of the Dark Moon tide. Both newborns and the sealed have no heritage and are easier to win over. The Council of Elders is by no means a match for the Holy Grail Society in this regard; they are too stingy.

Athena needed to better understand Clayton's needs to offer terms he couldn't refuse. Of course, recruiting him would be good, but if it failed, Athena would no longer let him act against her. After all, he killed Moore; although she, as a mother, didn't mind, in terms of mission, she had to be responsible for her subordinates.

"...That is the specific situation. If you are discovered by him during the operation, try to escape to a crowded place; these shapeshifters dare not release their power in public. You can even hide in a church, as he is dark-born, so the clergy has an obligation to protect you."

Although there were extraordinary individuals among these detectives, the Spider Priestess did not believe they could surpass Clayton. She held a subtle feeling of kinship toward Clayton.

"Is there a time limit for this task?" Diesel asked.

Athena narrowed her eyes, then relaxed: "What do you have to do recently?"

"We are going to bury Cooper."

Cooper was the Hook detective who was shot and killed.

"I think the time is sufficient. Just try to investigate this person within a week; his accent is not local, meaning he hasn't been in this city long. He must have dealt with many people when moving here..."

"We are detectives."

Diesel interrupted the Spider Priestess's warning. He stared at her steadily for a few seconds before leaving with the others.

The room returned to cold silence. Athena Baluge faced the empty room and laughed neurotically a few times. This body was reaching its limit. She walked into the washroom, took off her clothes in front of the mirror, and looked at her exquisite figure from side to side. Then she raised her hand, fingers together, and plunged it into her chest like a harpoon, peeling off the whitened, dried-out flesh that still carried cadaveric spots, layer by layer, like a self-sculpted plaster statue.

When that whitened flesh fell off one by one, the true body underneath was revealed. She had her own human part, which extended to the waist, but it was very thin—the chest was shriveled, the arms were withered, and the abdomen was sunken like a mummy, which allowed her to shape herself into other bodies at will. Below the waist were spider-like jointed limbs.

On the dehydrated skin, raven-colored patterns containing ancient curses crawled between her breasts, passed down through generations. Her mother once had full breasts, but by her generation, they had declined ridiculously, and her arms began to weaken. Later, the situation became even more serious. As time passed, her body grew weaker.

Athena had attempted to create nearly a hundred offspring, but none naturally inherited the dark-born bloodline. Even those who received the blood of desire only resulted in deformed beings that completely lost the ability to reproduce. They were once the brutal and terrifying spider elves of legend, but now they were on the verge of extinction, and a hundred years ago, they even changed their names.

Athena witnessed these painful transitions, but she was happy, for she was lucky enough to know of the return of the Dark Moon while she was still alive.

"Everything will be fine." She pressed one hand to her abdomen and said to herself in the mirror.

The power of life was once again gestated within.

Behind the St. Alvin Parish wandering soul street church was the parish cemetery, where cross-shaped white stone tombstones stood in rows. At the front of the cemetery was a specifically cleared area, ending at the back of the church building, with a row of poplars on both sides, where the corpse washing table was located.

The washing table was an open-air stone platform, slightly sunken in the middle, long enough to accommodate a two-meter-tall person. When a priest baptized a corpse, he had to strip off the deceased's clothing, shave off all hair except for the head, then apply holy water and balm, while the server would recite the Rosary on the side, praying for the deceased to ascend to heaven.

This involves privacy, so during important funerals, this area is closed off. But if there are too many corpses to handle at the same time, the priest will skip the complicated steps and directly spray the corpse with a holy water solution to speed up the ritual process. Not being curious and not bargaining is the clergy's mercy to the deceased whose cause of death is suspicious.

Diesel stayed behind, sending the other two—one to outside the city and one to contact companions at the Copper Horse Hotel to inform them of Cooper's death. He stayed to wait for the priest to handle the body. Cooper had no relatives, so it didn't matter which city he was buried in; he would often laugh and tell others that he only enjoyed the present, and if he were unlucky enough to die, he would ask others to take his possessions and hold a funeral, and split whatever was left. Now it seems this kind of consideration was truly necessary for their lifestyle.