The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 289: The Premonition Was Right

It was an impossibly ethereal, yet strangely dense gray figure. Shrouded by the shadow of storm clouds, its own immense shade blanketed the port city below. It hovered several hundred meters above the surface of the sea, impossibly slender and gaunt. Its elongated, distorted gray arms, vaguely human in shape, stretched out to either side as if to embrace the city.

A hairless, featureless head rested atop a thin neck. Its strange, grotesque form was difficult to put into words.

Below the waist, its body gradually dissolved into the air, fading into complete invisibility. Yet its upper half alone reached a terrifying height of five or six hundred meters.

The Awful Giant was only two kilometers from the city, but its colossal size created the illusion that it could swallow the port whole.

The grainy, black-and-white image prevented Lu Li from making out any fine details, but even a fleeting glance at the figure filled him with an indescribable terror. A torrent of distorted information flooded his mind, impossible to shield against.

Lu Li flung the newspaper away. The chaotic storm in his mind gradually subsided.

Just a single glance at a photograph—one that the paper claimed had been stripped of all its harmful effects—had provoked such a terrifying reaction.

He glanced at Anna, who was watching him with a questioning look. Once he had caught his breath, Lu Li tried to recall the distorted information that had just flooded his mind.

Few would have dared to do so, but Lu Li was determined to understand what he had just seen.

But all he could grasp were chaotic, disjointed fragments of memory, like a hopelessly tangled skein of thread.This mental contamination was a clear drain on his Mind Level. Lu Li resolved not to look at the photograph again, instead closing his eyes and trying to summon the image from memory.

Even the mental image sent a dull ache throbbing at the base of his skull. It felt as if something was stalking his thoughts, trying to twist his very will.

Opening his eyes, Lu Li saw Anna, moved by curiosity, tilting her head to peer at the newspaper. As a ghost, she was immune to the photograph’s influence.

"‘Under no circumstances approach... nine-tenths...’" Anna muttered, reading from the paper. She glanced up at Lu Li, who was massaging his temples. "Is it really that bad?"

"Worse than I imagined."

Lu Li had known the world was hurtling toward disaster, but he had underestimated the speed at which the ship was sinking.

Zenster wasn't nearly as bustling as Belfast. After all, in the old Allen tongue, the suffix "fast" meant "vast," and only five cities on the Allen Peninsula held that honored distinction.

Nevertheless, the population of Zenster was over one hundred thousand people.

And now, in the span of two days, this port city of over one hundred thousand had lost more than nine-tenths of its population.

And that was only because the Awful Giant had appeared at night. Had it manifested during the day, in clear view, the city would likely have become a dead zone, with almost no survivors.

Even more terrifying was the thought that if this giant had appeared not in Zenster, but in the densely populated Belfast...

The death toll would hardly have been any lower.

Anomalies were illogical, unpredictable. They killed people as casually as one might crush an ant. They didn't even have to act; the mere presence of such beings was enough to drive fragile humans insane.

That was why Tesla had suddenly uttered that phrase, so out of character for him.

And perhaps the bottle hadn't contained lemonade.

He was trying to cope with the emotions brought on by the loss of his friend and the news of the Awful Giant.

Zenster was in the northwest of the Allen Peninsula, while Belfast was in the east, separated by three or four hundred miles. The Awful Giant's immediate impact on Belfast was confined to the news reports—but that was only on the surface.

The event had a much stronger effect on Lu Li.

The destruction of an entire city and the scale of the disaster were impossible to hide, especially in an era of expanding communications.

Sooner or later, the news would spread across the entire continent.

The Allen Peninsula would feel the effects first. In a few days, panic would likely grip Belfast.

This would lead to riots and a sharp rise in prices.

Everyone would be trying to hoard food.

And the three major organizations would undoubtedly accelerate the construction of their shelters, which meant the price of Deep Sea Stone would skyrocket.

Fortunately, the Trader was due to deliver the processed stone in the next few days, and with the reward money from the Man-Eating House case, Lu Li would have just enough time to purchase a third slab of Deep Sea Stone.

"Cut out the photograph and put it on the bookshelf, face down," Lu Li said to Anna.

"Alright."

The soft rasp of tearing paper filled the room. Anna cut out the photograph of the Awful Giant and placed it on the top shelf of the bookcase, using a pen to weigh it down.

Lu Li picked up the Investigator Weekly again and reread the article about the Awful Giant.

This time, he read more slowly and carefully.

[It is theorized to be a projection of some impossibly horrific and dangerous entity from the In-Between.]

"Just a projection..." Lu Li muttered, his brow furrowed.

It was just as he had thought: the physical world was singular.

It was the world inhabited by humans, and it simultaneously served as the foundation for the countless layers of the In-Between. At the very least, the geography of the In-Between mirrored that of the physical world.

The In-Between contained countless layers, and not even the most ancient spirit hunter knew their true number. The layer where Anna resided was just one of them; it was the plane where she, and nearly all other ghosts, existed.

Listening to Anna’s muttering, Lu Li picked up the Investigator Weekly by its slightly damp corner.

The layer of the In-Between where Anna dwelled was just one of many, and it was home not only to her but to nearly all ghosts. From there, Anna could see a colorless, gray version of the detective agency. When Lu Li knocked over a glass in the physical world, Anna would see a glass topple over in the In-Between for no apparent reason. But she couldn't pick it up. To her plane, events in the real world were like the laws of physics; the glass was an immutable part of the space, unable to be moved.

But this wasn't an absolute rule. Some impossibly horrific and powerful anomalies could influence the physical world from within the In-Between.

The Awful Giant, for instance.

The realm of ghosts was the layer of the In-Between closest to the physical plane. This explained why ghosts could appear freely in the real world, unlike other anomalies that could only manifest as projections or illusions, visible only to those with a low Mind Level.

Once spirit hunters established the connection between the physical world and the In-Between, an unavoidable question arose: Was their world truly the surface? Was there another physical world layered above their own? And was there truly only one?

But right now, a different question troubled Lu Li more: Was the appearance of the Awful Giant’s projection a random event, or was it the beginning of a pattern?

If it was the former, the world still had a chance.

If it was the latter, this world was about to receive more uninvited guests.