The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 382: In Tenebrae

"H-h-h..." A ragged gasp echoed in the cramped space.

A vile stench permeated the air, but Oliver didn't seem to notice, gasping desperately for breath. To him, the foul odor of the trash bin was far more pleasant than the horror that reigned outside.

Swallowing hard to moisten his parched throat, Oliver steadied his breathing and carefully pushed himself up from the damp heap of refuse. He quietly cracked the lid of the bin, peering outside.

Ominous, dark-red clouds churned in the sky, painting everything below in infernal hues. A fine crimson drizzle fell from above. Oliver knew it for what it was—a rain of real blood.

Through the crack, Oliver could see enormous, bat-like shadows sweeping over the city. Floating heads drifted through the streets, while six-armed humanoids crawled along the ground. Black shades lurked in the darkness, watching everything, and fist-sized beetles with human faces scuttled past...

The city was so overrun with these abominations that there was almost no one left alive.

Now, they mostly just ran into one another, fighting like beasts from rival factions.

"It's a house of horrors," Oliver cursed silently, his eyes fixed on the right side of the street.

At the end of Trio Street loomed a silhouette resembling a lighthouse. At its peak sat a colossal, bloodshot eye the size of a small house. It was closed now, but when it opened, a piercing, horrifying sound would erupt from it. In those moments, the monsters in the city would fly into a frenzy, attacking anything that moved, including each other.

That was the very place he had fled from, along with one... no, two companions.And now...

"Aaaah!" A sudden scream from somewhere in the distance pierced the night's silence, only to be abruptly cut short.

"Now I'm alone again," Oliver thought.

Quietly lowering the lid, Oliver burrowed back into the cold, slimy refuse.

Fear drowned out the hunger and the cold. Oliver's mind raced, trying to figure out a way to escape.

The eye-topped lighthouse blocked the only exit from Tenebrae. Oliver hadn't managed to get close to it before. He and his fellow survivors had run into one more survivor, and then they were attacked by the ghost of a woman in a white dress with a mutilated face.

He had ended up in this trash bin, and the fate of his two companions remained unknown.

What troubled Oliver was that this was the third time something like this had happened.

He would team up with one survivor, then they would meet another, and then the ghost of the woman with the mutilated face would appear and kill them all...

If the ghost was hunting the second survivor they met, why was it always the second one? Was it just a coincidence? Oliver couldn't figure it out.

"Think of something, Oliver. Jojo is waiting for you at home..." he urged himself. Suddenly, a terrible thought struck him.

"What if... what if the second survivor we meet *is* the evil spirit?"

...

Two figures, wrapped in thick, fleshy wings, moved across the gray earth. From a distance, they resembled two grotesque, writhing monster eggs.

Through ragged holes in the wings, they stared ahead. At the entrance to Tenebrae, an imposing black lighthouse-tower loomed over the road. The massive eye at its summit was sealed shut by a fleshy membrane.

Ellen Sorn had warned Lu Li that the eye on the lighthouse opened at random intervals, at which point all hell would break loose in Tenebrae. If they wanted to get inside, they had to avoid approaching during one of those flare-ups.

For now, the giant, motionless eye rested peacefully atop the lighthouse.

As they drew closer to Tenebrae, the light around them grew steadily dimmer.

The grim, oppressive atmosphere felt like an impending storm. The sky above blazed with a blood-red light.

The closer they got, the more they felt the crushing presence of the tall, black tower. A deep sense of unease told Lu Li that something terrible was happening inside the town.

They were less than a hundred meters from Tenebrae now. They could clearly make out the lighthouse blocking the road and Trio Street lying just beyond it.

Lu Li stopped and turned to Joan. "Are you sure you want to go in there?" he asked. "If things get dangerous, I might not be able to protect you."

"Yes!" she declared. "Don't worry, I'll be careful. And if I become a burden... just leave me behind." She was the one who had asked Lu Li for help. If he was going to put himself in danger while she cowered in safety, how would that make her any different from a common scoundrel?

"Alright."

Turning back, they approached the black lighthouse that stood at the intersection of Trio Street, skirted its massive base, and stepped into Tenebrae.

A dark-red, magma-like glow pulsed from deep within the clouds. Ominous shadows glided across the sky overhead. The bloody rain fell relentlessly. Some houses had collapsed, and the streets were strewn with debris, body parts, and entrails, though not a single whole corpse was anywhere to be seen. A low roar echoed through the air...

A half-ruined wooden sign stuck out of the ground by the road, its inscription—"Welcome to Tenebrae"—lending the scene an even more sinister air.

Even without heightened senses or intuition, Joan could feel the oppressive, malevolent aura that saturated the air. It felt as if she had stepped into hell itself.

Lu Li led Joan into a dark alley and began to shed the fleshy wings. Joan followed his lead, rolling in the mud and pools of blood to mask her human scent.

When she was finished, Joan walked over to Lu Li, who stood at the mouth of the alley surveying the street. "Where are we going to look for my brother?"

Tenebrae was a small town, but finding anyone here would be no easy task, especially with the abundance of monsters, both seen and unseen.

"The police station," Lu Li replied, mentally mapping the locations that gave him an unnerving feeling. Some were stationary, while others were on the move.

"Could he be there?" Hope flickered in Joan's voice, but Lu Li quickly extinguished it.

"Unlikely. We're going to look for their investigation records. They might contain information about what the police did with Oliver."

Joan peeked out from the alley. The dark-red street and the thick stench of blood filled her with revulsion. "But we don't know where the police station is."

"I do."

The last time he was here, Lu Li had memorized the station's location as a precaution. It was only two hundred meters away, but...

Crawling, six-legged beasts, shapeless creatures, and a host of other monsters roamed the street. They weren't especially numerous and sometimes even fought amongst themselves, but that hardly meant the street was safe for Lu Li and Joan.

Looking up at the sky, Lu Li saw patrolling Night Demons circling high above, and strange, black spheres of various sizes floating over the rooftops.

There was no clear path forward.