The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 615: In Search of Her Shadow

"Some of the dandelions managed to get into the secret passage, likely through the entrances... But that's not the real issue. The exorcists discovered a walled-off side tunnel," the mayor's assistant explained, glancing at his watch every so often as if pressed for time.

"The sealed-off fork has been breached, and the signs are recent—it might have been the work of the former mayor when he escaped. The problem is, anyone who gets near the spot feels an irresistible urge to go inside. The exorcists were the first to snap out of it and had to drag the clean-up crew back. The strange part is, their Mind Level counters never went off..." The assistant clearly didn't grasp the implications, so he simply relayed every detail to Lu Li.

"That sounds like..." Anna trailed off, a vague sense of familiarity stirring within her.

An involuntary pull; a silent Mind Level counter; the ability to resist with a stronger will.

"The Abyss," Lu Li murmured.

Memories of the contained Abyss incident and its aftermath resurfaced, stark and grim: thirty-two investigators dead, one of them a legendary agent. Seventeen forced into retirement, including another legendary agent.

But that anomaly was supposed to be somewhere in the Fallow Lands, not on the Main Continent... Could it just be a coincidence?

"How are the people who were affected?"

"They're all back. One of the clean-up crew had a panic attack so severe it spooked the others, but everyone else is alright."

"Take us there," Lu Li said, shrugging into his cloak.There were two secret passages. One led from the mayor's bedroom to the fountain in the garden, the other from the fountain to a point outside the city.

Exorcists and members of the clean-up crew, all clad in protective gear, were gathered around the fountain, which had been fully excavated and lay exposed.

A short figure approached Lu Li and the others, and a quiet, girlish voice came from beneath the mask. "Brother."

"Doreen? What are you doing here?" Tom froze, taken aback. He had planned on waking his sister later.

"Brother, I had that dream again..." Doreen's voice was laced with anxiety.

"It got closer?" Worry washed over Tom's face.

The bird-beak mask nodded. "It's looking for me... It's very close now..."

Tom suppressed his turmoil, forced a strained smile, and turned to Lu Li. "Mr. Lu Li, Miss Anna, could you excuse me for a moment? I need to handle a personal matter."

Lu Li gave Doreen a silent glance, then headed toward the entrance of the underground passage with Anna.

The exorcists left in Flarand were a mix of surviving Night's Watch members and independent hunters; there were no Investigators among them. Like most of the townsfolk, they had been caught off guard by the dandelion invasion, and very few had managed to escape with their lives.

Still, six exorcists now stood before Lu Li—half the total number of survivors in Flarand.

They described the incident in the tunnel, relaying what the clean-up crew had felt. "It was like something was calling me inside... I've never felt anything like it, I can't describe it... It felt like... like a mother's warm love."

The anomaly's connection to such a tender emotion was bizarre, lending the side passage a sinister and inexplicable dread.

Those with stronger willpower, such as the exorcists, could feel the call but not the overwhelming compulsion to obey it.

"I propose we have people with strong willpower handle reinforcing the wall. Once the passage is explored, we'll need to post a guard to make sure no townspeople try to break through again."

No one objected. They weren't curious Investigators; evacuating the residents was clearly a higher priority than exploring some mystery.

Determining who had sufficient willpower was simple enough. Most of the exorcists qualified. For others, they could just test volunteers—if they didn't feel the pull from the side passage, they were cleared for the job.

Lu Li returned to Tom and his sister, telling the assistant their decision so he could relay it to Valentine.

The mayor's assistant hesitated, then glanced at his sister and clenched his jaw. "My sister, Doreen... I think she's being haunted by an anomaly. Can you please help her?"

Lu Li remained silent, looking at Anna.

"I don't sense any trace of an anomaly on her," she answered coldly.

"It's not in the real world... It's in her dreams," Tom quickly clarified. "Doreen, why don't you tell them."

Doreen, still in her protective mask, nodded and began to speak softly.

Two months ago, she had developed narcolepsy—a condition that causes constant drowsiness and sudden, involuntary episodes of sleep.

Fortunately, Tom had become the mayor's assistant before his sister's illness, and his salary was enough to cover her treatment, though it had little effect.

They had also consulted exorcists, but Doreen's dreams were usually incoherent and forgotten minutes after waking, which yielded no results.

All Doreen could do was follow her psychologist's advice and rest at home.

The turning point came a few days ago. Doreen woke up on her own in the middle of a nap—the first time she had ever done so without help. Normally, only a person's voice or a loud noise could pry her from the clutches of sleep.

This dream was different: she remembered everything clearly, as if it had happened for real. Doreen had woken up in her dream home, walked to the window, and seen an inky-black shadow on a distant street, moving through the night, searching for something.

Somehow, Doreen knew—the shadow was looking for her. At that moment, the distant creature seemed to sense something and turned. The girl recoiled from the window, and the fear, along with her pounding heart, jolted her awake.

Doreen dismissed it as just a bad dream—who doesn't have them?

Until the nightmare repeated itself.

Just like last time, Doreen awoke in her bedroom. Agitated, she went to the window and saw the shadow on a street much closer than before.

She slammed the curtains shut, threw herself back into bed, and desperately tried to wake up.

"I was nearby... She was pinching her nose, nearly suffocating herself," Tom said, his voice filled with pain.

Now, they could no longer dismiss it as a mere nightmare—after all, the sudden onset of narcolepsy in the once-cheerful Doreen was an inexplicable anomaly in itself.

It tormented Tom to see his cheerful sister transform into a haggard, withdrawn young woman. He took her to see specialists again, but this time, he went straight to the exorcists.

The results were disappointing. They couldn't find the source of her nightmares. The Mind Level counters remained silent, the anomaly detectors unresponsive. This pointed to one of two possibilities: either she was simply having a series of recurring nightmares, or Doreen was being stalked by an anomaly undetectable by standard means—not all of them were.

They both hoped for the first option—just a string of bad dreams.

But just now, during another narcoleptic episode, Doreen had briefly fallen asleep...

"I woke up inside the dream, and on instinct, I looked at the window... I saw that inky shadow. It was standing right outside the glass, looking in at me..."

Doreen's slender body shuddered.

"It found me."