The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 829: Awakening from a Long Sleep

A chill settled over the land, arriving even before the anomalous fog and the night.

The crackling of the fire in the hearth drowned out the howling of the wind in the chimney.

Beside the hearth, as if for some strange ritual, damp firewood was neatly arranged, waiting to dry and leaving no empty space.

With her experience in wilderness survival, Katerina knew how to ward off the creatures lurking in the fog.

When the light filtering into the cave from its mouth dimmed, she took half of the smoldering logs and started another fire outside the shelter.

The fire scattered the shadows, leaving only the long, drawn-out silhouette of Katerina herself.

"Go get Lu Li," Katerina said, tending to the new fire.

Prusius dropped the firewood he was hauling and ran toward the cave entrance.

Before he even reached the exit, Lu Li's tall form appeared in the entrance.

Katerina looked up, frowning."What did you do?"

Suddenly, she could no longer sense Lu Li's aura.

The beautiful, sun-drenched, life-filled aura Lu Li had radiated was gone. He was now just as she remembered him from the abandoned shelter.

"I've awakened Enni."

Lu Li skirted the fire burning before the entrance.

In the flickering firelight, he felt Enni's fervent desire.

A yearning for Lu Li to draw near, a longing for life to go on, a craving for the vitality that would stir her from an endless sleep.

And after sacrificing the humanity that had radiated such beauty, Lu Li's aura once again became enigmatic and profound, no longer standing out.

"That tree?" Katerina asked, stunned.

"You gave away the fuel?"

She remembered, of course, what had happened back in the Old Sewer's swamp.

"Mhm."

Lu Li set a mottled seashell on the wooden table—the evil spirit's radio transmitter, a relic from the Age of Anomalies.

"How much?"

"All of it."

Lu Li was left with only a single, basic unit of humanity. Without the amplification from the Book of the Apocalypse, it was merely half a unit.

"...I don't understand," Katerina said, reining in her anger.

Prusius dared not speak, seeing the anger in Katerina's face.

"I don't intend to just wait on Sea Gaze Cliff."

Lu Li simply answered Katerina, his voice calm, the blazing fire reflected in his dark eyes.

Awakening Enni from her eternal sleep was crucial, and not just because of how much she meant to him. To Lu Li, this "humanity" was a curse with side effects more potent than its benefits—like a delectable cake laced with poison.

To bask in the beauty it brought would be to savor the poison along with the sweetness.

"But you know how hard humanity is to come by! You barely got any from killing that anomaly leader who was hunting us!"

"Humanity isn't as hard to get as you think."

"You have a way?"

"Vinnelag, Midnicht, all of them—they won't hold back."

One could easily imagine that once Vinnelag learned of Lu Li's ability, it would become a veritable slaughterhouse for anomalies, capturing them in droves just to hand them over to Lu Li for the killing blow.

A complicated expression crossed Katerina's face.

"I thought you would hide this power."

"There's no point."

Lu Li shook his head slightly.

The people of this Age of Anomalies need hope. Selfishly concealing this power would only push the world further into the abyss.

The reason Lu Li hadn't mentioned it was simple: for the moment, he had no need for more humanity. And if Mayor Matteus had known he could acquire it, he would never have allowed him to leave Vinnelag.

Katerina realized this as well.

"Only by increasing your humanity, by staying in Vinnelag, can you help the people here."

"Anna is more important to me."

Katerina fell silent. She wasn't one to care about such grand concepts; any childhood innocence she might have had was extinguished long ago by the life of a hunter, a life that could be cut short at any moment. Joining Lu Li's party had been her one and only "emotional" decision.

It was the same for Prusius, though the sensitive little creature could understand Lu Li's reasoning.

If Lu Li, the very embodiment of rationality, cared this much, then this person must be the most important one in his world.

"Can it survive in the darkness?"

Katerina's harsh tone softened.

She felt herself being persuaded.

More than that, she found she couldn't argue with him.

"Enni is an anomaly."

The ten units of humanity had a far greater effect when manifested in Enni than they ever had in Lu Li.

Her faint consciousness was no longer a mere flicker. Awakened from her long slumber, Enni was stronger than she had been twenty-four years ago, and she radiated affection toward Lu Li.

In the near future, Enni would gradually recover, growing new shoots and green leaves.

Even if Lu Li were to leave for another twenty-four years, with enough fuel, she would not die.

Though the price was high, it all seemed to be worth it.

Lu Li had lost his resistance to contamination, but he had also lost his appeal to anomalies.

And so Lu Li, who had seemed so detached, as if floating above the world, was grounded once more by a familiar presence.

"I hope we don't see a fallen elm tree tomorrow."

Katerina went back to carrying firewood.

Without Lu Li's aura, she would plunge back into nightmares when she slept...

The last ray of light outside the cave disappeared. The anomalous fog from the sea seeped into the cave, but was driven back by the blazing fire.

Prusius, ever the peacemaker, quietly comforted Katerina, listing the benefits of Enni's awakening—like how she would now be able to protect their cave.

"How are you planning to find the Church of Twisted Vines tomorrow?"

That night, as the contents of a can bubbled over the hearth, Katerina asked her question.

"We'll take the shortcut," said Lu Li.

The Andreis brothers' repair station.

The investigators' base in the Belfast area.

There's a long underground passage there that leads to the True Library, which is in the Bauhinia District.

If the passage hasn't collapsed, been blocked off, or overrun by anomalies, we can reach the Church of Twisted Vines directly.

Even if the passage is impassable, starting from the coast is still better than cutting straight across half the ruined city. We can't forget that the anomaly nest beyond Elm Street is hunting for us.

The fastest way down from Sea Gaze Cliff was to rappel. There were hemp ropes stored in the basement. They were so damp you could wring water from them, but they were still usable.

If we leave in the morning as the anomalous fog recedes, we can reach the coastline undetected while a light mist still offers cover.

"You decide."

When it was time to rest, Katerina sent Lu Li and Prusius off to sleep, taking the first watch of the night herself.

At midnight, the exhausted Katerina couldn't stay awake any longer. She woke Prusius for his watch and fell into a sleep she loathed.

There was still an hour until dawn when Prusius's scream woke them.

"What happened?"

Prusius's humanoid face was pale with fear, and he was breathing hard.

"I... I had a nightmare."

The fear slowly faded, but an unnatural pallor remained on his cheeks.

Before dawn, they knotted the hemp ropes together into a line over a hundred meters long. They left the cave once the anomalous fog had receded.

Lu Li walked over to Enni and reached out, sensing her condition. The tree responded with a gentle affection to his touch.

"Is this the change caused by the humanity?"

Katerina secured one end of the rope, her eyes on the branches now tinged with green.

First they lowered Prusius, then Lu Li.

As the soles of his boots sank into the soft sand, Lu Li looked up, watching the figure making her way down the cliff face.

When she was nearly at the bottom, disaster struck. The hemp rope suddenly snapped, falling to the ground where it coiled like a long snake.

Katerina fell the last three or four meters, landing hard enough to gouge a crater in the sand.

"Are you okay?"

Prusius hurried to her side.

Without a word, Katerina got to her feet. She picked up the frayed end of the rope, which looked as though it had been sawed through by a sharp rock, and examined it. Then she raised her head, staring up at the newly visible outline of Sea Gaze Cliff.

"We can't go back."