The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 882: Unwelcoming Locals

A fishy odor hung in the air, far stronger than the scent of saltwater.

The outskirts of the town were lined with collapsed walls and derelict, abandoned homes. Not a soul was to be seen, as if all the figures they had observed from the sea had gone into hiding.

Ophelia stopped abruptly, a deep crimson light pulsing from the fissures that crisscrossed her body.

— Something... is warning... me.

As a vengeful spirit, Ophelia was being rejected by the town, while Lu Li, a human, was unaffected.

— You wait here.

— No...

— I'll need your help when I come back out.

Lu Li checked his supplies. He had his spirit gun with its silver bullets, a flask and some canned food, an oil lamp and a piece of fluorite, a few shillings and some Anomaly Currency, his pills, and his spyglass.

— Wait... wait.Ophelia whispered hoarsely.

— I... have something... to tell... you, about... Anna.

— What?

— She... is still alive, right... beside you.

Lu Li's dark eyes watched Ophelia calmly, intently. It was impossible to read any emotion on her flat, featureless, charred face.

Lu Li had, in fact, been dwelling on the idea that Anna had sacrificed herself to save him.

For instance, there was the mystery of his own return after twenty-four years, Friday's cryptic warning—'To see the wound is to die'—and Socrates's assurance: 'She is beside you. She never left you.'

But, as with the other possibilities, there was no proof.

— I can... feel her... feel... her hostility... toward me, and feel... a fervent... love.

— Why are you telling me this now? — Lu Li asked.

He recalled the frequent visions of Anna that appeared whenever his Mind Level dropped.

— I... see no... desire to live... in your eyes. I don't want... you to... die in there.

Her hoarse voice, like the wind howling through a cavern, seemed to carry a note of sincerity.

— Believe me...

Lu Li said nothing, merely giving her a slight nod before turning to enter the grim, cloud-shrouded town.

Entering the main part of town, Lu Li saw the locals.

They were human, certainly, but with distinct, anomalous features: hairless heads, skin on their necks folded like fish gills, and bulging, piscine eyes that never seemed to blink.

These traits appeared to grow more pronounced with age. They were almost unnoticeable in children and youths, but the middle-aged all bore them to some degree.

And strangely, the town was populated only by children, young people, and the middle-aged; there were no elderly.

Lu Li's arrival sent whispers rippling through the townsfolk. They regarded the outsider with wariness and hostility, as if he were the strange one here.

In a sense, though, they were being rather friendly. This was, after all, the territory of the Lord of the Depths, and a sacrificial ritual would have been a more logical welcome.

Their wariness made it difficult for Lu Li to get close to any of the locals; even the grocery stores and shops refused him service. Then again, none of the supposed heretics or monster-servants were causing him any trouble, either.

After crossing an empty circular plaza, he spotted a massive, colonnaded church on a street corner.

The paint on the church's exterior had peeled away long ago, and its weathered, faded pediment bore the name: Secret Cult of Dagon.

Could this be the Lord of the Depths?

Lu Li could feel a nightmarish aura seeping from the church's depths, a presence that seemed to rise from the abyssal sea. Yet the townspeople were indifferent to the building's decrepitude and primal atmosphere, as if they no longer worshipped the deity it housed.

A dim, gloomy silhouette, like a heavy nightmare given form, was vaguely visible within. Lu Li didn't linger or stare, simply walking past as an ordinary tourist might.

A few blocks later, Lu Li found an inn that clearly wasn't run by locals: the "House of the Vaiaans."

The Vaiaans were once the indigenous people of the Allen Peninsula, and unlike the local shops, which were all unmarked, this one had a sign.

Opening the door and entering the inn, the figure behind the counter confirmed Lu Li's guess.

It was an old man, one who lacked the repulsive features of the town's other residents. He seemed surprised to see an outsider, but he let him stay.

The inn hadn't had guests in a long time, so the ground floor was cluttered with household belongings. The old man led Lu Li to a bedroom on the second floor.

A lush fern sat in a pot by the window, which overlooked the distant bay. Out on the water, waves churned, and thin wisps of smoke from factory chimneys blended with the clouds.

He closed the door and waited until the old man's footsteps faded down the stairs. Then, Lu Li pulled his gaze away from the broad, dark green leaves of the fern on the windowsill and took out his spyglass.

Creak.

The single bed next to him seemed to dip, and a girl's perplexed voice spoke up.

— Why did you come to such a deserted, rotting place?

Lu Li froze, his hands halfway through extending the spyglass.

— Could it be that you like her?

The girl, perched on the edge of the bed with her legs dangling, pressed on.

Lu Li aimed the extended spyglass at the bay.

Silhouettes flickered around a rough, ruined factory, their skin or clothes the color of silt and seaweed.

At the edge of the port, on a plaza paved with wooden planks, stood several indistinct shapes—they could have been stone statues, or perhaps just pillars.

As Lu Li stared at the plaza for too long, the distant sound of waves suddenly crashed beside him. Watery mist streaked across the houses, and a foul, black liquid like seabed sludge began to drip from the ceiling, soaking his hair and seeping beneath his skin...

— You're quiet, so that means you agree...

A forlorn whisper beside his ear snapped Lu Li back to reality, and he lowered the spyglass.

He had nearly succumbed to the seductive, twisted madness of the local cult... only to be saved by his own delusion.

— I just don't make a habit of talking to hallucinations.

Lu Li didn't look at the harbor through the spyglass again.

The place was clearly connected to Katerina's disappearance, but to get any closer, he needed to find a way to resist its corruption.

Lu Li reached up to touch his scalp, which still felt cold, but his fingers brushed against something slick and cool—a scale that seemed to give off a fishy smell.

It had fused with his scalp, as if it had always been a part of his skin.

Lu Li reached for his bottle of pills, shook out a few flat, yellowish-brown tablets, and swallowed them.

It was a medication developed by Rainer Pharmaceuticals, designed to suppress the delusions brought on by a low Mind Level.

The pills took effect quickly, and the vision of Anna on the bed vanished.

Lu Li touched his hair, and the scale was still there beneath the black strands.

It wasn't a vision or a delusion; the scale was a physical corruption, just like the ones Prusius had.

Knock—knock—knock.

Slow footsteps creaked on the wooden staircase beyond the door, followed by a knock.

Lu Li put away the pill bottle, smoothed his messy black hair, and opened the door.

The friendly old man had brought crackers and fish soup.

— I'm from out of town. I was hoping you could tell me something about this place.

Accepting the food, which he had no intention of eating, Lu Li spoke.

The old man's smile vanished. His face, though lined with wrinkles, was entirely unlike those of the locals.

— Don't ask about the town's secrets, don't talk to the locals, and don't go near the coast.

He clearly knew something.

— Why?

Before the old man could continue, a slow, dragging knock echoed up from the inn's main door, audible through the gaps in the floorboards.