System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 322: The Girl in the Morgue
“Feeling better now?”
Corin Tilly drew on a small, delicate pipe and blew a smoke ring toward Todd beside her.
His massive body sat woodenly at the head of the bed, hunched over, clutching his head, as if one dream had aged him ten years.
The final image of the dream kept circling in his mind. His heart hurt as if it would split open.
A coroner and a room filled with corpses. What did that mean? The kin he had sought for so long, in the end, was no longer among the living.
The bleak life that had finally shown a thread of hope had been snuffed out without mercy.
Compared with the physical pain of wounds that had once brought him near death, this torment of the heart made him suffer far more.
Yet the willpower honed by long years as a mercenary forced him to free himself from that foul mood quickly.
“Sorry. Made a fool of myself.” Todd’s eyes were bloodshot, his voice hoarse as if he had just survived a grave illness. He abruptly stood.
“I understand.” The oneiromancer exhaled smoke, her gaze empty, as if recalling some unbearable past. “Nothing hurts more than losing family. That pain never truly heals.”
The two fell silent for a moment.
“Master Roy is still downstairs. Don’t keep him waiting too long.”
“Mm.”
Todd turned away. In a daze, dizziness swept over him, and the blurred man seemed to flash before him again. His fingertips dug hard into the flesh of his palms.
“When I find Aisha. No matter who he is, I’ll make him pay blood for blood ... blood for blood.”
...
Novigrad was draped in a veil of orange light, the sky leaning toward evening.
The Witcher and the mercenary hurried without pause to the morgue.
But they found two soldiers wearing longswords at the entrance.
That was unusual. Under normal circumstances, Novigrad did not assign guards to the morgue.
After all, the dead sent there had first been stripped over by corpse collectors, leaving nothing worth profit.
As for those twisted souls with designs on corpses, the coroner and his assistants naturally chased them away.
There was no need to mobilize soldiers.
The Witcher and Todd exchanged a glance.
“You two, what are you doing here?” The young soldier on the left swept his gaze over them carelessly, stretched out a hand to block them, and barked, “Stay away. Don’t come making trouble. The morgue is strictly off-limits now.”
“Good afternoon, guardians of the Eternal Fire. I am Roy, a Viper School Witcher.” The Witcher stepped forward, his dark-gold pupils sweeping over the men, neither servile nor arrogant.
“This friend’s kin met with misfortune, and her body lies inside. Could you two make an exception and let us go in to see her?”
The soldier’s gaze fell to the Viper School medallion at his neck. His face suddenly turned ugly, but he still stubbornly barred the door, neck stretched.
“Viper School Witcher, we’ve never offended you. So please don’t make things difficult for us without cause ... not long ago, there was a murder inside the morgue. A serious matter. I hope you understand.”
He emphasized the words “without cause.”
“I understand. Nothing without cause, yes? Brothers, you’ve stood under the sun all day. Tired, I imagine ... You should know Witchers are best at searching for clues. Perhaps I can help the great Eternal Fire with a small matter.”
“Why not first tell me exactly what happened inside? I’ll help investigate later, no fee. If I can find even a shred of a clue for you two, you’ll receive Commander Chappelle’s praise.”
The two soldiers exchanged a glance, visibly tempted.
But a trace of hesitation remained.
Seeing this, Roy winked at Letho beside him. The latter immediately understood and tossed out a coin-shot more powerful and reliable than Axii. The two soldiers surrendered completely and revealed the reason for the lockdown.
At dawn two days ago, the coroner and his assistant had been found dead in the morgue. Their deaths were strange, or rather, inexplicable. The soldiers of the Eternal Fire had yet to find any trace of the killer.
A bad feeling surged in Roy’s chest. In Todd’s dream, Aisha had appeared in the morgue, and then the coroner died here shortly afterward.
“Coincidence? Or some connection between the two incidents?”
A moment later, the two continued using coin to clear the path and successfully slipped into the morgue.
The soldiers knew when to take their winnings. After explaining the necessary precautions and the state of the rooms, they took the money and went off to enjoy themselves at the Spear Cave.
As the commercial capital, the Free City of Novigrad saw every resident chasing profit. Life, dealings, relationships, all of it was inseparable from coin.
...
The mortuary lay below street level, roughly one floor underground, better for preserving corpses. Its walls were thicker as well, keeping out the heat from outside.
Utterly unlike the bright sunshine and warm air above, the morgue was cold and damp within. Along the gray-black walls on both sides, torches and braziers had been set at intervals, their dim flames swaying.
When a man passed, his shadow fell onto the wall, stretched long by the firelight, cold and ghostly.
The morgue was divided into six small rooms, its structure tangled and complicated, somewhat like the deep mountain caves where shalmar lived. The air was thick with a sharp reek of medical preservatives, mixed with the rot and stench of flesh and blood.
Roy and Todd walked straight ahead for about half a minute, passing empty wooden beds along the way. Most were tilted or overturned, some missing a corner, clearly struck by great force not long ago.
Footprints on the nearby floor were chaotic. Blood had splashed across the walls and pillars.
With Witcher Senses opened, he could clearly see several crossing ribbons of blood and flesh.
Very fresh. From these past two days.
“Obviously, the coroner struggled before he died. Unfortunately, the killer was too strong for him to resist.”
“More than ten wooden beds weighing over fifty pounds were smashed into disarray. If an ordinary man tried that, he’d wreck his joints.”
At the edge of one wooden bed, the Witcher found fragments of broken skin, human.
The killer’s, or the coroner’s?
Examining and analyzing as he went, the Witcher reached the innermost room. His steps paused, and he pressed a hand over the faintly trembling medallion at his neck.
Mm. Something here.
“You’re the corpse collector here, Quasimodo?”
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