Conquering OtherWorld Starts With a Game-Chapter 201: Case Report
When Night Watchman Belter opened the Night's Watch hall in the morning, still bleary-eyed, he discovered several rows of undead camped outside.
He shuddered and was half awake in an instant. And when he thought about his current designation, Belter became fully awake.
For someone accustomed to being active at night and recently forced to adopt a normal routine, having skeletons confront them early in the morning was indeed an especially soul-shaking experience.
The undead didn't care whether the night watchman receptionist's face was filled with reluctance. As soon as Belter opened the door, one of them directly shoved a black leather dossier into Belter's face, very impatiently and rudely shouting, "We've already solved the 'Misty Woods' case. Hurry up and send someone to verify it and quickly assign us the next quest!"
Belter: "??"
Half an hour later, Night's Watch's captain Lynch Clark was once again woken up by a phone call.
"What?! Those undead uncovered the truth of Misty Woods in a single night?!"
Captain Clarke got dressed hurriedly and rushed to the Night's Watch headquarters.
When Clarke arrived, a baffled portly official, who had also been woken up early in the morning, was flipping through a black leather dossier.
The Night's Watch's archived cases were categorized by color. A dossier with a red cover indicated relation to sealed artifacts, catastrophes, or cults and were accessible only to high-ranking church officials. A white cover represented an ordinary resolved case, while a black cover signified an unresolved case.
"Captain, this is what Belter just had delivered," the portly official handed the black leather dossier to Clarke, who had just taken off his coat, his short chubby fingers trembling slightly.
As he sat down, Clarke quickly flipped to the last page of the file to read the conclusion.
Clarke was very familiar with this unresolved case from half a year ago when a mysterious mist developed in the Misty Woods of the Kolv baronet family as he had personally assigned "Shrew" to investigate.
"Shrew" was a promising young man, who was both sharp and meticulous. He had participated in several special case investigations and performed excellently. In just a week, he identified all potential relevant people and meticulously recorded everything.
Had it not been for the Kolv's dire financial straits making them unable to afford the cleansing fee for the mysterious phenomenon (starting at 50 gold coins), Clarke believed this file should have had a white cover by now.
The last few pages of the file that had been intentionally left blank now had two pages filled with text. Or rather… it was in a strange block script that looked like drawings that Clarke didn't recognize at all.
The somewhat bewildered chubby official slapped his forehead, hastily removed the azalea badge pinned to his chest, and handed it to Clarke.
With the badge on, Clarke could finally discern this extremely unfamiliar "undead font"… and then, like the chubby official, his face contorted with confusion.
"Jeanette? The fourth daughter of Lana Village's chief?" Captain Clarke doubted his own memory and flipped a few pages back to check the list of potentially relevant people that "Shrew" had recorded down.
Indeed, this name wasn't on the list.
"…'Shrew' didn't find out about this person in a whole week's investigation, and those undead manage to uncover this overnight?!" Captain Clarke was completely baffled. "That's—those undead didn't turn Misty Woods upside down and instead ran to ask the villagers? And the villagers actually gave them the truth they wouldn't even reveal to our investigator?!"
Were it not for the fact that Lana Village was once part of the Kolv's domain and now was the fief of a Darcy family knight, Captain Clarke would have suspected that the entire village was colluding.
As he read on, Captain Clarke became even more bewildered.
Not only did the undead uncover the truth, they had also resolved the mysterious mist in Misty Woods.
After learning about Jeanette's existence from the hunter, the undead rudely broke down the village chief's door and woke up the sleeping chief Nidam to inquire.
When they learned Jeanette was hastily buried in the mountains, the undead forcefully took Hunter Ordul and Village Chief Nidam into the mountains and exhumed her remains.
What followed was even more astonishing for Captain Clarke—the undead, believing Jeanette's deep resentment stemmed from her death being swept under the rug, forced the village chief to summon the villagers and held a "farewell ceremony" for her remains.
She was just a maid who had slept with the master, Robert Jeff had a bunch of mistresses, and Mrs. Jeff never considered her as a "rival," just ordering her around like a regular maid. Kitchen maids, seamstresses, and other female servants whom knight Jeff was involved with in his younger days continued to serve in the Jeff household just as before. To the people of Lana Village, Jeanette, a country wench, wasn't as important as they thought.
But astonishingly, when all the groggily gathered villagers saw Jeanette's skeletal remains and acknowledged her death, the eerie mist in Misty Woods actually dissipated…
Captain Clarke had a blank expression on his face after reading through the pages.
Those undead didn't just stop there.
They believed Jeanette's resentment was more significantly directed at Arnold Hayden, who might have betrayed her. After conducting Jeanette's "last rites," the undead rushed into the city and found the former lumberyard foreman Arnold Hayden based on the address recorded by "Shrew" in the file.
The Kolvs, already unable to accommodate all their servants, had dismissed the unlikable Hayden with a small sum of money after the lumberyard's closure. Hayden, who was arrogant yet without any notable skills, could only rent an abandoned house in the worst area of the city's Southern Quarter, almost akin to a garbage dump.
This was what the undead writing in the file depicted: They found a monster in Hayden's old house, its skin festering and oozing foul-smelling fluid all over, yet unaware, moving stiffly as if it thought it was still alive in the stench-ridden house.
The undead efficiently exterminated this monster and, after searching (plundering) Hayden's residence to confirm the dangers were cleared, took the trouble to carry the suspected monster's corpse, which might be Hayden's, out of the city before dawn. They buried it in a secluded area and included a simple map in the file, marking the burial site, instructing the Night's Watch to inspect if any additional remedial actions were needed…
After reading the detailed of the truth, the resolution process, and the wrap-up, Lynch Clarke remained frozen in place, his mouth half-open and eyes vacant.
It was quite some time before Clarke silently shut the black dossier and placed the case file down.
Two seconds later, Clarke reached out, picked up the dossier again, and silently removed the black cover.
He now understood why the portly official had seemed so distraught.
Even as captain of the Night's Watch, he found nothing to nitpick in this case . Had it not been the undead that had resolved the case, Clarke would have immediately brought this perfect case to Bishop Jene for advice on whether the ones who had done it could be recruited as official night watchmen.
Unfortunately, there were no ifs. The ones that had resolved the matter so succinctly were the Taranthan undead that one might unexpectedly encounter on the streets of Indahl City.
Now, Clarke was really doubting his worldview… What was going on? How were the Taranthan undead, casually thrown into the battlefield by Yang, performing even more impeccably in exorcism work than his own night watchmen?!
Clarke could never have imagined that the reason players were so enthusiastic about handling this case flawlessly was that they hoped to achieve a high completion rate so that when their choice of Uncommon-grade equipment was "refreshed," it would be even better, and ideally, a 100% completion hidden reward mechanism could be triggered, which would perhaps yield some top-notch items…
For rewards, players were truly willing to do anything.
While Captain Clarke was lost in his thoughts, Morton, another unfortunate night watchman "exiled" to New Wind District to liaise with the undead along with Belter, rushed in hastily.
Before Clarke could react, the portly official gasped. "Did those undead resolve another unresolved case?"
Morton, quiet, solitary, and probably one of the most reclusive and unpopular members of the Night's Watch, wordlessly handed over a black leather dossier.
The portly official struggled for a bit to brace himself and received the file.
When he flipped open the first page, his face completely contorted. "Samman House"… O Lady Gold Coin, this was actually solved overnight too!"
Impatient with his colleague's dawdling, Clarke snatched the "Samman House" case file from the portly official's hands and resolutely flipped to the last page.
The "Samman House" incident was a case that had been unresolved for 14 years.
Thomas Samman, who had served as the market head in the city's board of trade, disappeared overnight from his home along with his mother, wife, and eldest daughter. His second son was found dead in their garden, discovered by the female housekeeper of a neighbor going out to buy vegetables early in the morning, who then immediately informed the sheriff's office.
The sheriff's office searched through the Samman's house but only found the youngest daughter, six-year-old Ruth, who had managed to escape by hiding in the attic.
Ruth couldn't explain what had happened in the house, only that Mr. Samman suddenly ran into the nursery at midnight, picked her up, and ran to the attic, instructing Ruth not to come out of the attic no matter what she heard.
The reason the sheriff's office transferred the case to the church was also due to Ruth's testimony—she claimed she heard nothing while hiding in the attic.
This testimony was corroborated by the neighbors; the neighbors on both sides of the Samman's house claimed the night was unusually quiet, and even the dogs in the yard didn't bark.
A case with human perpetrators couldn't possibly be completely noiseless, especially not when kidnapping three adults and one healthy young girl.
Given that the missing Thomas Samman was a middle-class citizen of certain status in the city and Samman's wife was the daughter of a noble family, the Night's Watch spared no effort in this incident, investigating for nearly three years, with even the then captain of the Night's Watch participating in the investigation.
Unfortunately, even with the full mobilization of the Night's Watch, they were unable to ascertain the true reason behind the Samman family's disappearance. Over time, the situation at the Samman's house gradually worsened. More than a decade after the incident, one could vaguely hear terrifying sounds inside even when walking past it in the day, and if passing by at night, one could hear chilling screams and howls from a distance.
With such an unresolved violent case, Captain Clarke found it utterly unbelievable that the undead could solve it overnight! It was impossible!
Yet… he was given a rude slap to the face.
The case at the end of this file wasn't very professional. It certainly wasn't as clear as the previous one, but it did clarify how the undead solved—or rather, violently destroyed—the curse of the Samman house.
Firstly, the undead tasked with this quest didn't investigate the Samman family's relationships or care about who harmed them. Upon receiving the mission, they headed straight to the Samman house to wreak havoc.
When he read that this group of undead brazenly stormed into the haunted house, Captain Clarke's lips twitched uncontrollably…
Well, these undead never knew fear, so being reckless was somewhat expected.
And then, these undead camped in the Samman house, delightfully engaging in a game of ghost monster farming for half a day and a whole night…
Chapter 201: Case
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