Chapter 405 Investigation
North Coast of Conquer Sea, Navaha.
On the tidal flats far from the city of Navaha, a battle with no suspense just came to an end. As the victor, Doro was currently commanding a group of zombie puppets to quickly clean up the battlefield.
Doro did not rush to loot Massimo’s corpse. Instead, she put it into a magic box and had the zombie puppets deal with the traces at the scene, especially the shell casings and bloodstains. After a general cleanup, Doro ordered the zombie puppets to quickly return with the magic box.
Although this area was on the outskirts of the city, it didn’t mean there were no people around. The gunfire and muffled explosions during the battle had alarmed some ordinary people in the distance, and some of them came closer to the site of the incident. Fortunately, Doro had deployed several bird zombie puppets in the air beforehand. Using several bird’s-eye views, Doro successfully monitored a large area around the tidal flats. She clearly knew from which directions the attracted people were approaching, allowing her to control the zombie puppets to withdraw from the correct paths to avoid them.
Doro’s zombie puppets had cleaned up the battlefield thoroughly enough that the average person would have difficulty noticing anything unusual. Although a short-term cleanup couldn’t achieve complete cleanliness, because this was a tidal flat, the rising sea water would wash away most of the remaining traces. Therefore, Doro was not worried about anything being discovered.
Using the viewpoint provided by the bird zombie puppets, Doro’s zombie puppets successfully evacuated without being seen by anyone. They mounted the zombie horses and made a detour towards the city center of Navaha. After successfully getting all the zombies away, Doro, who was resting in a distant seaside pavilion, immediately began to withdraw.
With her hair neatly tied up, Doro wore a wide-brimmed hat and controlled the parent zombie puppet beside her as she casually strolled towards the city center of Navaha.
Doro was walking along a coastal road with only a few sporadic pedestrians. On one side of the road were lush green bushes, while the other side was the gently rolling sea, accompanied by the sound of calming waves. The soothing ambiance made Doro feel quite relaxed as she walked in the middle.
“Navaha… it looks like a laid-back coastal town, quite suitable for living.”
As she walked along the seaside road, Doro reflected on her surroundings. After walking for a while, she noticed a row of high gray brick walls beside the path on the land side. The walls were unusually tall, much higher than the typical courtyard walls, which piqued Doro’s curiosity.
“Such a tall wall, usually courtyards wouldn’t be built this high… this place doesn’t seem like a residential area. What is this special place?”
Filled with curiosity, Doro instructed the parent zombie puppet beside her to turn towards the wall. She saw a tall iron gate installed on the wall, a dimly lit five-story building behind it with barred windows, and a sign in Castilian hanging on the locked iron gate. Doro, having self-studied Castilian, recognized the words on the sign.
“Anzika Psychiatric Hospital.”
“A psychiatric hospital? No wonder the wall is so high. It’s built to contain mental patients. With such beautiful scenery, I suppose the patients inside could recover better.”
Looking at the passing psychiatric hospital, Doro thought to herself. Not dwelling on it any further, she withdrew her gaze from the psychiatric hospital and continued walking forward along the road, ignoring the building beside her.
Soon, Doro completely passed the entrance of the psychiatric hospital. At that moment, behind the iron gate, in a somewhat eerie room of the five-story building, a figure was pulling back the curtain just a bit, revealing an eye that was focused on the outside, aimed precisely at the direction where the battle had previously occurred.
…
After dealing with Massimo, Doro quickly returned to the city center of Navaha. Due to her encounter with the Abyss Cult, her plans to head to Iwig were interrupted. Now, she temporarily had no idea how to proceed, so she decided to find a place to rest and reconsider her next actions.
Navaha was a coastal small town, quite ordinary and unremarkable among the many cities in Castilian. Although it was by the sea, normally there weren’t many ships passing by, and thus there were few outsiders in the town. This time, the church’s fleet had unexpectedly brought over two thousand seven hundred travelers who needed accommodation, creating a strain on the rooms available in Navaha.
Fortunately, Doro had foreseen this situation early on. After disembarking with the first batch, her first task was to book a room before slowly dealing with Costa and Massimo. After all, the other party would surely remain at the dock for a long time to scent all the passengers, so Doro was not in a hurry. She even seized the opportunity to pick a nice inn.
After returning from the outskirts, Doro first found a place to retrieve all the zombie puppets and the magic box, then leisurely headed to the inn she had reserved earlier. After entering her room and closing the door, Doro began sorting through her spoils.
Once inside her room, Doro locked the door. Instead of taking out Massimo from the magic box, she directly controlled the zombie puppets inside the magic box to search him. Shortly afterward, the items they found were handed out from the magic box. After receiving them, Doro placed them on the table and immediately began to carefully check her haul.
Since Massimo had already clashed with the church’s people before reaching Doro, under the powerful military force gathered by the church, Massimo had been forced to relinquish many items to escape. As a result, Doro did not have much treasure to claim. After a thorough search, she obtained several sigils, two gold coin-shaped storage items in the form of “lamps,” four small vials containing dark blue liquids, a small mechanical device that could secure the vials to her wrist, and some cash.
“No ‘shadow’ storage items? He must have used them all up during the previous encounters with the church… what a shame… But luckily, this guy actually had two ‘lamps.’ That’s just enough to cover my identification costs.”
Looking at the two “lamp” storage items on the table, Doro thought to herself. She then took out a piece of paper with a magical array she had drawn and laid it on the table. After placing one of the gold coin-shaped storage items on top, she began the ritual. As the glow from the gold storage item dimmed, Doro soon gained the ability to identify items, and she would use this ability to identify her spoils.
One by one, Doro first focused on the sigils. These sigils were not only the ones found on Massimo but also some obtained from Bins earlier.
Among these sigils, aside from a few standard bl**d-Eating Sigils, there were two scent-tracking sigils found on Massimo. He had relied on these sigils to enhance his sense of smell in an attempt to locate Thief K. Doro had devised her button plan after learning that he possessed the scent-tracking sigils.
“Scent-tracking sigils… this is a good item. The last time I got some from Adele, they were used up quickly. I haven’t replenished them yet, and now I’ve got two more.”
