Ke-style law enforcement officers

Chapter 35 The Butcher's Soul

Milo gave Dirac a relatively satisfactory answer.

Although this wasn't the standard answer, it was enough for Dillashau, who was eager to know the truth.

Dillah might guess that Milo hadn't told him the whole truth, but he didn't intend to use force to pry Milo's mouth open. Of course, these were just Milo's speculations. At least for now, the church that Dillah represented hadn't shown him any obvious malice, and had even helped him solve tonight's big trouble.

Milo was quite satisfied with Dillash's transactional "mutual assistance."

However, he dared not lower his guard, because tonight he had witnessed the church's methods and strength far exceeding those of the noble class. Faced with such an existence, he could not afford to be complacent in the slightest.

……

"From the perspective of the law enforcement system, the serial murder case is considered closed, but for me it is far from over. We should meet again. If you remember any details that you may have overlooked before, please come to the church to find me. We will not mistreat anyone who serves the Golden Rule."

This is what Dillasho said to Milo before he left.

He's trying to curry favor with Milo.

Milo also expressed his willingness to provide valuable information to the church (pretending).

De La Shaw was the first powerful church official Milo had come into contact with, and also the one he couldn't understand the most so far. One had to be constantly on guard when dealing with such a person.

……

5 points in the early hours.

A farce involving multiple parties has finally come to an end.

Oh no, it should be a comma.

When Rebecca's law enforcement agency was suppressed by a higher-level oversight body, the Church suddenly appeared and expressed its position firmly. All of the Sherman family's covert plans fell through, and they would have to carefully consider this relationship with the Church before taking any further action against the Valrocan family.

Before that, the Sherman family needs to figure out the exact nature of the relationship between Milo and the Church, and whether Cillian's grudge is worth the Sherman family's enmity with the Church.

In any case, the Milo family has been given a respite, and there should be a period of calm before the next round of retaliation from the Sherman family.

Milo desperately needs a big enough fish to help him devour the Sherman family.

At the very least, Harrison has to be eaten.

For Milo, unlike his family, there was no joy of surviving the ordeal. After the crisis was over, he was met with immense pressure.

Gotta figure it out.

……

...

After Dillah Shaw left, everything seemed to go unnoticed at the law enforcement office.

From beginning to end, Rebecca couldn't figure out what was going on between Milo and Dillah. She had overheard their conversation through the iron gate in the detention cell and naturally wanted to know what else Milo had been hiding in the sewers on the night of the incident. However, she noticed the heavy weariness on the faces of Milo's family, so she didn't waste any more words.
"I'll send someone to take you."

"Thank you for today." Milo knew very well that Rebecca's all-out operation tonight carried great risks, so his "thank you" came from the bottom of his heart.

"No need. I have my own judgment, and it's not entirely for your sake."

Rebecca responded calmly.

She didn't want people to think that she was going to such lengths because the person in question was Milo.

But there was one thing Rebecca herself wasn't sure about: if she and Milo were complete strangers, would she have gone to such lengths? The aristocracy had always been a group that law enforcement found difficult to challenge, and she might lose her tricorn hat because of it.

Rebecca sat in her office chair, staring blankly at the ceiling, but she soon realized that the question she was considering was an insult to her law enforcement uniform, and her gaze gradually shifted from confusion to determination.

……

When the Milo family returned to their back-to-back residential area, it was around 5:30 a.m., the time when the fog was at its thickest in the city.

The family sat in the carriage of the law enforcement office.

Although he survived the ordeal, he didn't say much along the way.

Little Finn had long since fallen asleep, oblivious to everything, while Kang, who was holding him, remained silent with a furrowed brow the entire time.

Emma was already on the verge of collapse due to her illness; she was unsteady on her feet when she got out of the car, and Milo had to help her into the house.

After the law enforcement carriage left, Milo stood quietly at his doorstep for a few minutes, observing the street.

He feared that the Sherman family would retaliate without regard for the consequences.

After leaving the law enforcement office, he was left with no one to protect his family. To be honest, if it were him yesterday, he would probably have chosen to keep his family at the law enforcement office until dawn, but today Milo had more confidence.

This confidence stems from the bizarre changes in his body.

Even now, Milo still can't understand why his physical strength has doubled. The only explanation is the totem. All these strange changes occurred after he used the totem to read the experiences of the deceased Robben.

……

"No wonder Dillasho went to such lengths to get me out of trouble."

Milo looked thoughtfully at the wound on the back of his hand.

The help I provided during the investigation was absolutely insufficient to warrant such measures from Dillah Shaw. The only reasonable explanation is that he was tracking the totem and couldn't let go of any clue.

Despite being the sole owner of the totem, Komillo has virtually no understanding of it.

"If you can become stronger by looking at the experiences of the dead, then wouldn't I be invincible if I just wandered around the cemetery for a month?"

Milo chuckled self-deprecatingly, dismissing the naive idea.

He tried throwing a punch into the air, wanting to feel that powerful force again, but the punch made him feel as if a knife was churning in his head, causing him to stumble and almost fall headfirst at the gate.

Damn, what's going on now?

He was holding his knees, panting heavily, and it took him a long time to recover.

This wasn't a matter of visiting a cemetery or not; the intensity of the pain made Milo feel like he was about to enter one.

Are there any aftereffects?
side effect?
Milo couldn't understand it.

His legs were trembling, and all he wanted to do was lie down and rest as soon as possible.

But just as he was about to turn and go inside, a hoarse, sinister voice came from the thick fog a few meters behind him:

"The Spy... the Spy who has been given supernatural vision..."

Milo recognized the voice; it belonged to the red-robed, mad old woman who had been wandering the streets of Nanwei City for years.

This person was like a ghost, her whereabouts were unpredictable and there was no pattern to her movements. Just when people thought she might have starved to death in some corner, she would reappear on the street.

Some people say she is a heretic or a witch.

Rebecca had mentioned similar rumors to Milo, saying that the old woman could tell fortunes. And indeed, some people in the city had approached her, offering money or food in exchange for strange guidance; however, most of those people were gambling addicts—who would deal with a madwoman…?

The witch knelt in front of an abandoned house across the street, still wearing the same tattered dark red robe. Her withered hands gripped a strangely shaped cane, and a red hood covered her head, obscuring her face, with only messy gray hair hanging down from inside.

……

Milo didn't want to pay any attention to the witch, but just as he was about to turn around and go inside, the witch said something in her trembling voice that sent chills down Milo's spine.

“I saw it… I saw the soul of another person in you… a butcher with a blade in his hand… a tragic soul.”

Milo's breathing quickened instantly.

He had never told anyone about his strange experience in the cemetery, and even if he wanted to, he wouldn't know where to begin.

But how did this old witch know?
The butcher's soul? A tragic soul?
Isn't that Robben?
……

With a mix of trepidation and excitement, Milo crossed the street and approached the Red Witch.

"What else do you know?"

He felt that the fact that he was talking to a madman was absurd in itself. Before this, Milo had no interest in the so-called religious ideas of demons and monsters. However, the scene he witnessed on the night of the sewer incident overturned his understanding. In addition, what he saw in the cemetery made Milo think that these were things outside his understanding, not completely nonsense.

"The Watcher... It really is a Watcher. I never thought someone could actually elevate their spiritual vision to this level... Oh, the tentacles and claws of the Great Old Ones... You must have gotten used to the torment of the Nightmare phase by now. It seems you're still lost and confused..."

The red-robed witch, as if examining some rare treasure, stretched out one hand towards Milo, hovering it in the air, her incoherent ramblings coming out in fits and starts.

"But why is the calamity still here... Hahaha, the Great Old Ones you serve do not care whether you live or die, Spy... Your fate is sealed, you cannot escape it..."

……

"Can you speak properly? Don't insert seven or eight ellipses into a single sentence."

Milo could vaguely sense that the old witch in front of him knew something, but if she continued to ramble on like this, Milo would never be able to understand what she was trying to say.

……

"Did you suddenly learn how to use a knife?"

The witch suddenly changed her tone, speaking clearly and concisely.

Milo raised an eyebrow: So you can speak normally after all.

"Knife?"

He muttered to himself, suddenly remembering how he had precisely severed the middle-aged man's wrist joint with a single stroke during the conflict with the Sherman family's private army in the cemetery, and how he had used a dagger to cut open a horse's abdomen during the melee...

These were all actions that Milo had never done before, and he didn't think he could do them without a teacher.

Now that the witch had revealed the answer, the answer quickly came to Milo's mind.

It's Robben.

These are Robben's abilities.

"The Butcher's Soul"

Whether it's a precise cut into the joint cartilage or a clean, decisive disembowelment, similar things have happened in past serial murders, and it's nothing difficult for Robben, the butcher.

"So I not only witnessed his life, but also inherited his abilities?"

In fact, from the very beginning, Milo had a vague feeling that he was not simply an observer, because after finishing reading about Robben's experiences, many of Robben's thoughts and emotions still lingered in his mind.

Now it seems that not only those thoughts remain, but also Robben's butchering skills.

"Is this the true purpose of that totem?"

Milo couldn't understand the principles and mysteries behind it, but as someone directly involved, he could clearly feel the magic of it.

But whether he had gained Robben's abilities or whether Robben's soul was truly with him as the witch had said, remained unknown, and Milo couldn't bring himself to believe the words of a madman.

“Shall we make a deal? Spy… Your Great Old Ones have severed their connection with you. You need a guide… Without guidance, you will soon be forever plunged into the abyss, with no chance of ever rising again…”

The witch suddenly spoke, saying some things that Milo didn't quite understand.

“What do you mean?” Milo frowned. “What are the Great Old Ones? What are the Watchers? You want to be my guide… am I paying you or are you paying me?”

He knew that these religious figures always used vague and cryptic language when they were trying to deceive ordinary people, often with a hint of intimidation. So Milo wasn't too concerned about the "falling into the abyss" analogy; he was more interested in understanding his splitting headache.

……

"You have passed through the first sequence—the Nightmare."

The red-robed witch drew a strange, ancient symbol on the ground with her filthy fingernails, then drew another one on the left, pointing to it and saying:
"No matter what means you used to develop your spiritual vision, you have successfully entered the second sequence. You are now a voyeur. You may survive, but you cannot stay at this stage forever. After you have seen enough dead, you will gain their abilities and powers, but at the same time you will forget which one is your true life. You will fall into madness."

"Nightmare...the Spy."

Milo seemed to be deep in thought.

He seemed to understand some of it.

But I didn't fully understand it.

He tentatively asked, "Is there a third sequence?"

"You should think of a way to survive in the Watchers sequence first," the red-robed witch said, letting out a series of chilling laughs.

"Then what should I do?" Milo frowned slightly.

"Do you mean to accept my guidance?" the witch asked in return.

"I can think about it first." Given Milo's personality, he wouldn't be easily fooled into believing everything he heard. At this moment, he was still 90% skeptical of the witch.

“You’ll come back to me soon…hehehe…remember, if you want guidance from me, offer me communion; it’s our deal.” The witch’s voice was hoarse.

"Holy Communion?" Milo, whose religious knowledge was almost nonexistent, found the term completely unfamiliar.

"It's all about blood and flesh. You'll understand when you encounter it." The witch's words remained cryptic.

Milo shook his head:
"I'm keeping you in suspense."

He wanted to ask something more, but found the street in front of him deserted, with no sign of the Red Witch anywhere.

The heavy, humid air, carrying a slight chill, seeped into Milo's collar.

He shuddered, shook his head, and turned to go home.

……

(End of this chapter)