Chapter 44 02.0044: "Shadow of Chaos"

“……” The half-cat girl lowered her head and whimpered.

The food has been served on the table, covered with a shiny pot lid to keep it warm.

"What a great cooking skill." Horatio couldn't wait to lift the lid of the pot. A series of fragrant dishes were placed in front of him, arousing the most primitive desires of human beings.

The half-cat girl opposite had never seen such delicious food in her life. She washed her hands carefully in the basin, then bent over and squatted on the dining chair like a cat.

"Have you ever seen a fat bald man in a purple robe and a mask presiding over a cult ritual?" Horatio asked in a low voice.

Since that guy was able to collude with the people from the Ministry of Justice as his accomplices, his power must be considerable, and he will definitely unite similar people, big and small, in the vicinity of this area.

Horatio took out the sealed cutlery and pulled out the chopsticks.

[Hmm, it’s chopsticks.] Horatio felt a little surprised.

"I have...but can I have something to eat first?" The half-cat girl's ears drooped, and she hunched her shoulders and shrank her neck, as if she was afraid that these words would anger Horatio, who had just beaten up the hive bailiff in front of her.

"Of course, you can talk while you eat." Horatio wiped his hands and said in a soft tone.

The dish was well cooked, with a fragrant aroma and tender meat, which really suited Horatio's appetite.

The taste is different from Hood's dishes. According to Horatio's preferences, the taste of this street restaurant is not necessarily worse than that of the nobles.

As the main meat, Grox is an important and most important economic meat beast in the empire. Although it is very fierce, it is widely sought after in the empire because it has the taste of pork, the aroma of beef, is easy to feed, and has strong adaptability.

Then he mixed the dessert called bean blood jelly.

"Your father's cooking skills are very good." Horatio praised the girl with a smile.

"Thank you for your compliment, sir. If you like it, please come often when you have time!" A happy and simple smile appeared on the girl's face.

Horatio looked at the half-cat. Her fingers were quite long and thin, and she didn't know how to use chopsticks.

"Here, this is how you use it." Horatio picked up the chopsticks and demonstrated how to pick up food.

The half-cat looked up and tried to imitate Horatio's posture, but ultimately failed to pick up the chopsticks.

So she tried to grab the food with her hands, but the heat pushed her hands back before she even touched the food.

"Actually, you can use a fork." The boss's daughter whispered a little embarrassedly, pointing to the fork on the table.

Suddenly, her eyes lit up and she looked at the knife that Horatio was playing with.

That was the knife she had swung at Horatio in a fit of rage, and after Horatio subdued her, the knife remained in his hand.

"This knife is very exquisite. Does it have any history?" Horatio asked while playing with the knife.

"That's...my father's legacy."

"If you answer my question, I'll give this back to you."

"I know the people you are talking about. They harmed my family. My father is a very powerful thief. Before he left, he asked me to keep this knife. I must not hurt anyone except for self-defense. So..."

As the girl spoke, tears began to fall.

"So I'm really sorry, I didn't mean it, I...I was really scared."

"Thief...is your father the one who was killed by the Guild Alliance?" asked the boss's daughter.

"Hmm? Do you know anything?" Horatio looked at the girl: "Excuse me, please give me a piece of paper and pen."

The girl took the paper and pen from the bar and handed it to Horatio.

"I've heard about the deeds of a chivalrous thief. It is said that he pried open the treasury of the Guild Alliance and distributed the gold inside to the poor. But later, for some reason, he ran to the Ministry of Justice, but was killed on the way by the bounty hunters who were wanted for him." After saying this, the girl went to entertain other guests.

"Please accept my condolences. Can you tell me what happened?"

Why would a master thief go to the Ministry of Justice? Obviously, he would not fall into the trap.

Horatio smelled something unusual.

"Dad is a human. He met Mom while stealing in the office of a brothel owner. They fell in love at first sight. After they got married, Dad redeemed Mom and became a thief to support the family. In order to improve their lives, he became a famous thief and was even on the wanted list of the Middle Nest."

"That's amazing! He wouldn't steal public property."

"He stole gems and gold from the Guild Bank to make a necklace for his mother, and distributed the money he took away to the poor. He used this knife to pick the lock."

[Amazing.] Horatio nodded in agreement. To be able to sneak into a heavily guarded vault and steal successfully, he must be a legendary thief.

"Later, in order to protect me, my mother was kidnapped by the purple-robed cultists and taken away to be sacrificed. I told my father, and he was very anxious. He wanted to run to the Ministry of Justice on the ground to call the police. But just when he was about to successfully reach the Ministry of Justice, he was shot dead by the mercenaries of the Guild Alliance."

[Sacrifice…] Horatio caught the familiar words.

"Do you know where it is?" "Very deep. Dad said it's in a very low place in the residential area of ​​PW15-S-21. I don't know where it is exactly, but it's in an abandoned collapsed monastery."

"That's already the lower nest, almost even the bottom nest." Horatio frowned. He had narrowly escaped death from there before to climb up to the middle nest. That place was bad enough, and he couldn't even think about any place lower.

Everyone knows that the deeper you go into the nest, the more dangerous it becomes. The bottom nest is no longer a place that one can go to alone. If you step in rashly, you will only end up dead, especially since a strange plague broke out there half a year ago.

[These guys really know how to choose a place.] Horatio sighed dully.

"As for the others, since they can reach the Middle Nest, they must have a base here too."

“The closest one is an abandoned chapel in the K-7 block below Vegas, but that’s not the base camp, just a base.

There were also some in the Saints Monastery in the V-8 area, but their forces were cleared out from there overnight. There was a lot of blood on the ground, and I also saw tall figures. These people had very sharp reactions, and I was spotted from a long distance away, and then they ran away.

Then there are a few small secret gathering places for bad guys in the F-4 block, in... but they don't seem to be purple, they are red! Scarlet! The guy you are talking about has been here."

The half-cat girl told Horatio everything she knew, her words were passionate and unreserved, venting her forbearance and reluctance to not be able to avenge her parents.

[According to the description, K-7 Chapel should be the place where Farida and I escaped, and V-8 Saints Monastery is where I found this prosthetic limb.

Red? Is it the power of the Slaughter Might? How come the Joy-Bearers are mixed up with the Chopping? The V-8 forces were wiped out by a tall figure? Could it be a Space Marine? Or... an Inquisitor?]
The clues are disorganized and some are confusing.

She thought she could only find clues from the cat-man's instinct to avoid danger, but she didn't expect that the half-cat-man in front of her was actually consciously looking for the murderer who killed her mother and her father.

With the lesson of the Ministry of Justice officials being corrupted and turned into moles, he did not dare to reveal what he knew to the Navy casually for the time being.

Even the special task force investigating the accident of Farida's mother eight years ago was stopped. Major General Alexander Hood, who lost his wife, could only become the chief of the Military Intelligence Command and then find another way to continue the investigation. Let alone him.

Except for Farida, he would have to wait until he got to know the others in depth before making a decision.

[Let's talk to Farida tomorrow.] Horatio thought that at least she and her father should be loyal to the Empire.

"Thank you." Horatio placed the knife on the table and pushed it toward the girl.

"Is there anything special about this knife?" Horatio asked.

When his iron hand touched the knife, he felt the surge of the machine soul, which meant that this knife was not ordinary.

The half-cat girl took the knife and pinched the upper and lower parts of the handle. A delicate lock-picking tool extended from the end of the handle. Upon closer inspection, it even had a universal hacker code to break into the access control system.

[Good fellow, a self-taught programmer who is good at thieving and thieving?] Horatio couldn't help but complain in his heart.

"Keep it, and don't use it to hurt anyone next time. If you get caught next time, they may not be able to return it to you."

"Woo." The half-cat girl didn't dare to look at Horatio and nodded.

Dadada! Bang! Bang! The sudden sound of killing came from a distance.

Horatio immediately looked up in the direction of the sound.

Both the half-cat girl and the chef's daughter immediately showed horror on their faces.

"It's gunshots! So frequent!" The girl tried her best to keep the tray steady and stood behind a pillar with a worried look on her face.

About 200 meters ahead, I saw a group of protesters holding signs and banners, screaming and fleeing. The scene was so crowded that it even turned into a stampede.

"what happened?!"

"It looks like the mercenaries from the Guild Alliance opened fire on the protesting crowd!" Yin Shuyao looked at Horatio with horror in his eyes.

Horatio stood up in an instant, knocking the chair to the ground.

The horn-shaped sound array on the back of female sergeant Louise who was patrolling nearby suddenly received a call from the Navy Department's super-encrypted dedicated line.

This is a special frequency band that only has the call sign of the leader of each Zhongsi Marine group.

"I am Commander Elphinstone of the Military Intelligence Department. The Zhongsi Marine Task Force on standby in Block K-7 will immediately carry out an in-depth strike against the abandoned chapel. All teams near Block F-4 will immediately rush to the scene of the shooting to carry out riot control deployment to prevent the conflict from escalating..."

The colonel's words were suddenly interrupted by an extremely furious male voice: "Kill all the cultists in the K-7 chapel! Don't let any of them escape! Dig up all their secrets! People from the F-4 area, tell those hooligans to get out immediately! Anyone who resists will be shot on the spot!"

Of course, the marines Zhongji knew who this person was - the famous Rear Admiral Alexander Hood, chief of the Naval Military Intelligence Command.

"Are you sure, sir?" asked the leader of an unknown group in the F-4 block.

"Shoot to death! Kill all the rebels without mercy! Smash those scums for me!!!"

With a frightening clanging sound, the communication was cut off.

Needless to say, the other party must have hung up the landline very violently, but the team leaders did not know that the Major General would be so angry, nor did they know that the cultists had previously reached out to his only daughter.

"I am Sergeant Louise from Delta Group. Please ask all the Tadashi Marines near the F-4B-7 intersection to move closer to me!
Repeat, all nearby Zhongsi Marine groups immediately move towards the F-4B-7 intersection! "

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(End of this chapter)