Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic

"Ha~"

"Didn’t sleep well last night?"

On Sunday morning, in Spider Alley, Lower District of Moon Bay City, Shard yawned while walking toward the morgue alongside Mr. Benhart, and the Vampire Kind next to him asked concernedly.

"No, slept well, just dreamt about something strange... A beautiful red-haired Princess invited herself into my dream, it was quite wonderful indeed."

Shard casually explained, then entered the passage with Mr. Benhart.

Mr. Ptolemy Albert seemed to always be working in the morgue, and every time Shard came here, he could always find him. But since the three had agreed to meet this morning to exchange investigative information, he wasn’t conducting an autopsy at the moment, but led them into the office.

Compared to the damp, cold morgue filled with the smell of preservatives and corpse stench, the separately enclosed office was quite comfortable. It also had steam pipes, so Shard and Mr. Benhart took off their coats. After sitting down, they first complained about the snow from the day before yesterday, and then began to share their findings from the past week.

Since the appearance of the female corpse to the discovery of important clues in the steam bathhouse, to the present, more than a week had passed. Not only Shard, but the other two who were investigating separately also had significant breakthroughs.

Mr. Benhart was the first to speak, having investigated the Crowley Steam Bathhouse at 18 Glover Street after finding that an important person’s memories had been modified:

"Do you remember the information we first learned from the bathhouse?"

Mr. Benhart asked Shard:

"Important individuals entering and exiting the bathhouse do not use the front door but go through secret passages. These past few days, I’ve managed to find the secret passage in the room that had been used by Wood, Hawthorn, and Black, and discovered it was actually a passage modified from an abandoned sewer."

"I’ve heard that, locally, nobles also use abandoned sewers as secret passages when constructing estates. A few years ago, someone even attempted to enter a bank through the sewers for theft, but was caught because they broke in while a bank employee was inspecting the vault."

Local Mr. Albert said, and Mr. Benhart nodded:

"The secret passage beneath the bathhouse is not deep; you can reach the bottom quickly by using a ladder from the room. To prevent getting lost, the walls below are marked with directions in paint, and you’ll never guess where the exit is."

Shard then turned to look at the city map hanging on the office wall:

"I don’t believe this passage is very long, around the bathhouse... Miss Bell’s pedestrian street apartment basement?"

Mr. Albert also looked at the map:

"Hundreds of meters away from the bathhouse is the Taton River; I remember there are several rows of houses on the riverbank beach."

"Yes, the secret passage exit is in one of those houses along the riverbank of the Taton River. Those houses are usually shops like fruit stalls or blacksmith shops, not for living, and don’t have Night Watchman at night, so entering one of them at night doesn’t attract attention."

Mr. Benhart stood beside the map:

"I followed the secret passage to the exit and found cleaned blood stains at the location. Although they were washed away, the blood stains remain clear to us. I had smelled the body of the deceased and the remaining blood, and I’m quite certain the blood near the exit came from the deceased."

Shard and Mr. Albert looked at him in surprise:

"You really found it?"

Mr. Benhart seemed a bit proud:

"There’s no need to praise me, it was just good luck. However, there was no blood inside the secret passage; the woman was injured at the exit. I followed the blood trails out of the house to track them, but unfortunately, the trail eventually led into the Taton River. With nearly two weeks having passed since the incident, I couldn’t continue tracking."

He took a pencil from the desk and marked the locations of the blood stains. The woman did not directly enter the river from the secret passage exit of the riverbank house, but wandered around nearby before finally entering the river.

"It’s unfortunate that there weren’t any other witnesses that night, and with the sparse amount of blood scattered on the street, this clue probably ends here."

Mr. Benhart concluded, but Shard was rather excited:

"This clue is very important; I’ve obtained part of Herman Wood’s memories. That night, the three of them took the deceased from the secret passage to the sewer and saw something in the sewer."

He detailed that memory, emphasizing the "Eyes of the Dragon Beast," and then stood beside the map, studying the terrain around the steam bathhouse:

"The memory loss of Herman Wood and the other two does not pertain to long-term memories, just the short few hours that night, so the time of the memories I obtained likely occurred before Mr. Benhart’s blood stain discovery. Therefore, it’s reasonable to assume the sequence of events that evening was:

The three of them took the deceased to view a certain test subject held in the sewer, during which an accident caused an egg-like object to parasitize the deceased’s body. The deceased escaped from the sewer, entered the river, drifted along the water to the Lower District’s Herring Street, and then died here."

"Mr. Watson, you mean to say the strange sewer you saw is actually connected to Crowley Steam Bathhouse’s secret passage?"

Mr. Benhart also understood and thought carefully:

"The secret passage’s sewer is indeed quite extensive; I couldn’t explore every corner. If that’s the case, even if that secret detention area is relocated after, as long as we can draw the Church’s attention to the remaining traces, the suspicion on the Vampire Kind can be significantly reduced."

"That’s the situation. I’m having someone help gather the city’s sewer maps, and we’ll proceed once we have the results."

Regarding Miss Belindel’s matter, Shard had only spoken to Mr. Benhart about it, and the latter kept the secret as well, so it wouldn’t be mentioned in front of the robed coroner.

Although Mr. Ptolemy Abel hadn’t gone out to investigate, he had gained important information through his local connections. After the two had shared their findings, he finally spoke:

"I’ve talked to Armand about the Vampire Beast incident. Mr. Watson, are you aware of this matter?"

"I know, Viscount Benhart told me."

"Alright then."

The coroner nodded heavily:

"The Vampire Beast that has been appearing and attacking citizens at night, I originally thought it was a means by some behind-the-scenes force to confuse the Church. But in the past few days, I’ve received news from acquaintances in the Church: that Vampire Beast seems to be completely uncontrollable and exceptionally intelligent. So far, five people have been harmed by it, with four dead and one critically injured."

Mr. Benhart slightly frowned:

"If it was just to draw the Church’s attention, why would it attack citizens so frequently? Isn’t that forcing the Church to intensify their investigations?"

"So, the Vampire Beast wasn’t intentionally released to attract attention?"

Shard asked, exchanging a knowing glance with Mr. Benhart, both thinking of the same thing:

"The egg-like object that absorbed the deceased’s blood, could it have already hatched..."

The coroner nodded slightly:

"I think so too. We’re still not certain about the true relationship between that egg-like object and the Vampire Beast of the night. It’s possible our initial guess that the object itself was the Vampire Beast is wrong, but it definitely has Vampire Race blood in it."

He also stood up and approached the map:

"If your assumption is correct, then on that night, three nobles saw a dangerous laboratory in the sewers with the deceased, an accident led to the egg-like object entering the deceased’s abdomen, and the deceased escaped. After leaving the secret passage, entered the river, and exited downstream, finally dying in the Lower District. The egg-like object in her abdomen wasn’t reclaimed by the lab’s owners, otherwise, there’s no reason the corpse wouldn’t have been hidden."

"What sort of thing can grow so quickly? It was an egg at the time, but now it can attack humans?"

Mr. Benhart was puzzled, while Shard, having read a large amount of Laplace Howard’s notes on alchemy and human alchemy, had his own guess:

"That experimental product likely had the property of rapid growth from the beginning, and after absorbing a living person’s blood and life, it would’ve been entirely possible for it to grow in just a few days. Monsters that possess rapid growth usually have the ability to consume life to become stronger too."

"That thing will get stronger? And the more it kills, the stronger it becomes?"

Mr. Benhart’s eyes widened:

"Why does it feel like the situation is just getting worse?"

"It’s indeed getting worse."

Mr. Albert looked up and continued to study the map. Being the oldest of the three, his brow was tightly knitted, with wrinkles almost forming ravines:

"But we shouldn’t take the risk to find that hatched monster. I know you two are both very capable, but don’t take this risk. The only thing we can do now is locate that secret lab and let the Church know this matter isn’t related to us."

Mr. Benhart nodded and then gently asked:

"Yesterday, when I tried to contact Bruce, I noticed suspicious people near his home."

Shard looked at them, understanding they were discussing the same clan.

"The Church has temporarily taken him away. He lives near the crime scene and has records of selling forbidden biological products on the local black market, so he is a suspect."

"What kind of forbidden biological products?"

Shard asked curiously, and the coroner sighed, covering his forehead:

"Chocobo eggs obtained from who knows where. Although they’re all dead eggs, they’re still classified as a third-class forbidden item in the Church’s Dangerous Creatures Rating Directory."

"Bruce really has some nerve; even now, only the Church and the Three Major Academies are publicly breeding Chocobos. Only God probably knows where he got his goods."

The information gathered from the investigation was temporarily all they had. Although they had taken another step closer in the exploration of the truth, they were also getting ever closer to the ultimate danger. Starting from investigating the nameless female corpse, Shard found himself gradually closing in on the Dragon Feast Cult’s local objectives. And this "Detective Incident," which had already resulted in at least six deaths and instilled fear among the local Vampire Kind, would likely bring even more big news to Moon Bay in the future.