"Female reporter..." Yu Xing mused. So the reporter's corpse he'd encountered in the mycelium tunnel in the City of Terror, the one that had muttered Dorothy's name, had died because of this?
"That's right. A bold woman." Diffit gave a sneer, as if he were talking about an insignificant bug. "She photographed things she shouldn't have. So I asked Aiven to do me a little favor and send her somewhere 'interesting.' She'll never come back."
"Now that the trouble on the outskirts is taken care of, all that's left is Dorothy." Diffit continued, his voice as calm as if he were laying out a business plan. "I couldn't allow such a potential threat to remain at my side. Her suspicions were like a ticking time bomb. So I carefully prepared an 'accident' for her."
"Using Nightmare to plant fear in her dreams and trigger the memory left deep in her mind by her investigation—the mark of our 'symbol'... She'd die 'naturally' under the weight of extreme terror and mental shock. Perfect, don't you think?" He spread his hands, wearing a self-satisfied smile. "Everyone would think the Claude family had the misfortune of attracting a powerful monster's attention, and that the poor banker's wife had become yet another victim of a supernatural incident."
"No one would suspect me, not even my Philia..." His voice softened for a moment when he mentioned his daughter's name, but quickly turned cold again. "She'd only grieve. She'd never learn her father's true face."
He looked at Yu Xing, his gaze behind his gold-rimmed glasses brimming with the superiority of someone who controlled everything. "It was, without a doubt, a perfect operation. I eliminated a threat while maintaining my flawless public image. Now do you understand, Mr. Yu Xing? In this world, achieving your goals sometimes