The Feast at Lister Manor

Wei En walked into the Secret Investigation Bureau and immediately noticed the strange looks the guards at the entrance were giving him.

What was going on?

Was his charm so powerful that it transcended gender?

Wei En shook his head and hurriedly banished the thought. It was too horrifying.

Then he went to the third floor, where the Logistics and Investigation Division One offices were, and paused outside the door. He let out a breath, straightened his uniform, and pushed the door open.

"Good morn—uh?"

The huge office was completely empty.

"Am I early? It's almost nine."

Wei En looked at the clock on the wall and scratched his head.

He didn't think much of it, though. In his previous life, he'd changed jobs several times.

Starting at a new company meant facing a new environment and getting to know new colleagues all over again. It wasn't unusual to occasionally run into a colleague who had no sense of time.

With that in mind, he walked farther inside and set his things down on an empty desk.

After sitting down, Wei En took a careful look around the office.

He had to admit, it was arranged very comfortably. It was neat and orderly, and the air smelled fresh. He was sure he'd be in a good mood working here.

The office covered nearly two hundred square meters. Just inside the entrance stood six desks. They were large and made of nanmu wood, giving them a sturdy, old-fashioned look.

The Bureau's crossed-guns emblem had been carved into the openwork in the middle of each desk, which had been painted dark green.

The chairs were the high-backed kind, with soft cushions on the backs and seats.

The same pattern was carved into the chair backs. It looked like the emblem of Kaster City-State: the City-State Council Hall.

His predecessor had been there a few times. It stood right beside the Crimson Cathedral, in the heart of Kaster City-State.

Besides those six desk-and-chair sets, two sofas stood by the windows at the back, with a small table like a coffee table between them.

It was probably a reception or lounge area. He'd also spotted a cabinet in the corner nearby.

On top sat a complete tea set, tools for grinding coffee, several glass bottles, and a photograph?

Wei En got up and walked over, then picked up the photograph for a closer look.

"Lacy, Rogeret, a white-haired girl, a goofy young man, and the one in the middle... I'll call him Grandpa for now."

It was a group photo of five, probably taken a few years earlier. Lacy and Rogeret looked a few years younger than they did now.

From their smiles, it was clear they were all in good spirits.

Well... all except the white-haired girl. She was expressionless—or maybe just a deadpan.

Looking at her gave Wei En a strange feeling.

It was as if the girl hated the whole world. Her eyes were far too empty.

"Who knew Rogeret looked so handsome when he smiled? What a shame."

A shame he was mentally contaminated and on the verge of losing control.

But what surprised Wei En even more was that the photo wasn't black and white. It was in color.

That meant this world's level of technology was unexpectedly advanced. At least in optics, it was highly developed.

Of course,

it might not have been technology at all, but magic... He could look into that later.

There were also several oil paintings hanging on the office walls.

The most conspicuous and largest one showed an old man wearing a monocle. Beneath it was a signature: Alais Koulibaly, 13th Director of the Secret Investigation Bureau.

Hm?

Wei En walked over and checked again to make sure, then opened the System Panel and searched for the notification.

[You were scanned by Alais Koulibaly's mental perception. Reward: Survival Points +1.] (Chapter 12)

"So he was the one who hit me with a mental scan that day. And he's the director, too."

He remembered seeing the director's office building yesterday on the way to the Property Management Department with Lacy. It was an inconspicuous little building beside the Detention Zone.

A director who liked spying on his subordinates. Tch!

Wei En returned to his desk and sat down, then glanced at the clock again.

"It's already nine. No way."

He knew that if there was only one outlier in a situation, the larger group was usually right.

The workday didn't start at nine!

No wonder the guard at the entrance had given him such a strange look...

The realization left Wei En a little disheartened.

If only he'd known, he could've spent more time studying those parchments...

Whatever.

Since he was early, he'd treat it as the first lesson the Secret Investigation Bureau had taught him.

Then he opened the folder Lacy had given him the day before, ready to familiarize himself with Investigation Division One's work.

Smack!

Wei En had barely turned to the first page of the first file and glanced at it before snapping it shut.

"That's intense..."

He checked the title on the cover again: The Feast at Lister Manor.

Yes, it looked perfectly ordinary.

Unlike the titles on the other files, like Living Sacrifice of the Eternal Sleepers, Assassination Case of the Storm Church Bishop, and Lilith's Doll... Those were clearly cases with a horror angle.

But why—why was there a photograph like that on the first page?

What did that have to do with a feast?

Wei En wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. Thinking about how he'd have to deal with cases like this regularly, he gritted his teeth and opened the file again.

"Damn, it's still terrifying!"

The first page of the file held a photograph of a lavish banquet hall.

Of course, the location where the picture had been taken wasn't the point.

The "people" inside the banquet hall were.

The huge, luxurious hall was littered with severed limbs. Blood stained the carpet, the walls, and even the massive chandelier.

Below the chandelier stood a "pyramid" built from human heads.

The photograph was so clear that Wei En had jumped at the sight of it.

The expressions on those heads were simply too bizarre.

There were men and women, old people and children. It was clear they had all attended the feast.

Every face wore the same expression. They weren't snarling. Their mouths had been stretched into stiff, "radiant" smiles.

At the same time, their eyes were deathly white and hollow, without a trace of joy.

Combined with the bloodshed around them and the scattered limbs, the whole scene... could only be described as bizarre!

At the bottom left, Wei En noticed a line of black handwriting: New Calendar, November 3, 1577. Lister Manor, 66 Roland Street, Kaster City-State.

Had this case happened last year?

He looked at it a couple more times, then couldn't take it and turned to the second page.

"Damn it, the cases in this world are way too horrifying."

The second page was much more normal. It contained a detailed account of how they had solved this pleasant-sounding case.

"The Feast at Lister Manor. More than 113 victims, including 32 members of the Lister family. Farouk Lister, a candidate member of the Kaster City-State Council, was also among the dead."

"After an on-site investigation, the incident was confirmed to be a sacrificial ritual conducted by the Eternal Life Society: Bloody Eternal Life. The presence of a creature from the Deep Abyss, a Skeleton Knight, was also detected at the scene."

"Investigation Division One of the Secret Investigation Bureau, led by Lacy Genesis Montoya, solved the case. Bloody Boras, the Eternal Life Society member responsible for the massacre, was killed!"

The Eternal Life Society?

A Skeleton Knight, a creature from the Deep Abyss?

Wei En couldn't find any information about them in his predecessor's memories. He shook his head and continued looking through the other files.

Needless to say, like the Lister Manor case, the scenes in them all packed a powerful punch.

They were either bizarre or bloody... not one of them was normal.

But they did have one thing in common: Captain Lacy had solved every case, and none of the perpetrators had met a good end.

Did she like collecting the cases she'd worked on? Tsundere.

Wei En put down the file and clicked his tongue. "It's just like watching a horror movie..."