"Forget it. I'll head back first..."
Too much had happened that day. His rich haul in the game had put Mu You in a great mood, but that final sound, which seemed to be a wolf's howl, had instantly dampened much of his excitement.
Mu You spent ten minutes circling back to the alley from earlier. In the darkness, he took off the Night Watchman's Skin and returned to his original appearance, then climbed back into the pet shop through the washroom's rear window.
Only after he entered the pet shop did his taut nerves finally relax.
"So I'll have to go through this every night from now on..."
Mu You gave a wry smile. Obtaining the Night Watchman's Skin had doomed him to kiss a normal sleep schedule goodbye.
Shaking his head, Mu You went to the pet area, brought out three hamster cages, and began casting Animal Speech before giving them a group training session.
Training three pets each day, enough to keep the shop running normally-that was the goal he had set for himself.
He would use the remaining mana to practice the other two spells.
From what he had observed, these spells had proficiency levels too. Using them enough would level them up. As for what specific benefits leveling them up offered... he had yet to notice any.
Also, after his game character reached level 2, his mana had increased by a full 100 points. Previously, he could only cast spells around ten times, but now he managed nearly twenty-three or twenty-four consecutive casts before feeling tired.
After over twenty casts, Beast Trap and Sure Shot had finally both reached LV2. Something worth celebrating.
When he checked the time again, it was four in the morning, and Mu You's eyelids had long since begun fighting a losing battle against sleep.
"I still have to open tomorrow. I'll get whatever sleep I can..."
Putting away his phone, Mu You yawned his way back to his room on the second floor, collapsed onto the bed, and fell into a deep sleep.
At seven the next morning, Mu You was woken right on time by his alarm.
He had exhausted his mental energy the night before and slept for only three hours, yet he did not feel particularly groggy when he woke up. He wondered if it was because his intelligence stat had been boosted when he leveled up yesterday.
He went downstairs to check. Xiao Ya had not arrived yet.
Mu You raised the rolling shutter, planning to go to the breakfast shop on the next street for a breakfast he had not enjoyed in ages.
The moment he stepped outside, the effects of his enhanced constitution became fully apparent.
He strode along swiftly, leaving the old men exercising along the road far behind.
But when he reached the entrance to a residential complex on the next street, he suddenly saw a crowd gathered around a small flower bed ahead, all pointing at something inside.
Curious, Mu You approached to see what the commotion was about.
Only when he got closer did he see that the crowd was gathered around a dead dog.
The dog lay in the flower bed with a horrific wound across its belly and its organs scattered over the ground. There was also a gash on its shoulder made by some sharp object. The blood that had seeped out had almost soaked the entire corpse, making for a gruesome sight.
"Who could be so cruel? If they didn't like stray dogs, they could have just chased it away. Why did they have to torture it to death..." an older woman lamented tearfully, unable to bear the sight. She was carrying a bag of dog food and looked like a kindhearted person who regularly fed the strays.
"I don't think a person killed it. Look at that wound. It looks like an animal bite..." an old man beside her chimed in.
"Probably stray dogs fighting over territory..."
"What stray dog is that vicious? Look closely at those tooth marks. To me, they look like bites from some kind of wild beast. A wolf, for instance..."
"Nonsense. Where would you find wolves in a city these days? They're hard to find even deep in the mountains..."
"It must have been someone who abuses dogs..."
"How cruel..."
As he listened to the surrounding passersby discussing it, Mu You suddenly felt a chill shoot straight up to the top of his head!
Looking at the disemboweled stray dog on the ground, the first thing that came to mind was the wolf's howl from the night before!
Could it really have been...
His expression grew even graver when he noticed the wound on the dog's shoulder, where some sharp object had pierced it. The Werewolf in the game last night had happened to carry a Meat Hook...
Combining that with the traces around the little flower bed, he could even reconstruct the scene in his mind: a stray dog out foraging late at night had accidentally encountered the Werewolf. The dog had turned to flee, only for the Werewolf to pierce its foreleg with his hook and drag it back before cruelly tearing its belly open...
Mu You frowned.
Did that mean the Werewolf player with the in-game ID "Deer Eater" really lived nearby?
And if that guess was true, it meant that the game "Fool" corresponded to the real world not only in time, but in location as well!
Players whose spawn points were close together in the game very likely lived near one another in real life too!
Just then, three police cars pulled up at the entrance to the complex, sirens blaring.
More than a dozen police officers stepped out and began dispersing the crowd. They even put up police tape to cordon off the flower bed.
A forensic examiner wearing white gloves walked over to the dog's body, took out an assortment of specialized equipment, and got to work.
The whole procedure left the onlookers baffled. Wasn't it just a dead dog? Why were they treating it like a murder scene?
Before anyone could react, two of the officers had already taken out little notebooks and begun questioning people in the surrounding crowd.
Mu You did not want any trouble.
Besides, the sudden discovery that a Werewolf player lived nearby had completely killed his interest in watching the commotion.
He turned and quietly left the scene, heading back to the pet shop without even buying breakfast.
Unexpectedly, he had barely been home for a little while when a knock came at the door.
"Who is it?"
"Open up. Police!"
Mu You's nerves tightened further. He had only just returned from the entrance to the complex, and the police were already at his door... Had they discovered something?
He opened the glass door. A square-faced man stood outside, holding a pen and paper. He was one of the officers who had been questioning passersby at the entrance to the complex.
"Uh, can I help you?" Mu You asked, despite knowing why he was there.
"No need to be nervous."
The square-faced officer first studied Mu You for a moment. Noticing that he seemed tense, he smiled and took out a photograph. "This person in the corner of the photo is you, right?"
Mu You glanced at it. The photo showed the crowd gathered around the little flower bed earlier, and he was among them. However, it seemed to have been taken just as he was leaving, capturing only his back.
"I was just passing by on my way to get breakfast. I left when I saw you'd cordoned off the scene..." Mu You explained, then hastily added, "Officer, I didn't kill that dog!"
"Don't worry. We know you didn't kill it. We just wanted to ask whether you heard any noises last night," the square-faced officer said.
That was why he had come in person. The row of shops on Mu You's street faced the entrance to the residential complex from a distance, with no other buildings blocking the view. It was one of the locations from which someone was most likely to have witnessed what happened.
"No."
Mu You shook his head. That was the truth. After returning the previous night, he had slept like the dead. Even thunder outside probably would not have woken him.
The square-faced officer watched Mu You's expression closely. Once he was satisfied that Mu You did not seem to be lying, he nodded and prepared to move on to the next shop.
"Oh, right..."
Before leaving, however, he seemed to remember something. He pulled another photograph from his pocket and pointed to a dark red figure in it.
"Have you seen this person?"
Before you continue