Duanmu Huai didn't head straight for the shadow's location. From the few exchanges they'd had so far, he had already figured out that whatever else this thing was, it was fast enough — and even though it had been wounded earlier, Duanmu Huai wasn't confident he could catch it in a chase. So he went back to fishing — after all, a fisherman never comes home empty-handed.
Playing the part a little longer never hurt. Maybe this fish was dumb enough to bite on its own.
So Duanmu Huai acted as though he were surrounded, backing away toward the other side of the street. With Mary there, he could pinpoint the creature's exact location at any moment, and once it took the bait, that would be Duanmu Huai's cue to strike.
The creature seemed completely unaware that Mary had already seen through it. It stayed hidden in the fog, letting out occasional bestial roars, and one by one, hound-like shadows came lunging out of the mist at Duanmu Huai. They didn't appear to be physical creatures — they felt more like some kind of illusion. Against an ordinary person they would probably be completely unmanageable, but for Duanmu Huai, a casual swing of his fist was enough to shatter every last one of them to pieces.
Mary stayed close beside him, keeping her eyes fixed on the real shadow. Duanmu Huai couldn't tell which was which — as far as he could see, all the shadow creatures around him looked more or less the same. But for Mary, it seemed effortlessly obvious which shadow was the strange one...…well, the Golden Eye really was something.
Duanmu Huai recalled that there was also a spell that could permanently see through all illusions. Because it was relatively easy to obtain, quite a few players had slotted it in early on.
And then they'd suffered for it.
The reason was simple — it was still a "spell." And anything that was a "spell" could be interfered with and dispelled. Worse still, because the players at the time had absolute faith that the spell could see through everything, they never once suspected they'd been deceived, and didn't realize anything was wrong until the very end.
That situation persisted all the way into the mid-game, until a player stumbled onto the core of a quest by accident and the truth came out — they'd all been played. The forums erupted with wailing and despair. It was after that incident that many players stopped trusting those so-called all-seeing anti-illusion spells entirely.
For Duanmu Huai, though, the Golden Eye remained tremendously useful. He wasn't the type of player who liked using his brain. Even when playing games, Duanmu Huai had always hated puzzles. Mazes in particular were his most loathed thing in existence. Back when players were forming parties to take on the Evil Gods, he had gone straight for the God of Tyranny rather than the God of Trickery, for the simple reason that he couldn't be bothered with mazes and riddles.
Just smash straight through — how satisfying. What's the point of wasting brain cells?
Overwhelming force should just be met with more overwhelming force. Simple, direct, efficient. Either you can beat them or you can't. Either you live or you die. Where does all the complicated stuff come in? Either you smash their skull open or they smash yours. Clear-cut and straightforward.
So a fight like the current one was, frankly, making Duanmu Huai a little irritable.
According to Mary, the shadow had been following them the whole time but was being extremely cautious — making no attempt to close the distance at all. It reminded Duanmu Huai of fishing. The shadow creature was like a fish that nibbled carefully at the bait from just outside the hook but refused to bite...…
That kind of fish was the most infuriating. In real life you'd just drain the pond — was he really going to coddle it?
Since that was the case, he'd just have to turn up the pressure.
With that thought, Duanmu Huai suddenly turned around, reached out, grabbed Mary, hoisted her up onto his shoulder, and broke into a run.
"Hm? Mr. Duanmu? Wait?! What is...…??"
Faced with Duanmu Huai's sudden move, Mary was completely startled.
"Hold on tight — we're making this interesting!"
Duanmu Huai swept a glance around, then took off at a run toward the edge of town. The idea was to make it look like he was overwhelmed and trying to escape in the confusion. If the shadow creature took the bait, that would suit Duanmu Huai just fine.
"Woof woof woof!!!"
The hound-barking kept up without pause, chasing after them. Shadow after shadow came hurtling out of the fog from both sides, launching themselves at Duanmu Huai. Of course, attacks at this level had no effect on him whatsoever — he just casually swung his arm and sent every last shadow shattering to pieces.
"What about it? Mary — is that thing following us?"
"It is, right behind us, but it still doesn't seem willing to come forward...…"
Mary had more or less figured out what Duanmu Huai was trying to do, and from her perch on his shoulder she dutifully reported back. Being carried on someone's shoulder was certainly not something befitting a young lady, but she had more important things to worry about right now.
"...…Then let's head back."
"Hm? Is that alright?"
"Depends on the situation. If it keeps refusing to bite, we'll have no choice but to fall back to the manor for now."
Duanmu Huai could have dragged this out into a war of attrition, but there was no need. From what he had seen so far, this creature was genuinely formidable — fast, and unnervingly clever on top of that. An opponent like that wasn't easy to finish off in one go, and Duanmu Huai himself wasn't particularly quick. Under these circumstances, if the creature truly refused to take the bait, there wasn't much else he could do.
His speed really was his greatest weakness.
As they spoke, Duanmu Huai had already carried Mary out of town and onto the path leading back to Baskerville Manor. The fog had swallowed this stretch of road as well. He strode forward with Mary on his shoulder in the direction of the manor, and behind him, one shadow after another lunged out of the mist, only to be smashed apart without mercy.
Though Duanmu Huai couldn't see it himself, according to Mary's reports, the real shadow had been trailing them the whole time, maintaining a fixed distance — not too far, not too close.
Could it be that the wound from earlier had made it more cautious?
If so, this was going to be a real headache.
A moment later, the gates of Baskerville Manor came into sight, and just at that moment, Mary's voice reached him again, this time with a hint of urgency.
"Mr. Duanmu, that shadow is charging at us!"
Before the words had even left her mouth, Duanmu Huai felt a surge of violent wind sweep in from behind him, aimed straight at his back.
"Come on then!"
Rather than alarm, what Duanmu Huai felt was delight. He had been dreading the creature staying cowardly to the very end. Now it seemed it had finally lost its nerve — sure enough, a beast was a beast!
Without a moment's hesitation, Duanmu Huai spun around, thrust out his right hand, and reached straight for the incoming attacker!
"BANG!!!"
The shadow's claws slammed hard into Duanmu Huai's chest, tearing through his clothes. At the same instant, Duanmu Huai drove his right fist forward and brought it crashing down on the shadow's head. Unlike the phantom hounds before, which shattered at the slightest touch, this time Duanmu Huai felt something solid transmit through his knuckles — bone, and hide.
"ORA!"
Now that he had finally gotten hold of the creature, Duanmu Huai had no intention of letting it go. With a furious roar, he clenched both fists and unleashed them like a rainstorm.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!!!!"
Accompanied by his roar, his iron fists came down on the shadow creature like a storm, blow after blow after blow. Then Duanmu Huai clenched his fist once more and raised it high.
"ORA!!!"
At that roar, his fist came down like a hammer, connecting squarely with the shadow's head and driving it straight into the ground.
"BANG!!"
With that crash, the shadow collapsed heavily and went still.
Only then did Duanmu Huai finally get a clear look at what the creature actually was.
Just as he had glimpsed before, it looked like a dog, or perhaps a bear or chimpanzee — in simple terms, a monster with a dog's head, the powerful upper body of a chimpanzee or bear, and thick, heavily-muscled limbs with claws and fangs. Right now, though, the creature had been pummeled by Duanmu Huai until it was battered all over, and even its head was a bloody mess.
Well...…all he could say was that this thing hadn't held up under a beating. It was absolutely not because Duanmu Huai had been venting his frustration about not being able to catch it earlier.
"Augh...…augh-oooh...…"
The black creature had been beaten by Duanmu Huai to within an inch of its life. It opened its mouth and let out a cry of pain, struggled once, then went silent — and immediately after, the creature began to warp and melt like plastic scorched by fire, its entire body gradually dissolving into a pool of thick, black liquid that looked like foul, stagnant water.
There was nothing to be done about that. Strictly speaking, most of the creatures that attacked humans in this world were [Warp] entities, and if they died in the physical world, they generally left almost nothing behind. That was one of the reasons why this world had many investigators but very few actual monster corpses to recover. Of course, some monsters did leave bodies after death — but those bodies were more like concentrations of viral matter, and their mere existence could trigger mass chaos or even disease across wide areas. So competent investigators generally destroyed the remains on the spot rather than hauling them back and causing trouble.
Of course, it wasn't as though players had never tried to [exploit] this before. For instance, a player might discover an incident somewhere, go to investigate, and find that the cause was some frozen remains. The player would resolve the incident but leave the remains intact — then let them trigger another incident, resolve it again, and repeat the cycle indefinitely...…the result was [mission score] deductions so severe it was painful to look at.
After all, the system wasn't stupid. If an investigation was thorough enough, it would identify the root cause. If you found the root cause but didn't deal with it, it was obvious you were gaming the system for points.
Of course, a player could also pretend the investigation was incomplete and hide that information — but then the case's [rating] would drop. Even repeating the cycle several times, the cumulative case scores never added up to more than what a single thorough investigation would yield.
Well...…the arms race between players trying to [exploit bugs] and the developers patching them would probably go on forever.
Before long the creature had fully dissolved, leaving only a dark stain like filthy water in the pure white snow. Just then, Lingnu seemed to notice something — she scratched lightly at Duanmu Huai's cheek, gave a soft meow, and pointed toward the stain.
"Hm?"
At Lingnu's sound, Duanmu Huai looked more carefully, and then he saw it — amid the dark residue, something had been left behind.
It looked like...…a pendant?
Duanmu Huai reached out and picked it up. It was an old metal pendant, with a wolf's head engraved on its surface.
Hmm...…so this thing was a wolf?
"———————!"
But just as Duanmu Huai picked up the pendant, his vision suddenly went dark.
In the next instant, the scene around him changed completely.
In a dim, shadowy room, an old man sat in a chair. He stared ahead as though looking at someone, and a strange smile crossed his face.
"This is the fate of your family. If you wish to change it, a sacrifice must be made."
"A sacrifice?"
"That's right — you should understand what it is we require."
Then the scene shifted again.
Under the cold light of the moon, in an endless stretch of wilderness, the howling of hounds filled the air. A girl in ragged clothing was running desperately ahead, and Duanmu Huai's perspective seemed to be elevated — as though he were riding a horse, giving chase to the girl before him with all his might.
Then a voice spoke.
"Is it true that if I kill that woman, the Baskerville family's curse will be lifted?"
"That's right — kill her, and the curse upon the Baskerville family will be broken. And you will restore your family's glory!"
Another voice replied, though it didn't sound like a single voice — it seemed to come from all directions at once.
Catch her!
Kill her!
"Someone" began riding harder, cracking the whip, closing the distance between themselves and the girl ahead — but before long, Duanmu Huai started to feel that something was off.
By all reason, it should have been impossible for a person to outrun a galloping horse, let alone with hounds in pursuit as well. The girl's flight was desperate and disheveled, yet she had somehow managed to maintain a sustained run ahead of a charging horse and a pack of hunting hounds for this long. Thinking carefully about it, there were many parts of that legend that didn't quite hold up under scrutiny.
For instance — how had an ordinary girl managed to escape across open wilderness in the first place? A group of riders on horseback with hunting hounds hadn't been able to catch her, even accounting for a head start. Catching up to her shouldn't have been that difficult.
An ordinary person watching this scene would only have felt pity for the girl being hunted. But as an [Inquisitor], Duanmu Huai was already raising his guard — unfortunately this was all in the past and beyond his reach, but as far as he was concerned right now, there was absolutely no way he was going to assume that girl was a helpless innocent. When something defied reason this completely, there was always something behind it. Any [Inquisitor] worth their salt would have acted immediately upon seeing something like this.
Sure enough, as if to confirm Duanmu Huai's suspicion, the girl being chased suddenly lurched forward, dropped onto all fours, and in the next instant went sprinting across the wilderness like a beast on all four limbs. Seeing this, "someone" seemed genuinely stunned — though very quickly Duanmu Huai saw a gun appear in his field of view, leveled at the woman ahead, the trigger pulled.
"BANG!!!!"
A gunshot rang out.
But at that same instant, the girl on all fours suddenly leaped — and then vanished entirely. The abrupt turn of events left "someone" visibly shaken. He raised his gun and looked around, but saw nothing. Then, with a sudden screech, the horse "someone" was riding collapsed instantly beneath him, and "someone" was thrown from the saddle, crashing heavily to the ground.
"HAAH—————!!!"
"Someone" slammed hard into the earth. Before he could even get up, a face suddenly appeared directly in front of him. A twisted, savage face — one that looked far more beast than human.
"———————!"
And then the vision was gone.
The scene before him returned to normal. Duanmu Huai furrowed his brow and looked down at the pendant in his hand.
That was the third time this inexplicable ability of his had triggered. Sure enough, just as he had suspected — what that Baskerville ancestor had gone through was far from ordinary.
But...…now that the demon hound had been killed, it should be over, shouldn't it?
Or was the trouble still yet to come?
"Mr. Duanmu, are you alright."
As Duanmu Huai came back to his senses, Mary's voice reached him. She was gripping his clothes with an expression of frightened concern, staring at his chest.
"Hm? Do I look like something's wrong?"
"Because your clothes...…"
"Oh."
Noticing where Mary was looking, Duanmu Huai glanced down and saw that his chest had been torn open in several places by the creature's claws. From Mary's perspective, that probably looked quite alarming.
"It's fine, the clothes just got torn."
Please — with his constitution, he could practically bathe in liquid nitrogen. The idea that some creature of unknown origin could breach his defenses was frankly laughable.
"Haah...…"
Hearing his answer, Mary let out a breath of relief. Then she turned and looked down at the dark stain on the ground.
"Does this mean it's over?"
"Who knows — let's wait and see."
Duanmu Huai turned the pendant over in his hand as he spoke. He had a nagging feeling this wasn't going to be so simple. And if what he had seen in that vision was accurate, then it contradicted the legend of the Baskerville family entirely — at the very least, that girl who had been hunted was certainly no innocent, and whatever the Baskervilles' reason for going after her, it surely wasn't purely for sport.
Perhaps the pendant could yield more clues?
Either way, worth trying.
(End of Chapter)