Guild Wars

Chapter 772: Draco Holmes

Qiong Qi and Clarent had even morphed into their human appearances, the lion had the appearance of a blonde haired playboy who needed to be punched while the dragon looked like a red haired cunt.

(Author\'s Note: Qiong Qi looks like Sting from Fairy Tail and Clarent looks like Benimaru from Reincarnated as a Slime.)

All the ladies they had passed on the road wore deep blushes of red on their face. None of them had never seen a trio of such handsome men before, and the contrast between the three added more allure and flavor to them.

The three lads, though, were too caught up in their \'play\' to notice this. They excitedly arrived at the location of the crime, a small yard with wooden planks and some pipes stacked on each other.

Ah, a construction yard, the perfect place for the first crime.

In the middle, where most of the cops and some civvies stood, was a deceased body of the victim who had been crushed by a falling pipe. It was quite gruesome, but given the era, such horrible deaths were nothing out of the ordinairy.

"Ah, the detectives are here! Please, please come this way." A certain man in fine wear beckoned to Draco and co with relief.

Draco shared a look with the two other idiots and smiled filthily.

"Of course, of course, fine sir. Please give us a rundown of what\'s going on, so we may begin our investigation!"

"Certainly. The name is Donathan Wiles, by the way, and I\'m the Chief Inspector of our usually lovely town. Our case today is one of murder, where the victim, identified as a one Mr Kevin Cleland, has been crushed to death by an overhanging pipe." The Chief Inspector began as he led Draco\'s group closer to the actual crime scene.

Draco\'s eyes flashed as he took in the sight of the gruesome murder. His field of view was soon interrupted by the floor\'s details the next second.

?The Sixty-First Floor – Divine Quest

Description: Welcome to the Kingdom of Clevante, styled after Victorian-era London! A place where children are forced to work in factories for a few pennies in exchange for losing a few \'non-essential\' limbs, a place where your parents\' standing will decide whether you\'ll live like a prince or like a pauper… unless you manage to randomly switch places with your lookalike.

You are the most Renowned Detective of this kingdom and you\'ve been called to solve the case of Kevin Cleland, to bring his murderer to justice!

Limitation 1: This is a world of industry and science. All your stats, skills and various powers have been blocked.

Limitation 2: You may retreat from the floor at any time, but upon re-entry, you will have to resume from the exact situation you were in at the time.

Limitation 3: There is a time limit for each case. You have a maximum of 2 months to resolve the case before it is deemed unsolvable, making you fail.

Limitation 4: If you choose the wrong target at the end of your deduction, you will fail the floor without any chances of re-doing it.

Provision 1: You have full access to all the resources of the police force, as well as any forensic and classified data of this time period to help you solve the case.

Provision 2: You are free to use any method to interrogate suspects, but some more - unfavorable - methods will have to be done discreetly.

Provision 3: You have the senses of a detective, helping you to better spot tells when interrogating suspects and witnesses.

Rewards: Score Points, 1 Gold-Tier Reward Selection.?

Draco swiped the screen out of his face and focused on the fellow on the ground. A black light shone in Draco\'s eyes as he injected it into the corpse without anyone but the two other Stooges noticing.

What was that? Didn\'t the floor state that all powers would be sealed?

Yes, but as has already been noted 58 times, the AI could only seal Classes, Titles and the like. Basically anything Boundless giveth, it could taketh away. As such, any bloodlines or Control would stay with the player.

The body shook and shivered, making all those at the scene freeze in terror, not understanding what was happening. Soon, the upper body rose up and gazed at the crowd with bloodshot eyes coated with darkness and evil.

Draco cast his eyes over to the gathered suspects who had been gathered at the scene for questioning. They numbered three in total, the operator for the pipe\'s pulley, the foreman of the site and a hooligan looking fellow.

While the rest of the crowd were stunned by the undead phenomenon, Draco used his Dark Angel abilities to read the minds and memories of the three.

The pulley guy was named Johnny Dane, a 22-year-old young man who had taken on this job to feed himself and his girl who was pregnant with their first kid. He had studied in trade school and learned a specialized still, which was operating pulleys, so he hardly had difficulty finding well paying jobs, which was why he dared to impregnate his girl so easily.

The foreman was James Blankslate, a 35-year-old fellow who was set on retiring after this gig since he was facing back problems. He just wanted to get his money and get out of this bloody business before he ended up like Kevin Cleland.

The hooligan was Ebenezer Lacy, a 20-year-old brute who was the enforcer for a nearby loan shark company. That loan shark company had given a loan to Kevin Cleland and Ebenezer was the one who had been sent out to retrieve it by any means necessary.

In fact, Kevin had only walked beneath the pipes in order to avoid Ebenezer who had been be waiting for him around the route the formerly deceased had usually traversed to go home.

As it was, Ebenezer was the only one in handcuffs, being watched like a criminal by the policemen, while Johnny and James gazed at him with anger. The two men blamed him for everything, for not only did he kill a man, but he had to kill him at their workplace!

Now, they couldn\'t even continue work! Not only would the client be unhappy about this delay, but they too would see no penny for as long as the work did not continue!

Draco got the gist of what went on from their minds and understood who the likely culprit was. Surprised, his eye narrowed as he turned back to his eldritch abomination that was moving its throat, trying to speak. Draco injected more Death Energy and granted the corpse the ability to fulfill its wish.

"Ebenezer… you blimey bastard tried to kill me…" The corpse moaned in an evil voice that send chills down the spine of all those gathered around it.

Ebenezer paled and stepped back. "Y-you corpse bastard, h-how dare you s-slander me! I might have t-threatened you a few times, but did I ever actually hit you?!"

The corpse took a moment, as if recalling his memory. "You\'re right, it wasn\'t you who killed me… it was someone I least expected…"

The corpse then looked through those assembled here, seemingly in an attempt to identify the killer. The already deathly quiet atmosphere worsened even more. Everyone seemed to be praying, not be singled out. Not only would that be hard to refute given the circumstances, but it would also add a layer of curse to their family.

"Roar, brother corpse, what\'s with the suspense?" Qiong Qi shouted as he reverted to his lion form and swatted the corpse on the back of his head.

"Seriously! Can\'t you see that we are shaking in our boots?!" Clarent complained, as he also reverted to his Dragon form.

At first, the people here became horrified by what they witnessed, and their hearts leapt into their throats. However, after a few seconds, they seemed to accept it as normal and reverted into their previous states.

The corpse, who had been disciplined by Qiong Qi, stopped playing around.

"Martha... Where\'s Martha?" It cried out, as if desperate to stop a man dressed as a furry from stabbing it with a pole that had a green rock on top.

Everyone looked around with dismay, but the constable coughed lightly. "Martha is the name of his wife. She is down at the station because she couldn\'t handle the sight of her husband\'s corpse."

Everyone became enlightened and felt some sympathy. It turned out that even when revived like this, the fellow put revenge aside and wanted to see his wife for one more time!

Such love and dedication is truly moving and tear-jearking!

The corpse spat out a glob of black blood. "Where\'s that bitch, Martha? I married that whore, yet she dropped a fucking pipe on me!!!"

The crowd froze as they tried to process what they had just heard, coming from their previous high of emotional valor and benevolence.

"Roar, I knew it! I knew it was her! All the clues pointed to this man\'s dead wife!" Qiong Qi bellowed as he started hopping up and down, making a ruckus as he attempted to take the credit.

"How did you know it was her?" Clarent asked evilly as he eyed Qiong Qi.

The Divine Lion, who had expected support, could never have foreseen this betrayal. With his limited IQ, how could he use any logic to deduce what was going on?

"This matter…" Qiong Qi trembled initially, but seemed to gain confidence and spoke.

"Sigh, it has to do with my own experience. Back in the day, my mother, Martha, was shot dead in an alleyway while I was but a wee cub, along with my father Thomas. It was all because I became scared of a movie about bats, so I rushed us to leave."

Qiong Qi gazed into the sky as sad anime music played. "Ever since then, I have chosen to don the mantle of Batcat, Hero of The Morningstar World and Defender of Justice. I have solved many cases and became known as the world \'s greatest detective. Hence, I could tell that this man\'s wife had to be this case\'s culprit."

The onlookers were weeping silently, greatly moved by Qiong Qi\'s story. Even the corpse was crying black blood, feeling like his death was nothing in the face of what Qiong Qi had gone through.

Meanwhile, Draco and Clarent wore hard expressions. They severely wanted to beat Qiong Qi to death, but this was not the place.

"Bring forth, Martha !" Draco commanded the constable, who nodded and sent the message. Soon, Martha was brought over in a carriage, and upon seeing her, the eyes of the three hooligans lit up.

One would have expected her to be a middle-aged woman with a bit of motherly plump, but no, she was a relatively young woman with a sleek body and moderate assets. While her sizes weren\'t big, the shapes were certainly there to make up for it.

When Martha saw the corpse of her husband, she paled, but she became even more horrified when she saw that the corpse was reanimated. The corpse too was stunned when it recognized his murderer, and they both exclaimed at the same time.

"How?!?"

Hm?

Draco realized that something was wrong. Even though he had derailed the script by using his bloodline powers, the end result should be the same. Yet these reactions told him that there was far more to this entire situation than met the eye, and Draco felt curious.

As such, he narrowed his eyes and casually parsed through Martha\'s memory using his Dark Angel abilities. What he found there left Draco shocked, then amused. He understood that the Tower had once again meddled with this floor\'s difficulty in order to end him, but it had backfired completely.

And it wasn\'t just this floor, but the entire set!

Similar to the Martial Spirit floors, this set of floors had been designed to carry over data from the previous one, which would affect the later difficulty and its rewards.

The Tower had basically been banking on the fact that the hooligan trio would not take things seriously, so that it could pull a fast one on them, yet Draco\'s braincells just had to come back from their perma-vacation...