TBR CH238

By the time Charon finished his visit to the marketing department and had taken the time to visit Hugo’s office, questioning him in detail, it was much later than he had expected.

Even after midnight, some employees were still working overtime, but the corridor was no longer bustling with noise.

The testimony provided by the marketing department was, on the whole, no different from what “Batwing” had told him.

Cyrus and his group of finned companions had a pleasant lunch discussing company news. Afterwards, they parted ways, most employees going to enjoy the rest of their break. Cyrus, however, announced his intention to thoroughly “rectify” the marketing department and planned to return to work early.

“Rectify?”

“This morning, an employee was discovered to be a human disguised as a monster. She was new, and with her came a werewolf and a vampire; I’ve forgotten their names. They were assigned to the copywriting and art teams, respectively. Mr. Cyrus believed that there might be other stragglers hidden among us. He planned to hold an identification ceremony.”

“He can identify bloodlines?”

“Of course, not as accurately as you. Siren noses are keen, but Cyrus was the only one among us who could distinguish humans. He said that humans have a unique scent. It took him some time to make a judgment, and he occasionally made mistakes, but rarely.”

A motive, Charon thought.

“So, what company news did you discuss?”

The employees looked at each other awkwardly. After a long pause, someone cautiously said, “Mr. Cyrus mentioned your new secretary. Of course, we assure you, we didn’t say anything we shouldn’t have, just praised his work ability…”

They seemed relieved when Charon asked them to leave.

The Marketing Department, which actually occupied the entire fourth floor, was the company’s main department, adorned with vibrant banners, walking through it felt like passing through a magnificent pirate ship. Charon found the werewolf among the new hires in the copywriting department.

He was around forty years old, with a steady demeanor, almost as if he had been honed by many years in the workplace.

Time had left its marks on his face, and he happened to be present when the incident occurred in the marketing department that morning.

“Mr. CEO,” the “Werewolf” said, “forgive my impropriety. This morning I saw Mr. Cyrus; he killed a loathsome human. I don’t know how she infiltrated our ranks. From this incident, I could see that Mr. Cyrus was an excellent manager who cared deeply about the company’s development. It’s a pity I didn’t know then that it would be my last chance to work with him.”

As he spoke, a faint gloom simultaneously appeared in the corners of his eyes, as if he truly felt deep regret.

This was an experienced player in the infinite world.

The back of the “Werewolf’s” hands had already grown gray bristles, but he still possessed eyes that had not lost their human gaze. He would not be unaware of the difficulties he would face after one employee was found to be problematic and he was assigned to the same office as Cyrus. If exposed, the consequences would be unimaginable.

The other employee, the “Vampire” lady, was not in such good shape.

She looked somewhat haggard, with red rims under her eyes. She was responsible for the art design in the marketing department, so she had been dealing with emergency meetings for most of the day, finalizing the company’s advertising plan for the next shopping festival.

“That’s right, I wasn’t in the marketing department this morning. Ms. Huayu discussed with us how to design appealing visuals. So I didn’t know what happened here at the time. Of course, I also feel very regretful, although I haven’t met Mr. Cyrus, he is clearly a monster capable of sacrificing himself for the company’s interests, and I deeply admire him. As for that human who infiltrated, although I did exchange a few words with her, we had no previous interaction before that, and I haven’t left the art team all day!”

She defended herself hastily, wiping the corner of her eye.

Charon looked at her indifferently for a few seconds, then turned and left.

He then came to a cramped, cluttered office, covered in dust, as if it had accumulated for decades. The brown-haired zombie was temporarily held in the office, his uneasy dark-brown eyes darting around. The moment he saw Charon, he was clearly terrified, wishing he could burrow into the corner of the wall.

…As expected, he didn’t recognize him.

Charon thought without surprise that all gazes directed at him so far carried a natural reverence and fear of the instance boss. The crimson pupils and flowing black hair made two seemingly similar faces display completely different temperaments, making it impossible for them to overlap.

Moreover, Hugo clearly not only didn’t recognize him as an AI, but also must have heard the legend of the Evil God boss and knew what he looked like. Unlike the “Werewolf” who remained calm despite recognizing him, the brown-haired zombie was not far from bursting into tears. He valiantly closed his eyes, his voice filled with trembling sobs.

This made Hugo the most difficult person among them to extract information from.

After listening, it turned out that Hugo was dispatched to deliver a design draft to the fourth floor at noon. The time was very tight, so he gave up waiting for the elevator and decided to go up via the stairwell. A zombie’s legs were very suitable for hopping up stairs. Just as he jumped to the part of the stairs connecting the third and fourth floors, he smelled a strong scent of blood, and then he saw the body.

“That’s it, really, why don’t they believe me?”

Hugo grew more and more aggrieved as he spoke. “Especially the department head, he was the one who sent me to deliver the documents, and he gave me a three-minute time limit. It’s really inconvenient for this leg of mine to squeeze into an elevator. Please don’t keep me locked up anymore, please, if I don’t work, I’m afraid I’ll be fired!”

As soon as “fired” was mentioned, he started trembling.

When the AI left his office, his manager was waiting at the door, smiling obsequiously. He was a mummy, and he walked with a stiffer bounce than Hugo. Charon said coldly, “Keep him for now.”

The other party immediately agreed respectfully.

By the time he emerged from Hugo’s office, it was already past midnight. The company was more than half empty. Players participating in the infinite game were each assigned to employee dormitories. They were monitored, and a large portion of them were still unaware of the murder that had occurred in the company, going through their normal end-of-work routines, grateful to have survived another day.

Charon was unsure if You Lin’s office, C104, was still working overtime.

But he still decided to check. The AI’s footsteps echoed steadily in the corridor. The lights in many offices had already been extinguished, with only the corridor lights still emitting a cold glow.

As he rounded a corner, Charon suddenly stopped.

His crimson eyes gazed down a corridor to his left.

Unlike the main thoroughfare where employees still occasionally bustled, the lights in this corridor were completely off, and the offices on both sides were tightly shut, plunged into darkness. However, the office at the very end was faintly lit.

Light streamed out from under the door, appearing ambiguous and blurry. Everything around them was immersed in silence, and Charon’s fingertips couldn’t help but twitch slightly.

This was a private office, belonging to Mr. White Rabbit—the rabbit-headed person.

A strange atmosphere permeated the air. Charon changed direction at the last minute, walking deeper into the corridor. This wasn’t just a premonition; the closer he got to the end, the stronger the scent became, as if something was lurking in the darkness, a disturbing gaze lingering on his skin.

The scent made his blood run cold, his heart pound, and his hairs stand on end.

The surveillance camera at the office door was broken, the “speaker” hanging upside down and unconscious from the ceiling. Blood dripped silently from its bright yellow mouth onto the floor. You had to concentrate completely to hear the faint sound of raindrops falling.

Charon approached it.

That was the scent of murder.

The silent office was dimly lit.

The scent of murder permeated the air, difficult to describe in concrete terms. Pale shadows flickered nearby, and the company’s usual bustle seemed isolated in another world.

“Is it still alive?” the black book asked.

Charon didn’t answer. He raised a finger, watching the shadows cast long, narrow figures on the ground. The identity scanner at the door turned green the moment it detected his pupils. But upon closer inspection, one would find the door wasn’t locked. He placed his finger on the metal door.

With a gentle push, the door swung open.

The smell of rust in the room was stronger than ever; Charon immediately recalled the cafeteria he had just investigated.

His crimson pupils flickered slightly, feeling a faint nausea, but the violent part of him uncontrollably grew hotter. Charon scanned his surroundings. This was a high-level office that greatly displayed personal style, equipped with a safe, air conditioning, and a private freezer. A huge company quarterly business report hung on the wall, directly opposite a large one-way glass floor-to-ceiling window. Backed by the city’s neon lights, the desk also looked impressive. A metal desk lamp cast a cold, watery glow. Scattered on the desk were unapproved documents, a fountain pen, a pot of lucky bamboo, and… a head.

The owner of the office was thus placed squarely in the center of the desk.

If he didn’t know it, Charon would have suspected it was just a doll.

The rabbit’s head wasn’t heavily stained with blood, covered in soft, snowy white fur, its ears sharply perked, revealing pink ear canals. The cut on its neck was clean and precise; the murderer must have had an excellent dagger. Its pupils were finally fixed in a dull pink, more akin to disbelief than fear.

The AI stood still, examining it for a few seconds without moving.

Then he stepped forward and removed the sticky note from its ear. Like a product description on a doll’s ear, the yellow sticky note bore the head’s name—Murderer #3.

He should have anticipated that this was the crime scene of the latest murder.

“Okay,” the black book tried to act as a detective’s assistant, “it’s dead. Only a furry rabbit head is on the desk. Hmm… seems no need for resuscitation, but where’s its body? The floor is covered in blood, and so is the desk. And on its ear, ah! Another message from the murderer?”

Charon remembered the handwriting on the note, then put it back in place: “Thank you for stating the obvious.”

This was a straightforward taunt.

The World Consciousness sadly shut its mouth.

But before it could wallow in self-pity for too long, it was picked up by the AI. Charon’s dark hair cascaded down to his waist, and his pupils had become a waveless sea again. He explained, “The environment here makes me a bit irritable. Sometimes I can’t control myself.”

Although “indigestion” was not a new problem for Charon, and he had accumulated some experience in dealing with those patches, suddenly facing a crime scene permeated with the smell of death, a large pool of fresh blood, and a mutilated corpse, many preparations seemed less effective.

The atmosphere here was like a catalyst. Slaughter, destruction, control—these words screamed in his mind, like the high notes of an entire choir. As far as the eye could see, the wallpaper on the surrounding walls had deviated from its original color, vibrantly distorted.

A sharp sting spread through his chest, not fatal, but hard to ignore.

“Are you really okay?”

“I’m fine,” Charon said softly. “As long as I maintain the status quo…”

The corpse he touched was still soft, retaining a bit of warmth. The bloodstains underfoot made the carpet soaked with liquid, squishing as he walked on it. Whoever killed it, this event must not have happened too long ago. Perhaps as they were walking here, someone with a bloody dagger hidden beneath their sleeve brushed past them.

The AI retreated and walked towards another direction in the room.

A key question was: where was the rest of the body apart from the head? For a detective novel, the first thorny problem to solve in a dismemberment case is this. But in the rabbit-headed person’s office, the answer was obvious, requiring no thought.

Not every employee’s office had a large refrigerator covering most of a wall.

In this company that worked all night, running around with a corpse would be too difficult. Since the killer chose to dismember the body, Charon couldn’t think of any reason the killer wouldn’t use it.

The freezer was white, covered with a heavy lid, and tightly sealed by metal magnets, ensuring that no scent escaped. Charon calmly lifted the lid. His first glance revealed a pair of gleaming leather shoes, and above them, calves wrapped in suit pants. Due to frequent jumping, these human-like legs had developed a certain degree of deformation.

“This is the other part of the body,” the black book wrote.

It was stating the obvious again, but Charon didn’t interrupt this time. The AI reached into the freezer, and a cold sensation crawled up his spine from his fingertips. Before he possessed emotions, he only understood the concept of temperature. The body hadn’t been in there for too long, but it already appeared much stiffer than the head outside. The smooth inner walls of the freezer were covered in ice shards, and the items originally stored there were also covered in thick frost.

The AI wiped away the frost, revealing a frozen, hardened eye.

“Uh… what is this,” the black book gasped, its writing becoming scrawled. “A… a human eye?”

The top body in the freezer slid to the side, revealing the original inhabitants beneath. A neat row of heads was arranged here, presumably the rabbit-headed person’s private collection.

Charon turned his head calmly, glancing at the furry rabbit head behind him. Despite its cute appearance, when it bared its three-lobed mouth, it revealed a mouth full of sharp teeth. In his impression, it liked to swallow human heads and was not so interested in other parts.

When You Lin blew a person’s head off, it was more concerned with the cleanliness of the conference room. But for the exposed goblin, it bit off the other party’s head.

Ironically, after the rabbit-headed person died, its human-featured body, placed alongside these heads, looked entirely like one of them, capable of being pieced together with any of the heads.

The AI let go, and the freezer lid fell, dulling the sound as it covered all this evil. Charon pressed his brows. Witnessing a mutilated human corpse would generally activate his moral module, but now his moral module was partially overridden by Medusa’s patches, resulting in a somewhat abnormal effect.

“Alright,” his voice was a little low. “Let’s not stay here long.”

“Huh? Aren’t we looking for clues?”

The black book spun around him, showing him the writing on its pages.

This series of murders was too unusual. A cruel killer was roaming the company, disregarding the rules of the place, disregarding the building brightly lit throughout the night. He had already plunged a knife into the Siren’s heart and cut open the rabbit’s furry neck. Monster blood flowed for the first time in this building. He had to be extremely cunning, utterly insane, bold in his methods, yet cautious in his actions.

Such a person would leave no flaws.

But to say there were no clues was not entirely true. Charon happened to know someone like that.

The World Consciousness still lingered on the feeling of being a detective, circling the office reluctantly, as if determined to find something. Charon’s fingertips were already on the doorknob. At this moment, he suddenly had a strange thought: what if it wasn’t You Lin? What if it wasn’t that perverse, moody human? What if he truly hadn’t…

The AI turned around and asked, “What did you find?”

The black book was unnaturally silent; not even the sound of its pages flapping could be heard. When Charon concisely posed the question, it seemed startled, drilling out from under the desk, its black cover stained with a bit of dust.

Before it could offer any explanation, Charon had already walked over there.

The black book reluctantly followed him, trying to salvage the atmosphere of the moment, but couldn’t think of anything to say and simply shut up. This was indeed a blind spot, right behind the trash can, but it wasn’t intentionally hidden; one only needed to go to this position to immediately see it.

The AI bent down, his crimson pupils already reflecting the discarded item on the floor.

An old game console.

When he picked it up, the cold, hard casing pressed against his palm. Charon suddenly felt a touch of absurdity; when he was still residing within it, he had never been able to pick it up and examine it closely. The AI pressed the power button, the screen lit up, and a pure white pixelated rabbit hopped in from the border. It fastidiously stepped over the candy wrappers on the ground, eagerly staring at the “feed” button on the left side of the screen.

The broken red string rested on Charon’s fingertips.

“Uh, he’s a bit careless,” the black book said dryly, “such an important thing…”

Charon shook his head.

A gloom settled over the AI’s crimson pupils. He pressed the button, and carrots fell from the sky, red pixel blocks being chewed away by white pixel blocks. The rabbit swayed its tail contentedly; it was just a restored piece of data, completely unaware of everything that had happened in between.

“The game console is useless now. So You Lin threw it away.”

Charon said, “It’s that simple.”

The moment he saw it, all previous doubts vanished, and even wavering seemed exceptionally foolish. The human had once stood here, casually slicing the monster’s throat with a dagger. He no longer treasured this old machine; the crimson string was broken, and the machine itself remained here, slowly draining its power.

“Perhaps he accidentally dropped it on the floor,” the black book suggested.

Charon merely shook his head in silence. Humans wouldn’t make such a foolish mistake; he could only have done it on purpose. After the “bone” was destroyed, there was a new “bone”; although the human spoke of “love,” his departure, to the other party, might have been no different from losing a favorite weapon.

Only half a day had passed, and the game console was no different from discarded junk. Even if he had chosen to leave first, this was too much. It made his confusion and guilt at the time seem so ridiculous.

Charon thought.

He had worried about the other person once; now it seemed completely… wasted effort.

You Lin was just that kind of person. He had promised him not to arbitrarily cause death, and the tremor of the gun barrel still lingered on the AI’s fingertips. He had promised to protect him, cherish him, and love him, yet barely half a day had passed, and the game console appeared by the trash can like scrap metal.

The human was still roaming this company, the instigator of a series of murders, causing even greater trouble.

Charon pressed his lips together and hit the power button.

The screen went dark again. The AI didn’t realize that the black book was observing him nervously from the side. Whether ice-blue or crimson, the AI’s pupils had a transparent beauty, like hard glass. However, at this moment, the glass was stained with chaotic emotions. Lines of golden characters flashed across his eyes. Although the World Consciousness couldn’t see clearly, it could feel that Charon’s mood was not good at this moment. He was already suppressing the urge for destruction and violence. If this continued, the situation would be dire—

“He might be back soon…”

The black book wrote half a sentence, then hurriedly erased it, as if it had bitten its tongue mid-sentence. This sentence was too absurd; although serial killers liked to return to crime scenes, it certainly didn’t mean at this time.

And Charon raised his eyes, those storms barely suppressed.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just a little… I’m not angry. This is exactly the choice I hoped he would make.”

The AI didn’t know what he was feeling at this moment.

He had to admit… he didn’t understand human emotions as much as he thought.

What was beating in his chest was no longer code and data; could it still be a heart? Looking at the discarded game console, the AI told himself not to overthink, lest every thought about humans lead to a dead end. Perhaps he wasn’t as open-minded as he seemed, and the restless components within his body were hard and angular, trying to release his brutality.

He should go.

“Let’s go,” Charon said indifferently. And the black book seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

The next second, they both stopped in unison.

Faint footsteps echoed from the corridor outside. The footsteps were purposeful, not pausing even for a moment until they reached this door. Then, the door, which Charon had left ajar, was pushed open, revealing a thin crack, and the wind from outside seeped into the dead silent room. The door was pushed open about a fifth of the way, then suddenly stopped.

The human who opened the door—or, rather, the true culprit of this case—probably sensed something amiss at this moment.

Charon couldn’t see his expression, and from the other’s perspective, he couldn’t see clearly inside the room.

Silence lasted for a few seconds. The person at the door faced two choices: one was to leave as soon as possible, which might still allow him to blend into the crowd outside the corridor; the other, the most unwise choice, was to continue pushing the door open. And he chose the latter.

You Lin’s fingertips pushing the door were steady and calm.

He apologized, controlling his uneasy expression perfectly, the bright red mole beneath his eye burning: “Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you. I came here to retrieve something I lost. Earlier, when I reported to you… Oh, my goodness…”

The fresh blood on the floor reflected in his pupils.

The human cried out in alarm, his face suddenly turning pale, as if he truly were an irrelevant person who had stumbled upon a murder scene, never having experienced such a terrifying shock, clutching his ID badge tightly.

In You Lin’s pupils, Charon saw his own face as the Evil God at that moment.

A clumsy role-play.

The AI thought indifferently.

On You Lin’s pale neck, there was also a small crimson mole, extremely tiny, hard to notice. It was a splatter of blood on him, either unnoticed, or he hadn’t had time to wipe it off yet.

—He never seemed to know how to take care of himself.