Steampunk Era: Mad Abield
Chapter 954: Section 626: Recourse (2)

Chapter 954: Section 626: Recourse (2)

Escaping the illusion, Mana cast the Dance of Light Spell, illuminating the only bright color in this desolate scene, as Malin approached the young man sitting with his face upturned, who had an eye on his forehead, yet surprisingly, the back of his head was intact.

Extending his left hand, Malin stirred the gunshot wound with his fingers and found a crossbow bolt, which came as a surprise. It was so, no one around heard a gunshot, and Malin marveled at the professionalism of the assassin as he withdrew his hand.

Mana took out a bottle of Holy Water, and cleaned Malin’s left hand.

Out of professional habit, Malin performed a soul-scolding, but no traces of any soul Purification emerged. The Spiritual Bodies of the deceased had vanished—they would usually linger at the scene for a while, either unable to believe they were dead or already marching on a path twisted and distorted.

But the souls of these two young men were gone.

Could it be that this assassin also mastered the Spell Formations of death, directly purifying or binding away the souls of the dead?

True professional, Malin came up to another assassin, who was face-down on the table. This middle-aged man had a dagger stabbed into his back, which Malin pulled out— it was coated with toxins, not only on the blade but also on the handle. The type of poison was unknown, probably a surprise left for the discoverers. However, for Malin, it just caused a slight tingling in his palm, nothing more.

Having clapped himself to remove the toxins, pushing the uncomfortable feeling out of his body, Malin confirmed the make of the dagger—it was a standard-issue dagger of the Northern Kingdom’s army, a design that had barely changed over hundreds of years, except for minuscule differences. Malin couldn’t even tell its era.

So it was impossible to confirm whose it was—absolutely no distinguishing features. Malin could only hope that the officers or Carter Robinson could recognize from which era it came.

Thus, he didn’t touch the corpse. As he prepared to leave, Malin noticed something puzzling about the body lying face-down on the table—his shirt was fully unbuttoned, obscuring the view from both sides.

Malin walked around the long table to the opposite side, crouched down, and saw a bundle of six hand grenades tied to the abdomen of the deceased, along with a perfectly sized tripwire and a pull ring held in the dead man’s hand.

Interesting, such booby traps, Malin only spread among his own team—it’s not the regular soldiers could use them, only those infiltrating behind enemy lines like Sudel required such strategies.

Malin confirmed that the young people had said they had never heard of this method, so... either this assassin was familiar with them, having heard of this method.

Or, this assassin was related to the military AI that Jason had been tracking.

Fascinating. After disarming the booby traps, Malin summoned Jason, then pushed open the back door to call the officers over for a thorough autopsy of the two unfortunate assassins.

"How did you find them?" Jon Svenson, the older of the two Svenson brothers, expressed great awe at Malin’s speed.

The younger brother simply started boasting: "As expected of the esteemed Malin who wrote the Holmes detective series!"

Damn, you little rascal, are you criticisizing or praising?

Malin, resigned, you see, had I known that today there would be such trouble, I would have rather died than copied those little stories of Holmes and Moriarty loving and killing each other.

Calling over the two young men and Mr. Carter to one side, Malin exchanged information about the discovered booby traps with them: "Do you know of this method?"

The brothers shook their heads, and Carter Robinson thought for a while: "I’ve heard of some troops making booby traps, but using a corpse as a trap? I haven’t heard of that."

"I see." Malin was even more certain of his judgment: "The souls of the two deceased have been purified or bound and taken away, the scene’s elements have been contaminated, similar to the previous scene. I’ve decided to continue investigating the surrounding area, hoping to find traces of this assassin."

"You have done hard work, Sir Malin."

"It’s nothing, you guys protect these two scenes well, hoping to find something. I’m leaving."

Having said that, Malin parted with them, greeted Halil who had arrived, and then walked out the door.

There were quite a few pedestrians on the main road. After considering, Malin decided to perform a retrospective Spell Formation right at the door, but it had no effect at all. Just like the first scene, the house and surrounding area had been completely corrupted into an untraceable chaos zone after multiple uses of Spell Formations.

Pulling out a map, looking over the avenue and alleys, Malin sighed—there were more than a dozen alleys appearing in a 100-meter radius nearby. If the assassin didn’t go through the alleys but walked along the avenue, the chance of finding him was almost next to nothing, especially since this era didn’t have cameras everywhere on the streets.

At this time, Jason had already completed his preparations. Malin opened a transport channel for him, and the next moment, a small-sized simulated mechanical body about the height of Malin from his paternal lineage emerged from the channel.

"I heard there might be a murderer related to that damn military AI?" This guy came over looking malicious, but Malin thought it wasn’t fair to blame Jason—he had boasted before, saying he would surely dig that military AI out from underground, but so far, there’s still no clue. Indeed, sometimes the other management AIs of Malin’s family could catch short messages from that military AI mocking Jason on the public channel.