"…" The Half-cat person girl lowered her head, whimpering softly.
The meal was already served on the table, kept warm under a shiny pot lid.
"The cooking is really good." Horatio eagerly lifted the pot lid, and a variety of fragrant dishes were laid out before him, stimulating humanity's most primal desires.
The Half-cat person girl across from him had never seen such a good meal in her life; she carefully washed her hands in the basin, then hunched over and squatted on the dining chair like a cat.
"Have you ever seen a bald, fat man wearing a purple robe and a mask, presiding over an Evil Cultists ritual?" Horatio asked in a low voice.
Since that guy could collude with people from the Adeptus Arbites to be his accomplices, his influence was naturally not small, and he must have integrated all the large and small groups of his kind in this area.
Horatio took out the sealed cutlery and pulled out a pair of chopsticks from it.
[Hmm, chopsticks, surprisingly.] Horatio felt a small surprise.
"I have… but can I eat something first?" The Half-cat person girl's ears drooped, and she hunched her shoulders, shrinking her neck, seemingly afraid that this question would anger Horatio, who had just beaten up the Hive City Law Enforcement.
"Of course, you can eat while you talk," Horatio said softly, wiping his hands.
The dishes were very well made, full of oil, and the meat was tender, very much to Horatio's liking.
The flavors had their own unique characteristics compared to the Hood Family's dishes, and in Horatio's opinion, the taste of this street-side eatery was not necessarily worse than that of a noble family.
As the main meat source, Grox beasts are an important and primary economic meat animal in the Empire. Although they are incredibly fierce, they are widely popular in the Empire because they have the texture of pork, the flavor of beef, are easy to raise, and are highly adaptable.
Then he stirred the dessert called Bean Blood Jelly.
"Your father's cooking is excellent." Horatio smiled and praised the girl.
"Thank you for your compliment, sir. If you like it, please come often!" The girl's face showed a happy and simple smile.
Horatio looked at the Half-cat person; her fingers were quite long and slender, and she didn't know how to use chopsticks.
"Here, this is how you use it." Horatio picked up the chopsticks and demonstrated how to pick up food.
The Half-cat person looked up, tried to imitate Horatio's posture, but ultimately couldn't pick up the chopsticks.
So she tried to grab the food with her hands, but before her hand even touched the dish, she was repelled by the heat.
"Actually, you can use a fork." The owner's daughter said quietly, a little awkwardly, pointing to the fork on the table.
Suddenly, her eyes lit up as she looked at the small knife Horatio was playing with in his hand.
It was the small knife she had instinctively swung at Horatio before; after Horatio subdued her, the knife had remained in his hand.
"This knife is very exquisite; does it have any special origin?" Horatio asked, playing with the small knife.
"That is… my father's relic."
"If you answer my question, I will return this to you."
"I know the people you're talking about; those people harmed my family. My father was a very formidable master thief. Before he left, he told me to keep this knife safe and not to harm anyone with it except for self-defense. So…"
As the girl spoke, tears streamed down her face.
"So I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to, I… I was really scared."
"Master thief… Is your father the one who was killed by the Guild Alliance?" the owner's daughter asked.
"Hmm? Do you know anything?" Horatio looked at the girl: "Excuse me, please give me a pen and paper."
The girl took a pen and paper from the counter and handed them to Horatio.
"I heard a story about a master thief. It's said that he broke into the Guild Alliance's vault and scattered the gold inside among the poor, but then somehow, he went to find the Adeptus Arbites, and on the way, he was shot dead by a bounty hunter who was after him." After saying that, the girl went to attend to other customers.
"Please accept my condolences. Can you tell me what happened?"
Why would a master thief go to the Adeptus Arbites? It was clearly impossible for him to walk into a trap.
Horatio smelled something unusual.
"My father was a human. He met my mother while stealing in the brothel owner's office, and they fell in love at first sight. After they got married, my father redeemed my mother. My father worked as a thief to support the family, and to improve their lives, he became a famous thief, even appearing on the Middle Hive's wanted list."
"That's quite impressive. He didn't steal from the public, did he?"
"He stole gems and gold from the Guild Bank to make a necklace for my mother, and he distributed the money he took to the poor. The lock was picked using this very knife."
[Impressive.] Horatio nodded objectively. To successfully steal from a heavily guarded vault was nothing short of a legendary thief.
"Later, my mother was kidnapped by purple-robed Evil Cultists to be sacrificed, all to protect me. I told my father, and he was very anxious, wanting to go to the surface to find the Adeptus Arbites and report it. But just as he was about to reach the Adeptus Arbites, he was shot and killed by mercenaries from the Guild Alliance."
[Sacrifice…] Horatio caught the familiar words.
"Do you know where it is?"
"Very deep. My father said it was in a very low place in the PW15-S-21 residential area. I don't know the exact location, but it's in an abandoned, collapsed monastery."
"That's already the Lower Hive, almost even the Bottom Hive." Horatio frowned deeply. He had barely survived climbing up to the Middle Hive from there before. That place was already bad enough; he couldn't even imagine places further down.
Everyone knew that the further down one went in the Hive City, the more dangerous it became. The Bottom Hive was no longer a place one could go alone; venturing there rashly would only lead to utter annihilation, especially since a strange plague had broken out there half a year ago.
[These guys really know how to pick a spot.] Horatio sighed heavily.
"What about the others? Since they can extend their reach into the Middle Hive, they must have bases here too, right?"
"The closest one is an abandoned chapel in K-7 Block, below Vegas District, but that's not their main base, just an outpost.
Originally, there was also one in the Saint's Abbey in V-8 District, but their forces were cleared out from there overnight. There was a lot of blood on the ground, and I also saw very tall figures. These people were very alert; they spotted me from far away, and then I ran.
Then there are a few small secret meeting points for bad guys in F-4 Block, located in… But they don't seem to be purple; they're red! Scarlet! The person you mentioned has been here."
The Half-cat person girl told Horatio everything she knew, her words excited and unreserved, venting the suppressed resentment and unwillingness at being unable to avenge her parents.
[From the description, the K-7 Chapel should be the place where I and Farida escaped from, and the V-8 Saint's Abbey is where I found this prosthetic limb.
Red? Is it the force of the great power of slaughter? Why would those who believe in pleasure mix with those who hack and slash? The forces in V-8 were purged by very tall figures? Could it be Space Marines? Or… Inquisitors?]
The clues were disorganized, somewhat baffling.
He had initially thought he could only find clues from the Cat People's instinct for self-preservation, but he hadn't expected this Half-cat person to be consciously searching for the murderers of her mother and the killers of her father.
Having learned the lesson of the Adeptus Arbites officials being corrupted into moles, he dared not casually disclose what he knew to the Navy Department for the time being.
Even the special task force investigating Farida's mother's accident eight years ago could be called off, and Rear Admiral Alexander Hood, who had lost his wife, could only first become the head of the Military Intelligence Command and then find other ways to continue the investigation, let alone him.
Aside from Farida, he would have to wait until he had a deeper understanding of the others before deciding.
[I'll talk to Farida tomorrow.] Horatio thought, at least she and her father should be loyal to the Empire.
"Thank you." Horatio placed the knife on the table and pushed it towards the girl.
"Is there anything special about this knife?" Horatio asked.
When his iron hand touched the small knife, he felt the surge of the machine soul, indicating that this knife was not ordinary.
The Half-cat person girl took the knife, pinching the upper and lower parts of the handle. A delicate lock-picking tool extended from the end of the handle, and upon closer inspection, it even had a universal hacker virus code for hacking into access control systems.
[Good heavens, a self-taught furry-loving master thief programmer?] Horatio couldn't help but inwardly scoff.
"Keep it safe. Don't use it to harm anyone in the future. If you get caught again, it might not be returned to you."
"Woof." The Half-cat person girl didn't dare to look at Horatio and nodded.
Tat-tat-tat! Bang! Bang! Sudden sounds of slaughter rang out from a distance.
Horatio immediately looked up in the direction of the sound.
Both the Half-cat person girl and the chef's daughter immediately showed expressions of horror.
"It's gunshots! So dense!" The girl tried her best to keep the tray steady, standing behind a pillar with a worried expression.
About two hundred meters ahead, a crowd of protesting citizens holding signs and banners screamed and fled, the scene becoming congested, even devolving into a stampede.
"What's going on?!"
"It looks like the Guild Alliance's mercenaries opened fire on the protesting crowd!" Yin Shuyao looked at Horatio, her eyes filled with terror.
Horatio instantly stood up, his chair crashing to the ground.
Female Sergeant Louise, who was patrolling nearby, suddenly received a top-secret encrypted direct line call from the Navy Department on her horn-shaped sound array.
This was a special frequency that only called the team leaders of each Childer of Loyalty Marine squad.
"This is Lieutenant Commander Elphinstone of the Military Intelligence Command. Childer of Loyalty Marine task force on standby in K-7 Block, immediately carry out a deep strike operation on the abandoned chapel. All squads near F-4 Block, immediately proceed to the shooting scene for riot control deployment to prevent the escalation of conflict…"
The Lieutenant Commander's words were suddenly interrupted by an extremely furious male voice: "Kill all the Evil Cultists in K-7 Chapel! Don't let a single one escape! Dig up all their dirty secrets! People in F-4 Block, make those hooligans scram immediately! If they resist, shoot them on sight!"
The Childer of Loyalty Marines, of course, knew who this was—the famous Rear Admiral Alexander Hood, head of the Navy Military Intelligence Command.
"Are you sure, sir?" asked a squad leader from an F-4 Block team, identity unknown.
"Kill them! Resist and be killed without mercy! Blast those scum!!!"
With a terrifying clang, the communication suddenly cut off.
It went without saying that the other party must have hung up the dedicated landline very violently, but the squad leaders didn't know that His Excellency the Rear Admiral was so angry, nor did they know that the Evil Cultists had previously laid hands on his only daughter.
"This is Sergeant Louise of Delta Squad. All Childer of Loyalty Marine squads near F-4B-7 Street, rally to me!
Repeat, all nearby Childer of Loyalty Marine squads, immediately rally to F-4B-7 Street!"