Arknights: The Scarlet Devil of Terra — Chapter 102

Chapter 102: Little Flandre Working Overtime

On the other end of the line, Lin Kojui gave a low, gravelly hum of acknowledgment.

“I’ll have Little Lin follow up on this,” the Rat King said, his voice carrying the quiet weight of the slums. “If there are any further developments on your end, you can coordinate directly with her.”

“Sorry for the trouble,” Ch’en Hui-chieh replied, her tone crisp. She cut the connection and slipped the radio back into her coat, her sharp gaze returning to the pale, lifeless form sprawled on the wet grass.

“Is there any other physical evidence?” she asked the surrounding forensics team.

Flandre tilted her head, tapping a finger against her chin in thought. “Flandre remembers there’s a surveillance camera at the main entrance, right? Can’t we just see who came in from there?”

“We’ve already pulled the footage,” an L.G.D. officer reported, stepping up with a datapad. “The Information Department confirmed that between ten o’clock and midnight last night, only one unaccompanied woman and a single couple entered this park. We have personnel running the single woman’s identity through the database right now.”

Ch’en nodded slowly, her brow furrowing as she scanned the sprawling, shadowy treeline. “This park usually sees a heavy amount of foot traffic. Why was it so deserted last night?”

“Because of the rain, probably!” Flandre chimed in brightly. Even though the little vampire had been fast asleep in her warm bed during the storm, she always knew when the weather turned sour outside.

“She’s right, Madam Ch’en,” the officer confirmed. “It started pouring shortly after nine-thirty, accompanied by a rapid temperature drop of about ten degrees. The rain only lasted an hour, but between the bitter cold, the late hour, and the notoriously dim streetlights around the gates, almost no one wanted to wander through here.”

“How long until the Information Department locks down the victim’s identity?” Ch’en asked.

“It will take some time to cross-reference the missing persons reports.”

“Tell them to double their pace,” Ch’en ordered, her voice hardening. “Once those lunatics from the Cult of Truth make a move, it never stops at a single body. We have to root them out before they butcher anyone else.”

With her orders issued, Ch’en signaled the medical examiners to bag the corpse and transport it back to the L.G.D. headquarters. She and a handful of senior operators began combing the immediate perimeter, sweeping their flashlights over the muddy turf in search of trampled grass or discarded Originium Arts conduits.

Watching them work, Flandre simply raised her hand. She wiggled her pale fingers, murmuring a soft, melodic chant under her breath.

Ch’en, having turned up nothing but wet leaves, paused when she noticed the girl’s strange behavior. “What are you doing?”

Flandre didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she pointed at the indented patch of grass where the victim had just been lying. A bead of residual blood lifted from a crushed blade of grass, swirling into the air before expanding into a small, translucent, crimson bat. It fluttered its phantom wings, hovering patiently in the damp night air.

“Let’s go, Sister Ch’en,” Flandre smiled, her crimson eyes gleaming. “Flandre will take you to the dead girl’s home.”

Ch’en’s expression instantly shifted into absolute professional seriousness. “How certain are you about this?”

“Magic and blood do not make mistakes,” Flandre declared proudly, puffing out her chest. “So, one hundred percent.”

During her initial inspection of the body, Flandre had discreetly collected a microscopic trace of the victim’s blood. For a creature of her nature, that single drop was a flawless compass.

Ch’en didn’t hesitate. She waved over a squad of heavily armed operators. “You lot, with me.”

The strike team fell into formation behind the glowing, transparent bat. The moment they stepped past the wrought-iron gates of the park, Flandre’s vision shifted. She could ‘see’ two distinct crimson trails bleeding into the night, both fed directly by the bat’s resonance.

One trail was thick, fresh, and led straight down the main avenue toward the L.G.D. headquarters—the exact route the coroner’s van had just taken.

The other trail was much fainter, a ghostly red ribbon weaving through the complex streets of Lungmen in the opposite direction.

Ignoring the fresh trail, Flandre happily skipped down the fainter path, leading the heavily armed police force through the neon-lit drizzle.

“Can you explain the principles behind this spell?” Ch’en asked, keeping pace beside the girl. Since they had an unknown distance to cover, she wanted to understand the tactical limits of the magic.

“It’s a Blood-seeking Bat,” Flandre explained cheerfully, her boots splashing through shallow puddles. “A super common trick for the Bloodfiend race to track their food. As long as Flandre has a drop of the target’s blood, they can’t hide anywhere in the world. It basically uses the blood to trace the exact movement trajectory of its owner.”

She pointed at the glowing red line only she could fully perceive. “This kind of trail is super hard to erase. You basically just have to wait for time to wash it away. Usually, it takes about a week to fade completely. Since that girl died less than a day ago, the path is crystal clear!”

Flandre looked up at Ch’en, her smile turning a bit apologetic. “But this spell is strictly tied to Bloodfiend heritage. Flandre can’t teach it to your police friends.”

She wasn’t lying. The magic looked effortless when she performed it, but it required the fundamental, ancient bloodline of a true vampire to ignite. Currently, across the entirety of Terra, only Alina had managed to learn a variation of it from her.

Ch’en sighed quietly. If every L.G.D. investigator could master such an infallible tracking technique, Lungmen’s murder clearance rate would skyrocket overnight. Still, having Flandre here to break this specific case wide open was more than enough to satisfy her.

After a brisk thirty-minute march through the winding commercial districts, the ghostly bat fluttered to a halt at the base of a towering, weathered residential block.

“The victim lived in this building?” Ch’en asked, her hand resting instinctively on the hilt of her sword.

Flandre nodded.

“Move in,” Ch’en commanded.

They followed the bat up the concrete stairwell, the heavy, synchronized thud of L.G.D. combat boots echoing off the walls. The crimson familiar finally dissolved into mist right in front of a battered metal door on the third floor.

Ch’en pressed her ear to the cold metal. Hearing the faint murmur of a television inside, she raised her knuckles and knocked sharply.

“Who is it?” a shrill, cautious female voice called out. A moment later, the mechanical slide of a peephole clicked open.

A middle-aged woman peered through the glass. The moment she registered the grim, heavily armored L.G.D. strike team crowding her hallway, she visibly flinched, her drooping Lupo ears flattening against her graying hair.

The locks disengaged with a series of heavy clacks, and the door opened a crack.

“O-Officers,” she stammered, her hands trembling on the doorframe. “Is there something you need?”

Ch’en held her ground in the hallway, keeping her officers back to avoid overwhelming the civilian. “Are you the only one home right now, ma’am?”

“My husband went downstairs to the night market to buy groceries,” the woman answered, her face draining of color. “And my daughter… she said she was going out to a party with her university friends last night. She hasn’t come back yet.”

It was impossible for an ordinary Lungmen citizen not to feel a spike of terror when the Guard Department showed up at their door in the dead of night.

“Is your daughter approximately twenty-two years old, roughly one hundred and sixty centimeters tall, with dyed red hair?” Ch’en asked softly.

The moment Ch’en had seen the woman’s Lupo ears, the tragic puzzle pieces had clicked into place. The victim in the park shared the exact same racial traits.

Hearing the precise physical description of her child, the mother’s panic spiked into raw, suffocating dread. “Officer… did something happen to my little girl?”

Ch’en held her gaze, her voice steady but carrying a heavy, sorrowful weight. “I am deeply sorry, ma’am. Your daughter was murdered in the community park last night.”

The words struck like a physical blow. The woman’s eyes rolled back, all the strength vanishing from her legs as she collapsed toward the linoleum floor.

Ch’en moved with blinding speed, catching the unconscious mother before she could hit her head.

It took several agonizing minutes for the woman to regain consciousness. When she did, a gut-wrenching, breathless wail tore from her throat, echoing down the sterile apartment hallway. The sheer volume of her grief drew several neighbors to crack their doors open, but the sight of the grim, silent L.G.D. operators sent them shrinking back into the safety of their homes.

Shortly after, the father rushed up the stairs, plastic grocery bags dropping from his hands the moment he saw the police. When the news was broken to him, the older Lupo man shattered. Tears streamed down his weathered face, but he forced himself to stand straight, looking directly at Ch’en.

“Officer,” he choked out, his fists trembling at his sides. “You have to catch the animal who did this. You have to avenge my daughter.”

“Bringing killers to justice is the absolute duty of the L.G.D.,” Ch’en promised, her tone ironclad. “We came here to ask if your daughter had been in contact with any unidentified or suspicious individuals recently. We also need your permission to search her bedroom.”

“Do whatever you need,” the father whispered, holding his sobbing wife.

“Rest assured, we will not damage anything, and we will leave the room exactly as we found it,” Ch’en said. She signaled an operator to take the parents’ official statements in the living room, then gestured for Flandre to follow her down the short hallway.

The bedroom was a snapshot of a life abruptly stolen. It was a typical young woman’s sanctuary—pop idol posters plastered across the walls, a neatly made bed, and a small desk cluttered with cosmetics and stationery.

A thick work notebook lay open by a pen. Ch’en flipped through the pages, her eyes scanning the careful, color-coded notes. It painted a clear picture of a bright, passionate girl who had just graduated and was eager to prove herself in her new career.

After a thorough physical sweep, Ch’en turned to the little vampire standing in the center of the room. “Have you found anything on your end?”

Flandre sniffed the air, her crimson eyes scanning the invisible currents of the room. “No suspicious Originium Arts or rune traces anywhere. And those two crying outside are completely clean. They match all the behavioral and biological markers of genuine grief. Flandre can guarantee they have zero connection to that Cult of Truth.”

“Her social circle appears incredibly clean,” Ch’en murmured, closing the notebook. “Identifying the killer shouldn’t be too complex.”

By then, the forensic technicians had finished photographing the room. Ch’en arranged for a patrol car to escort the grieving parents to the L.G.D. for formal processing and support, then gathered her core investigative team in the hallway.

“The victim’s phone is missing from the crime scene,” Ch’en briefed them. “But her mother confirmed she was attending a gathering with a specific friend last night. A twenty-two-year-old university classmate named Li Zhen, who currently works at a local beauty parlor. Flandre and I will go bring this Li Zhen in for questioning.”

She looked at the remaining operators. “The rest of you, track down the venue of last night’s gathering. Pull the guest list and see if anyone else stands out.”

“Actually, you don’t need to do all that boring stuff,” Flandre interrupted, raising her hand high.

Ch’en blinked. “Little Flandre, do you have a better idea?”

“Just bring everyone you suspect back to the station and let Flandre look at them,” the vampire smiled, her fangs glinting. “If the killer is in the room, they will absolutely be drenched in the dead girl’s blood aura. It’s impossible to hide it from Flandre’s eyes.”

She had used this exact method to bypass hours of tedious detective work in the past.

“Right…” Ch’en nodded, adapting to the tactical advantage instantly. “Also, the surveillance showed a couple entering the park shortly after the victim. Find them and bring them to the interrogation rooms as well.”

“Madam Ch’en, you suspect the couple?” an officer asked.

“The lunatics in the Cult of Truth never act with logic or reason,” Ch’en replied coldly. “A momentary, twisted whim is all it takes for them to commit a slaughter. We cannot rule out anyone who was in that park.”

The operators saluted and immediately dispersed into the night.

Ch’en looked down at Flandre, her rigid posture softening just a fraction. “It’s going to take a few hours to round all these people up. You might be stuck at the station for a long time today. Looks like you’re working overtime with me.”

“That’s fine! Flandre can just read her books there!” She patted her heavy backpack happily.

Once they returned to the L.G.D. headquarters, Flandre claimed a comfortable chair in the breakroom, pulled out a thick fantasy novel, and kicked her legs back and forth as she read.

Around five o’clock in the morning, Beatrix Swire strolled into the precinct to pick her up. When the elegant feline learned that the little vampire had been drafted into ‘working overtime’ on a murder case, she leaned against the doorframe and doubled over with laughter.

“Well then, you just keep working hard, Little Flandre,” Swire teased, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye. “I’ll head back to the estate and have the chefs prepare a massive dinner to bring back for you.”

Flandre didn’t quite understand what Swire found so hilarious about police work, but she happily waved goodbye at the promise of good food.

A short while later, Ch’en stepped into the breakroom holding a stack of files. “The patrol units have brought the first batch of persons of interest in. Flandre, why don’t you come take a look? If the killer is among them, it’ll save us hours of interrogations.”

“Alright!” Flandre hopped out of her chair, slipping her book away, and followed Ch’en up to the second-floor observation deck overlooking the interrogation rooms.

She pressed her face against the one-way glass, her crimson eyes glowing faintly as she scanned the nervous civilians sitting in the stark metal chairs.

“Not this one!” Flandre declared, pointing at the first room.

They moved to the next window. “Not this one either!”

After walking down the entire cell block and inspecting several suspects in a row, Flandre shook her head in disappointment.

All she could taste in the air radiating from them was mundane, suffocating fear. There wasn’t a single trace of the dead girl’s blood aura to be found.