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Chapter 952: Impostor

“Lorsa Downs, age sixty-five. Preliminary reports show that the killer should be her neighbor. No motive, yet, but he didn’t clean up his tracks.” The human partner said, his blue eyes staring at the bludgeoned body on the floor.

“Right… let’s see it, then.” The lycan sighed, focusing as he channeled his mana. “Replay the scene.” At his words, the light in the room flickered, showing a hologram of what had transpired.

As he watched the scene, the officer narrated what he was seeing to have it recorded officially. “According to clocks, the incident began at three past nine in the evening. Victim’s husband doesn’t appear to have been home. The victim appears to be watching a news report when she hears the doorbell, and moves to investigate.”

“When she sees who is at the door, she opens it with a smile, letting in a tanned elven male. He has sharp features, jade-green eyes, and jet black hair.” As he said that, he watched the two walk back into the living room. “The two appear to be close friends. No… scratch that, it would appear that this is an affair. At least… the woman seemed to believe so.”

“The elven male rejected her advances, frustrating the victim. According to their body language, there was an argument, after which he resorted to violence. When the victim was deceased, the elven male fled the scene, which was later discovered by her husband.”

The lycan let out a long sigh as he finished watching the replay provided by world energy. “It’s not often that we get a case where the criminal doesn’t even wipe their signature from world energy…”

“Think it was just a moment of frustration?” His partner asked, to which the lycan shook his head.

“Maybe, Brian. It’s also possible that it was someone simply using his appearance to frame him. Have you met the suspect?”

The human, Brian, gave a small nod of his head. “After the scene was discovered, he was called in for questioning. They’re talking to him at the station now.”

“Then why are we here? They don’t need the two of us to take care of the body, do they?” The lycan asked in frustration, though Brian only chuckled, shaking his head.

“Coroner is on his way. The commissioner wants us to look for anything that might hint at a third party involvement. Divine traces, anything that could have influenced the scene.”

“Figures…” The lycan sighed, nodding as he focused. He activated the path of his divine circuit, his vision changing. Walking over to the victim’s body, he crouched down next to her. “No sign of any foreign energy, other than faint traces of ki from her injuries.” After saying that, he stood, looking around. “Additionally, there are spiritual energies from two people other than the victim. One of the energies matches the ki pattern, but the other is more deeply rooted in the house.”

The lycan walked out to the yard, eyes glancing slightly upwards as if he were following a trail of smoke. “The first spirit pattern matches the house next door. Aside from the basic household energies, I’m not seeing anything else. Face it, Brian, this is just what it looks like.”

Brian let out a light sigh. “If the God of Detection can’t find any extra traces, there’s probably nothing left to find.” He said with a roll of his eyes, hearing a car pulling up. “That’ll be the coroner. I’ll go and let him in.”

After Brian said that, he turned and left the house. The lycan’s eyes continued to scan the back yard, as if looking for anything out of the ordinary. There were certainly cases of mundane violence that persisted even in this day and age, but such acts were rare. Even more so when the criminal made their job so easy for them.

Buried storage item in the backyard. Looks like it’s been there about fifty years. The contents… just some outdated currency. Might be worth something to a collector, but doesn’t fit the scene. 

Upon reaching that conclusion, he turned his gaze back towards the house, looking up at the second floor. Three hidden storage items in the house. Contents… just some magazines and a private safe of divine coins. 

Shaking his head, he turned to walk back into the house, seeing the coroner returning with his partner. He looked the two over, before dismissing his divine power. “Let’s go. This is as open and shut as it gets.”

Brian chuckled, nodding his head. “Right. It was worth a shot, at least. Allow me to offer a prayer for your services.” He gave a small grin, causing the lycan to scoff and roll his eyes.

Outside, the two officers got back in their police car to drive away, leaving the coroner at the scene collecting the body. Although there were a couple of low-ranking officers watching the scene to avoid any interference, they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The coroner simply hummed to himself, shifting the body onto a stretcher and carrying it out to his car.

With the back of the car facing away from the house, none of the officers were able to see what was inside when he opened the car. They couldn’t watch him place the body inside, or see the body of a human police officer tucked next to the newly deposited body, its blue eyes opened wide in horror.

The coroner chuckled, closing the back of the car. “You’ll make a great friend, Officer Pike.” He said as he walked to the front of the car.

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Clara tapped her foot on the ground impatiently, looking at the detailed map of the planned machine empire. The progress was already amazing, with a starting city having been constructed thanks to Tubrock restoring the old drones. However, their ‘empire’ was still just that, one city.

“Gah, why does this have to take so long!?” She asked in frustration. She knew in her head that this would take quite some time, but with the help of the drones, she had hoped that it would go by significantly faster. “We’re already going to have to use AI for our citizens, unless we can find a good world to uplift. Even then, it’ll take a period of adjustment.”

Of course, there was the option of giving the drones themselves advanced AI, but Clara was not going to be entertaining that possibility. That was a doomsday scenario waiting to happen. “I don’t suppose that you can accelerate time in that region of space, Fifi?” She asked in a hopeful tone.

“My apologies.” A soft voice spoke into her ear. “That would be an abuse of my power. While I may be able to pull some strings for the Keeper, my capacity to do so is limited in the event where they have refused to announce themselves to the world.”

In actuality, that wasn’t even the problem. If that was all that was wrong, Fifi could still manage, so long as the action was for the Keeper’s benefit. However, she didn’t say that. She was well aware that the Keeper’s ‘desire for an empire’ was just a passing remark that Clara had taken as a personal mission. Thus, it did not meet the condition of being for his benefit.

Clara let out a soft groan at the refusal. “I could just make shadow people to fill the NPC slots, if we really need to. But, I can’t do that without her permission, and I want to save this as a surprise!”

Chewing on her lip, she opened up a control panel to manage the local drones. “These things are way too useful, practically a cheat for any advanced society. However, they’re not foolproof. Once their frequency is discovered, they fall apart. We scrambled the shutoff frequency when we remade them, but that’s still a critical weakness.”

“We need to expand. An energy source capable of sustaining Digital Conversion and operating on a massive scale to provide materials… I can’t believe I’m saying this.” She let out a deep groan. “We’re making a Dyson Sphere.”

Fifi’s eyes widened slightly at Clara’s words. Although the terminology was different in this game, she was aware of the construct Clara was talking about. “A Stellar Encapsulation Drive is highly inefficient in terms of resource consumption, and will remove the possibility of life on any nearby planet.”

Clara simply nodded her head, fully aware of this. “That’s true. That’s why this is an investment! This Dyson Sphere will be set to convert solar energy into the four primary energy types, which can then be used to power Digital Conversion. I’m sure that there are empires that have done something like this, right?”

Fifi hesitated for a moment, before nodding her head. “That’s right. There are indeed cases of this being achieved. However, the conversion process is highly inefficient when operating with energy on such a grand scale. Furthermore, most of the energy that is produced is used to maintain the drive itself. The constantly rebounding solar radiation causes a rapid buildup of heat within the sphere.”

Clara gave another nod of her head. “Yeah, but I’ll get something out of it! I can use one panel to get the energy to make another, and set this up on an automated cycle until the star is fully encapsulated. Plus, I’m not using the star for this planet, just a nearby one. After that, it’s just a matter of refining the energy to be used as needed.”

Fifi let out a low sigh, nodding briefly. “I understand. In that case, I suppose you plan to use these drones to construct the initial frame?”

“That’s right!” Clara nodded her head. “The drones have a high heat resistance, and should be able to withstand the initial operating period, until we have enough resources to create an automated maintenance fleet.”

Ideally, she would have preferred to use the resource veins on her familiar, Sirius. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to create a virtual reality interface for something like a living star, so she couldn’t bring it into the game with her. And if she asked the Keeper to seed another world like that, he’d naturally look into things.

Since that was not an option, she would harness stellar energy from this side of things, and then use that to expand her workforce. With that in mind, she leaned over her console, starting to draw up a blueprint in the design interface. “If my basic calculations are right, we should have initial results within a week, and a full sphere within two months.” Creating a full Dyson Sphere in just two months was already a ridiculous sounding achievement, but if the power from the plates was used to produce more plates, and this cycle was allowed to repeat, it could be possible.

Fifi shook her head, seeing how focused Clara was on achieving her goal. I thought Tsubaki was the crazy one? She thought to herself. Though, on the bright side, the city was at least ready for the members of Elisae’s kingdom to begin moving in. Until NPCs were provided, this would be a true player city. I’ll let her and Sun know that the first step is complete, then. With that thought, Fifi vanished from the room.