Chapter 168: Murder Mystery

Chapter 168: Murder Mystery

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"I suppose a good place to start would be talking to the local law enforcement?" Robin suggested quite reasonably.

"What? We're PIRATES! With BOUNTIES! And you want to talk to the guys who are paid to arrest us?!" Perona refuted animatedly.

"I'm sure it'll all work out." Cherry said, before marching off to grab another villager to interrogate- no, to ask for directions.

She approached a teenager with the great misfortune to be both covered in warts and a lot of painful looking acne. Judging by the scowl on his face, he wasn't very happy about it.

"Excuse-" Cherry started politely.

"Fuck off!" The teenager cursed and made a rude hand gesture in her general direction. Cherry exerted the smallest amount of pressure with her conqueror's haki and nearly made the young lad piss himself in fear.

"If you answer my question, I'll clear all that nasty shit off of your face with a special technique. How does that sound?" Cherry took a different, less polite approach this time.

The teenager nodded his head furiously. He didn't believe that she could actually do it for a second, not even the village doctor could do anything for him. However, he wasn't about to upset the terrifying demon lady any more than he had already done.

"Where's the local law enforcer?" Cherry asked calmly.

The teenager's arm jerked up and pointed towards the center of the village. "Big sign says "Constable", can't miss it!"

"Good boy. Now hold still, this will only hurt for a moment." Cherry spoke ominously.

"What-"The teenager tried to turn to run away, but he was only a regular person so he was far too late.

Cherry poked him on the tip of his nose, which happened to be one of the few relatively clear areas of skin on his face.

The teenager didn't feel any different and seeing Cherry walk away with her companions, he figured she was just messing with him. He ran in the opposite direction that she went and hoped not to run into her again.

He only managed to get a few meters away before he started to feel an odd pressure building in many places under his skin all over his body.

Suddenly all the acne and warts he had all burst outwards along with a rather painful

"We want to solve the mystery! Catch the Killer! Punch his teeth down his throat!" Cabernet excitedly exclaimed, pumping his fists in the air.

"Ah, y-you heard about the deaths, I see..." Constable Ricky tugged at his collar. "Well, I guess you can help out if you want, but I won't be much help to ya. I'm mostly here to break up drunken brawls, not hunt for killers. I've deputized Deponte to do the investigatin' for the recent cases of unexpected death. You can find his house here."

Constable Ricky pointed to a point on the map behind him.

"I don't really got the smarts for investigations, ya see? DePonte is one of them cyan-tests." Constable Ricky said somewhat embarrassedly.

"What was that about the toxins? How come they don't make the people here sick?" Perona asked. Cherry's technique helped to clear out the toxins from her system, but they still affect her before they are filtered out.

"We actually didn't know about them until after DePonte came here. Said we must have built up "Aunty Bodies" against the spores over the generations of living here. The mayor's wife gave him a slap for that, but after explainin' what he meant we kinda sorta understood."

Constable Ricky explained.

Perona was disappointed that there wasn't some secret cure, but then realized that this Deponte fellow probably had something to use for himself that she could use.

Deciding to go visit this DePonte, they bid farewell to the constable who promptly returned to his drinking of "mushroom water".

DePonte lived on the outskirts of town, which is apparently by choice rather than because he isn't welcome. Though whether he WAS welcome depended on who you asked. Most folk

thought him odd, but harmless and wouldn't actively associate with him.

His home wasn't anything out of the ordinary for the village, except for his mushroom garden that was much larger than average from what they've seen.

*Knock knock*

The door immediately swung open and a middle aged man with pale, sickly skin, black hair

with a thin handlebar mustache and goatee, and blood shot eyes.

"I've made a breakthrough in the case, Constable!" The man, presumably DePonte, shouted excitedly. "Oh, you're not him. Who are you?"

"We're helping out the Constable with the case as well." Robin said.

"In that case, come on in! Constable Ricky was never interested in my updates anyways!" DePonte motioned them inside his home.