Chapter 82 The process is off topic but the result is right
"...What?" Kuroba Kaito suspected he'd misheard. He turned up the volume on his phone and put his ear close to the call. "Sorry, I think I misunderstood. What price do you think I have to pay?"
The demon on the other end of the phone repeated it again, enunciating each word clearly and speaking slowly: "Ten bottles of Coca-Cola soda of different flavors."
“…”
Now the silent person became Kuroba Kaito, and it took him a long time to find his tongue.
"Any of the ten different flavors of Coca-Cola soda you can buy at a convenience store?"
"right."
"...Are the prices in your Ghost Kingdom all based on Coca-Cola?"
"It wasn't originally, but it is now," the demon on the other end of the line said. "I'm the absolute ruler. Do you understand what that means? It means I'm the emperor. I set the market price. What I say is what goes on."
"......Thanks."
Kuroba Kaito's feelings were beyond words.
We shouldn't stereotype people. Although ghosts are fun to do, they are not as bad as the demons in the legend.
Cheng Xiaoyu: "There's one more thing about Pandora. I can tell you for sure: Pandora isn't among the large gems you can find online. I've checked them all. From your description, I don't think it has any magical properties, so it's hard to find."
Kuroba Kaito: "No magical fluctuations? Is it because there's no moonlight?"
"That's about right. It sounds like an alchemical product powered by moonlight, perhaps even a component of some massive alchemical relic. Therefore, unless it's powered on, there won't be any magical fluctuations. Furthermore, it's not a true gem, so gem-finding magic won't work on it. Therefore, my suggestion is that you symbolically search for Pandora to lure the zoo organization out, and forget about searching for the stone."
Kuroba Kaito: "No, if that's the case, it's only a matter of time before another 'Zoo Organization' appears to be searching for Pandora's Box."
"It's up to you, but as long as the zoo gets rid of me, you can leave work."
Cheng Xiaoyu said.
"If you insist on finding it, I have a piece of advice for you—don't touch it directly. Once you're sure it's Pandora, immediately isolate it from the moonlight and put it away. There might be magical radiation or something, and ordinary people without magic won't have resistance to it, so they're likely to suffer various side effects. This is the true nature of what you call a 'curse.'"
Kuroba Kaito suddenly realized, "I see. So, that's why you approached the sorcerers who deal with 'curses' earlier, in order to try to find information about Pandora from them."
Cheng Xiaoyu: “…”
Hey, don't say that, don't say that...
This is theoretically feasible!
......
Gojo Satoru howled exaggeratedly, "So you only remembered us now? You're such a heartless, mean woman! You're like a mourning bird during your break. The moment you approached us, it meant you were going to work overtime."
Cheng Xiaoyu: "Would you mind rewinding your memory and remembering what we were doing half an hour ago? I was having dinner with you guys, and it just occurred to me to ask if you had any impression of cursed objects or spells that looked like gemstones."
Ieiri Shoko: "If a cursed object related to the legend of immortality really appeared in Neon, then Tengen-sama would probably know about it."
Geto Suguru: "The trouble is, it might not be in the country and might not even be discovered by the sorcerers."
Gojo Satoru: "As for overseas...my student Yuta Otsutsukotsu is currently on a business trip abroad visiting the local sorcerer community. I asked him to keep an eye on it."
Cheng Xiaoyu: "Thank you for your help."
Gojo Satoru: "No problem, it's not my fault anyway. By the way, when will you release those old guys you arrested?"
"Just release them before I leave. Catching two criminal organizations made up entirely of ordinary people is much easier than catching two high-dimensional beings, so you'd better hurry up and grab what you want. Hold on tight." Cheng Xiaoyu said, "But there's actually a way to avoid such a rush. After I release them, you can just kill them immediately. It's a permanent solution. Don't you want to let them go?"
"How is that possible? You don't think I'm relying on my eloquence to push for reforms in the world of spellcasting now, do you?"
Gojo Satoru explained.
"The main thing is that those guys you sent packing were also severely mind-controlled by higher-dimensional creature number one. Then you scared them for ten years and beat them up... To be honest, they were pretty miserable. I even felt a bit of sympathy with them in terms of being controlled by higher-dimensional creatures. The most important thing is that they ended up blaming you and forcibly extracting their souls, but they've been living peacefully ever since then and haven't caused me any trouble. Just like people generally don't get angry at frozen food in the freezer, I don't have any desire to fight or kill them now."
Of course, if these people come out to cause trouble, Gojo Satoru will still take action to deal with them, as he won't be short of time.
But now these people are staying quietly in the "packing box", and the ghost said that they can stay with her for a while. Gojo Satoru thinks that if he releases them and kills them now, it will not be for reform, but simply "killing for the sake of killing", which is like adding legs to a snake, thankless and meaningless.
"Ghost, don't forget about those people in Beika Town. They must have heard about my resignation and move away. They will definitely come looking for you later. Do you plan to confess your identity to them directly?"
Cheng Xiaoyu: "Let it be. The identities and future career plans of those people over there don't lend themselves to having their worldviews shattered. They want to pursue careers like detectives and investigators, relying on science to solve cases. The people in Jianggutian had already been exposed to their local magical side, so the second high-dimensional creature had only been suppressing the magical abilities in Beika Town."
Considering that the second high-dimensional creature had helped them a lot, Cheng Xiaoyu didn't mind helping maintain the fragile worldview of the people of Beika Town.
Gojo Satoru and others didn't mind it at all. They thought that the supernatural existence in the world of magic was hidden from ordinary people. In this regard, they had the same attitude as Cheng Xiaoyu.
That is, although confidentiality should be maintained in principle, if the other party has become suspicious or even guessed it yourself, then just admit it, it's no big deal.
After all, they only violated science, not the law.
......
"So, Conan-kun, what you're saying is that besides the organization, there's another group of criminals causing trouble, but they're targeting Kid?" Amuro Toru pondered. "Kaito Kid called one of them 'Venomous Snake'... This reminds me of something I overheard in the organization. It's said that there's another equally large underground organization whose cadres are codenamed after animals. Perhaps, Conan-kun, you've encountered them."
Conan Edogawa: "Do you have any information about this organization?"
Amuro Toru shook his head. "I haven't tried to collect any information, and I couldn't. I only heard about this from Gin by chance. They jokingly call this organization the 'Zoo,' and the people in the 'Zoo' jokingly call us the 'Distillery.' I heard that the two organizations had tried to cooperate before, but in the end they found that their styles of operation and philosophies were very different, so it didn't work out."
Edogawa Conan: "Are these two organizations hostile to each other?"
Amuro Toru: "I'm not sure about that, but I personally think it shouldn't be. Because when those Gin talked about this, the emotions they showed were not gnashing of teeth, but mockery and disdain."
As a die-hard fan of the brewery, if the two organizations were in a hostile relationship, Gin would definitely want to kill and eat the organization alive when mentioning it.
Amuro Toru: "It's difficult for me to gather information about this kind of cooperation between the two organizations at my current level, but it's very likely that Umekawa Kuko knows about it. Didn't the FBI say they've already contacted her? Did they get any useful information?"
When Geto Suguru submitted his resignation to the manager of Polo Café the morning after Satomi and the other body were found, and quickly gave up his rent and left Beika Town, the identity of the other body could basically be confirmed as "Noose".
Li Mei and Nozomi died, but more problems followed.
Launching an attack on a large subway station is no small matter, and a mission of this magnitude may not be canceled even if the executor dies.
They knew before that the attack would be carried out by Nozomi and Satomi, and they could obtain intelligence by observing Geto Suguru's movements. Although time was urgent, they still knew what to do specifically.
But now Ume Suso is dead, and Amuro Toru was not on duty on the day Geto Suguru left. By the time he found out, Geto Suguru's apartment was empty, and [Umekawa Kuko]...
Edogawa Conan sighed: "Ever since Rimei's body was found, Umekawa Kuko has not appeared near Tokyo Jujutsu High School. Judy tried to send her messages, but all were unread."
"After all, we still know too little about Umekawa Kuko's power. We can't just sit back and wait for her to come." Amuro Toru said, "Why not start with other people who know Umekawa Kuko? We'll definitely find her other traces."
Conan Edogawa: "In addition to the people in Tokyo Jujutsu High School, we also investigated Huiyuan Xiong, who was also friends with her, but found no valuable information."
Amuro Toru frowned. "Or maybe we expand the scope and target people who are not friends with her, but simply or even unilaterally know her?"
Conan Edogawa: "Her interpersonal relationships are very weak. Even in the commercial streets and snack streets where she often hangs out, the surveillance footage shows that she has no particular preference for any particular store. Most of the time, she really just strolls around without buying anything. Therefore, the shop owners around her don't have a particularly deep impression of her that we can use as intelligence..."
As Edogawa Conan pondered, some fragments of memory suddenly lit up. They were the biting cold wind in the sky at night, the shrill sound of gunfire, and the smug white thief ostentatiously saying in a familiar female voice that he had closed the door...
.......Edogawa Conan knew why he felt that the female voice imitated by Kaito Kid was familiar that night, because that voice was extremely similar to Umekawa Kuko's.
The experience that night was too thrilling and exciting, and Edogawa Conan had no time to pay attention to this little episode, but now this almost forgotten episode seems to be the key to breaking the deadlock.
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