North American Detective: I am Proficient in All Kinds of Gun Quick Draws
Chapter 128 - 109 A wave of fat!_2

Chapter 128: Chapter 109 A wave of fat!_2

Twenty minutes was the critical limit in Dean’s mind.

Inside the attic, alarms blared.

Although it was unlikely to reach the town, an infuriated Dean nonetheless shot out every one of those alarm devices.

As a bungling assassin, he decided to go all in. He turned on the lights in the house and conducted a quick search.

The attic had only two stories. Within minutes, Dean had cursorily checked all the rooms.

Not a soul inside.

Beyond that, Dean found signs of life in a storeroom on the first floor.

Judging by the clothes and ornaments, they were similar to the pajamas of the person who had died on the second floor.

But the bed in the storeroom was surprisingly luxurious, clashing with the surrounding environment.

Dean guessed that this Brownhagen character usually lived in the master bedroom on the second floor, but when it came to sleeping, he shamelessly swapped beds with his servant.

So where was he? Not sleeping in the dead of night, where the devil had he gone?

Brownhagen’s movements outside were never hidden from the town’s believers; people posted online daily about him personally tending his crops. This meant he definitely lived here...

If he wasn’t in the obvious parts of the attic, then there must be a secret room beneath it!

Dean, thinking of all the wiring needed for that many surveillance cameras, dashed out of the house. He surveyed the exposed wires outside, and his eyes lit up as he charged towards the kitchen at the back of the attic.

At this moment, in the basement, a man in his fifties frowned as he watched the masked man storming toward the basement entrance on a monitor.

He sighed, took a worn-out priest’s robe from beside the bed, put it on, and stood before the cold firearms mounted on the wall. He began to pray fervently, "Oh great Lord, your follower Amordoka shall offer up this stray lamb to You. May Your great Holy Spirit protect me..."

Just beyond the wall, fierce gunfire had already erupted.

The intruder had discovered the entrance and was destroying the mechanism!

The old man remained unfazed. After devoutly finishing his prayers, he grabbed the revolving heavy shotgun—as thick as an adult’s arm—that lay before him. He then slung a bandolier of oversized shells, resembling a string of garlic, casually around his neck and calmly headed towards the tunnel entrance.

He had killed countless for his Lord throughout his life, his hands stained with blood.

A mere intruder.

Slaughtering him would be as easy as butchering a dog.

This was the main reason why Archbishop Brownhagen, despite committing many unscrupulous deeds, dared to live in the manor with only two old servants!

His almost paranoid security measures were one aspect.

The protection of a declining ’Punishment Knight’ was another crucial factor!

BANG!

A muffled sound!

With the connection point violently destroyed, the disguised iron door crashed heavily into the underground passage.

Without even looking, Dean stuck his gun into the tunnel and pulled the trigger, spraying bullets wildly to cover all areas at the far end of the passage.

CLINK, CLINK, CLINK... The crisp sound of shell casings striking the ground echoed continuously.

Once the magazine was empty, Dean reloaded with a new drum magazine and jumped into the tunnel.

There, at the brightly lit end of the tunnel, an old man with a large frame was propped up by an ostentatiously styled shotgun. Covered in bullet holes and bloodstains, he stared wide-eyed and unblinking at Dean, who had just leaped into the tunnel. The old man’s face was a mask of bitter unwillingness to die.

Dean muttered, "...So I really did hit some unlucky bastard."

He had acted cautiously, firing indiscriminately with the mentality of ’shoot first, check for fish later’; he hadn’t expected a fish to actually take the bait and be waiting for him at the other end of the tunnel.

And it was a good thing too. The old man had looked formidable, and that shotgun probably packed a serious punch.

If the old man had managed to fire, anyone entering this narrow tunnel would have been turned into a sieve.

Dean touched the earthen wall of the tunnel, confirming his suspicions. His initial unease subsided.

This place likely had no other exits, and the possibility of hidden self-destruct explosives was also slim. That was his conclusion based on experience.

Tunnels like this were typically built either for escape or to conceal private areas, both demanding a high degree of secrecy.

In ancient times, nobles and the wealthy could kill the workers who built them.

Modern times made things more complicated. Crucially, Brownhagen’s status didn’t allow him to go to such extremes.

Although he was the Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles, he was more akin to a social butterfly—influential and well-connected, certainly, but he no longer possessed the kind of power held by his predecessors centuries ago.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken such high risks, like trying to suck the marrow from the bones of the elderly.

He needed money to maintain his social life and status!

So this underground chamber was most likely intended for hiding secrets.

Reality isn’t like the movies. Not every underground passage is riddled with traps.

Such things aren’t easy to set up, and they’re prone to malfunctions that could injure one’s own people.

Since someone was guarding the tunnel, it implied that the likelihood of traps inside was low.

Dean hugged the wall and advanced quickly toward the old man, whose eyes were still wide in death. After a brief glance at him, Dean focused his attention ahead.

The passage he had just walked through seemed more like an entrance corridor.

Beyond it lay a small compartment, only about five square meters in area.

A bed and a wall half-covered with monitors took up almost all the space.

Beyond the compartment was another door, seemingly operated by a switch.

Despite the significant commotion outside, there was no reaction whatsoever from inside the compartment.

It was unclear whether the person inside was too terrified to respond, or if the soundproofing was so effective that they were oblivious to the events unfolding outside.

After a brief search, Dean found no keys.

This door was probably usually left unlocked; it could only be secured from the inside once someone was in the room, and it looked very solid.