Aozaki Aoko Case File

Credits: Rowdy_Rich

On the night of their arrival in the Souya area, Aoko let Stark go and split up with Touko, each exploring the streets and alleys of Souya City to search for traces of Dead Apostle activity.

Unlike the Dead Apostle Jewel Wizard, Aoko never believed that Dead Apostles could abandon their nature. It was impossible, in her eyes, for such creatures to give up bloodlust and killing while living in a densely populated metropolis like this.

Zelretch argued that there were many scholarly Dead Apostles who were fundamentally driven by the pursuit of knowledge. He even reconciled with the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors after he became the Dead Apostles himself, offering such reasoning as justification.

But unlike the True Ancestors, the bloodthirst of Dead Apostles was ingrained in their survival instincts. Unless they reached a power level equivalent to Zelretch's, they could never escape the compulsion to drink blood. Even Arcueid, the True Ancestor princess, struggled to suppress her bloodlust when her strength declined. So how could the Dead Apostle Ancestors, who often looked down on humanity, ever succeed in this?

Aoko had a strong dislike for Zelretch's self-delusional mentality, especially his claim of graduating from humanity before he even became a Dead Apostle. Humanity was ever-evolving. Even in the Land of Steel timeline's apocalyptic future, humans continued to evolve into new forms, stubbornly surviving on a dying planet. Who was he to claim he had graduated?

Both Aoko and Touko were difficult to define as human in terms of their physical or spiritual compositions. Yet neither of them would ever utter such remarks as Zelretch did. Having broken free from the older-is-stronger paradigm of magic within humanity's system, Aoko and Touko pursued the development of techniques—whether magical or scientific.

If Aoko had to choose a favorite among the three major magical organizations, it would undoubtedly be the Atlas Institute. Unfortunately, the Atlas Institute no longer admitted new members, and Aoko had long passed the stage where she would seek magical training under others. Cooperation in the future might be her only option.

Of the three organizations, Aoko despised the Wandering Sea the most. These people had hidden themselves permanently in the Age of Gods by using the Five Temporal Gates, serving as the ultimate example of refusing progress. Perhaps this was why Nero Chaos (Fabro Rowan) had left the resource-rich Wandering Sea in multiple worldlines to seek his future research in the outside world.

But back to the present.

Aoko wasn't particularly skilled at creating familiars. However, her magical pet possessed intelligence and combat power far superior to anything Touko or Alice could produce—even if she only had one of them. Using predictive magical networks and detection magic, Aoko wandered around areas where single women were likely to be attacked, searching for Dead Apostle traces while also taking out plenty of street thugs to beat up.

Touko, on the other hand, was much more professional. She deployed dozens of spider-like magical puppets and positioned herself atop a tall building to oversee the entire operation. If anything noteworthy happened, Touko would transform into a bird and quickly arrive on the scene. Watching the esteemed Third Magic user as a Druidic shapeshifter always left Aoko marveling.

Aoko didn't know if the Church had some reliable method of quickly locating hidden Dead Apostles, but she felt Touko's methods were already highly efficient—at least 20 years ahead of what future reconnaissance drones would achieve.

As for Aoko, every time she passed by a strange, filthy alley that she didn't want to enter, she used a 1st-circle divination spell, Detect Undead. Knowing she'd be dealing with Dead Apostles, Aoko had prepared a significant number of Detect Undead spell scrolls in advance, and now was the perfect time to use them.

Technically speaking, Dead Apostles in the Nasuverse were degraded beings infected by the True Ancestors and shouldn't be considered undead. Yet, for some reason, the Detect Undead spell still worked on them.

Previously, Aoko had encountered a vampire and eliminated it on the spot, so she hadn't gathered much data. But now that there were so many vampires active in Souya, she decided to capture a few for experimentation.

And as fate would have it, just as Aoko was considering her testing plans, her Detect Undead spell reacted. The source was in an alley piled high with trash bins.

Frowning, Aoko looked around before casting Invisibility and using Fly to hover into the alley, bypassing the garbage. After traveling just a few dozen meters, she spotted a figure that looked like it had stepped straight out of a medieval European drama—crouched on the ground, feasting on the corpse of a Shibuya-style gyaru.

The creature was so absorbed in its meal that it didn't notice Aoko's arrival. From her observations, it was undoubtedly a Dead Apostle.

Since it was the first one she'd encountered, Aoko decided to expend a little effort to extract some information from its mind.

Four magical bullets flew out in an instant, severing the Dead Apostle's limbs with such precision that it probably didn't even feel pain—a mercy.

"Huh? Wha—?" The Dead Apostle, focused on its meal, suddenly found itself collapsing onto the gyaru's mangled body. "My… my arms and legs?!"

Aoko ignored its protests and fired another magical bullet to flip the creature onto its back, allowing her to see its eyes. Without giving it a chance to speak further, she cast a 2nd-circle divination spell, Detect Thoughts, to probe its mind.

As expected, the Dead Apostle turned out to be a hedonistic waste of space, focused only on feeding and indulgence. There was no valuable information in its mind—though Aoko did pick up one piece of intel: this creature served under White Wing Duke.

She speculated that the White Wing Duke had likely sent this worthless minion out as bait to lure Princess Arcueid Brunestud. Everyone knew that Arcueid, the executioner of Dead Apostles and rogue True Ancestors, would hunt down any vampire recklessly indulging its bloodlust in human society.

Unfortunately for the Duke, this bait had fallen into Aoko's hands instead.

After some thought, Aoko pulled out a replica of the Shroud of Magdalene, which she'd recently borrowed from Ciel. She tightly wrapped the Dead Apostle, silencing all sound and movement.

"I've caught a bug," Aoko messaged Touko. "No valuable intel. I'll take it to the Church and let the professionals interrogate it."

Touko wasn't surprised by the news. While she hadn't captured any Dead Apostles or Ghouls, she had discovered several humans in abnormal states—victims of bloodsucking, their minds completely dominated.