I'm writing a fictional immortality script in Detective Conan.

Chapter 207 Dracula's Villa: Collection

"I really don't know where Hucang ran off to! I've never seen this secret room before, please let me go!"

With his hands strapped to a chair behind his back, wearing a purple fleece pajama set, Doi shivered in the cold wind and helplessly rubbed his feet.

"I admit that I did steal and plagiarize a lot of submissions for Hucang, but that was only because I was forced to! After my stock investments failed, I was desperate and Hucang helped me pay off my debts and then took the opportunity to threaten me!"

"Heh." Kuromon Haruya chuckled lightly, neither confirming nor denying.

He despises people who, even after becoming criminals, try to whitewash themselves out of self-pity.

Asagi grabbed him and dragged him to the entrance of the secret passage: "Since you've put it that way, we'll give you a chance to redeem yourself. Either live to explore the way, or... become part of the future ghost stories of Dracula's Villa."

"Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!" With the cold metal object pressed against the back of his head, Doi squeezed into the secret passage with great enthusiasm, afraid that if he was a second too late, he would be blown away.

There was no light source in the dimly lit secret passage, so they had to use flashlights for illumination.

The spiraling steps extend deeper and descend vertically. Tsuchiya walks barefoot down the slippery steps, and the feeling of moss getting stuck between his fingers is not pleasant.

The mournful, relentless tides pounded against the stone walls, ceaselessly rising to almost chest height, making it inexplicably difficult to breathe. Each breath was unusually heavy, the alveoli seeming to shrink from lack of oxygen, and the darkness before my eyes pressed ever closer...

Snapped!

The crisp snap of fingers echoed through the secret passage.

"Control your breathing, relax and calm down. You're in a state of hyperventilation right now." Kuromon Haruya casually stuffed a towel into Doi's mouth, reached out and pinched his shoulder, his gaze wandering over the bricks and stones.

The secret passage is distinctly old-fashioned, sharing the same Eastern European style as the octagonal study from the last century. There is little dust on the handrails and steps along the walls, indicating that Daisuke Torakura used the secret passage frequently.

With the earthen well as an obstacle, it took them five minutes to stumble their way to the bottom floor: a basement filled with all sorts of bloodstained old objects.

"This is...!" Doi stared in disbelief at the decorations illuminated by the lights.

"Do you recognize this place?"

"No, but I know these things!"

Doi tentatively glanced at Kuromon Haruya, and seeing that he didn't move, went to the nearest coffin and began listing the contents as if they were his own treasures:

"These are all sacred artifacts or relics that appeared in Tiger's early vampire novels! Look, there's the ancestral coffin from the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Iron Maiden from England, and the piercing stake from the Piercing Duke..."

The blood-stained collectibles were piled up haphazardly in the low-ceilinged, secret room, forming a maze.

Lifting a scarlet-black carpet, Kuromon Haruya applied slight pressure with his fingertips, and congealed bloodstains fell off. He leaned down and sniffed it, his brow furrowing slightly: "Unlike the items in the collection room, this is all real bloodstains."

If someone were to observe him through the lens of his normally open sense of impending doom, they would be even more terrified.

Every item here exudes a thick aura of death, which lingers even after many years; each of them has claimed many lives. It subtly creates an unsettling sense of unease.

Asagi looked around, observing a scene rarely seen on field missions: "There are only wrong names, not wrong nicknames. It seems this Mr. Dracula is quite something; this villa is practically a haunted house..."

haunted house.

Thinking of this word, Asagi Minami subtly shifted her gaze to her side, only to find that Kuromon Haruya's calm face showed no reaction, not a trace of panic:

'It seems Mr. Kuromon's fear of ghosts is mostly an act. Has he forgotten his own persona?'

“Hmm.” Kuromon Haruya calmly agreed, now focusing on the old objects: “There’s a fork in the road here. Let’s split up and track them. Given Torakura’s speed, they shouldn’t have gone very far.”

"Okay, let's communicate via headset."

Asagi stared at his teammate's back, thoughtfully taking a step forward, but accidentally bumped into a pile of debris behind him: "Ugh."

Swah——

The dust-covered cover suddenly fell, scattering the dust into the air and revealing the enormous object hidden under the white cloth:

A massive, dark shadow, nearly three meters tall, loomed directly before him, so much so that Asagi mistakenly thought it was a pillar. It stood upright on its two legs like a human, its forepaws suspended in mid-air. Its fur, treated with preservatives, gleamed with an eerie blackish-blue luster under the light. Due to its age, the stitches at its joints had come loose, and the grotesque, twisted seams bulged out like centipedes.

But what is most captivating are the glass beads embedded in their eye sockets. They are almost as radiant as when they were alive. No matter which angle you look at them from, you can feel the chill of being watched closely by a predator, and the dull pain of being slowly chewed from your calves to your internal organs.

Asagi looked at the collection before him with genuine interest: "Wow, what a huge black bear specimen! Mr. Kuromon, is this real...?"

"Mr. Heimen?"

The distinctive, pungent smell of wild beasts seemed to waft towards me, awakening a long-forgotten nightmare.

The flashlight made a squeaking sound under the strong pressure, and Kuromon Haruya stared intently at the black bear in front of him, his pupils dilated.

The sound of bones being crushed bit by bit traveled from the skeleton to the ears, like the pleasant crackling of pine cones burning in a fireplace on a winter night.

It was an indescribable experience. For the first time, Haruya Kuromon could clearly feel the distribution of internal organs within the human torso, and which areas they affected when the rough tongue licked. Thanks to the brain's protective mechanisms, the intense pain caused the brain to release large amounts of adrenaline to counteract the excruciating pain that was driving him to the brink of unconsciousness, thus lessening his suffering.

However, due to the cold temperature in the snow, blood flow slows down, and premature death due to excessive blood loss seems to be the second possibility.

Asagi saw his once docile brown-gray hair visibly bristle and stand on end, his face as white as paper, and cold sweat beading on his forehead. He didn't respond to being called, remaining motionless, simply gazing intently at the specimen as if lost in thought.

Just as he hesitated whether to step forward, Kuromon Haruya suddenly snapped out of his daze, took a deep breath, and laughed as he echoed, "Wow! What a huge black bear! It almost scared me!"

He shrugged, still shaken, without a hint of reluctance on his face, as if the fleeting fear had been nothing more than an illusion.

'Are you OK? ’

A caring greeting almost slipped out, but was swallowed back subconsciously. At this moment, her subconscious was telling Asano Minami that keeping her doubts to herself was the better choice.