Chapter 166: Post-Incident Rewards and a Sudden New Case

Monday, Investigation Squad 5.

Aside from Mona, who practically lived at the office, none of the other agents had arrived for work yet.

Roan had come in early today. Sitting in his chair, he was checking the pale blue system interface glowing in his mind.

Judging by his experiences over the past few days, the system's evaluations of his performance were mostly rated as good or excellent.

Following the crude, web-game-style treasure chest opening animation every day, the system most frequently rewarded him with Stamina Potions, Strength Potions, and Agility Potions.

Roan welcomed these potions that could permanently increase his baseline attributes just a little bit with open arms; he could never have too many.

On the two nights he cracked the [Park River Male Corpse Case] and the [Beach Deep Pit Serial Murder Case], the system chests had yielded Hemostatic Potions, Antidote Potions, and a brand-new type of potion:

The Feather Fall Potion.

Without an instruction manual, Roan had no idea what the Feather Fall Potion actually did, so he temporarily stored it in his inventory.

If he happened to get another one in the future, he would drink them together to test the exact effect.

Ever since he developed the healthy habit of downing a few Stamina, Strength, and Agility Potions every morning after breakfast, Roan's inventory didn't have many items left despite the numerous chests he opened.

At the moment, Roan's system inventory contained 2 Antidote Potions, 3 Hemostatic Potions, 1 Strength Potion, 1 Agility Potion, 1 Weakness Potion, 1 Water Breathing Potion, 1 Fire Resistance Potion, and the newly acquired Feather Fall Potion.

There had originally been a Sleep Potion in his inventory as well.

After attending August's wedding anniversary party on Saturday night, Roan went to Ryder's backyard barbecue party on Sunday.

Just as Roan had expected, the party was filled with a bunch of unfamiliar faces from Texas.

These people had heard about Roan's arm-wrestling exploits from the previous time and had come specifically to meet him.

Bolstered by Strength and Agility Potions, Roan naturally had nothing to fear from these rednecks.

After sweeping the entire room in a gauntlet of arm-wrestling matches, Roan successfully upgraded his status from a sworn brother from another mother to a blood-related family member from Texas whom everyone had apparently never known existed in the first half of their lives.

Roan: "..."

Once Roan defeated everyone, a few NYPD officers directly shoved a card into his hands.

This was a special internal pass issued by the NYPD department to the family members of certain police officers.

If these family members accidentally made minor mistakes, as long as they presented the card and the situation wasn't too severe, the NYPD would let them off the hook.

American interpersonal connections and favors were not only deeply rooted but also brazenly displayed in broad daylight.

They gave Roan this card primarily because these NYPD rednecks had heard rumors about Roan's fondness for street racing.

With this card, even if Roan went joyriding in his Chevrolet off-duty, as long as he didn't cause an accident, no NYPD officers would come to hassle him.

Roan was quite happy to receive the card; the only remaining issue was that this group of people could drink an absurd amount of alcohol.

Roan Greenwood's alcohol tolerance was normally quite average, and even with the buffs from various potions, alcohol tolerance wasn't something that could be arbitrarily increased overnight.

Especially when a whole crowd of rednecks took turns trying to get him drunk.

When he finally couldn't hold his liquor anymore later in the evening and these guys refused to let him leave, Roan had no choice. Taking advantage of their inattention, he poured the Sleep Potion directly into the communal beer barrel.

Half an hour later, the rowdy noise of the drunkards completely vanished, replaced by a chorus of deafening snores.

Seeing this, the rednecks' wives unceremoniously dumped their husbands into the trunks of their cars, stepped on the gas, and drove back home...

—

Not long after, just as Roan was calculating how many more days it would be before the system chest coughed up some US dollars, Lacey pushed open the doors of Investigation Squad 5 and walked in.

Slap!

Throwing a few bags of Roan's favorite breakfast onto the desk in front of him, Lacey said in a low voice:

"Look what a wonderful thing you've done!"

"?"

Roan raised his head, completely bewildered. Then, a thought suddenly crossed his mind, his pupils contracting sharply as he hurriedly shook his head:

"I didn't touch you!"

Roan had zero sexual interest in lesbians.

"...Duh!"

Hearing Roan's words, Lacey froze. Regaining her composure, she glared fiercely at him.

Reaching into her pocket, Lacey pulled out a business card, shoved it onto Roan, and said with extreme displeasure:

"If you don't want to work hard and want to reach the pinnacle of success overnight, just call this number!"

The look of confusion on Roan's face deepened. He picked up the card and asked:

"Who is this?"

Lacey let out a cold snort:

"She's the female companion I brought to August's party, Diana."

During the party on Saturday night, when Roan asked Valentine if he wanted to continue the pool game, Valentine had remained silent for a long moment before choosing to proceed, subsequently resorting to a few foul plays.

To put it nicely, he skillfully exploited the rules, using his own cue ball to block the path of Roan's ball.

The men in attendance thought that since it was a competitive match, making tactical use of the rules was completely normal, but the ladies weren't nearly as rational, openly complaining and expressing their dissatisfaction.

Therefore, even though Valentine had ultimately beaten Roan two games to one, all the women at the venue rushed over to Roan to comfort him.

They all declared that since Valentine was a former professional athlete, bullying Roan—an amateur player—amounted to the strong picking on the weak, which was utterly despicable.

Valentine wanted to cry without tears; winning the match felt even worse than losing it.

Diana, Lacey's female companion, was one of the ladies who went to comfort Roan.

After the party ended that Saturday night, Lacey and Diana went to a hotel, and then...

They started a wrestling match right there in bed.

Because both of them mistakenly assumed the other was the dominant partner while viewing themselves as the submissive one.

After over an hour of intense combat, Lacey suffered a miserable defeat and was forced into submission.

A long while later, Diana was enjoying some post-coital fruit with a thoroughly satisfied expression when she suddenly leaned over to Lacey and made a request:

Call Roan; she wanted to test her skills against him.

Don't get any wrong ideas—the "skills" here referred strictly to American billiards.

Diana's family was exceedingly wealthy, and her older brother was a world-renowned professional pool player.

Since Diana herself never had to worry about money, she naturally pursued higher spiritual aspirations.

Namely, she wanted to become world-famous in American billiards just like her brother.

However, her personal skill level was mediocre and her talent was lacking, so she ultimately chose to downgrade her life goal:

Marry an American billiards player.

Roan wasn't a professional billiards player, but he possessed billiards skills, and to top it off, he had a handsome face.

Though he was a man, Diana didn't care; gender was completely irrelevant to her.

"..."

Listening to Lacey's narration, Roan felt the word "speechless" was plastered all over his eyes.

Too lazy to deal with a woman who played for both teams, and having zero desire to become a kept man marrying into wealth, Roan casually tossed the business card into the trash can.

After pondering for a long moment, Roan gave a couple of light coughs and leaned closer to Lacey, intending to ask a pressing question.

Based on Lacey's extensive experience, why had she failed to figure out the other party's role this time?

Roan was genuinely curious; he wanted to acquire some new knowledge.

Bang!

Right at that moment, the door to Investigation Squad 5 was violently shoved open, and August's booming voice rang out:

"Everyone! A brand-new case just dropped!"

The official work hours hadn't even started yet, leaving Roan, Lacey, Mona, and August staring blankly at one another across the empty office area.

"Consider this overtime, I'll approve overtime pay later!"

Seeing the deserted office area, August's mouth twitched, but fortunately, the key personnel needed to solve cases were all present. Without wasting any breath, he stated directly:

"A judge from the New York court was murdered ten minutes ago! All of you, get to the crime scene right now and check out the situation!"

"Understood, Boss!"

Hearing that there would be overtime pay, Roan stood up with a grave and stern expression, grabbed Lacey, bolted into the equipment room, and immediately drove toward the crime scene.