Chapter 16 Interrogation

He entered the southern tower. It was designed to function as his workshop for all means and purposes, well-stocked with all kinds of herbs, poultices and potions. The room had a variety of glassware and a type of rudimentary bunsen burner with crude and imprecise temperature control. A simple mercury bulb thermometer, a standard scale and a level-measuring device became the standard measuring equipment.

On the one side were the chests that held the equipment and books he had plundered from Victor. On the other were cages that were to hold prisoners. In one of those cages was the singing magus Victor. He was bound from head to toe, a rag sealing his mouth. Half of his face was charred, exposing raw skin beneath. Burns had consumed his silver hair. Pretty Victor lacked an arm and a leg. If not for the enhanced Vitality of a magus, he would be dead.

Leylin could see the hatred in Victor's arrogant eyes, 'was he wrong to be arrogant? He was in the magus world, wasn't he? He was a magus, above the common folk, right?' No, Leylin thought.

'Victor may have been a magus, but he failed to understand that power and knowledge gave the magus right to be arrogant. Victor barely had any; he wasn't even a magus in the true sense of the world. He was a magic user, not a magus. A magus is someone who pursues the higher mysteries to comprehend the rules that govern the world. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it,' Leylin concluded.

Leylin realised that nothing Victor said would have been usable, but interrogation doesn't need your unwilling guest's compliance.

He knew torture wouldn't work, as Victor would say whatever it took to make it stop. 'No, I would have to proceed with a gentle hand,' Leylin thought.

Leylin sat silently in front of Victor as he kept all the books aside and picked up one of Victor's diaries. Leylin was confident that there were at least some false information and traps for any unfortunate soul that got their hands on the dairies.

Leylin thought, "Monitor Victor's physiological tells while treating the various information as I read as stimuli."

[Beep! Task Established...….. establishing no stimuli baseline….]

[Beep! Baseline Established….. Caution!!! The Subject is under duress…. Physiological conditions are abnormal….Results may be compromised…..Only able to differentiate between standard response and elevated response with accuracy... Not able to determine positive or negative stimuli…..]

Leylin sighed; he had guessed something like this could happen. 'Better something than nothing,' Leylin thought. This way, he could separate the wheat from the chaff, but he would have to investigate everything with an abundance of caution.

So, He started the long and arduous process of slowly going through each and every piece of information stored in the diaries.

Initially, he refined the baseline by reading mundane entries in the diaries but slowly started reading mentions of Magus markets and different magus schools. Next, he began reading about ruins and magical formulas etc. Finally, he intermittently mixed in mundane entries to throw victor off the scent.

Leylin thought, "Compare information from WMW.pdf with the dairy and correlate with physiological tells to further refine baseline."

[Beep!!!...Task Established…..Positive signal Baseline Refined….]

After days of interrogation, Leylin compiled a list of information that gave a positive response and a list of information with any response and discarded the useless information.