C30: Who Did It? Not Me!

It has been a week since Duke Roshoka cast his dream divination spell to look for the mastermind behind the destabilization of his scheme against the Merfolk. Shamrock City during this period has been at peace. The celebration festival has come to an end without any incidents.

However, the Duke himself only became increasingly restless with each passing day. Officials working near his towers were whispering about frequent sightings of the super-rank expert rushing in and out of the core city, his motives a secret to all.

But there was one particular establishment where he had been seen multiple times recently— the city's only prison facility. An inside rumor asserted that a few suspects of some vague crime were being interrogated by the Duke himself every day. The rumor also spoke of horrifying screams emanating from the interrogation chamber whenever the Duke was inside with the prisoners. But that was to be expected, after all. Most would say that the torture was well deserved when performed on miscreants.

Normally, this rumor would not have spread across the city like wildfire, but it did so, by the end of the week. Even those not associated with politics in the core city could tell that someone was fanning the flames, someone with an aim to damage the Duke's reputation as a competent, noble ruler.

Today was proving to be no different from the preceding one, until the high noon when a team of law enforcers suddenly appeared in front of the prison building dragging a young human with them.

"He's been found! The miscreant has been arrested, my lord!"

Duke Roshoka, who was just about to return to the core city, was informed by a heaving, tired investigator. Not quite making the connection immediately, he asked, "Which miscreant?"

"The person you issued a warrant for. He was the one who fished up the remains of the spirit pet alongside the manapoisoning artifices and then disappeared. We caught him after an informer told us that someone had been looking for the beastmen we arrested last week."

Duke Roshoka paused for a moment before quickly ordering the detainee to be brought to the interrogation chamber. This person was a prime suspect. The Duke wanted to do the questioning himself.

Ten minutes later, the Duke and the suspect were facing each other, sitting inside a small, well-lit underground room, separated by a metal table. Both wore an expression of scrutiny, surveying the other's appearance cautiously.

Before Roshoka could speak, the young human opened the conversation unprompted.

"I would like to know what happened to the three beastmen arrested last week under the suspicion of colluding with enemy forces."

"They are still being interrogated," Roshoka replied calmly. "I have yet to receive a satisfying answer from them."

"A satisfying answer... to what question?" The young mage said.

"I suppose you can answer better than them. I want to know who put you up to the task of fishing out artifices from Capera River. And how did the spirit pet's remains end up beside the artifices under water?"

Roshoka made his tone clear. He would hear of no denials, no wayward tale, only the truth. The sharp metal tools hanging on the walls, mixed with the stink of recently cleaned blood and piss was an invisible threat that he didn't need to assert. They both knew what could happen here once a conversation spiraled out of the perimeters of civility.

The mage held Roshoka's gaze for a moment before replying, "It was me. I orchestrated all of it."

"...."

A slience occupied the interrogation chamber for a long time after his answer. Roshoka could sense no traces of falsehood on the human's expressionless face. He could just cast a spell to verify his honesty, but Roshoka's curiosty got the better of him.

"That's an interesting claim. Elaborate so that it makes sense, will you, little mage?" he said, the threatening aura in his tone now replaced by a distinct hint of amusement.

The human leaned adjusted his posture to get more comfortable, as comfortable as a detainee in cuffs could be, and began to explain.

"I came to this city some times back in hopes of making a stable living here. After searching for opportunities throughout the city, I came to realize that my lacking abilities as a mage puts few choices ahead of me. In the end, I chose to become a fisherman on Capera River.

But on my first day as a fisher, I discovered an inexplicable taboo; that it was absolutely forbidden to cast spells on the river to catch fish. Otherwise, death could very well follow.

This put me in a deeper dilemma. I am but a young man with limited capability in magic and even worse skill in fishing. The only way I could ever live in prosperity is to combine my magic with the fishing process for good hauls. Barred from doing so, I would struggle to make ends meet every day.

So I began to think, how can this taboo be broken? Does a curse really haunt this river? Why has the city's capable administration failed to remedy the problem?

With each passing day, my desperation grew. Eventually, I succumbed to the temptation and began to cast spells in secret, hoping that I would not targeted by whatever forces were plaguing Capera River.

This was when I discovered a secret, a massive scheme hidden right under everyone's eyes, embedded into the riverbed. Someone was using incredible technologies to spread spiritual poisoning among the aquatic creatures. Suddenly, every unusual detail I had discovered in the past weeks made sense!

Why did the mages who used magic near the Capera River disappear? It was easy to conclude that they were being silenced by the same unknown party poisoning the river. Warriors and commoners would not discover this scheme! So only mages were being targeted.

Why do the boat-renting businesses on Capera River insist on taking away a small share of fish caught by the fishermen every day? And why is such a corrupt rule never challenged, or even reported to the law enforcer? I observed the men in charge of the task and realized that they were not just collecting shares of every fisher's haul, they were also dropping a small amount of medicine on each fishing bucket each time!

What could this medicine be, if not a preventive antidote to the poison?!

So I concluded that the unknown party who arranged the entire scheme was powerful enough to control the fishing market and the law enforcers without a hitch. At that stage, my list of suspects grew short. All there was left for me to do was to dig into this city's recent history and see which powerful entity inside this city had a grudge against the only possible target of the poison, the merfolk in the western ocean."

The human paused, giving Roshoka time to digest the chain of information. Roshoka raised his forelimbs in the air and thumped down on the metal table between them loudly, almost barking out his words.

"So you, a low level mage of the Ordinary Rank, decided to fight me, a Super Rank Warrior?"

The human looked surprised facing the obvious question.

"Oh no, I had no such intentions! That was actually someone else's fault, I swear!"