C31: Forced To Break A Scheme

"You just said a moment ago that you were the one who arranged this whole scheme against me." Roshoka thumped a forelimb on the thick metal table so powerfully that it caved in.

"Indeed, I arranged it all. But I was...er, forced to do it, in a way," the mage answered awkwardly.

"Explain," Roshoka said, nonplussed by the second twist in the tale.

"A few days back, I met a strange customer while selling my haul in a corner of the city, a heavily pregnant goblin woman from the Eastern Atze forest."

Roshoka's bulging eyelids shivered. Atze forest was the largest forest in the Emeraldflame subcontinent, spanning more than 10,000 kilometers at its widest regions. It occupied about one-fifth of the subcontinent and housed numerous wild tribes detached from the Emerald Dynasty. For a goblin woman from those tribes to appear so far away here inside Shamrock City, something quite implausible might have taken place.

"This woman was clearly about to give birth anytime. Incapable of performing menial jobs, she asked me to deliver a large amount of fish to her home every day. The price she offered wasn't something I could turn down. I was promised a collection of Common Grade Totemic Spells. Naturally, I accepted the deal.

"It turned out, she couldn't adapt to the city life and had made herself a home in the small stretch of woods outside the city. I had to carry a bucket of fish over there daily. A couple of days later, she gave birth to four healthy beastmen children."

The ominous premonition in Roshoka's heart grew stronger! He was quite knowledgeable about the lifestyles of wild Goblin tribes. Crossbreeding was absolutely forbidden in all of them. Even the population of the advanced civilizations barely tolerated it. Even the fact that she had given birth to four children at once was suspicious, because the birth fatality rate for mixed-race children was too high to allow that. At least he had never heard of any such case.

"You've noticed it, right?" the mage said with a vague smile. "Some of those details don't add up. I realized that too, and started to investigate. Every time I went to her home to deliver food, I hung around for some time, asking questions, probing for information. And then, just a week ago, she relented, being the naive simpleton she is. She laid her past bare, and... I realized that I might have just come across the luckiest encounter of my life, past and future included."

Roshoka leaned over the table between them, listening with rapt attention.

"According to the goblin woman, deep within Atze forest, a secret organization has been conducting cruel, unnatural experiments on the locals. From goblins to druids, hundreds of test subjects are being held there...well, hundreds of living subjects, to be more exact. She estimates that more than a thousand have been killed during the experiments. The aim of this secret project is simple: to create a new race capable of crossing the limit of the Ultimate Rank."

The human mage stopped to test the Duke's reaction. But Roshoka only snorted, saying, "I'm certain that's not the pivotal information of your tale. Every secret organization out there is trying to do the same. Go on, keep talking. What makes this one so special?"

"This one is special, because they may have succeeded," the mage answered softly, setting off an explosion inside the Duke's heart.

It took him a couple of breaths to control his emotions and ask, "The four children, they are the result, right?"

The mage nodded approvingly. "Indeed. The four little beastmen whelps she birthed are extremely abnormal. You'll know how terrifying their potential is if you observe them for a day or two. I'll give you an example just in case you can't fathom what I'm talking about. All four children can operate their progression panel and level up despite being only a couple of weeks old."

The metal table caved in further as Roshoka nearly jumped to his hind-limbs.

"Impossible! Were they born with developed brains?"

The mage shook his head. "Not at all. I have been in close contact with these children. They do not have that kind of intellectual capability. I suspect that the World Spirit itself is assisting their growth!"

For Roshoka, the next two minutes were a blur. His mind didn't even register the existence of the mage in the chamber as he paced around the table on all fours, muttering curses and abstract theories of growth from his vast memory. It couldn't be real, his knowledge told him again and again. But as old as he was, Roshoka understood that knowledge could be a light and a blindfold at the same time.

However, caution was the key to success. Turning to focus on the cuffed human again, Roshoka said, "Young mage, you haven't explained how any of this is connected to your crime."

The mage shrugged helplessly.

"I told you this goblin woman lives inside the forest on the outskirts of Shamrock City, remember? Connect the dots yourself."

Roshoka's vertical pupils constricted into needles.

"The spirit pet... I ordered my men to lure it out of the city and injure it to attract the parasite. Did they stumble upon-"

The mage nodded as he trailed off. "I was the one to discover the dying pet near her home. The goblin woman didn't understand the implications, but I knew that powerful people would be attracted by the dying pet. If they discovered her and her unnatural spawns, the consequences wouldn't be good for anyone involved. Even I might be killed to erase the secret's last trace. So what could I do, except to drag away the spirit pet far from the woods and dump it in a place where nobody could track it down?"

Roshoka began to holler, partly in anger and partly in amusement.

"So my own scheme bit me back! The most easily accessible place you could hide the pet in is Capera River, where countless magical artifices have been placed over the years. The mana pulses they emit would drown out much of the spirit pet's dying breath. And the river is so strictly monitored by my own men that nobody would be able to look for the body without my knowledge and permission!"

"Correct," the mage said without missing a beat. "The next day, a guest came over while I was fishing and asked me to help him look for the body. I knew that if I simply did as he asked, I would fall under everyone's suspicion. I needed a better diversion, something that would force everyone's attention away from me. So..."

"So you fished up those manapoisoning artifices from the river alongside the body of the spirit pet, and handed them all to the parasite," Roshoka completed the sentence with a miserable smile.