Advanced Investigation (2)
CRASH!
“What are you dawdling for! Bring those wretches before me this instant!”
Count Messianne—no, not the ‘Le-’ but the ‘Me-’ that everyone whispered about—was so furious that his soft, chubby cheeks were trembling violently.
“But, Your Excellency. We aren’t even certain if this letter is authentic, and—.”
CRASH!
The vassals’ attempts to calm their rampaging lord only served to pour oil on a raging fire.
“Not certain if it’s authentic? If you truly believe that, you should resign your position right now! That pipsqueak of an administrative officer, buried away in the desolate North, who we didn’t even know existed—if this isn’t real, how would he know the details of the insolent crimes those bastards committed against me to write such a letter!”
“Th-that is….”
At the Count’s outburst, the vassals were forced into a stony silence.
“But my Lord. Isn’t it strange? These are the very people we’ve been hunting across the entire Empire for the past three years, searching high and low, yet we couldn’t even catch a glimpse of their tails. And now you’re telling me they’ve been rounded up? Furthermore, that they confessed to crimes against you while being investigated? What are the odds of that actually happening?”
However, among the Count’s many vassals, there were those who possessed the composure to analyze the situation rationally, even in the face of their lord’s fury. At one such observation, the Count finally began to calm his heart.
Though his title was inherited by blood, the current head of the Messianne family was a man who possessed the aptitude to match his rank.
It meant that while he might be short-tempered and hot-blooded, he was by no means a fool.
‘The man’s words make sense. Those bastards, whom I couldn’t even catch a whiff of for three years, were captured by a pipsqueak of a dispatched administrative officer from the North, and he even got them to confess to their past wrongdoings?’
As his reason returned, it was undeniably strange.
Interrogations in this world were rarely that delicate. While one might hear a criminal wail, ‘I did it all! Please, just kill me now!’, it was not easy to extract a confession as detailed and specific as the one written in the letter, covering crimes committed years ago.
Occasionally, there were cases where confessions were traded for political purposes, but these men were seasoned con artists who made a living by swindling others; they didn’t fit that category.
‘Then, did he really find out all these facts through interrogation?’
Did they have some kind of torture expert in the North?
“That shouldn’t be possible.”
As Count Messianne muttered to himself while stroking his chubby chin, one of his confidants immediately caught his drift and spoke up.
“The administrative officers in the North have been changing every few years, so they haven’t had the circumstances to cultivate an interrogation expert, my Lord.”
He was half-right and half-wrong.
An interrogation expert. In other words, a torturer was quite a high-level human resource by the standards of this era.
The senior administrative officers dispatched to the North before Aiden, as the Count thought, didn’t have the capacity or the energy to train such experts, but they did exist.
They were quite capable—capable enough to make influential figures in other regions envious.
The North was overflowing with skilled hunters, and skilled hunters were easily turned into human butchers, so perhaps it was only natural.
However, regardless of the existence of such experts, the fact remained that the confession from the con artists in the North was not the result of an interrogation (read: torture), so the Count’s confidant wasn’t entirely wrong.
“But the conclusion is clear, isn’t it? They obtained a confession. Is this a coincidence?”
Count Messianne was a man of generous proportions, and his appearance made him look somewhat naive. People who didn’t know him well often made the mistake of judging his personality by his looks.
He was well aware of how others perceived him.
Yet, the Count never made an effort to change that appearance.
No, it was the opposite.
He actively used his ‘naive and easy-to-handle’ appearance to his advantage.
— *Most people judge me by my looks and reveal their own bottom line, so why would I throw away such a good weapon?*
That was the kind of man he was.
A high-ranking noble with noble blood flowing through his veins, yet possessing a razor-sharp political sense, and a man who could discard his pride whenever necessary.
Because he was that kind of person, Count Messianne did not believe for a second that the Northern administrative officer had stumbled upon the truth of those three-year-old crimes by mere coincidence.
“But my Lord. Sometimes, a series of coincidences can shake even a scholar’s long-held reason.”
Still, there were vassals who wanted to point out that this could indeed be a coincidence.
“I told you to always keep your perspective broad.”
Though the return was the Count’s irritable sarcasm.
“They say the North is finally starting to look like a decent place to live.”
“Yes. Recently, both trade volume and population have increased significantly.”
“And they even absorbed the land of that idiot, Viscount Lontes.”
“Even so, it’s just a matter in the North that no one cares about.”
“Even if it was just a squabble between people playing king in a worthless land, is it easy to swallow up another territory without a single sound of discord?”
The Count went over the events that had taken place in the North one by one.
“I, for one, do not believe that the administrative officer who became the hegemon of the North created the current North through a series of coincidences.”
“Shall I look into it myself?”
“Are you planning to infiltrate them?”
“I will do so if necessary.”
“No, no.”
Though one vassal rose from his chair, offering to gather information on the North himself, the Count shook his head.
“The reason he sent me a letter offering to hand over those con artists, who deserve to be chewed up and spat out, is…”
He trailed off for a moment, then,
“I see. The administrative officer of the North wanted to show me.”
He finally reached his conclusion.
“That they possess the ability to uncover those past events.”
“Pardon?”
“Is such a thing possible without torture?”
“C-could it be… black magic?!”
Most of the vassals chimed in, but each time, the Count’s brow furrowed deeply.
How could there be nothing but fools here?
‘They have two ears each to hear the same news, yet… tsk tsk.’
Just as his temper was rising,
“Could it be… a witch?”
That’s it.
There was no way all my vassals were idiots!
The Count grinned, having finally heard the answer he wanted.
“It seems the rumors that witches use spells to peer into people’s hearts are true to some extent.”
Not long ago, at a banquet, he had seen a priest of the Sun Cult—somebody or other—ranting and raving while swirling his wine glass, claiming that the lowly scum of the North had finally accepted even half-breeds.
‘A witch. A witch, huh…’
Because of the Sun Cult, which would foam at the mouth and scream, ‘It’s judgment! Purify them!’, whenever they saw anything remotely witch-like, young influential figures who knew anything about witches had almost disappeared.
The witches themselves had hidden in the shadows to survive, and with the Magic Tower also keeping them in check and siding with the Sun Cult, it had become the default for nobles to view them like demi-humans or tribes of fallen nations rather than showing interest in a group with no power.
Even the Count, classified as a high-ranking noble, had never seriously pondered their abilities, having never even exchanged a proper word with a witch, even if he had seen one being burned at the stake by a Sun Cult priest.
“My grandfather once sat me on his knee when I was young and told me stories about witches as if they were fairy tales. It’s been so long that I don’t remember exactly, but yes. He said they could speak to each other without talking, and could make anyone they looked in the eye speak only the truth. That is why he always warned me that rulers with blue blood should never get close to such wicked things.”
“…Isn’t that a truly amusing fairy tale?”
Most of the vassals still seemed to think it was just an old story, but,
“Whether that was just a story my grandfather told to teach his young grandson a lesson, or if it was a truly serious warning…”
Count Messianne’s gaze rested on the letter that had arrived from the North.
“…we shall soon find out.”
Count Messianne.
A noble who received love calls from both the First and Second Princes.
Though he was a Count, he managed a relatively small territory and led a relatively small number of soldiers.
He was a high-ranking noble of a prestigious family in the Empire, which divided the power of the Western Continent, and,
“I must contact my godfather.”
He was a man who carried the blood of the Holy Empire, the other core of power on the Western Continent.
***
“Administrative Officer! This is a true revolution! If something like this is possible, the days of wrong verdicts in this world will disappear entirely!”
“Quiet.”
“We must deploy witches on a large scale to the prisons, the executive branch, and the guard! Oh, and the Administrative Welfare Center and the Exchange as well!”
“Hiss-.”
“You saw it too, didn’t you, Administrative Officer? That ability to peer into people’s hearts and even extract their memories!”
Roland had been trailing behind Aiden for days, his lips chapped from arguing that they needed to make significant use of the witches—specifically, Kalisa’s—abilities.
“I told you, it’s not possible yet.”
“But-!”
“You heard it too. The witches’ abilities are all so different that it’s difficult to standardize or systematize them right now.”
“Can’t we use Kalisa?”
“You want Kalisa to handle all the interrogations of people suspected of crimes by herself? You saw it, I saw it, and Jamie saw it—that guy, whatever his name was, passed out and fell into a deep sleep for two full days after being interrogated!”
“Th-then, perhaps for important cases…”
“Go say the same thing in front of Jamie, get his approval, and then come back to me.”
“…If I say something like that in front of him, I won’t be able to leave the office for at least two months.”
“Exactly, so give it up.”
“But isn’t it a waste? If we use it properly, we could truly rule the territory with law, not fists!”
Roland, who believed in the power of education and reform rather than force and fists.
A path to a more peaceful and humane interrogation had opened, not one based on confessions obtained through torture, and he couldn’t let it go.
“Wait.”
“Administrative Officer, if you keep telling me to wait, then until when…”
CRASH-.
“…….”
“I always say this, but it’s the door that’s flimsy, not that I…”
“State your business first.”
The office door had been broken once again, but,
“Count Messianne has sent a letter.”
The broken door didn’t matter; the news he had been waiting for had finally arrived.
“Everything has a procedure, Roland.”
Aiden smiled and tore open the letter.
If you want to overturn a long-standing system, you must first establish the justification.