“Why, you ask? Of course, it was to feed that damn demon beast. It was raised especially by that backer, you see. And it needed ranked entities to feed on.”
Dom said this like it is the most obvious thing in the world.
“That’s absurd. A demon beast will never be tamed by anyone if it’s not the blood ritual performed at the time of their evolution.”
Julie refuted him without waiting for a moment’s delay. She thought the guy was too drunk to make sense now.
“I said they raised the beast. Not tamed. The beast was sent human sacrifices at the right time for its steady evolution. Don’t you know the hunters’ disappearance had increased long before the Osan woods’ disturbance was known to the populace?”
Eren said this in Dom’s voice from a distance. He was using his bullshittery again. There would always be cases of hunters’ disappearances into the woods and more. Not just here, but all over the world.
Eren just linked those disappearances to a conspiracy. People needed a reason to believe the lost hunters’ disappearances were a part of a bigger plot than some mundane things like being killed by the magic beasts, terrains, circumstances, or rivals.
Eren / fake Dom’s claims worked. Julie and the audience around them suddenly realized that there was more to the sudden increment in death toll and disappearances.
“But who would be crazy enough to raise a demon beast this way? If they were found out, they would be hunted by the entire kingdom and brought to justice no matter how high their rank is.”
Julie said this and immediately felt she shouldn’t have asked the question. The matter didn’t look as simple as she thought it to be.
Maybe it would be in her best interest if she doesn’t know the identity of the one who raised a demon beast this way. She wanted to retract her question and replace it with something else when she heard a burst of hearty laughter coming from Dom:
“Hahaha! Julie, oh my sweet little Julie. Don’t you think a person partaking in a project of such scale and magnitude would know about the risks involved in it beforehand?
Let’s just say there’s no fight between the killers coming from the same creed. The kingdom is more than what it lets on.”
Eren again voiced and weaved a popular conspiracy theory. A kingdom that keeps its citizens in the dark and obtains benefits through shady means.
Conspiracies that discredit popular beliefs would always get sold like hotcakes, whether they were true or not. This time was no different.
“You mean…”
“What I mean doesn’t matter. What matters is that I was put in a tough position to choose between two hard choices. Either stay as a mediocre hunter all my life. Or, take a flight in the skies with a little push from that backer, after a chance meeting in the woods.
I wanted to say no. But his power and the things that he was offering in exchange were too hard to resist.
That guy had always done things slowly and carefully till now. But it looked like he was in a hurry all of a sudden. He decided to expedite the process by sending a lot of sacrifices towards the beast in one go.
That’s when he laid his hands on my party. He offered me a deal. To lure my party to an isolated location and sacrifice my members there in exchange for a sure shot way to break into D Rank and progress much further.
We all know the kingdom controls information like this so most of us stay stuck in lower ranks. But I had the chance to break past these limitations. And I took it. Begrudgingly at first, and willingly later on.
That cursed demon beast evolved into a C Rank as a result. The backer was able to tame it successfully using the blood ritual.
He also gave me an artefact to safely exit from the woods without leaving any clues behind. For our discretion, we had chosen an off route to exit the forest. But… “
“But what?”
Julie asked anticipatingly.
“But we met some greenhorns unexpectedly. My backer wanted to keep his identity hidden so he killed them all brutally. I suspect he would have killed me too had I not signed a binding contract with him and taken some preventive measures against him.
I’ll meet up with my backer in the next few days outside the city and then leave the city of Osan for good. But I need to enjoy my last days here.
Turns out, a few among the younglings my backer killed were loaded with money. He didn’t need the money or any of their stuff. So I kept some, sold some, and threw some.
I still have plenty of their money on me. Should we make good use of it during my time here?”
Eren / Dom smiled creepily like he hasn’t tried smiling before while saying that. Then he took out two Extols from his ID stone and handed them to Julie. Julie’s eyes opened wide after Dom gave her two Extols in advance without them doing anything together.
‘How loaded is this guy?’ Julie thought to herself after she looked at the Extols lying on the table in front of her.
Before she could say anything about it, Julie saw two ladies approaching their tables after they witnessed Dom’s charity work. Julie could see what must these ladies be thinking of when they were approaching Dom.
One Extol was enough for them to live a good life for quite some time. And if they could please Dom some more, maybe he would bless them with another couple of Extols.
Julie couldn’t blame them. She too would have similar ideas had it been someone else and not Dom who had gotten himself involved in the mess. And Julie was here on a mission.
A mission that was almost completely over due to an unexpected encounter with the perpetrator behind the whole incident himself.
The ladies approached Dom and offered him to ‘double’ his fun. Dom of course accepted right away. He looked at Julie who waved him goodbye, indicating she wasn’t interested in the offer. Dom didn’t mind. He even let her keep the two Extols.
Julie had tried following Dom when they went outside the bar. But even in his drunken haze, Dom could sense he was being followed and looked back to stare at Julie who then had to bow her head and let him go away.
She knew if she pushed her luck now, forget about unwrapping the whole mystery behind Dom, she’ll end up deader than the dead.
Dom had gotten away. Nobody could tell where he had gone. Julie closed her fist on the two Extols Dom had given her. She needed to inform her superiors about the breaking news she had received.
*******************************
Julie Ekheart was on a mission when she was spending her time in such a lowly place. To collect information about the unknown person that had accompanied Dom during his second visit to the Osan woods.
Sometimes the denizens of the darkest corners of the city knew more about what happened around them than people of the light ever could.
Julie stuck out in the bar due to her ranking. Not many people could gauze her rank due to her using an artefact to interfere with their mana sense. But Reen could find out about it with her C Rank prowess.
Therefore, Eren immediately closed in on Julie, knowing full well she wouldn’t be the bar’s usual customer. She was there to collect information regarding anything and everything that had happened in the Osan woods.
Eren knew the city was now crawling with spies. He just needed to approach the right spy at the right time to ‘spill the beans’ about Dom’s involvement.
When Dom was approaching Julie, Eren could tell that there was a hint of surprise flashed in Julie’s eyes briefly before she masked it away. Eren guessed she did not personally know Dom but must have seen his picture in the reports.
Eren was also aware Julie had started video-recording the entire conversation with her mana-powered 360-degree audiovisual capturing device dubbed as her ID stone.
First, she handled her ID stone hurriedly and briefly without taking anything out from it. She had also kept that stone too far away from her on the table when the conversation started. That was another sign.
Eren was more than happy to give a documentary-type recorded interview to Julie. He said enough about his motives, stayed vague about a few things and blamed everything on his ‘backer’, which was no one by the way.
Unless someone was doing something suspicious in the Osan woods for real. But what were the chances of that happening, right? Eren had thought.
Eren was purposefully being vague about the kingdom’s involvement during his spy interview. First, he didn’t want to draw the kingdom’s attention. And second, if he outrightly blamed anyone, nobody would believe him.
Plus, the chances of his lies getting caught would be high if he named someone or became specific about anything. It was better he let others conclude the story themselves to fit their narrative.
Of course, there would be some loopholes in what Eren had said to Julie. Like why did he come back to save Matt if everyone was going to get sacrificed? But he had skipped on many details and stayed elusive about the rest.
Therefore those loopholes will be treated as blank spaces that need to be filled with either information or conjectures.
Eren also did not go into details about Isaac’s party wipeout for the same reason. He even skipped mentioning their names to show that Dom was still in his capacities to think about himself.
A miser like Eren gave two Extols to Julie with a bleeding heart so that she would have proof of Dom’s involvement in Isaac’s murder.
Every batch of Extol had a special mana refraction pattern that was different from the other. Julie could compare the batch pattern of Isen’s current Extols with the Extols she had received from Dom to make a solid case against him.
**********************************”
With this, Eren had given Julie enough to make her see Dom and his backer as the real culprit.
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Author’s Note: I’ll soon update VEH’s discord link in the novel’s synopsis. Be sure to check it out ?