Godfather's System 224

I exited the room fifteen minutes later, disguised as a servant, leaving behind a very convincing crime scene, where the guard captain had killed the noble in a fit of anger, before realizing the depth of his mistake and committing suicide.

I had even forged a letter from his handwriting, begging the gods for mercy, hoping that his suicide would cleanse his sin.

There were some inevitable small inconsistencies. A careful investigation, for example, would have revealed the signs of my … well, enhanced interrogation as the CIA liked to call it, as well as several other details. However, that assumed that they would look for such details.

If there was one thing that was predictable about law enforcement, they rarely went out of their way to look for the truth. All they needed was a convenient explanation, which often came in the form of someone from the wrong social class or ethnicity nearby without an alibi.

And, after all that trouble I had gone through to put together such an excellent story, there was no chance they would do so. Particularly since there were other guard captains who had been in that room earlier, aware that they needed a solid explanation to keep things believable.

They had watched the game themselves, which was more than enough as a motive for the captain. The noble had given up his weapon as a pawn, which justified the method. And, they even had multiple eyewitnesses in the form of servants, who they could interrogate under Charisma to get the truth.

And, I had gone through quite a bit of trouble that the ‘truth’ the servants had seen matched with my story.

However, as I walked away, I wasn’t particularly happy. I had interrogated both, and learned quite a bit about my accidental recruit. General Amilin. Having a name was nice. The other things I learned didn’t make me particularly satisfied, even though, unexpectedly, I had learned which of the contacts I had been suspecting had worked for my accidental recruit.

The reason was less good. The noble was already in contact with him to join them.

From the noble, I learned more about the mysterious member of my party. Apparently, he was one of the most accomplished military leaders of Somaton, until one fateful day when he decided that he would make a better king about a decade ago.

That, I had no problem with, if it wasn’t for the tactics he had used. Apparently, he had spent a lot of resources to trigger an artificial beast wave before letting it trigger, which threatened to destroy a lot of cities. Especially since he decided to support the monster waves with six flying castles, providing the monster wave with strategic air support, helping them to destroy several cities and an endless number of villages, the civilian casualties surpassing the million-mark.

All of those had been told by the noble while he wore a delirious smile due to my manipulations, once I convinced him that I was actually a recruiter for the General. Apparently, I had misread the reason for his presence. He wasn’t there to hunt him, but to join him, because he respected his ruthlessness.

Translation: the noble wanted to indulge in endless massacres.

The guard captain didn’t know about the identity of the general as the escapee, under the impression that the Butcher — an unimaginative but well-deserved title — but he had confirmed the general historical details.

I wasn’t willing to make a decision immediately, as I knew exactly how the history could be distorted, but that didn’t mean I would just ignore all the information I had just gathered. I had been already planning to observe him and his operation for a couple days from outside.

Now, I decided that a closer observation was necessary. There was a chance that the events had been attributed to him falsely, yet he still decided to use the reputation for a better end, so it would be unfair to judge him from the outside.

But, just as I wasn’t willing to deal with him without making sure of his crimes, I also wasn’t willing to let him act unimpeded … no matter how easy it would have been to turn the other way and let him start another war, which would allow us to develop with impunity.

No one would have paid attention to our development, even if the extra dungeons at the mountains had been revealed, if they were distracted by a Ralum-Somaton war.

… too bad it was completely unacceptable.

Now, I needed to get away from the inn before the bodies had been discovered. I could have just gotten away, but if the sole hunter that had visited the inn hours earlier was the only one that was to disappear, it might have made some people ask unfortunate questions.

So, I changed into my hunter disguise before I mixed into the crowd. “I hope nothing bad happens upstairs, the noble seemed to be really angry,” I commented as I picked a drink from the bar.

I had been shushed by the bartender. “Careful, old man. We don’t want any trouble, do we?” he reminded.

“Sorry,” I said, but the damage was already done. The people started questioning others, and the knights were far more confident talking. Their social status might be lower than a proper hereditary noble, but not enough to make them afraid of gossiping about safer topics — well, at least topics they thought to be safer.

While they talked about how the game had developed in an interesting direction, I made sure to ramp up the stress they had been feeling with Charisma, which went unnoticed. After all, it was merely an extra bit of subtle tension.

It snapped when a servant shouted in fear. People might be used to violence, but finding a dead noble was not exactly easy for a servant responsible for bringing around drinks.

As his shout echoed, I gave another push to their emotions, and a lot of customers decided that mandatory curfew wasn’t as scary. The guard captains might have prevented that, but they froze momentarily.

I mixed in with the crowd.

“Stop, no one leaves,” one of the guard captains shouted while the other went upstairs to check what had happened. Some of the customers slowed down, so I hit them with another Charisma blast, enflaming their panic even more.

Once I took a turn, I darted away while abandoning my hunter disguise. Now that I wasn’t the only one who ignored the curfew, the guard captains would do their best to hide any disappearance, not wanting to be responsible for any potential assassin from escaping, and instead lean even further for the story I had created.

Once I got out of the city — the discipline of the guards was a joke — I walked around the camp under different disguises, whispering various conflicting rumors about the murder. Some claimed that a noble had been assassinated, some claimed there was some kind of rebellion by the guards, all made interesting but occasional whispers.

Some of the smarter people started escaping. Meanwhile, I started watching the spy of General Amilin. Initially, he didn’t do anything but listen to the rumors.

Then, a large contingency of guards arrived at the camp to squash the rumors, inadvertently giving those rumors credibility, and also showing that the guards were panicking. That was a bad move — not the worst, but close.

With the guards confirming something big had happened in the town, the spy had retreated. He was decent. Not only did he use the crowd to avoid attention, but he also managed to keep his Speed a secret until he had moved almost five miles away, and worked hard to identify there were no followers.

A good procedure. Too bad he was outmatched.

I followed him to a cave but didn’t interfere even as he sent a message using a magic device. Instead, I traced the magic signature, which had arrived in another cave in the middle of nowhere, manned by a mage solely responsible for directing the upcoming messages in a different direction, protected by several wards.

It took the rest of my night to finally discover their satellite base, which was a small mountain village that looked completely normal from the outside.

I was impressed by the operation. No wonder he managed to avoid getting caught despite trying to operate under a dedicated manhunt. It was proper operational security, the kind that would have required months of dedicated effort if anyone else was trying to infiltrate it.

Too bad there was a chance he was possibly a genocidal maniac.