Hello again fellow readers. This chapter is allot longer and I had allot of fun writing it. Detective work and Politics is what I like to write, that or sex scenes, and while I can guarantee fight scenes I will try to work on how I describe such fights to make them that much more intense. And now onto the messages.
To Uqihana: Yeah there are quite a few side characters that people forget, hell Sara wasn't even in the web novel or manga so I felt they did her a huge disservice when it came to her character and how she affected Rudeus. I will include her in this fanfiction don't you worry.
To SkinnyA: Yeah the OC is going to be the plot change and alter the course of the story after certain events. I will remain vague about this but look forward to this. I've even gone ahead to write this characters backstory and powers so I don't lose continuity, so far I've written about 10 pages worth of information about him.
To Zairyo: HAHAHA yeah that would be awesome, I can see Paul trying to challenge his son to see how much he has grown.
To Shadow Joestar: He will try his best ;-)
To 321jaz: Glad you like the failsafes, also I will include more of Eris's letters in the future. Looking forward to writing about Rudeus and Sara too. Didn't forget about Derrick either but thanks for reminding me lol. Yeah I did an Ace Attorney move in this chapter which in the real world is illegal as fuck hahaha, where he obtains evidence illegally, thanks for the recommendation. Better call Saul is one of my favorite shows.
To XaiGRS: LMAO I can have him joke like that but that will be later on in the story when he is reminiscing. For now he will be serious. Also Darius won't kill himself, but that would be a good way for him to die in the future.
To icecreampapa: Glad you like the bases, maybe if the teleportation even fails Rudeus will use the base near the Asura kingdom as the new Refugee camp. Or create a new base entirely.
With that being said enjoy the chapter.
"You are certain about this?" Rudeus asked as he tapped the armrest of his chair.
"Yes, I am certain." Philemon said taking another swig of wine.
"...That bastard, he is willing to burn the house down if he so much as gets a small smoldering ember on him."
"It would seem that way, yes." Philemon said, his eyes going down to the floor.
The prime minister of the Asura kingdom was going with the typical dirty political move of going nuclear. He was going around to every noble in his affiliation and threatening to expose them as well with all their dirty deeds if he was to be removed from office. Rudeus saw this as a possibility but wouldn't think Darius would do something so bold. By choosing this option he would essentially be looked at as poison ivy among every noble after this. Anyone who asked for his help in the future would be risking exposing their own dirty little secrets and Darius knew that. After this trial was done he would make little allies and lesser friends but this was his way of retaining power. However he could still use the prince to gain power or have political allies so when it came down to it there would be allot of collateral but he could easily repair the damage by using a third party. The prince would fall into Darius's hands even more.
Philemon had been tipped off by a former friend who he had a disagreement with a long time ago. The lady was the head of the Greydove family. She was in support of Darius and the Prince instead of Ariel but she secretly visited Philemon after Darius had a meeting with her in which he threatened to expose her poison trafficking operations. Some of these poisons could be found at the Adventurer guilds for slaying monsters but other poisons were designed to torture or be resistant to magic which could be sold through the black market. Many of these substances were illegal and if she was exposed then she would go down as well. Numerous stories like this existed among the nobles.
The lord of the Notos branch had managed to contact Rudeus about this recent change in events two days before the trial was to take place. He had been attempting for the past several days to contact the boy but had managed to get Ghislaine's attention when he tried to talk to Philip about Rudeus presuming Philip knew that the boy was still alive. Ghislaine managed to find Rudeus after several hours where from there Rudeus met Philemon back at his manor early in the morning one day before the trial was supposed to take place. And here they were, in a field of political shit.
Rudeus bit his lip. "Fucking hell."
And then Rudeus had a thought.
'Wait. Is Darius no longer Hitogami's apostle?' It became clear that was a likely option.
Darius was making moves that Hitogami would easily be able to criticize. This didn't follow the mannerisms or tactics that Hitogami normally employed. Hitogami would most likely tell Darius to be quite and not be in the spotlight letting things pass over him. If he saw Darius as baggage then he would just up and leave him requiring Darius to fend for himself which is what he was doing currently, fending for himself and trying to preserve his power.
Ghislaine said that Darius looked happy when it was reported that Rudeus was missing. If Rudeus went missing Hitogami would be able to see this as a farce and tell Darius that Rudeus was in fact alive and well. But Darius gave away the fact that he only took things at face value in that instance and was happy that the boy was missing.
The downside if Darius was in fact no longer an Apostle of Hitogami meant that keeping track of other apostles would be harder to come by until Rudeus established contact with Orsted, and the man himself was impossible to find until Rudeus would "accidentally" run into him at the Red Dragons Lower Jaw years from now.
'I could just kill Darius. No, light would immediately be shined on Philip and he would be blamed for the murder. Half of the Asura kingdom would want his head after that point even if he wasn't the murderer. And if I don't kill Darius now or reduce his power then he will continue his assassination attempts on Ariel, he might actually be successful. Shit what do I do?'
Rudeus stood up.
"Where are you going?" Philemon asked.
"A place I can think. I will be back here in the evening, no need to wait for me just be back in this room by nightfall is all I ask." Rudeus said slamming the door behind him.
He flew back to his base underneath the field of wheat. Descending down the hundreds of feet he immediately went and created another room. He pins a drawing of Darius in the center along with the other people who have sworn allegiance to him.
This room would be dedicated for Rudeus to deduce what his next move would be, keeping all of this information in his head he was guaranteed to create mistakes.
'Hitogami can see this if he wants too so I will mark him as a question mark connected to Darius.' Rudeus drew a question mark on a post-it note and tied a blue string directly connected to Darius.
Blue string represented Darius's allies and red string represented his rivals. Throughout the course of the trial Rudeus would be working on changing the blue string to red. So far Darius's biggest supporter was the prince who would be impossible to sway when it came to his allegiances. For right now Rudeus's biggest objective was establishing if Darius was no longer Hitogami's subordinate. Things would be allot easier if this was the case.
Over the course of two hours Rudeus used his notes in contrast with several books on detective work to establish a foundation for his investigation.
'What are some things that most nobles have but Hitogami's subordinates do not have?' Rudeus put his fingers to his chin.
He went down the list of Hitogami's powers in his head. The man gods best resource other than his ability to see into the future by 50 years was his vision to see anywhere in the world, the exception to this rule of course was Orsted and his secret dragon art to alter fate which illuded Hitogami's vision as a result.
Then it clicked to Rudeus.
'Spy networks! That is how I will know if Darius is still in line with Hitogami!' Rudeus thought smiling. The best spy in all of the worlds was Hitogami. Anyone under his influence would have no need for a spy network.
This spy network under Darius's employment would most likely operate under a form of coding system in their exchange of letters and orders to remain undetected by local authorities or other nobles. To find this cipher and coding system the place of interest would be Darius's house or office in the royal palace. If Hitogami was watching Rudeus's movements then this action would not draw suspicion that the boy knew about the man god, it only would be conclusive that Rudeus was attempting to take down Darius by destroying his routes of communication and understanding his other methods of spying by intercepting and decoding letters.
A cipher was needed if this was the case to crack the code into the operations of the letters and what they truly contained.
Darius had no way to establish contact with nobles that were either out of the capital in time for the court case to blackmail them. So he would instruct Philemon to intercept letters addressed to several of the houses outside of the capital and search through the letters to find ones sent by Darius. If Darius lost the case he would most likely use these people as an escape route. By destroying the letters he would cut off any communication Darius had throughout the Asura kingdom and only keep it contained within the capital. Blackmail wouldn't work if there was no mail and he would gain no support from any of the houses outside of the city.
But the first order of business was to go to the royal palace, specifically Darius's office to look for clues. Rudeus went to his summoning chamber and stepped into the center of the room, placing both hands on the pedestal before him. Closing his eyes and picturing the object he wanted and the twelve mechanical arms came to life with the use of his mana as the plates of magical circles rearranged themselves following Rudeus's will. Then the 100 plates of magical circles above pressed down onto the now stacked 200 plates below. A bright light radiated from the center of the room and when Rudeus opened his eyes there lay a detectives briefcase. After a few more minutes Rudeus obtained some more items that would be of use for an evidence investigation. Rudeus exhaled at the task before him. He then drew up four summoning circles where he would have only one time to use the items he had in his search. One time to summon the tools and another to send them back.
He flew out of the cave system and towards the Asura capital of Ars heading straight toward the royal palace. Rudeus had been through it a few times but it was easy to get lost in such a huge complex. He dressed as one of the squires by raiding one of the children's locker rooms until he found the appropriately fitting clothes.
The official name for such a job was a page. The clothes were clean and finely pressed but not decorated with expensive articles like jewelry much like the noble counterpart to a page.
Rudeus wore black buckle leather shoes, on his legs he wore red stockings that went all the way up to his thighs. Over his upper body he wore a tunic that was long enough that it went down to his kneecaps. The sides of the tunic were flared at the arms showing class. The other two articles was a messenger bag for taking and receiving letters to be transported throughout the palace and the capital, the final article was a wool cap that went over Rudeus's head that made him look like a newspaper boy from new York.
"Damn I look pretty cute in this get up." Rudeus said eyeballing himself in the changing room mirror smiling.
He then walked through the halls. He didn't want to make himself look lost which would be a dead giveaway that he was a trespasser so he obtained a goblet of wine and some glasses that he carrier around the palace making it look like he was bringing some refreshments to a lord or lady of the complex, whenever he could he would drop the activity and move to another task such as carrying laundry or letters when he saw an item placed haphazardly to make it look as realistic as possible that he belonged in the palace. He blended in perfectly and no one paid him any mind. Soon after several hours of going around the palace he found the place he was looking for, Darius's office.
He peaked through the keyhole and saw the fat man pacing in his office, going back to a pile of letters, and then going back to pacing. Rudeus hid behind some curtains for the time being as he waited for the fat man to leave his office.
Once Rudeus had confirmed his suspicions that Darius was no longer in contact with Hitogami he would try and determine the reason for it. After that he would manipulate Darius to having him believe that the boy was an Apostle of Hitogami. Once that had been established a layer of trust would be gained. Even if Hitogami tried to come into contact with Rudeus the boy would still be telling the truth that a vague being in a blank world tried to reach out to him. He was of course referring to his dream that he had several nights before.
Words like "Who was that being?" and "why was it overjoyed to see me?" were still plaguing Rudeus's mind. He tried shoving them to the back of his head but they still kept popping up. Whoever this person was it had a huge amount of magical energy behind it and it was possibly as strong as Rudeus if not stronger, and if that was the case he prayed it was friend and not foe.
Rudeus was at a power level right now he felt like he could level a continent with ease if he truly was a immature child. The world could be his if he wanted but he never desired that. Well he used to desire a harem of limitless women to grope and plunder but looking at people like Darius helped remind Rudeus that was a path reserved for the degenerate and scum of the world. All he wanted now when it came to sex was wholesome engagement, well a little bit of perversion was fine if his lover was fine with it.
'Sylphy, Roxy, Eris. I shall give you the world and give all my love to each of you. You are my world and you are what matters to me.' Rudeus said smiling in pleasant thoughts.
A moment later Darius unlocked his door and exited, locking the door once he was on the other side. Rudeus went back to the door once Darius was out of view and checked the door again. Several enchantments were in the door which were all related to Barrier magic, anyone that tried to pick the lock or open it through magical means would make the door send out a torrent of fire. The original key would be required to open it without triggering the traps. Furthermore the door might of looked to be wood but Rudeus could tell that inside the door was a layer of steel.
The walls themselves had barrier magic on them so even if someone tried to use earth magic then the traps would be triggered, either way guards would come running.
Rudeus sighed. It was an unpleasant option to get inside but the only one he new of.
He focused on the atoms in his body as he began to selectively change the properties of his bones as his legs turned into literal jelly.
This wasn't the first time he had attempted this. The reason why he did this is if he was locked up in iron bonds and chains then he could just slip through them without issue. It wasn't a painful feeling but a rather unnerving in sensation.
Gradually Rudeus turned his bones into jelly as he took on the properties of an Octopus. He slipped through the bottom crack of the door as he inched his way further into the room. It looked like a human puddle was leaking into the office if someone was to observe him. He paid close caution to his organs and veins careful not to damage anything on his way through as well. Squishing his brain would yield unpleasant results.
When he was all the way through he reassembled the properties of his bones one by one as he shuddered at the feeling of being some type of weird gel monster for a few moments. Pulling out of his pocket two blue elastic gloves he put them on and then without further delay he got to work looking throughout the office, starting with the papers Darius was going through.
Rudeus kept an inventory of all the papers he disturbed, putting them back in the same place he had taken them from before moving onto the next set of files. If anything looked amiss Darius might get suspicious when he came back. The oddest thing Rudeus found so far was a jar of lemon juice just sitting on the prime ministers desk.
Opening up the drawers he found several documents of Darius's favorite sex slaves, none of which were noble women so the man couldn't be tried for this piece of evidence, however the man was truly a pig. Further looking into more detailed pages he found budget reports, trade operations, political movements and strategies along with several sets of rehearsed speech should he ever be backed into a corner. Rudeus noted that allot of these rehearsed words were responses to questions he would most likely be asked in court. Making copies of these to give to Philip he returned to his search.
'This little piggy certainly is prepared for allot of things.' Rudeus thought.
What interested him more was looking through the report of magical anomaly mainly involving labyrinths but with no real motive behind them. It would seem that Darius was attempting to hire the adventurers guild along with several hundred magicians in order to explore and raid labyrinths throughout the world, offering a substantial payment to anything relating to magic being blocked by a magical artifact similar to disturb magic.
On the surface any person of wealth or power who didn't use magic would see such an item as invaluable from protecting them against magical attacks. But this didn't feel right, Darius probably had another motive behind this. Potentially against someone like Orsted. Pushing those thoughts aside Rudeus went back to looking throughout the office.
'Many people in political power often times hid a secret compartment in their desk or in their office.' Rudeus thought. He pulled out one of the summoning circles in his pocket. Summoning the tools he had previously obtained he closed the curtains and pulled out a forensic laser from the briefcase he had just summoned. He then closed the curtains in the office making the room almost completely dark.
Using this laser Sodium and Glucose among other chemical compounds would be highlighted in the dark much like how a white shirt would glow if a blacklight was shown on it. Darius placed his finger prints mostly on the top of his desk. Rudeus also noted several sets of smaller fingerprints throughout the room, they looked like children's fingerprints. Rudeus had to keep himself from vomiting as he noticed many of the finger prints were dragged either across the desk or the room.
'He rapes children here too! I will rip his world apart!' Rudeus roared inside the contents of his mind. In that moment he could not tolerate talking to Darius, removing the idea of convincing Darius that Rudeus was an apostle of Hitogami. If he did come into contact with the fat bastard he had no doubt that he would kill the man, introducing Darius to a new definition of pain starting with tearing off his most sensitive parts. Rudeus breathed several times, in, and then out, in, and then out to calm himself. Once he was calm he pulled out a blacklight and found particles of blood both on the desk and the floor near the desk or on Darius's chair. It seems he had a taste for virgins in particular.
Rudeus pulled out a scalpel and took several slivers out of the wood and flooring taking small samples of all of the places that had blood on them. He could use this to cross-reference the DNA to find the original owners. If Rudeus could find these women and girls that Darius had abused then he could use it against the man in future cases if they were nobles. However making these women come forward one at a time would be ineffective much like the boy who cried wolf, Darius would brush such an accusation aside as political slander. The young boy used alteration magic hide the damage he had made while collecting the various samples, labeling them all which he then put away in the detective bag, and then he got back to looking for his main objective.
Rudeus then found what he was looking for. A cluster of fingerprints underneath the desk. Rudeus put pressure on where the fingerprints were, feeling the wood form a square hole which was the hidden button he was looking for and he heard the click of a mechanism to his left. He smiled.
It was a small side drawer which was in a vertical line. The sides of Darius's desk had six drawers on each side but they were smaller than the drawers would normally be if not for decoration, six columns made to look like marble pillars of Greek design were placed at each notable corner of the desk. One of these pillars was now sticking out, the one on the left corner to be exact. Rudeus pulled on the column and out slid the secret horizontal drawer. In it were two items, a book and the cipher.
The cryptography cipher was what Rudeus would recognize as a playfair cipher.
'How ironic that a politician would have something called playfair as a method for secret communication.' Rudeus chuckled.
The playfair cipher had a symbol or letter that stood for a word where a 5x5 grid would be needed to decode the message. There were three rules to this encoding system other than the 5x5 rule. J is replaced with the letter I to fit the square, X is used as a substitution if two letters repeat themselves back to back or if it was needed to fill a letter in the diagram. And finally the square is filled row by row starting with a keyword, if someone did not know the keyword which would be in the square then they could not decipher the message. The keyword was Hail God which was written in the playfair square.
Something like, "The death shall be carried out through poison." Would turn into a jumble of letters which would look like.
QLOBDGQLQIIGICOEDWSAOBEQUSYQLQDZEGFBHQBMY.
Then his fingers landed back on the jar of lemon. Rudeus was curious though. He hadn't seen any playfair encryptions written down in the office. He redoubled his efforts looking to see if Darius had written anything down using the encryption method.
'Of course!' Rudeus realized.
He then grabbed the paper of Darius's favorite sex slaves and sniffed the paper as hard as he could.
"The faint acidic smell of lemons." Rudeus whispered.
He then conjured a small flame over his fingertips as the words that were originally invisible became visible. Lemon juice is acidic and weakens the fibers in a paper, when the paper was heated the remaining acid turns the writing brown before discoloring the paper. The brown letters were encoded but now that Rudeus had the keyword he quickly grabbed a notepad from the detective bag along with a pen and began to decipher the jumble of letters. They were the names of noble women and girls!
Rudeus dropped the paper and slouched on the chair taking in a deep breath. He had cracked the code.
The next step was to make a perfect copy of the paper and place it back in it's original spot. Rudeus would turn this paper over to Philip so he could find ways to exploit this against Darius. Making the copy was simple with Alteration magic he just had to copy the chemical makeup the paper had.
The boy smiled quickly making a copy of the cipher and Darius's favorite women and placed it back in their select locations like it had never been touched. Then he moved onto the book, the one that was in the secret compartment, which was titled….
Rudeus paused for a very, very long moment. If he opened this book he was treading on very thin ice if Hitogami was watching him.
The book was titled messages from God.
Rudeus checked the exterior of the book and found no magical circles or enchantments that were either traps or barrier magic. Opening the book he began to read, he was overjoyed to find that they were not encrypted. Most likely Darius presumed that if anyone came across this book they would just conclude that this was what Darius dreamed about which is why he didn't bother encrypting the journal. In fact if he did encrypt it then that would only draw more suspicion.
He skimmed through most of it. The majority was movements had already happened which allowed Darius to gain power but the latest entry was of particular interest.
"God has finally come to me again after four long years. I was concerned he had forgotten about me. He has given me two tasks, double my spy network and search for magical anomalies that disrupt his magic. I will follow suit with both. He told me he can no longer look down on the world, I must be the eyes for my master. Something is blocking his vision and the world looks blurry to him, until it becomes clear I can no longer rely on him to help me. I have the opportunity to prove myself worthy to by the apostle of god, I shall not let him down."
"Hitogami can't see?" Rudeus whispered. Then footsteps could be heard in the hallway coming toward the door.
'Shit I got distracted.' Rudeus cursed himself putting back the book and cipher, closing it, he quickly sent the detectives bag back with his one remaining summoning circle along with the other pieces of paper he had made copies of.
He checked the windows, they had barrier magic infused on the windows but Rudeus could make it out, he just had to be clever. He opened the window just a crack as he used the same method that he used to get himself in the office. He altered the properties of his bones as he slid through the crack in the window, just in time too as the door opened right after Rudeus had escaped. Rudeus controlled his decent as he reassembled the structure of his bones, falling lightly on the ground where no one was watching.
It was the gardens of the palace which had a balcony overlooking the kingdom. Rudeus took in the view for a moment.
"Who are you?"
Rudeus jumped in the air quickly turning and he saw a man he didn't recognize. It was clear the man hadn't seen him a moment ago, otherwise he would be asking him how he flew down, the man probably turned around after Rudeus had landed and saw the boy.
'I was so close to people discovering I could fly, I was so careless.' Rudeus cursed himself but still responded to the mans question.
"Sorry sir you scared me for a second there. I am one of the squires under Philemon Greyrat's employment. Who are you sir?" Rudeus said quickly coming up with an answer he had already rehearsed should anyone in the palace question him.
"I am Derrick Redbat, protector of Ariel Asura."
Rudeus turned pale for a moment. He knew that name but he had never met the person. This was the man Orsted had told Rudeus about, the man who would convince Perugius to lend his support to Ariel. Unfortunately he had died because of the magical teleportation incident. A monster had been displaced to the gardens because of the event along with Sylphy, while Sylphy had saved Ariel from the monster she didn't have enough time to save Derrick who was the first to be attacked by the monster as Derrick tried to defend Ariel.
Derrick had long straight dark hair with an angular face. He was tall and lean much like any other magician. He looked like the type of refined teacher you would see in an anime who was knowledgeable but strict because he wore a pair of small circular reading glasses over his eyes where at one end they were connected by a chain. Rudeus looked behind him, a small girl around Rudeus's age wearing a white dress with blond hair was hiding behind the man, she looked like an angel.
"What types of gloves are those? I have never seen them on a squire before." Derrick asked.
'Shit I forgot to take off the nitrile gloves!' Rudeus quickly took off the elastic materiel that covered his hands but it was too late obviously.
"They are a new type of glove. One that keeps grease stains and fingerprints off of surfaces, good for keeping things tidy." Rudeus quipped but his acting was off, Derrick squinted at him as he walked over to the young boy.
"What is your name?" Derrick barked.
At this point Rudeus had three options, tell the man his name and intention, keep acting and have to run when caught, or just skip option two and run. Option one posed it's own problems mainly Derrick getting involved in affairs that didn't concern him, this was Rudeus's fight. But based off of what Ariel had told Rudeus in his past life Derrick could be trusted with secrets. So Rudeus resorted to go with option one.
"Forgive me for being disrespectful. My name is Rudeus Greyrat, I was attempting to spy on Prime Minister Darius. He created an assassination attempt to kill me and my family several years ago, the members of the squad Death Row who have long since passed are the ones he hired. I have since then wanted to seek justice for my family." Rudeus said bowing on one knee.
"Such an act of spying is treasonous but why not try to go against Darius the traditional way? Through the court system."
Rudeus bit his lip in frustration, this man was a traditional one who wanted to do things the right way which in his mind was following the rules. This man would not be easy to sway, he was a man of honor, the only way to beet this type of stubborn was to expose the honorable person to the truth that they were an idiot.
"I am. Well Philip Greyrat is. Darius attempted to hire the head butler of the Boreas branch to kidnap the young lady of the house, Eris Greyrat. Now we have set up a trial to expose Darius for his misdeeds. My objective was to gain an edge against Darius in court."
"Evidence that has been obtained through illegal means will be dismissed in court, that is the law." Derrick said calmly.
"Yes. Darius however will win the trail in his favor regardless of the evidence presented. He has blackmailed the other nobles threatening to expose their misdeeds and illegal actions should he fall from power. Because of this I am attempting to go beyond that in turning both nobles and the common people against him." Rudeus said pressing his fist to his chest where his heart lay in a sincere oath. "He is also the one behind several assassination attempts on the young lady standing behind you."
Rudeus stepped forward and Derrick extended his magicians staff, ready at a moments notice to utter an incantation to kill the boy in front of him. Rudeus stopped and prostrated himself on the ground with both hands placed on the ground as he bowed as low as he could not saying a word.
Derrick hesitated when he received a light tug on his robe making him look down at the young girl grasping him.
"It's alright sir Derrick, I would like to speak with him." The young Ariel said. Even at such a young age she remained graceful in her words.
"Of course my lady." Derrick responded instantly stepping aside and bowing curtly.
Rudeus heard soft footsteps treading on the grass as the young girl approached him. He felt a pat on his back in reassurance. Lifting his head he was met with the eyes of pure kindness from the girl standing above him.
"My name is Ariel Asura. I'm sorry my friend was rude to you before but he is like that when it comes to strangers, please, let's go take a seat." Ariel said smiling softly at him.
"It is a pleasure to meet you Princess Asura." Rudeus said.
She outstretched her hand and he kissed the top of it making her beam at him. Then she gestured at a nearby bench which overlooked the entirety of the gardens.
"You don't want to be queen do you?" Rudeus said sitting down. He knew what she was a feeling at that time, she hadn't made up her mind yet regarding if she would step down and let her brother take power. Derrick would be the one to convince her and she would also be convinced to become queen otherwise all the people that had laid their lives down for her would be in vain, but that reason wasn't good enough, she had to make it a personal reason. So Rudeus would try and nudge her in that direction.
Her eyes widened at that question though. "How do you know that?" Derrick however gave Rudeus a glare like his question was a great insult however Ariel raised her hand at Derrick and he resumed the blank look on his face.
"I can see it in your eyes. You want the burdens to go away, the politics, the people, the assassination attempts, and the scheming." Rudeus said looking into the sky, imagining her as a soring eagle flying away from all her problems.
"Yes. I dream about that often."
"There is a solution in a few years though."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, it will take a few years though but if you go to the Ranoa Kingdom you can escape allot of that while building up support in the magic university."
"Why would it take a few years?"
"There are some things that need to be done in the meantime but I can try and help, Philemon is already helping you but I also have Philip Boreas Greyrat on your side now. Many people can support you and help. But if you don't want to be a puppet to them you should follow your own heart and wisdom, listening to them is fine but following them blindly is a different story." Rudeus said smiling at her. Then he took notice of the sun setting.
"I have to go, I apologize but I have a meeting with Philemon shortly. One last piece of advice though. Trust Sylphiette, you will know what that means in the future."
She just nodded at him sadly, taking in his words but wishing that he could have chatted with her for a little bit longer.
After a few minutes he exited out of the palace once he had returned his temporary disguise. He then departed to Philemon's office to report his findings.
Rudeus was surprised though to find Philip sitting next to Philemon along with Ghislaine when Rudeus peaked through the office window from outside to see if anyone was home.
'Well a good a time as any.' Rudeus thought summoning his courage.
Rudeus knocked on the door.
"Come in." Philemon said from the other side.
Rudeus took in another breath as he opened up the door, slapping the sides of his face lightly as he prepared for the numerous array of questions Philip would most likely have.
Philip of course got up quickly his eyes full of shock. Ghislaine didn't even bother with a reaction and Philemon tensed his breath. It would seem that he was still afraid of Rudeus.
"Welcome back sir." Philemon said. "I hope your day was a success."
"It was Lord Philemon, thank you." Rudeus said calmly, his voice not changing in fluctuation for a moment. He then looked at Philip. "I think I owe you an explanation Philip. But first Philemon can you please tell me why they are here?"
Philemon coughed into his fist to draw attention as he prepared his next sentence. "By your command I have supported Philip through these several days both feeding intelligence to him through third parties and things around that nature in preparation for the trial. However with it being tomorrow I thought we should meet face to face to discuss how things should proceed and to also inform Philip directly about what Darius plans to do."
Rudeus nodded. "That was a very good idea, thank you. Now then, Philip if you will please be seated I will explain everything."
Philip hesitated for a moment but sat down slowly as Rudeus sat down on the other end of the room facing the mayor of Roa.
"Firstly I want you to know that what I did was a spontaneous idea, in order for me to move freely I needed to not be encumbered by the day to day business of preparing for the trial at hand, and secondly it would make the enemy believe that I am dead, this will essentially make me a trump card in the trial to come. Lastly, thank you Philip for not telling the rest of the family about my supposed demise, I did not look forward to being hit repeatedly by Eris and you have spared me from that."
"No apology? Just an explanation and a thanks?" Philip asked, it was clear the man was angry, he didn't like to be kept in the dark about such things, certainly such things that were critical when it came to importance.
Rudeus nodded. "I will not apologize for my actions, I regret having to do them, but it has allowed me to obtain information I otherwise could not." As he said this he put down the several copies of paper he had obtained earlier.
"Where did you get these?" Philemon asked.
"From Darius's office." Rudeus said plainly.
The room went noticeably more cold from there.
"You intercepted the palace?" Philemon whispered.
"Yes. I posed as a page, or squire, in the palace and worked my way to Darius's office to obtain intel. After he left his office I entered and searched though his documentation after which I returned here. Among these papers is the coding system that Darius uses to write coded messages in plain letters, we can use this information to intercept his letters that he sends to the city of Roa and several other places we have allies. He also uses invisible ink in the form of lemonade to write the encoded messages on plane messages. From here we can discover and disable his spy network through execution or by buying them off to send Darius false intel."
"There is a huge problem with this though." Philip said with his interlacing his hands. "If it is revealed that Darius's network of spies was sabotaged then he will know someone found a way to decipher his messages. He will change his method of encryption at that point. Ultimately down the road his suspicion can lead to him realizing that someone went through his office and if he realizes we were the ones behind it we will be tried for treason and trespassing on palace grounds. I'm sure the judgement of such a misdeed is self explanatory."
"Yes. Heads, spikes, and walls." Rudeus said nodding. "However there is a solution to this. We can use this information to our advantage so long as we do not show a pattern of interception or a 100% failure rate in Darius's spy network. If he only has a 10% rate of failure he is less likely to become suspicious. Moreover we can send messages to both Darius's allies and foes alike so all of a sudden he doesn't know who the original traitor was."
"How do you propose we go about this?" Philemon asked.
"We will immediately send out this template of encoding to all the noble houses that Darius has been in contact with over the past several days. Each time we do this we will go under the guise of a different house with a different seal so that way it will look like an entangled web if anyone tries to track who sent the original cipher to decrypt Darius's letters, we will also hire different people to write for us so they cannot track us through handwriting patterns."
"What about the trial coming up?" Philip asked.
"The person on trial is Narum not Darius, we will merely plant the seeds of suspicion against Darius using Narum. And this." Rudeus said putting down the list of name he had procured earlier.
Both Philemon and Philip looked at the decoded names.
"These goes beyond evil." Philip said as he bit his thumb so hard to try and keep from bursting in outrage that his finger started to bleed. Rudeus healed it quickly and thanked his three Goddesses that Sauros was not the one looking at these names. Sauros would probably attempt to burn the whole of Ars down in fury.
"We will find the women and then put Darius on trial for these actions. Narum will most likely be sentenced to banishment from the asura kingdom and live out his days in the Millis continent. But one thing does perplex me."
"And that would be?" Philemon asked.
"A book in his which was he has an account about messages he received from God."
"So what? Is he a believer in Millis?" Philip scoffed.
Rudeus shook his head.
"No, whoever this so called God is. There were detailed accounts about his actions and what God told him to do, when he carried it out profit or power followed quickly in Darius's favor. Darius is working for someone."
"So the prime minister has a puppet master." Philemon whispered.
"Yes, until we find out who this God is we will leave Darius in power, the current 7 worldly powers do not match the description of this individual but it is clear that this being has the ability of foresight, he is able to see everything and has something called future vision which allows this person to see 50 years into the future. But something is blocking it's abilities for now."
"Believing what you say is true, we should take Darius out now before he makes another move against us or if this so called God regains it's vision."
Rudeus shook his head.
"We have spotted a vulture, if we kill the vulture we will no longer be able to track it and a new vulture will be chosen that will hide in the shadows, our moves must be discrete and while it pains me to say it, we will not kill Darius as of yet. We will only cripple his power for the time being like we originally planned and keep our eyes on him now that we know he has a benefactor watching over him."
Rudeus knew how difficult it would be if Darius was killed. More apostles of Hitogami would be chosen if Darius died and once the man god regained his powers, he would send more people from the shadows to kill Ariel and from there it was likely the odds of her dying would increase. For now this would have to do. And if he stopped the teleportation event altogether none of this would matter, the way Orsted had set things up beforehand it was guaranteed that Ariel would become queen in the future. But still, failsafe's were in place, and Rudeus would keep making them until that fated day after his 10th birthday.
See you guys hopefully by next week or the one after for the trial. I'm researching as many t.v show trials and movie trials as I can for references and how to add drama to this whole story. Until then review and give feedback and I will respond back in the next chapter.