Chapter 119: Relaxing Discussion
"Welcome, Roy… what"s wrong? You"re shivering." Albert greeted me but he was worried when he saw me shivering.
"I just… feel like something scary is happening. It was terribly scary. Even more than the day I died."
"Well, that doesn"t matter to me now. Soon Candy will return with other agents and I want to prepare to interview them one by one. I want you, Miguel, and Candy to be there with me." Albert said.
"One moment. I need to stop this uncontrollable shivers."
What the heck is wrong with me? What is making me so scared? I even feel like going to war again is much better than this feeling.
After one minute, the shivers finally disappear.
I"ll figure out what happened later. For now it"s the most important event for this kingdom. Interview with his people.
"Albert, I suggest you also invite some people either from the military or n.o.bility as well for the interview. Those who are traitors will be killed and those we are not traitors, we will select carefully from them and choose only those we can fully trust and tell them the truth. If there"s no one we can trust, let"s just give them job to test them."
With this, thanks to Albert"s lie detection, we can quickly decide those we can trust, those who are traitors, and those who aren"t traitors but we can"t trust yet.
"I agree. I have several people in mind to summon. One of them is Luiz. The governor of Melk. Well, it"s obvious that he"s a traitor. But I won"t call him because I need the Stampede to happen."
"Even if you call him, by the time he arrived here I would be in Ca.s.sau. Since those agents Candy brought will come soon, I have no plan to stay here any longer and being used by you. I"ll left after the parade and Ian"s wedding. I should have finished the whole books and doc.u.ments in Library Tower by then." I said.
"That"s fine. For now let"s discuss about the interview tomorrow."
Other than me, there are Albert, Mustache, Ian, Victoria in human form, Sonia, and Marie who carried Alan along so we can"t be too loud or we will disturb the baby.
Everyone is discussing in a relaxing manner other than Mustache who looks serious, and Ian the butler who serve us tea and snacks.
"We"ll interview them one by one. Although it will took time, it was easier to eliminate the traitor this way. Is everyone agree with this?" Albert asked for everyone"s agreement.
"Aye! Mustache and Ian don"t need to be asked because they will do whatever you say. Let"s do that." I answered.
Mustache looked at me in anger.
"Hey! I told you my name is Miguel!"
"It"s fine, right? To have a nickname is an honor for hunters. Everyone will know you soon. And you even arrange your mustache so each tips are pointed upward. How much do you care about that mustache of yours?"
Last time I saw him, his mustache is normal and not a gravity defying like this. Why the change?
"Oh. I told him to do that. When he got close to Alan, Alan would cry nonstop. But after arranging his mustache like that, Alan smiled. So I told him his mustache needed to be permanently that way." Mustache look dejected when he heard Albert said that.
Then Albert continues. "Speaking about facial hair, Ian also started to grow his beard, right?"
"It"s to make sure that no one will recognize me anymore. Ruby also said I look better with a beard." Ian answered happily.
"Right. I can"t wait to see your wedding and meet the lady who caught your heart. Your friends will come as well, right?" Albert aimed that question at me which I replied by a nod.
"Can"t you return back to the main topic already? It has just barely started and you already discussed something else."
"Sorry, Marie." Albert apologized to Marie.
"This is the reason Victoria and Sonia brought me here. They are correct to have me come."
Well, she"s right. We easily strayed from the main topic when it"s just us men. Good thing that she"s here.
"About the interview. Anyone has suggestion about the question? Of course name, birth date, and birth place are normal. Let"s make the questions that can only be answered by yes or no, or questions with two choices only."
I suggested it because Albert"s lie detection skill is not almighty, if we limit the answers into two, when Albert detect that the interviewee is lying, we can know his answer is.
For those who have explosive devices inside their mouth, I can just kill them once they entered the room.
"I agree. How about asking their allegiance?" Albert suggested.
"Why? So you can just kill everyone whose allegiance is not toward you? Does that mean you want to kill me as well since my allegiance is toward my girlfriends? Rejected. At least make it subtle like work or family. Then ask them what kind of family they had or what kind of job they do. Of course since I"ll be there as well, I might ask some questions I made on the spot."
"…then this discussion is useless, right?" Mustache asked.
""No."" Both I and Albert answered at the same time.
"We can use a questions from this discussion as the benchmark of what we"re going to ask later." Albert said.
"I was about to say I was bored reading books all the time so coming here is a good idea to relief my boredom. But I agree with Albert."
"…I guess you must have a lot of joke questions in your mind."
"It"s not a joke. I"m about to suggest if they have a preference between big b.o.o.bs or big b.u.t.ts." I replied confidently.
"That"s what I"m talking about!" Albert said as he pointed his index finger at me.
"It"s not a joke! We know that the cult has at least two factions. One is the big b.o.o.b faction with Celestine as their leader, and the other one is the big b.u.t.t faction by Veronica."
"But you decided to kill the traitor once they entered the room! Those questions are useless unless you want to interrogate the members of the cult!"
"Oh, right. What about you? Which one do you prefer?" I asked Albert teasingly.
"It"s obvious! I choose… Marie no matter what!" Albert said after paused for a second.
"Albert. You hesitated for a second there."
I also see him glancing at Marie who"s glaring at him before he answered. Marie is the boss here.
"Well, that one was indeed a joke so let"s put it aside. Since they are from a cult, how about we ask them their religion is? Ask them which G.o.d they believe in. Of course we will only ask those with faith."
There are several religion in this world. The biggest one is from the Supreme G.o.d Church. The one with the biggest numbers of believers. Of course there"s a church for them in the capital as well.
There are also some religion that was made for jokes like Straight Banana or Flying Papaya. What the h.e.l.l are the people who built those religion thinking?
"Right. If we ask their faith, we might know if they are from the cult. But what if there are other religion who believe in world destruction that we don"t know of?"
"They are as dangerous as Evil G.o.d Cult. There"s no need to ask them any further. If they have faith that we don"t know of, we can just ask them about it. Let"s also ask them about how much they know about Tim. They are his subordinates after all. Who knows if he has influenced some of them with his thinking?"
"Then tell them that you"re the man who killed him? They might be hostile to you. And we"re also asking other people as well so let"s be careful of our questions." Albert said.
"We can say that thanks to me, you found a hidden pa.s.sage to Tim"s room and found some evidence of his plan to betray the kingdom. Then we can ask them if they are involved with Tim"s plan or not. We can ask those whose name are not on the list of people he"s planning to betray."
We continued discussing until it started to get dark.
It was finished quite nicely. We made a lot of good questions that can help us find if there are traitors or not among them.
Although I don"t think that we will use most of the questions we prepared.
I returned to the library to continue my search about the past, and Albert return to his works.
Tomorrow will be a long day for us. I need to stay sharp to see if there are some people who can bypa.s.s Albert"s lie detection. Those people will be difficult to handle.
That was why I didn"t spend the night at the library like usual, and return to the inn to rest.
While I was racking my brain and think about tomorrow, the others were already thinking about Ruby"s marriage.
A wedding that will be witnessed by the king himself is something rare, and they will partic.i.p.ate as well after all.
Meanwhile, Sam has already given up persuading her mother to wait until Ruby and Ian gotten to know each other better before they marry. She"s still sulking today.
Well, she"ll be okay… right?