By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 12 - Chapter 4

Chapter 7, Episode 42: Disquieting Night

By evening, the soup kitchen was beginning to wrap up. I hadn’t kept track of how many we’d served, but it must have been upwards of several hundred. We’d just repeated the process—cooking and serving, cooking and serving—until we’d finally run out of food.

A few scuffles had broken out in the line, but those had been quelled quickly with the assistance of the Brawny Boys. They’d also helped us clean up and volunteered to take Bell and the kids back to the orphanage. Hudom and I just needed to get home. I had been asking Hudom to escort me to the north gate, since my home was a quick space magic spell away from there.

“Hudom, can we stop somewhere on our way?”

“Sure thing,” he said. It was settled.

Walking down the street, painted golden by the sunset, we’d begun to approach one of the new zones of the city. The new residents’ children were running around in the cold, open air.

“Good evening!” I greeted them.

“Hi, Ryoma!”

“Slime boy!”

“Here comes the secret boss!”

Secret boss? Was he implying that there was a non-secret boss around? While I contemplated this question, the kids waved their goodbyes and ran off, still full of energy.

“It’s still bustling around here,” Hudom said.

“There are a lot of people on the night shift in this area.”

Accordingly, some beastkin had traits of nocturnal animals. It depended on the person as to whether they were completely nocturnal or could choose to stay up during the day, if they wanted to.

“A lot of mole beastkin here, right?” Hudom asked.

“Right. I think half of the residents here are mole beastkin.”

As the name suggested, they had some mole characteristics. It wasn’t like they couldn’t be out under sunlight at all, but they preferred dark environments to bright ones. Their true talent, though, was displayed underground. Their smaller stature allowed them to maneuver better in tunnels, and they were heavy lifters too. But their most useful characteristic was a special sixth sense they were born with that allowed them to know how likely an underground tunnel was to collapse or become dangerous. Those with heightened senses could not only feel a collapse before it happened, but also sense the presence of water pockets or poisonous gas.

“Cities closer to mines tend to have more mole beastkin in them,” Hudom pointed out.

“I’m sure they make wonderful miners.”

Since mole beastkin liked living underground, I had built their homes with basements. Their main living quarters were there, and they usually used the above-ground portions of their houses for storage or to rent out.

We made it through the nocturnal district and finally came to our destination in the north-northeast section of town: the shelter, or the group home for the formerly homeless residents of the slums. It was a row of four square buildings built with sand slimes and sand magic. I had taken inspiration from government housing in Japan, but these buildings didn’t look too clean. The place had the feeling of a neglected boarding house. An acquaintance of mine in college had lived in a place like this. There was a pair of men huddled at a bonfire in an open area.

“Good evening,” I called to them.

“You again, rich boy?”

“We told you this ain’t a good place for someone like you.”

While their language might have given off the impression that I wasn’t welcome, that wasn’t the case. They knew that I was the one who had built the shelter and that I was pretty close to Lible. Besides, I always made a point to bring a certain little gift every time I came, which helped me get a warmer welcome.

“I brought the usual,” I said. “Could we talk for a bit?”

“Talking’s free,” one of them said.

The other turned to the building. “Hey! The usual kid and his booze is here!”

Beckoned by that call, a crowd of people with cups and bowls emerged from the building. The sight of them shuffling out in layers of wrinkled and dirtied clothes secretly reminded me of a zombie film. In the meantime, I produced a few things with space magic: three large barrels of wine I’d gotten a good deal on the other day, three large barrels of a drinkable batch of white liquor that the goblins had mass-produced, and piles of lamon fruit and giger roots. I also brought out a box of tools and metal slimes. Leaving the white liquor alone, the metal slimes and I rapidly sliced the giger and threw it into the wine barrels.

“Heat.”

Stirring the wine with a stick I had brought out, I brought the drinks close to a boil with fire magic. I had only used the bare-bones ingredients in a messy process, but now I had hot liquor and wine that was pretty darn enjoyable.

I called out to the crowd, “Come on, line up. I have lamon slices to go with the hot wine, if you want one.”

“I’ll take the wine, chief,” Hudom said.

“All right, form two lines!” one of the men said.

“One drink at a time!”

By the time we were ready, there were already lines formed by those who knew the drill. We started serving the drinks.

“We always appreciate it.”

“Ahh... That puts hair on your chest.”

“Heh heh heh... Can’t beat this on a cold day.”

We continued serving the drinks until the man I had come here for came out.

“Can I trouble you for a cup too, sir?” The man wore a filthy wrap, and his hair was disheveled. While his face might have been handsome, he was completely unhygienic. He always called me “sir” and spoke in a weaselly manner.

“It hasn’t been too long since I last saw you. How have you been?” I asked.

“Really good, thanks to you. Can’t thank you enough.”

“Any problems you’re having lately?”

By this point, he had gotten his drink and come around to my side of the barrel to get out of the way of the line.

“Not much around here. Peaceful. You got us shelter, and even the folks that never really settled down ain’t complaining about a place to get out of the cold. Well, with this many people you always got a few scuffles, but Lible’s been working with us on that.”

“Good. I’m glad there’s no major issues.”

“Yeah. Thanks to you, sir.” The man took a sip of liquor and exhaled, his breath fogging in the air. He waited until the fog disappeared before adding, “Well, I got one piece of news. Just not from around here.”

“Oh? What happened?” I asked.

“The bar I told you about before. It’s been closed for a while, but it’s been turning out lots of bottles and food trash. There’s even more now—they’re leaving out trash every day, when it used to be every couple of days. Folks who get their meals from the trash were happy about it. Seeing that the bar’s taking shipments often, it looks like they might open up soon.”

“Really? I would love to stop by if they do.”

“So would I. And that’s about it around here. I’d just be talking about the snow otherwise.”

“That’s understandable, with how much snow we’ve had. Oh, speaking of...” At this point we had run out of liquor, so I let the crowd know and put the barrels away. At the same time, I produced a package via space magic. “It’s just leftovers from lunch, but if you want it... It’s hard, so be careful.”

“Thanks, sir. Us mice beastkin love anything with a crunch. I like your style. See you later.” He took the package, finished his drink, and sauntered off.

After a short time, we also ran out of wine, so the crowd dispersed. Now that I’d finished my detour, we headed for the North gate.

En route to the gate, Hudom asked, “Do you always hand out booze there, chief?”

“You’re asking me now?” He had helped me without saying anything, so I thought he knew.

“Well, I had heard that you did.”

“Oh, when you were investigating me,” I said. “I’ve done it quite a few times. And I have a couple of reasons for it. One of them is just to get the alcohol off of my hands.” My goblins were very passionate about this. Ever since they had developed a taste for alcohol, they’d started distilling it every day, as long as they had ingredients. Fatoma’s white liquor was easy for them to make and didn’t take long to mature, which left me with barrels of the stuff constantly. I had the drink slimes help consume them, even though I still had a good amount of the wine I had stockpiled for that purpose. “I didn’t want to just dump the stuff, especially since the goblins worked hard for it, so the barrels kept piling up.”

“Like a parent who keeps every drawing their kid has ever made.”

“I don’t know if that’s an accurate comparison, but that was one of the reasons. And do you remember the man I spoke to last?”

“I am technically your bodyguard,” Hudom said. “I stayed out of it because it was clear you knew each other. He’s on the job, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He’s a tipster. When I started a bunch of these projects, he was introduced to me by Lible. He said since he’d be busy, the man you saw today would know about almost everything that goes on in the city. He evidently has friends all over Gimul. His standard price is a drink and a meal. Depending on the type of information I ask for, I pay extra.”

“So you hand out the booze to everyone as a cover ?”

“Partially. It’s also that the former residents of the slums help get me that information indirectly. They work all over the city by picking up trash, for example. They all gather information, which passes to my informant. Then he passes the most relevant tips to me. In that sense, they are all informants, whether they know it or not. I wanted to thank them somehow.”

Hudom seemed to understand my sentiment. “Any new tips today?”

“Yes. Like we were talking about this morning, our enemy may be on the move.”

“You keep that close an eye on them?”

“It’s not perfect, but they were suspects from the beginning. Even when our objective is to maintain the status quo, there’s no reason not to keep an eye on them.”

“I think the term is entrapment... You’d make a much better investigator than I do, chief.”

“I’m pretty good at managerial work, but you’re much better at communicating with people. We’ve been working together lately, and I’ve seen you make friends with everybody.”

“You think so? I’m just being myself, really. It’s much easier than talking to nobles... Actually, there’s plenty of nobles who are much better at reading people and manipulating conversations than I am. It’s a prerequisite for them.”

“Ugh...” I was feeling sick just imagining having to hold a conversation in the midst of nobles. I wondered if Elia was doing all right. In fact, the duke and duchess could be attending balls and functions as we spoke. I couldn’t help but wish them luck.

The conversation was getting grimmer, so I changed the subject. “You were noble-born, weren’t you, Hudom? Do you know much about what goes on in high society? I’m oblivious to it.”

“I practically ran away, so not much about the past few years. I could tell you about things that happened up to my student years... And it depends on the topic.”

“The topic...” I contemplated. “Anything would be news to me, and I’m curious. Well, can you think of any house that might hold a grudge against Duke Jamil regarding a fire?”

Hudom hesitated for a beat. “Why do you want to know?”

“Carrying on from our conversation this morning, I was wondering why the enemy chose arson as their first method of sabotaging the city. I couldn’t shake it. It is possible that they didn’t care how they caused a commotion in the city, and there’s no guarantee the arson has anything to do with their identity, but...anyone come to mind?”

“I don’t know about a grudge, but one house that both has connections with the duke and is associated with fire would be the former Margrave Volcano.”

I’d never heard of that name. “By former, you mean...”

“Long story, but it was revoked, which makes him an earl. It had to do with Duke Jamil. Like I said, it’s a long story, but...”

We walked to the North gate as Hudom told me about Volcano. It made the wind bite colder and the night seem a little lonelier...