Chapter 404:
False Rumors
“ER…WHAT SHOULD WE DO?” Piarre looked at my father and me in bewilderment.
“Flame is curing him, so we can’t move him,” my father explained.
Piarre nodded soberly and walked over to the bed to watch Flame cure the captain. Flame’s shuwaaa-shuwaaa noises echoed through the room. Juggy came out of his bewildered daze and paced around the bed, checking on the captain. I watched the two in amusement; it was a funny sight to see.
“Hey, Ivy, do you remember that rumor?”
“What rumor?”
I looked at my father and saw a grim crease between his brows. He seemed puzzled about something. Rumor…he must mean one of the rumors that caught our interest. But which one?
“You know, the one about the guild master and captain fighting? Don’t you remember?”
“Oh! I do remember. Wait…” I looked at the captain, enveloped inside Flame. He didn’t look like the sort of man who was healthy enough to get out of bed to fight with anybody, but that was a recent rumor. It didn’t make sense.
“The captain and the guild master are fighting? When did you hear people saying that?” Juggy asked us, looking worriedly at the captain.
“We heard it a little while ago when we were listening for rumors in the village.”
“So it’s pretty recent, then?”
“Yeah.”
Juggy frowned at the ceiling, and Piarre also fell into thought.
“That had to be a false rumor somebody planted.”
But who would even believe such a fake rumor? I mean, the villagers all knew the captain was sick. Wait…did they know? If they did, there was no way those ladies would have been spreading that made-up rumor. Whoa! So, do the villagers not know their captain of the watch is sick?
“Um, do the villagers know that the captain is sick, sir?”
“Of course they know… Wait a minute.” Piarre seemed a little distraught from my question.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just don’t remember what happened after we talked about announcing the news to the public. Why don’t I remember it?” Piarre looked at Juggy, but he only shook his head in response. Apparently, neither of them had any memory of making the news public.
“Summoning circles tone down any feelings of apprehension or danger. It’s possible that the summoning circle got rid of any anxiety people felt over the captain’s illness by making them forget about it,” my father said.
Piarre held his head in his hands. “How terrifying. How could it make us forget something that happened?”
“I know…” Juggy’s complexion was no better than Piarre’s. But then who leaked the rumor that the guild master and captain were fighting? And why did they do it?
“Um, sir, if you did hear that the guild master and captain were fighting—knowing full well that the captain was sick—what would you do?”
Is somebody trying to tell them something? No, maybe I’m overthinking things.
“Well, first of all, we’d ignore it,” Juggy said.
“Ignore it, sir?” I was surprised that they would do nothing.
“If we heard the rumor many more times, we would have to look into it, though. First, we’d find the source of the rumor. Then we’d find out whether or not the captain and guild master really were fighting. And in this case, since the captain is sick, we would immediately decide it was a false rumor.”
Now I get it. In that case, they’d only get more suspicious. A rumor like that would be easily proved false with just a minor investigation. And if they looked into the source of the rumor, they would surely find the culprit right away. Why would this person put themselves in so much danger just to spread a rumor? There must be something to it. Hm? Wait a minute. The adventurers in this village are all under a spell, and Zinal thinks the entire village watch is under it, too. So who would be able to check if a rumor was true under those conditions? Even if the same rumor came up again and again, wouldn’t they just leave it be?
“What’s up, Ivy? Got a theory about the rumor?” my father asked.
“I do. Mr. Juggy said they would look into a rumor if it came up more than once, but I was just thinking they probably wouldn’t do that if they were under the spell’s influence.”
“Oh, that’s right! The village watch and the adventurers were all under the spell, so they probably wouldn’t care about any of the rumors anyway.”
I knew it. So was our mastermind the one who spread that false rumor? Did they just throw around whatever stories they wanted, knowing full well that they wouldn’t be investigated? The rumor is recent, meaning our mastermind might still be in Hataka. But why did they spread this rumor? To plant the suggestion that the guild master and captain didn’t like each other? But I’ve heard that village and town leaders often butt heads, so it seems pointless…
I glanced at the captain in bed. He looked dead.
“Maybe they wanted to make people think the captain was feeling well?”
“Hm? Ivy, what are you talking about?”
“The reason why they spread that rumor. Maybe they didn’t want people to know he was on his deathbed, so they sent around a story that would imply he was perfectly healthy…”
It’s far-fetched, I know.
“Miss Ivy, do you think our mastermind is the one who spread the rumor?” Juggy asked.
I nodded. It just didn’t seem like the sort of story somebody would spread for the fun of it. Nobody wanted to be on the village watch’s radar.
But it just seemed too sloppy for the mastermind, spell or not. Wouldn’t they know the villagers would feel something was wrong? Would our mastermind, after such an intricately executed scheme, really make a careless error like that?
“Once the captain is cured, we’ll look into that rumor,” Piarre promised.
When I thanked him politely, he chuckled. I responded with a curious look, and he gave my hair a rough tousling.
“Dang, your hair’s a mess.”
“And whose fault is that?!” I glared at Piarre as I smoothed down my hair, but he just smiled back at me. “Oh, honestly.”
Knock, knock.
Everyone’s eyes shot to the door. Then we looked at the captain and realized how much trouble we were in. We were only supposed to feed him a potion; they couldn’t see him like this. What do we do? I looked at my father, then at Piarre and Juggy.
“Okay!” Juggy pumped his fist and went to open the door. An explanation would have been nice…
“Er, what should we do, sir?”
“Don’t worry, Juggy’s going to explain everything. Those nurses used to be adventurers, so they’ll probably understand.”
“They used to be adventurers?”
“Yes, and famous ones at that.”
“Sorry, they caught us in our lie, and I couldn’t hold them back.”
The door burst open and Nalgath came into the room apologizing. Then came Arly, a tired look on his face, followed by Juggy, smiling sheepishly. And lastly, the two nurses came into the room with angelic smiles. They approached the bed to check on the captain.
“Can you cure the captain?” Melisa asked my father worriedly.
“We think so.”
“I see.”
Melisa reached out toward the captain…then her hand stopped midair and returned to its former position. She probably wanted to hold his hand but couldn’t because Flame was surrounding his whole body.
“It’s all my fault. I didn’t know it was poison.”
Poison? Wait, so it’s not an illness?
“What’s going on?” Piarre asked Nalgath and Arly. Arly explained quietly that his father had received a heavy dose of poison.
“If Eche weren’t around, the poison would have killed him,” Nalgath said. Piarre froze stiff as stone.
The captain was almost poisoned to death? Flame can cure illness, but can it cure poison? Won’t that hurt it? Starting to feel worried, I moved closer to the captain’s bed. “Flame, are you okay?”
Flame’s body jiggled around the captain. I wanted to be supportive, but I also didn’t want my slime to get hurt.
“Don’t worry, Ivy, everything will be okay,” my father said, squeezing my hand. “Flame would never do anything to make you sad.” His reassuring words made my hand relax in his. “Ms. Melisa, Ms. Eche, please tell us everything you know.”
The two women nodded.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login