Chapter 53: Mage vs Knight (2)
The knight’s face flinched noticeably before slowly flushing red. Though he had just spouted nonsense, he clearly didn’t like being called foolish.
“Rexy Litterson is an unsuitable analogy for this case. You don’t seem very good at assessing the situation, so at least hold your tongue.”
“That’s too harsh, ma’am!”
“Then sit properly and cooperate with the investigation. I didn’t call you here as a joke.”
Aracila stared at him with cold eyes. She could tolerate a few instances of rude behavior, but she had no intention of enduring it indefinitely.
Feeling the pressure, the knight hesitated before straightening his previously slouched posture.
Now that he finally seemed to be in the right mindset for questioning, Aracila asked her third question.
“Do you know what Sir Pattinson was doing on April 2nd of last year?”
“Uhm… back then…”
The knight rolled his eyes around, rummaging through his memory. A vague recollection surfaced.
“Ah! The commander gave us a day off, so we all went drinking together.”
“Did Sir Pattinson join as well?”
“Yes.”
“Until what time?”
“I don’t remember exactly… but Johnny left around ten. I remember because he told me he was leaving first.”
Finally, a useful testimony. Aracila leaned forward, her ears sharpening in focus.
“Did he leave alone? No companions?”
“Yes, alone. Johnny never liked entertainment, so he was always the first to leave.”
With this, Johnny Pattinson’s alibi was once again thrown into uncertainty.
Even when asked if anything seemed off about Johnny at the time, the knight simply scratched his head and shook it.
Subsequent interrogations yielded only similar responses.
Hopper’s testimony turned out to be the most valuable piece of information Aracila obtained from the witness questioning.
Meanwhile, after completing their investigation, the knights gathered in the commander’s office.
Seeing them crowding in with hands clasped behind their backs, Damian massaged his temple. It was obvious they had grievances and were here to protest.
“What is it?”
“Commander, we were subjected to unfair treatment at the Mage Tower today.”
“Explain in detail.”
At this, the knights hurried to express their frustrations about how the Mage Tower’s witness questioning was conducted.
“She spoke to us in an overbearing tone as if she were our superior.”
“She summoned me for questioning only to spend the whole time insulting knights.”
“They’ve already branded Johnny a criminal, and they mocked us for believing in him!”
Their words weren’t lies. They had indeed been treated that way, and there was a reason for it.
Aracila couldn’t interrogate every knight herself, so she had divided the work with other mages from the Mage Tower.
She and her junior, Rudy, had conducted proper interrogations, but about half of the remaining mages had not.
“Is this true?”
“Yes, it’s the absolute truth!”
“Commander, we must take Johnny’s case away from them immediately! Those damned mages are hopeless!”
The knights, filled with indignation, argued passionately. Damian, however, calmed them down and sent them away.
Agreeing with an agitated person would only fuel their emotions further.
Once his subordinates had left and the office had fallen silent, Damian sat alone, deep in thought.
Inside, he was growing increasingly angry.
“So much for a proper investigation.”
He had cooperated, trusting that they would handle it well if left alone, but now this had happened, naturally planting doubts in his mind about Aracila.
In any case, the fact remained that she had failed to manage the witness questioning properly, making him even more suspicious.
“Is she even doing her job right? This is why mages are…”
Clicking his tongue briefly, he swept his hair back. His smooth forehead was deeply furrowed.
—
As time passed, news of Johnny Pattinson’s accusation for using black magic spread beyond the initial circles.
The reactions from the mage and knight communities were starkly divided.
“That knight was clearly framed. Why would a knight resort to magic?”
“Casting sinister black magic curses is something mages do. If it were a knight, he would have challenged his enemy to an honorable duel instead.”
Naturally, the knights sided with their own.
“Tsk, what a pathetic sight. If he was that desperate, he should have come to the Mage Tower and begged to learn magic properly.”
“See? In the end, even they turn to magic when they’re in trouble. This just proves magic is superior to swords.”
The mages, on the other hand, had the opposite reaction.
A few took a neutral stance, but that didn’t last long.
An incident soon ignited the already tense atmosphere.
A fight broke out when knights from the Red Hawk Order and mages from the Mage Tower happened to dine at the same restaurant and got into an argument.
Fortunately, the brawl ended before anyone was killed, but both sides suffered serious injuries.
This clash turned the “Johnny Pattinson Black Magic Accusation” into a full-blown conflict between mages and knights as a whole.
The relationship between the two groups deteriorated rapidly.
Even before this, they could hardly be called friendly, but now it was worse than ever.
All eyes were now on the Mage Tower’s investigation results.
Whether Johnny Pattinson was declared guilty or innocent would determine which side would triumph in this ongoing battle.
As tensions reached their peak, something even more troubling landed on Aracila’s plate.
“Um, senior. I found out who the anonymous accuser is.”
Sally had worked hard to track down the identity of the informant.
“She’s a woman named Sisle… who works on 4th Street.”
The informant turned out to be a woman from the streets.
4th Street was known for its countless taverns. That was the polite way to put it, but it was obvious what kind of profession people working there were engaged in.
Seeing Sally’s hesitant demeanor, it was obvious.
‘There are already many people who don’t trust an anonymous accusation. If her identity is revealed, it will cause an uproar.’
Aracila let out a sigh as she ran a hand over her face.
People generally tended to distrust the words of those deeply involved in nightlife.
Moreover, Johnny Pattinson was well-known among his peers for disliking such activities. Just the revelation of the accuser’s identity might be enough to clear him of all charges.
Everyone would undoubtedly choose the knight with a good reputation over a woman from the streets.
“Keep the accuser’s identity completely confidential. No one besides us can know about this.”
“Yes, senior!”
Sally and Rudy nodded solemnly.
“And I’ll go meet this woman, Sisle, myself.”
“You’re going personally, senior?”
“Yes, I’ll go tomorrow.”
Aracila had never heard the name Sisle before. She wanted to know how this person knew about her and why she had sent the accusation letter.
Additionally, she was curious about why a woman from the streets would go out of her way to accuse a knight who was known to dislike nightlife.
However, she hesitated over whether she should inform Damian about this.
She had promised to be transparent, but she was worried about his reaction once he found out the accuser’s identity.
‘It’ll be troublesome if he tries to interfere.’
After thinking about it all the way home, she ultimately decided to keep her promise. If she didn’t say anything now, she might be accused of hiding something later.
“A woman from the streets is the one who accused Johnny?”
Upon hearing the accuser’s identity, Damian furrowed his brows. His obvious displeasure made Aracila quickly raise her hand.
“Enough. That’s all you need to hear.”
“……”
“I will conduct this investigation without any bias toward the accuser’s profession. So don’t add any unnecessary comments.”
Damian’s lips twitched. It was clear he had a lot of unnecessary comments he wanted to add.
“This information is for you alone, Damian. I’ve kept my promise, so you must keep yours as well. Understood?”
“……Understood.”
Though his expression and voice were filled with dissatisfaction, Aracila was satisfied with the fact that he had agreed.
He was a knight who constantly preached about honor, so she trusted that he wouldn’t break his word.
The next day, Aracila headed to Fourth Street.
At midday, the street was eerily quiet. It was only natural, as this area only became lively after sundown.
She entered an old wooden building and knocked on the door at the far left end of the second floor.
After knocking several times, she finally heard movement inside. Soon, a weary-looking woman opened the door.
“Who are you?”
“Hello, Sisle.”
Aracila greeted her with a bright smile. Seeing her, Sisle froze.
As she instinctively tried to shut the door, Aracila gently stopped it and spoke in a friendly tone.
“I know you sent an anonymous accusation letter to me. Could we talk for a moment inside?”
Sisle’s eyes wavered violently. Her hand, gripping the doorknob, trembled slightly as she stood there, unable to decide what to do.
Aracila patiently waited for her to make a wise decision.
Fortunately, after some hesitation, Sisle opened the door wider, allowing Aracila to step inside.
The room was bare, containing only a bed, a wardrobe, and a nightstand. It looked desolate, as if someone was preparing to leave soon.
As Aracila glanced around the room, Sisle anxiously asked,
“How did you find this place?”
“You wrote the letter with your left hand, but you signed the visitor log with the same left hand, using your real handwriting.”
“……”
The Tower required all visitors to sign a log upon entry.
Sisle had left the accusation letter in front of Aracila’s office but had carelessly written a fake name in the visitor log using her usual handwriting.
When the guard suddenly asked her to sign, she had been caught off guard and instinctively used her dominant hand.
“Did you find me just from my handwriting?”
“No, the tattoo helped too. There are a lot of eyes in the Tower.”
Aracila gestured toward the flower tattoo on Sisle’s wrist with a nod.
Although Sisle had covered her face carefully, she had carelessly exposed her hand while writing.
At that moment, a passerby had noticed her and later mentioned the distinctive flower tattoo to Sally, which allowed her to track Sisle down.
“Why did you send the accusation letter to me?”
Aracila asked bluntly.
Taking a deep breath, Sisle replied,
“Because you seemed like the most trustworthy person.”
“How do you know me?”
“I read an article about you winning the recent hunting competition.”
Sisle rummaged through the nightstand drawer and pulled out several newspapers featuring Aracila’s achievements.
“I thought that if it was a capable female mage like you, you’d be different from other men or knights. I believed I could trust you.”
Leaning against the window frame, Aracila studied Sisle.
Perhaps because of her nocturnal lifestyle, her face bore deep traces of exhaustion.
“How do you know that Sir Pattinson used black magic?”
“I saw it myself.”
“What’s your relationship with him?”
“He was a regular at the place where I worked.”
Aracila subtly masked her surprise.
A knight who claimed to be engaged, one so righteous that he wouldn’t even join his colleagues at a drinking table, was a regular at Sisle’s establishment?
This was a stark contradiction to his public reputation.
“I heard Sir Pattinson dislikes nightlife.”
When Aracila relayed what she had heard, Sisle let out a scornful laugh. It was an instinctive, uncalculated reaction.
“Well, he did keep his visits to our place a strict secret.”
“Then there’s no one who can confirm that you two knew each other?”
At Aracila’s sharp, probing question, Sisle flinched.
Her inability to refute it suggested that no one else knew about their connection.
As she anxiously bit her lip, she suddenly seemed to remember something and spoke.
“……I have proof that we knew each other.”
─── ･ ｡ﾟ✧: *. ꕥ .* :✧ﾟ. ───
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