Chapter 146: Examination

I opened my eyes, finally done with my choices. Erani, sitting on the floor, seemed to be still working through hers, and Ainash was keeping herself occupied exploring the small outpost. She was currently in the kitchen area, poking and prodding at the various foods and appliances, much to the annoyance of Bon, who was watching her intently.

But he glanced over when he saw me with my eyes open, and took a breath. “Okay, you ready to answer some questions? I’ll get the Truth Stone.”

“Yep, I’m ready,” I nodded. I’d taken some time to speak with everyone through the silent communication of Ainash—and mentally communicating with Index to ensure my plan would work—and it seemed like I might be able to work through this.

“Great, be right back.” Bon stepped through the door to their sleeping quarters, disappearing for a moment while I waited in the main room with everyone else.

“Father, mother says to tell me if there is question you cannot get past. If happens, will tell mother and we will escape! I will kill all the Humans!”

“Did mother tell you to say that last part?”

“...No.”

“Okay. Don’t kill all the Humans, even if we escape.”

“What if they are mean?”

“Even if they’re mean.”

“My name is Humanslayer! Dragon gave me that name! Have to kill at least some Humans.”

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t believe I had to argue with her on this. “Just ask mother if you’re allowed to kill any Humans, and you can talk about it with her. I’m going to be busy soon.”

“Okay!”

I glanced over at Erani and watched as her face shifted into one of exasperation as Ainash no doubt messaged her with the same fervor as she was speaking to me with. As I held  back my laughter at that, the door from the sleeping quarters opened again, and Bon walked out, a small, round stone in his hand.

“Alright,” he said as he sat down in a chair at the small table, “go ahead and turn yourself around so we face each other.”

“Sure,” I nodded, trying to hide my nervousness.

He watched me situate myself and smiled. “First time taking a Truth Stone test?”

“Uh, yeah,” I chuckled, “just worried about false positives or whatever.”

“Nah, nah, these things aren’t faulty,” he said. “You’d have to be a flamin’ mastermind of self-deception to get past it. Would probably need your entire life to train yourself to get them to spit out anything but the correct answer—whether that’s tricking it into thinking you’re lying, or into thinking you’re telling the truth. It goes off what you’re thinking, yourself. So as long as you know you’re answering truthfully to the questions being asked, you’ll pass just fine.”

I took a breath and nodded. “Right, right.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty much just a formality anyway, but we’re required to say whether we used a Truth Stone when giving our reports back to headquarters, and they’d be pretty flamin’ mad if they knew we shirked our duties like that by not questioning you lot properly.”

I nodded again. “It’s fine. Should we go ahead and start?”

“‘Course. So, I’ll just put the stone on the table and ask you a question, and all you have to do is put your hand on the stone when you answer. Although, uh, the System needs to see your body touching it, so your armor…” he gazed at the Dark Plate still covering my body.

“Mm, shouldn’t be a problem. Objects pass right through it. See?” I reached up and grabbed his hand, and as I said, his body went straight past the armor and touched my hand as though the armor was just an illusion.

“Woah…” he said, gazing down at it. “I didn’t even know there was an Enchantment that did that.”

“Well, like I said, it’s stuck on me, so I wouldn’t be able to eat otherwise,” I laughed.

“Man, you are one weird group of people,” he shook his head. “Anyway, just be sure you show me your hand when you’re touching the stone, so I can see it passing all the way through the armor like you said it would.

“Sure,” I said.

He reached out and dropped the palm-sized rock in the middle of the wooden table with a thunk. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pencil and some paper. “Okay, you ready?”

I nodded, sending a mental message to Index.

“Great.”

**********

Erani sat on the floor of a small, cramped outpost. She watched as Arlan, in his still kind of scary Dark Plate, sat across the table from that Bon guy. They went over how everything worked, and then began.

“So, to start off, could you tell us a lie, just to ensure the Truth Stone works? Let’s see…when I ask you what color your skin is, just tell me it’s blue, alright?”

“Sure.” Arlan reached out and picked up the Truth Stone, turning his hand over to show that it was, indeed, passing through his armor and touching his skin.

“Okay. What color is your skin?”

“Blue.”

As expected, the Stone lit up bright red, shading the entire stone outpost in its crimson hue. Arlan, who was obviously not expecting it to be so bright, turned his face away in surprise. If the circumstances weren’t so secretly tense with the lies they were about to get away with, Erani would have even thought it was cute.

But she couldn’t ruminate on that nice feeling for long, as the moment the Stone dimmed down, Bon spoke again.

Okay, great. Keep the stone in your hand just like that. First question, tell me your name, age, place of birth, that sort of thing.” Bon asked.

Erani held her breath, knowing that this would be the moment that decided whether they’d be able to enter this country, or if they’d be chased out for being fugitives of the Demons.

“My name is Annor Ton, I’m twenty-four, and I actually come from an unnamed village in the Koinkar Kingdom, but it’s near Waterinn, if you know that town.”

“I don’t.”

“Oh, well it’s a bit southeast of here, few days’ travel from Kingdom’s Edge. Or, my bad, you guys call it Empire’s Edge, right?”

Pretty much everything Arlan had just said was a lie. Waterinn was technically a town that existed—and it was where he said it was—but it wasn’t even close to where Arlan was born. And of course there was the fake name and age. They’d spoken and agreed that they should probably increase their ages, since being as high-Level as they were in such a short time was, if not impossible, at least notably rare. It signaled that they’d obviously gotten their Levels in an extremely risky, life-threatening way. But these lies were completely blatant. In any normal scenario, the Truth Stone would have absolutely no issues with detecting the flagrant falsehoods—Arlan knew his own name, age, and place of origin, so he’d know he was lying. That was all the Stone needed to activate.

But it sat inert in his hand, doing absolutely nothing at all. Not even a hint of that bright red light.

Unsuspecting of any foul play, Bon, nodded and jotted down the information on his notepad. “Okay…Waterinn, spelled with two ‘n’s?”

“Yep.”

“Great. Next question, why did you come to the Barinruth Empire? And why through a passage so dangerous as Empire’s Edge?”

“Well, you’ve heard of the Demon invasion, right? We,” Arlan gestured to Erani, “were neighbors who fled from Waterinn together when it happened. With all the death and destruction…Well, we knew we didn’t really have any other choice but to leave the whole kingdom. Especially as time went on and it became more and more obvious that the kingdom wasn’t going to do anything to repel them. Kingdom’s, er, Empire’s Edge was the nearest escape route, and the Demons pretty much said that running away from them meant the death penalty, so we took the fastest way out as possible.”

“You just decided to walk through the mountain range? I can’t imagine doing something so dangerous.”

“You can’t?” Arlan frowned. “I thought you said you guys were high-Level.”

“Well, yes, we’re obviously very high-Level. Don’t try anything. But the Dragons are still deadly for anyone.”

“Oh, right, yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“Anyway, next question,” Bon moved on, continuing the interrogation with Arlan giving the answers that Erani had been preparing with him through Ainash, creating fake identities and backstories for each of them to try and distance themselves from the identities that would undoubtedly get them kicked out of Barinruth and thrown to the Demons.

While this went on, Erani just sat back and went over her own Status. She’d gone up to Level 20 from the previous fight, herself, with the help of the absolutely massive Bond she had with Ainash. That meant she had a Talent Choice, and her third ever Spell Choice. But she just…wasn’t in the space to think all of that over. She hadn’t even opened them up. But still, glancing over the numbers gave her something to do as she sat in the chair, gazing at nothing.

Numbers, numbers, numbers. At least they’d gone up.

She’d gotten three Levels from that Xhag’duul Demon dying, which had given her the Devastator Title. Arlan had gotten exactly that a while back, when they’d blown up the barricade back in the forest. It apparently raised all XP gained from kills she contributed to by 25%. The theorist in her wanted to do tests on whether that was additive or multiplicative with Arlan’s duplicate Title, but she just couldn’t muster up the energy right now. She hadn’t even mentioned getting the Title to anyone, yet.

Erani even had one last free Rank she could assign to one of her Spells from getting to the most recent even Level—20—but she didn’t have any place to put it. Sorcerers got them every 2 Levels, making up for their relative lack of utility with extreme specialization, but with both Angelic Shield and Firebolt at their respective limits, Erani would need a Spell Crystal to advance further. Though Firebolt at least had some more room for extra Spell XP. That was where she’d put all of her previous free Ranks, so the Spell’s Rank in terms of XP cost was still only 10, whereas the thing already had the power of a Rank 19 Spell.

Firebolt Rank 19
+Explosive Firebolt

School: Fire

Type: Activated

Cost: 58.7 Mana

—

Shoots a small ball of fire that travels up to 75.5 paces, exploding when it collides with something. Deals up to 198 damage, depending on where it hits, on a direct collision with a being.

Firebolt explodes upon impact, damaging and knocking back all beings within 5 paces, with severity depending on how close they are to the source of the explosion.

As she looked over her Status sheet, she was extremely careful to avoid looking at one specific part of it.

You are dismembered.

No. No. Absolutely not. Do not think about it.

“Hey, uh, lady,” a voice said, and Erani instantly jumped on the opportunity to break herself out of her thoughts, looking up at the speaker—the Paladin of the three, Jannin. He continued, “want some water or something? You look thirsty.”

“Sure,” she nodded, blinking and taking a breath in an attempt to clear her mind.

Jannin walked over to the kitchen area, where Ainash was still exploring the various foods and utensils there. Currently, she was looking at her reflection in a metal spoon, turning it around and watching how her face warped in the steel. He turned to squeeze past the monster that stood a head taller than him, clearly extremely cautious of the spiked whip and flaming embers floating up from her eyes—a reaction to the cute little thing that Erani felt was extremely unjustified. How could anyone really find her scary, when she was acting like that? It was adorable.

“You good with created water?” Jannin asked, reaching into a cabinet that contained a few large pitchers of clear liquid. “I know some people think it’s gross.”

“No, no, created is fine. Did you make it yourself?”

“Hm?” He looked up from the mug he was pouring the water into.

“That healing Spell you used on Ar, Annor was Apostle’s Blessing, right?” She stuttered for a second over Arlan’s fake name, but Jannin didn’t seem to notice, instead seeming to just be surprised Erani somehow knew the Spell he cast. “Paladins get it at Level…5? And from that path I’m pretty sure depending on your Level 10 Spell, your Level 15 Spell can be Waterwhirl, right? And even if you don’t pick that, there are other paths you can go down that offer Hydroblast and Hydrosurge—or maybe it was Hydrolash? I’m not sure, I really do need to get to a library and remind myself. A-anyway, I just assumed you may have had one of those, and were using it to create the water.”

“Wow. Uh…you really do your homework, huh?” Jannin laughed awkwardly. “...Why do you know such a weird amount about my Class?”

Erani frowned. “It’s not about you. I’m just prepared.”

“Uh huh.” He continued pouring the water. “Well, no, I didn’t create it. I don’t have those Spells. We get it sent to us from that nearby town. It’s apparently, like, a day’s trip or something, but I guess they can spare sending some sub-Level-5 Wizards out here to make us our water ration every week.”

“Huh,” Erani mused. “Feels like it’d be pretty useful to have out here, and you may as well pick it up if you’re getting to the 25s, maybe 30s, anyway. Do you have a specific build in mind? Most Paladins I’ve heard from say Apostle’s Blessing is a pretty popular path to go down, did you go with Angel’s Mercy for the full half-Cleric, half-Melee-Type sort of build? I know that’s a common option. And then Destroy Evil is obviously also a solid choice.”

“...Listen, I’m just gonna get you some water,” Jannin said.

Why was he avoiding her questions? Was he hiding something? Maybe he was planning on betraying them, and so he wanted to keep her in the dark about what Spells he had. But then why wouldn’t he just lie and give her deliberately incorrect information to throw her off? Maybe—

Erani stopped herself. No. These were normal people, he was just getting her some water. She was the one being weird with her interrogating this random guy about his Class. Maybe he was just private with that sort of thing. She was obviously still in a bit of a survival mindset. Mentally, she reminded herself, these are not enemies. They are just people.

Jannin walked over and held out the mug of water for her. “Here.”

Erani reached out with her dominant left hand to take it and—

She stopped short when the limb that ended in a stump came into view. She froze.

After a numb moment, she was brought out of her stupor when she heard a strange sound. Looking up, she saw that Jannin was laughing. Not a loud, boisterous laugh, but a hidden chuckle. He stopped when she looked up at him.

Saying nothing, Erani awkwardly put her left hand—left arm—down and reached up with her right to grab the mug, feeling strange holding it in the wrong hand.

You are dismembered.

No.

Erani sipped from the mug, the cold water sliding down her throat. It felt nice. Almost nice enough to distract herself from the fact that she was still holding the mug in her non-dominant hand.

“Alright,” Bon said, and Erani looked over.

She’d somewhat lost focus of the ongoing interrogation, but it seemed like Arlan had gotten through without tripping the Truth Stone once. He sighed and leaned back—an action that could be simply attributed to him wanting to rest after having to lean forward with the truth stone presented in his hand in the middle of the table for so long, but Erani knew him well enough to tell it was more than likely out of a feeling of relief that his plan had actually gone smoothly.

Bon looked over at Erani and nodded his head over toward an open seat. “Okay, you’re next. Just wanna get your name and basic information, I won’t make you go through the whole explanation again.”

Unfortunately, Arlan’s plan was one that only actually worked for him. He got through this interrogation just fine with it, but Erani would have to do something different. Something that was definitely a bit riskier.

Erani nodded curtly and stood. Time for a test of her own.