Wizard: I am a goblin

Chapter 97 The Emerging Puzzle

After listening to the conversation between the priest and the man named Alphonse, Geb fell into deep thought.

Unexpectedly, this small town of Chifang has a complex web of intertwined interests behind it.

Piece by piece, the puzzle gradually takes shape—church, lord, guild.

Every faction has its own demands, and everyone has their own agenda.

And right at the center of this puzzle... is that damned manticore.

That is only a questionable existence of the manticore.

Gebu saw the peasant woman and child from the crowd walk past him and quickly ran over to stop them.

"What, are you going to insult me, a widow, too?" the woman said dejectedly, her face full of exhaustion. "Do as you please, but my husband is a good man... I don't care what Father Usa says."

The child didn't speak, covered the blood on his face until it dried, and looked at the halfling with sobs.

"Please accept my condolences, both of you," Gebu said with an innocent expression. "May I ask, you said your husband was killed by a manticore, did you see that terrible monster?"

The peasant woman shook her head, and the child nodded.

"Huh? You saw it?" Gebu looked at the child suspiciously. "Nobody else saw it, only you did?"

"I saw it...I..."

"Why are you yelling at the child? If you have something to say, say it to me." The peasant woman looked at Gebu with displeasure, shielding the child behind her.

Realizing his tone had been too harsh, Gebu changed his expression:

"Madam, I believe you. That priest is talking nonsense. Hunting wild animals and protecting farmers is the duty of the lord and the church. Otherwise, why pay so many taxes to support them, right?"

The peasant woman's expression softened somewhat.

"My whole family are devout believers, and we've never missed a single church service... It's so unfair that this happened to my family. My child is so young... How am I going to live like this...?"

The woman became increasingly aggrieved as she spoke, and her eyes reddened.

"Please accept my condolences." Gebu took a silver coin from his waist and handed it to the woman. "Buy some good food for the child; life has to go on."

The peasant woman hesitated for a moment, then took the silver coin.

"Thank you...Obak blesses kind-hearted people."

After offering the woman a few more words of comfort, Gebu suggested speaking to the child alone. The peasant woman agreed without much thought.

After taking the child aside, Gebu asked:

"Don't be afraid, little friend. Describe to me carefully what that manticore looked like."

"I went to deliver lunch to my father. I walked along the path on the hillside, and as I walked, I saw my father in the wheat."

"Where is this?" Geb asked.

"It's in that field to the left of the big white stone, behind which is a grove of trees," the child said. Gebu asked the child about the place names more carefully and roughly figured out the location of the wheat field.

"My dad saw that I hadn't brought any water, so he told me to go fetch some from the stream. I took my water bottle and walked away, over the hillside—to fetch water on the other side of the slope—and just then I heard a roar!"

The child finished speaking in one breath, his face turning red. He took a couple of breaths and then continued:

"...It was terrifying! It sounded like a lion roaring! I was so scared that I broke my water bottle. When I went to look for my dad, I saw something moving rapidly in the wheat field, and then it disappeared..."

"Then my dad... my dad... there was so much blood... my dad..."

Seeing that the child was about to cry, Gebu quickly came over to comfort him—he'd been coaxing children a lot lately and had gotten used to it.

"Good boy, you're very brave—let me ask you again, how long was it between when you heard the roar and when you climbed the hillside and saw the swaying in the wheat field?"

"...I don't know...I was scared, so I hid for a while before going up."

That's strange, Gebu thought. A manticore killing someone is a simple matter of a swoop, it wouldn't take so long. And why didn't it fly away? Why did it have to burrow into the wheat field?

"What kind of wounds did your father have? Like this?" Gebu gestured with three fingers, making a line across his abdomen. "Or like this?" He made a knife-like shape with his palm.

The child immediately burst into tears—Gebu realized that it wasn't appropriate to ask the child about this, so he called the mother over to confirm.

A deep scar marked the opening of her abdomen, revealing her intestines and internal organs spilling out onto the floor. That's how the woman described it.

No wonder the child was so frightened... it was quite terrifying.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, Gebu said goodbye to the mother and son.

He thought carefully about the information he had obtained: so the child had never seen the scorpion lion either.

Judging from the conversation between the two sides, neither the acting lord Alphonse nor Father Usa had questioned the existence of the manticore, but it seemed that neither of them had seen it with their own eyes.

This is so complicated... I need to pause and sort things out again:

First, the Salt and Iron Merchants Guild was forced to stay in Chifang Town because of the scorpion attack on the caravan members.

Father Usha, dissatisfied with the Merchant Guild's desire to do business with the Empire, spread rumors about the guild and prevented lords and the people from hunting manticores.

The acting lord, Alphonse, wanted to cooperate with the merchant guild, so he wanted to hunt down the manticores to curry favor with the dwarves.

Both sides wanted to kill the manticore, while one side refused to allow it—but no one had ever actually seen this "manticore".

The traces that Geb found in the attacked dwarven camp were from humans...

This Father Usha… is becoming increasingly suspicious, Gebu thought. Could it be that he really hired a group of bandits to impersonate manticores and harm people?

Just to stop caravans from moving forward? That's extreme. They're not even sparing farmers.

However, Gebu hadn't yet figured out how to use this information. After all, it was just a hypothesis, without any concrete evidence.

It seems that once the matter with the dwarves is finished, I will need to take some time to investigate thoroughly.

If there really are robbers impersonating scorpion lions, I might be able to find evidence and blackmail the priest into firing them.

This solved the problem of the "manticore," relieved the immediate crisis of the acting lord and the caravan, and also earned the priest's letter of recommendation.

There's even a chance you could get those 5000 gold coins!

A bloodless victory... wishful thinking. This plan is still in its infancy. We'll make further plans after we've dealt with the golem for Dulin.

Things have to be done one by one, and meals have to be eaten one at a time... Just thinking about this makes me hungry.

Seeing that it was getting late, Gebu stopped the laborers who were going home after work, and through a combination of coaxing and deception, negotiated a price and agreed to meet at the town square the day after tomorrow morning.

There were thirteen or fourteen people in total. Adding the carpenters we had arranged beforehand, there were seventeen or eighteen people in total. Including Gebu and Dulin, there were around twenty people in total.

Why hire more people? Because some people will definitely be absent for various reasons, so we need to leave room for backup in advance, otherwise we won't have anywhere to find replacements.

The donkey cart can be hired again tomorrow. Gebu was also hungry, so he took down the notice and went back to the inn to rest.

I entered the room and had just sat down when the door opened.

Who is it?

"It's me, Tani! Hurry, you can't hold it anymore!"

Gebu opened the door, and the little girl stood there, looking travel-worn, carrying a large plate of roast chicken, her steps trembling.

"Hurry up, I'm starving," Gebu said quickly.