After finishing his investigation, Souta went to the surface. He went to the pub, the meeting place of the three.
He was alone. Alice and Eztein haven't arrived yet so he decided to listen to the rumors first.
"Hey, have you heard about it?"
"What?"
"The news!"
"It's circulating fast."
"The guards have captured the culprit."
"For real?!"
"Yeah, a lot of people are talking about it for now."
"Huuuu~ I'm glad that they captured the culprit. I'm afraid that I would get cursed soon, for real."
The drunkards were talking nonstop and Souta picked up a lot of interesting rumors. The one that caught his attention was the culprit.
The guards captured the culprit?
It feels impossible so he wanted to verify if it was true or not.
'I should wait for the others to arrive.' Souta said inwardly before he drank a mug of beer.
Suddenly, the door of the pub was slammed open causing all the people inside to turn their heads.
Bang!
Souta looked and saw that it was Alice. He was about to call her when saw said, "Souta, come here. I need to talk to you."
She sounded serious so he didn't ask her any more questions. He just stood up and left a few coins on his table before he left.
...
The two went to the alley where there were no people that could eavesdrop on them.
"What's wrong? Did you discover something important?" Souta asked.
"No, I didn't find anything outside the dukedom." Alice shook her head. "But have you heard about the culprit being captured by the guards?"
"Yep, I just heard it from the people in the pub. What's with it? Is this rumor true?" Souta raised his eyebrows.
"No, but the one they captured was Eztein. They thought that he was the curse user that is murdering the citizens of Halbun in an unusual way." Alice said.
"Wait! What?! Haven't we just arrived in this city a week ago so how could they suspect us?" Souta asked.
"They didn't want to listen to any sort of excuses."
"It means that they wanted to make him the scapegoat for this case to calm down the citizen." Souta realized it quickly.
Since the murder was happening for a long time, the citizens of Halbun were secretly terrified about it. After all, the culprit didn't differentiate any victims of the curse and just kill anyone. If this continues most of the citizens would migrate to other lands to continue their peaceful lives.
"Should we rescue him immediately or not?" Alice asked.
"No, we'll wait for a while. I'm sure that Eztein can handle it." Souta suddenly recalled something. He narrowed his eyes and said, "But if the guards captured him, they will know that Eztein came from Athen's Champion."
"Eztein had the emblem hidden in his clothes. The guards will naturally find it as long as they thoroughly check his clothes." Alice said.
"Yeah, let's wait for that. If the guards ignored the emblem then they were in cahoots with the real culprit." Souta nodded.
The emblem of Athen's Champion couldn't be ignored by people from this land. After all, the Dukedom of Halbun was within the jurisdiction of Olympus. They knew the powerful legions of gods and Athen's Champion was within the top legions.
"The culprit will soon discover that the Athen's Champion is investigating this case. It will be hard to move at that time." Alice said.
"No, it's the opposite. If the culprit had some plans with this dukedom then he will make haste after he discovered the emblem of Athen's Champion." Souta said.
"I understand." Alice nodded.
"Okay, let's observe for a while."
The two left and they exchanged information about their investigation. Alice found nothing outside the city and Souta told her about the Tomb of the Creep Lord inside the sewers.
According to his investigation, the culprit should be one of the treasure hunters that got the inheritance of the Creep Lord. The inheritance from a powerful Ten Shackles Realm expert wasn't something that they could underestimate. They should be careful in dealing with it.
...
On the next morning...
Souta noticed a strand of dark green energy around his energy field. It was trying to corrupt his monster orb.
"I'm cursed... I couldn't even remove it."
He was surprised to find that he was cursed. He thought that he would be able to successfully repel all the cursed energy in those three objects but it seems that he underestimated those objects.
'It's not fatal for me. The curse is strong but it's still not enough to fully contaminate my body.' Souta said inwardly after he observed the curse in his body.
Compared to the people who died because of curses, he was several times more powerful than them. His resistance was naturally higher so he wouldn't die easily. Plus, this curse was corrupting his monster orb so people that suffered the same curse would have their mana pool corrupted.
'I can easily suppress it with my best feram. But I shouldn't let my guard down.'
Souta stood up from his bed and wore his clothes. He then went downstairs to have his breakfast.
Alice joined him and both of them have breakfast at the same time. After that, the two went outside to gather more information.
What they discovered was that the higher-ups wanted to execute Eztein. Everyone thought that Eztein was the culprit behind the cursed incidents.
"They are going to execute Eztein...?" Souta muttered while reading the newspaper.
"They are really going at it," Alice commented.
Souta read the details of execution. "Hmm... So they are going to execute him in the colosseum. Eztein is going to fight other prisoners until he collapses and died."
There were other S-rank prisoners too so Eztein was going to fight all those people alone. It was an unusual way of execution.
"When?" Alice asked.
Souta glanced at her and said, "Six days from now. It looks like the culprit knew that Eztein belongs to Athen's Champion and is waiting for us to rescue Eztein."
"So are we going to rescue him?" Alice asked.
"Nope, we're staying low for these upcoming six days. We are going to watch the execution." Souta explained to her.
He didn't doubt Eztein's battle prowess. He was sure that Eztein could dismantle other S-rank easily. After all, he was already at the peak of S-rank and was on the verge of breaking a shackle.
Those people really thought that they could kill Eztein like that.
They were wrong.
Souta planned to stay on the sideline until those people moved personally when they realize that they couldn't kill Eztein.
"We still have six days... We should improve our battle power in this amount of time." He said to Alice.
Alice simply shrugged her shoulder as she already expected it. For her, if Souta has a lot of time he would simply expend it on training.
Soon, the two went inside Saya's inner consciousness. They used the time to fully train everything that they could improve.
They didn't even leave the inner consciousness and just immersed themselves in training their power level and combat skills.
Just like that, six days had passed quickly.
It was already time for Eztein's execution.
Souta and Alice exited Saya's inner consciousness. Their aura around their bodies was stronger than before. It was suffocating especially for Souta which had best feram.
Huff...
Souta took a deep breath and suppressed the lingering aura around him. He once again got stronger. He was sure that he was in the top ten strongest third evolution monsters in the entire Imperium.
He stretched his arm and observed it. 'Except for those two unique monsters, I should be at the top three right now.' He said inwardly.
The two unique monsters that he was talking about were the monsters that grew famous in the game. The first time that those monsters appeared was just in the second evolution but they evolved quickly and became a well-known monsters.
When those two reached the level of monster lords, their fame was comparable to the three kings of monsters.
Just like Bargan who was invincible at his power level, those two unique monsters were the same.
'Well, well, well,' Souta smiled to himself and shook his head.
He went out of the inn with Alice and after walking for a few minutes the two arrived at a huge colosseum.
The colosseum could accommodate thirty thousand audiences. A lot of people were already here to watch the show. They wanted to see the person behind the cursed murders going around the dukedom.
"There are too many people..." Alice said in a low voice.
"Yeah," Souta nodded at her words.
If a battle broke out here, then a lot of people would die since most of them were just ordinary citizens with low power levels. Just a release of his best feram would be enough to knock down thousands of people at the same time.
"It's going to start."
