Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG

Chapter 179: Trust and Tensions

As time passed and the sun set, moon rising through the sky, I approached the guard outpost that housed my last use of the Arcane Spell Crystal. Last up was Gravity Well, something with a unique enough effect that I was pretty interested in seeing the different directions the Upgrade options took it.

By the time I saw the outpost appear through the trees, it was around ten at night. From what I knew of these guys, that meant they’d still probably be up for another half hour, maybe another hour. So I’d just have to wait for a little until then, and then I could head in and take it without any problems.

At some point during travel, I got far enough away from Ainash that the Bond disconnected until we got closer together again, meaning the extra Stats were stripped away from me for the time being. It caught me off-guard when it happened, but I could still function without them. And our telepathic communication wasn’t something that required the Bond to be in place to function—though it certainly took more effort to talk over long distances—so that wasn’t cut off. Still, it felt like I was operating with a piece of me missing.

Slowly, I approached the guard outpost, keeping an ear out for their loud voices. But I didn’t hear them. Last two times I was here at this time, they were drunk or playing cards, shouting at each other about this and that. Strange to not hear them. So I crept closer. Maybe they were already asleep?

But as I got close enough to touch the outer wall, I finally heard them. Hushed whispers. What were they talking about?

I listened even harder, ear up against their shut window. And I heard…

Jannin sat around a table with Bon and Poppins, discussing the news they’d recently gotten.

“W-what do we even do about this…?” Poppins muttered.

“It’s obvious what we do about it!” Bon said, snarl on his face. “We report the bastard! I can’t believe there’s even a question here.”

Jannin rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Bon? Report him to the Empire? Yeah, sure, why don’t we just bow down to Etrin at that point?”

“It’s not about that damned emperor, it’s about doing our duty. We have a job. We protect the people. If there’s some criminal out there, killing civilians, we obviously have to keep them safe. We have information, we give it to the authorities. They can do what they want with it.”

“We are the authorities, dumbass!” Jannin argued. Did this guy not understand what he was saying? “It’s up to us to decide whether or not to report it. And I say we don’t. He’s probably just some random political opponent to the Empire, someone threatening Etrin’s oh-so-precious power. They’re lying to get rid of him.”

“Why would they do that? If they wanted him gone, they’d have gotten rid of him. Listen, they said the kingdom’s fugitive would have most likely come through this very mountain pass in a single week’s timeframe. And guess what? Those people did exactly that. They said it’d be a man, a woman, and a monster. That was them. They gave physical descriptions, and they fit them.”

“Annor didn’t. And the monster was a little different, too.”

“Annor was wearing a flamin’ suit of armor the whole time! We don’t know what he looked like! They’re obviously the fugitives. And since they lied to us about their identities, that proves they’re trouble. Why lie if you aren’t guilty?”

“Maybe because they know idiots like you exist?” Jannin slapped his hand on the table. “Idiots who follow everything the Empire says, idiots who don’t think for themselves? All that proves is they knew they couldn’t trust you. A pretty accurate observation, if I say so myself. You clearly don’t know your left from your right.”

“Don’t know my left from my—man, go to Hell! You’re just so swept up with hating everything related to the Empire, you forget that there are people here! People we’re charged to protect! If there’s even a chance this guy’s no good, we need to do something about it! And there is a chance! We know for a fact he’s no good, in fact! You saw him, you talked to him, you’re really comfortable letting a guy like that live with the innocents?!”

“Oh so it all comes down to that huh?” Jannin said, completely exasperated. “You’re pissed that the guy beat you in a fight, and so you wanna kill him.”

“I didn’t ever bring that up.”

“But you were thinking it! We all know you’re a flamin’ crybaby who can’t stand to get your flamin’ ego challenged. Apparently, you can’t stand it so much that you’re willing to abandon what I thought you held important. Seriously? Trusting the Empire? Siding with the Empire?! When we got sent out here, we made a promise. We knew refusing to serve that false emperor, that murderer Etrin would get us in trouble. But we said we’d never abandon our ideals. We’d never trust what that bastard said! But here you are, the moment someone you don’t like is relying on you to keep that promise, you throw it all out! You throw our promise out! If Annor’d said he thought Empress Lyra deserved to live, would you’ve gone and pissed on her grave, too?!”

Bon stood from his seat, rage on his face. “You don’t know what in the flames you’re talking about! We know he’s a shithead, we know he assaults people for no reason, we know he’s an egotistical son of a whore who doesn’t deserve anything but what’s coming to him! It’s fact!”

Jannin stood too, eager to talk some sense into this dumbass. “It ain’t shit! It’s you believing what you wanna believe because the thought that maybe you did something wrong is just so hard for you to believe!”

“Hey, g-guys, let’s calm down, okay?” Poppins said, quiet voice calming in the room slightly.

Jannin huffed sat back down. “I’m just tryin’ to show this man what he’s doing. Who he’s lying his allegiances with.”

“I think we should go over what we know for sure,” Poppins said. “We let someone through here a couple days ago. He passed a Truth Stone test giving us his identity, and went on his way. Now, we’re being told that, if we had someone come through during that range of days who fit a certain description, it’s possible that person could be a fugitive of the Kingdom, so we should report it in.”

“Yeah, a description that those people perfectly fit,” Bon said with a scowl.

Jannin scoffed. “And so they just somehow passed the Truth Stone test saying information that directly contradicts our theory?”

“Tests can be faulty! You know that!”

“It was a test that you administered, Bon! If it was faulty, that’s your fault!”

“Listen, guys,” Poppins said, hand out as if to calm two wild animals. “What we don’t know is what he did to deserve this.”

“We do! The report said it. Uh…” Bon shuffled through the pages of Message Paper on the table in search of the one that held the details. Once he found it, he held it up and read off, “‘Mass murder, evading law enforcement, and deliberately antagonizing Demonkind into launching an assault on the Overworld.’”

Jannin rubbed his eyes with his palms. “Bon, how do you know they’re telling the truth? These bastards lie all the flamin’ time!”

“So,” Poppins continued, “let’s go over the possibility. It’s possible that, first off, this is just a coincidence, right? I mean, technically, it could be the case that Annor has nothing to do with this fugitive, and they were just in the wrong case at the wrong time.”

Bon shook his head. “Flamin’ unlikely.”

“It could also be possible that Annor is who they’re talking about, and the Empire is lying to us. The Kingdom said nothing of the sort to them, and the Empire just wants this man dead for some other reason. Like Jannin said, he could be some sort of political opponent to Etrin, or someone who holds information they don’t want to get to the populace for fear of starting a rebellion.”

“Yeah,” Jannin said, “and I’m not sellin’ this guy out in that case. No matter how much you disagree.”

“It could also be a similar situation with the Kingdom. Perhaps they’re lying, and this man has nothing to do with the Demons at all. The Kingdom just wants to keep him from entering the Empire. And finally, the Demons could be lying. Perhaps they’ve deceived the Kingdom in some way into believing this man is a villain, when in reality they want him dead for selfish reasons. Maybe they wish to enact a full-scale takeover of the Kingdom, but for whatever reason, they can’t while this man is alive.”

“Yeah,” Jannin nodded. “Poppins, you get it. Almost certain that someone is lying here. And whoever that someone is, I’m not helping them kill some random guy.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘almost certain,’ but it’s completely possible. Which is why I think we should think through our options before acting.”

“There’s nothing to think about!” Bon said. “You keep going on and on about how we should slow down and think, but that’s probably all this ‘Annor’ guy wants us to do! Mass murderer freak would love to get more time to kill more innocents! How are you talking about protecting an innocent life when there are hundreds—thousands—of lives that you’re abandoning as we speak?!”

“Oh, yes, forgive me for questioning the infallible Emperor Etrin,” Jannin said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “The man we all know has done nothing wrong. I never knew you were such a fan!”

“Don’t you dare—” Bon growled.

“Guys, guys,” Poppins attempted to quiet the room again, but Jannin wasn’t listening.

“I mean, if I’d known you liked Etrin so much, Bon, I’m not sure if I’d have shared my doubts about him in the first place. I’ve been so curious for all these years about who in our guard platoon must have sold us out for ‘conspiring’ against the new murderer of an emperor, but maybe I forgot to consider the man closest to me! The man I thought I could trust!”

Bon leapt from his seat again, ignoring Poppins’s continued attempts to calm them down. “Don’t you dare accuse me of something like that! You know—”

“I know what, Bon?! That you protect the innocent? That you care about justice? That you understand the dangers of working with the Empire? I thought I knew a lot of things about you before now, but it seems like lots of your true feelings are being revealed.”

“This isn’t about that! It isn’t about flamin’ politics! It’s about doing our job, even if that means making a tough choice.”

Jannin laughed bitterly. “Tough choice. Yeah, right. This is a tough choice for you? As if you wouldn’t absolutely love it if this Annor guy turned out to be some asshole. As if it wouldn’t make your flamin’ day if Annor got executed for some crime he didn’t commit. You keep rambling on about justice and duty, while you’re the one trying to break all the rules to kill some innocent man who did nothing wrong but beat you in a fight! This is the easiest choice in the world for you, Bon! You don’t like someone, so you want to kill them. It’s tyrannical. You’re abusing your power, and I refuse to stand by it. Same as I refused to stand by Etrin when he abused his.”

“Don’t compare me to that monster!” Bon reached for his sword.

Poppins’s arms broke out between them over the table, forcefully pushing them each back.

“Enough!” He screamed, voice quivering with anxiety. “This arguing won't solve anything. Just…let’s take a night off, or something. Bon, I’m sure a single day won’t make a difference. Take some time, sleep on it, and maybe we can try and find some more information tomorrow.”

Once again, the room fell silent, the weight of their disagreement suffocating the very air they breathed. Both Jannin and Bon glared at each other, their chests heaving with anger.

Finally, Bon took his hand off the hilt of his blade. “I’ve had enough of these insults. Not wasting another second with a couple of morons who can’t see reason. You can go to Hell, I’m gonna go take a flamin’ piss.”

With that, he stormed through the door, and Jannin could hear his boots crunching against the leaves outside as he walked off.

Jannin sighed, feeling as though he let out a breath he’d been holding for years, and fell back into his chair. The old wood of the furniture scraped against the stone floor as he sunk his weight into it.

“What in the flames are we gonna do now, Poppins?” he muttered.

“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “I knew Bon didn’t like Annor—I’m not entirely fond of the man, myself. But that felt…”

“Hey!” a muffled shout came from outside.

“Bon?” Jannin looked over in the direction it came from, and rushed to open the window. Through the dark, he could barely see Bon’s figure rushing off into the trees.

Poppins walked over to the window, too, shouting out, “Bon! What’s going on?”

“I found him!” Bon looked and yelled back, voice shaking in excitement and nervousness. “That damned monster! I got him! He was listening to us! If that doesn’t prove we need to turn him in, I don’t know what does!”

Jannin couldn’t see anything, like Bon wasn’t pointing at anything. But as he focused on the imagine more, he slowly realized that it wasn’t that Bon wasn’t pointing at anything, it was that he was pointing at nothing. Like a patch of nothingness, pure darkness, standing in the forest.

Then, the patch of darkness waved, and a voice came from it. A familiar voice.

“Uh, hey guys. I think we just need to talk this through.”