Chương 58: (57) 2.10. Talk About Bad Timing

"Okay, so I'm with you on the part involving the rope and candle wax, but I think we should revisit your idea with the wicker furniture," Vin said, frowning at their hastily drawn diagram Shia was scratching into the stone floor with his knife.

"I just don't think we'll be able to muster up enough force to turn it into shrapnel."

"I told you, let me worry about the explosion," Shia repeated, patting her bag of magic seeds lovingly.

"I got everything I need right here. Now Alka, you remember your part of the plan?"

"I mean, I think so. But I still don't know if I can make a fire big enough to-" The three of them froze as their guard who had been giving them strange looks for the past hour finally stepped aside, allowing the elder into the room.

"Thank you Fredrock, I can take it from here," she said, patting the grown man on the arm like he was a young child.

"Elder," he nodded, punching his fists together before leaving. The elder walked over to them, raising an eyebrow at the crude scratches marred into her once pristine floor.

"Dare I even ask what the three of you are doing?"

"Probably for the best you don't," Vin said, his face heating up. Despite how worried he was about Scule, he couldn't help but feel like his grandmother had just caught him drawing on her walls in permanent marker.

"Then I suppose I won't," she said, the hint of a smile flickering across her weary face. Sighing, she gingerly took a seat, gesturing for the three of them to join her. Sharing a quick nod, Vin and Shia sat across from her, and even Alka decided to join them. The elder looked at the three of them carefully, as though weighing something in her mind. Vin didn't know what her investigation had consisted of, but for the first time since he'd met her, the elder actually looked her age for once.

After a few seconds of tense silence, the three of them each on the edge of their seats, she finally spoke.

"Toby is dead, and according to our head warrior who I had look at the body, he died to poison," she stated, her face utterly blank.

"…poison that got into his body via a few small wounds near the bottom half of his leg." Vin's heart sank and Shia gasped, her hands covering her mouth. He still wanted to believe in Scule, but that evidence was pretty damning. Though while the two of them recoiled at the news, Alka merely crossed her arms.

"So?" The Slayer said, looking rather unimpressed.

"I can think of five different monsters off the top of my head that would fit that method of killing. Hate to say it, but that doesn't prove squat."

"Not the words I would use, but my sentiment exactly," the elder agreed to Vin's surprise.

"Unfortunately, however, it carves a bad picture for your friend. Bad enough that many of the upset villagers will think it's all the evidence we need to convict him of Toby's murder."

"Let us talk to him then," Vin pleaded, praying the elder would see reason and they wouldn't have to resort to their back up plan. Mainly because their back up plan was a tad rough around the edges and more likely to get them all killed than to free Scule, but also because he didn't want to throw away the good relations he'd built with the village of Sikas so far.

"I thought your people were all about open honesty and gathering knowledge," he argued, remembering the first conversation the two of them had shared.

"You can't very well call it a proper investigation until we get Scule's side of the story." Luckily, it seemed the elder had been chosen to lead the village for a reason, because the older woman smiled, tapping her cane on the ground softly.

"That is precisely why I came to see you in fact. But before I bring you to your friend to act as a translator, there's a few things I want to discuss with you. There is a problem you need to understand currently going on within our village, as I fear you will view us in a bad light if you remain unaware. It affects how your friend is being viewed as well."

"Okay," Vin nodded, happy to listen to whatever the elder wanted to share so long as it would get them to see Scule.

"What's the big secret?"

"Unfortunately, it's not a big secret to anyone within the village, which is half the issue," the elder sighed, her chair creaking as she leaned back into it.

"The problem relates to our Stone Mages and their apprentices, of which Toby recently was one." The elder paused, seeming to choose her words carefully.

"Tell me. How would the three of you feel if you'd spent your life working toward something. Earning power, garnering recognition, basking in admiration of your peers… only to have it stripped away from you, all in an instant?" She asked, looking at each of them in turn.

"On top of which, while you floundered, desperate to claw back even a shred of your former glory, people who hadn't struggled, hadn't suffered as you had were suddenly considered your equals?"

"This is about the Great Reset," Vin stated more than asked, earning himself a nod from the elder.

"The problem our village is currently facing is the upheaval of our traditions, and the diminished power disparity between our Stone Mages and their apprentices," the elder explained.

"It used to be that hopeful children with the right potential would be welcomed as an apprentice to one of the current Stone Mages. The older mage would teach them how to sense mana, how to craft runic formations, how to use magic. In exchange, the apprentices would help the mages with whatever tasks they needed done. Honestly, more often than not that just amounted to doing the older mage's chores." Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Now however, when everyone reset back to level 1, those who were once powerful mages that commanded respect were all of a sudden only as powerful as their own apprentices." The elder sighed, shaking her head.

"To be blunt, it was a mess those first few weeks. I told you when you first arrived here that we'd only recently begun sending scouts into the neighboring fragments. To be entirely honest, that was primarily because those first few months I'd wanted all our warriors close in case an all-out war broke out between the mages and their apprentices."

"So basically, your oh so powerful mages lost all their magic and all they had to offer their apprentices, they didn't like the idea of losing their servants," Alka summed up.

"That's basically what happened," the elder nodded.

"Suddenly just as strong as their former teachers, the apprentices decided that it was only fair for either them to be labeled as full-fledged mages in turn, or for their old teachers to lose their old status."

"Hold on," Shia interjected, looking confused.

"When I lost my levels, I still retained knowledge of all my spells that I'd learned without the System's help, even if I don't have the attributes to cast all of them just yet. Wouldn't your former mages still have that knowledge, separating them from their apprentices?"

"You must be quite the spellcaster indeed if you have so many self-taught spells under your belt," the elder said, looking impressed.

"For most of our mages, other than the first couple of spells that make up the base of most of our magic, the rest were almost entirely provided by the System as rewards for leveling. Other than the current head of our mages Eithan, few ever managed to learn more than a small handful of weak spells of their own volition."

"You did tell me most people didn't bother learning spells the way I do," Vin pointed out, remembering his lessons with Shia.

"So that means the older mages truly were set right back to square one with their apprentices?"

"Exactly. While most did still have their impressive knowledge of runic carving, they now lacked the dexterity to actually utilize or teach said knowledge. Unfortunately, many of our former mages are older and rely heavily on their apprentices to help them with daily tasks. As you can imagine, they were thus staunchly opposed to both losing their apprentices due to them graduating, or due to their own loss of status."

"How do you even solve a problem like that?" Vin asked, not able to come up with an alternative.

"Poorly," the elder said bluntly.

"For the time being, due to everything else I had on my plate to figure out, I issued a quick order. The mentor-apprentice relationships would be upheld for the moment, but in exchange, I lessened the requirements the apprentices needed to meet in order to advance. Once any of the apprentices were able to show me a few select spells, I said I would personally promote them into full-fledged Stone Mages."

"The problem with that was in trying to appease both sides, I just made everyone unhappy," she frowned.

"Even if only temporarily, the apprentices were still stuck listening to people that no longer had anything to teach them, and the Stone Mages were upset that their apprentices would be advanced to full-fledged mages with far less work and effort than they themselves had once had to put in."

"I am still unsure what I could have done better, but there's no sense worrying about the past," she mused, tapping her cane a few times as she stared over Vin's shoulder, lost in her thoughts.

"I'll admit, this is all very interesting…" Vin coughed, bringing her focus back to the present.

"... but how does that relate to our current situation?"

"Toby was one of the older apprentices, and admittedly, one of our brighter ones," she explained with a chuckle.

"He'd been close to graduating from his apprenticeship before the Great Reset had even occurred, which made him one of the more vocal apprentices in favor of getting out from under his old master." The elder paused, her eyes growing misty at the thought of the dead villager.

"He was a respectful lad however, and he didn't argue a single time after I made my initial ruling. Instead, he chose to put his nose to the grindstone and work on his magic. Because of that, he managed to shoot ahead of not only his peers, but many of the former Stone Mages as well. After only a handful of months he managed to pass the simplified test I'd put together, graduating from his apprenticeship in record time and becoming one of our newest Stone Mages."

The more the elder explained, the more dread Vin felt welling up inside him, to the point where he was hesitant to ask his next question.

"So, Toby finally graduated and became an official Stone Mage, despite the outcries of all the former ones," Vin summed up, hoping he didn't already know what was coming next.

"And this graduation was...?"

"Two days ago," the elder said bluntly, confirming Vin's fears.

"And now, not even half a week after he'd become a symbol toward his fellow apprentices and the source of outrage among the former mages, he's dead." The three of them sat in silence for a moment, each one lost in their own thoughts as the elder watched them. Eventually, Shia spoke up, her quiet voice sounding far too loud in the stillness that had fallen over the room.

"So now that Toby's dead, the longer you wait before officially declaring Scule the murderer…"

"The more his fellow apprentices will begin to suspect it was actually one of the angry former mages that killed him," the elder nodded.

"Now you see the problem I'm facing as the elder of this village. It's not enough to declare your friend as innocent. I need to figure out what actually happened, or half my village could very well self-destruct when I release your friend."

"I understand what you're facing, but regardless of what might happen, you wouldn't punish an innocent man for a murder he didn't commit, right?" Vin asked, looking hopefully at the elder. He thought he'd had a pretty decent understanding of the woman, but he knew nothing could screw with a person's morals like the weight of responsibility.

"Of course not. I would never do that to someone I had even the faintest hunch was innocent," the elder smiled reassuringly, her knuckles whitening around her cane as she tapped it against the ground.

"For now, as thanks for sitting so patiently through an old woman's tale, how about we go check on your friend and finally hear his side of the story? After all, maybe he'll be able to shed some light on what to do moving forward."

"I bet all he'll be shedding is a few sets of silverware and some loose change he found while walking around," Alka drawled as the three of them got up. Shaking his head, Vin motioned for the elder to lead the way, and they quickly fell in step behind her. Just you wait Scule, Vin thought as the hide covering fell shut behind them. The Explorer clenched his fist, determined to do whatever it took to see his friend free. We'll figure this out together.