749 Banque (1/2)

The Mage Country's traitor was discovered three days after archmage Akama's assassination.

The traitor was Trant Sodar, an archmage of dark witchcraft. He excelled in death summoning and rune creation. He only lacked a convincing research result which was sufficient enough for him to join the Truth Symposium.

It was discovered that he was directly connected to the Chaos Abyss. He received orders from someone high up in the Chaos Abyss to murder his comrade, archmage Akama.

I wasn't curious at all how the traitor had been discovered. The Mage Country had so many random mages with different specialties. Plus, Bardi's specialists had also been investigating. The assassin had also acted right under the watchful eye of the dragons. It would be strange for the assassin to have managed to escape discovery.

Rather than cheat-like deductive ability like in detective stories which relied on science, all sorts of magic abilities and spells were of course far faster and more direct in being able to identify the culprit.

Prophecy magic, star reading magic, lie detection magic, and so on. People in this world wouldn't care about human rights or evidence. Interrogation would only begin after catching and beating a suspect half to death. The suspect would also be force-fed hallucinogenic potions and truth potions and be interrogated while under hypnosis. Nobody would be able to refrain from telling the truth in such circumstances... unless they were capable of committing suicide first.

Of course, such a method which only cared about efficiency would also result in many false accusations. But in the current situation, finding the traitor at the quickest speed possible would definitely be the best way to assuage everyone.

The information that I received was relatively simple. Basically, Trant had confessed that he had been allured by the Chaos Abyss and that he had ambushed archmage Akama.

Indeed, it was possible for Trant to have killed prophecy archmage Akama in a single attack as Trant was a combat magic specialist. However, this conclusion was still difficult to accept for most.

Who was the true mastermind? Did Trant have other allies? There were many thoughts about such things, but the trail of clues had already been cut off. For the sake of not shaking everyone's morale, a large-scale investigation wouldn't be possible, as a major battle was upcoming.

A side effect of this was that everyone would likely be highly on guard against each other from now on.

Halent's request for reinforcements had been quite successful. Reinforcements from all over kept arriving. However, from what I saw, not only did Halent view this battle against the Undead Emperors as an allied battle, he also viewed this as an opportunity to show off Bardi's international status and power.

”Look, these are Bardi's allies.”

In a way, this was no longer a war. Rather, it had become a show instead. This was a major business performance that absolutely required a beautiful victory.

Halent had used a huge amount of gold and resources to obtain concrete and powerful reinforcements from Bardi's allies. Whether this was a good deal or not could be calculated afterwards. At the very least, this current scene indeed seemed quite majestic.

”Nine members of the Truth Symposium came as Bardi's reinforcements? When counting Akama, that's a double-digit number. Wow…”

10 years ago, there had only been 28 Truth Overseers of the Truth Symposium. As the Elemental Tide rose, in theory it would be the mage job class that benefited more than any other job class.

Many topics of research which were only theoretical before had now become reality thanks to the Elemental Tide's activity. The result was that many archmages had gained much power as they became closer to gaining control over their own truth.

The Truth Symposium now had 31 Truth Overseers. Although this number didn't seem like a big increase, there were actually 12 newcomers… Don't misunderstand. Mages weren't gladiators who always wanted to fight, and some Truth Overseers, not wanting the responsibility, had simply retired from their duties rather than died.

The Truth Symposium was the greatest authority in the Mage Country. However, many mages were only interested in their personal research, so they viewed being a Truth Overseer as nothing but trouble. They preferred to use their free time on performing more research rather than boring governmental tasks. Although it was an opportunity to scam more research funding for themselves, overall it was still a bad deal for their time.

Apart from archmages who had tremendous research expenditures, other archmages didn't value the position of Truth Overseer at all. They were naturally willing to give up their own positions as Truth Overseers to any junior who was willing to take on the job. In fact, many Truth Overseers even intentionally schemed so that their disciples or descendants would take over the duty for them.

However, there were some things that everyone recognized. Arlodant, also known as the Mage Country, had more than doubled in combat strength over the past decade. The Mage Country had benefited immensely from the rise of the Elemental Tide.

It wasn't only the top-level mages who increased in number. Originally, the mage job class was the most difficult job class to progress in power level for due to requiring control over the power of the elements, but after the Elemental Tide rose explosively, it became ridiculously easy for people to increase in power level as mages. In fact, there was even an abnormal instance when more than 100 mages improved in power level on the same day.

Another effect of the explosive increase in the Elemental Tide was that many taboo or theoretical constructs in ancient texts and diagrams could now be created in reality. Alchemists and magical puppeteers were basically having celebratory parties on a daily basis. Summoners were summoning strange creatures from other dimensions which they were unable to handle. Even the taboo undead mages were increasing in power ever since Hell's establishment.

The Mage Country was considered on par with other human mega empires to begin with. However, its territory was pitifully tiny in comparison. The Mage Country's combat strength depended entirely on its mages. Now that the mages' power level had massively increased, naturally the country's power also massively increased as well. Saying that the Mage Country's power had doubled in comparison to a decade ago was only a conservative estimate.

Unfortunately, some things still hadn't changed. For instance, how the Mage Country had such a loose organizational structure…

According to current estimates, after the past decade of accumulation, there were now more than 200 mages from the Mage Country who had achieved Truth emblem power level. However, there were less than 50 mages of such a power level whose contact information was known. It was likely that less than 30 of them would be willing to be sent out to fight. Additionally, the ones who were willing to fight would only do it as a favor or in exchange for some type of knowledge.

With that being the situation, sending out 10 Truth Overseers at once along with several Truth level archmages who weren't Truth Overseers as reinforcements to Bardi counted as having sent out more than half of the Mage Country's highest-level combat strength.

”The Mage Country is being so generous. Just what benefits did Halent promise to them? I doubt that it would be something like giving additional territory to the Mage Country. Territory is nothing but a burden for the Mage Country. Halent probably promised some type of ancient knowledge. Nothing ordinary would possibly lure so many old mages into all working together at once,” I muttered to myself while observing the archmages before me.

Currently, I was at a banquet that Halent had organized for the reinforcements who were being treated as guests of honor.