Chapter 724 - Got You (2/2)
Roland read each one, carefully comparing the times.
Finally, he found a request from ten years ago that said a male elf had disappeared around here and wanted the Guild of Mercenaries to help find him.
And of course… this quest wasn’t completed.
Roland looked at the time… June of Fareins’s Starfire Year.
Starfire year?
Roland’s eyes snapped open.
The calendar in Fareins was a ten-year cycle, and the male elf he had met had been captured in the year of Starfire.
He wasn’t trapped for two months, but a whole decade?
Roland contemplated again; the intelligence peddler said that the number of missing people in neighboring towns had become fewer in recent years.
He read the records one by one.
This guild made a very detailed record.
There were probably about seventy years of records.
Roland found that the records that started to appear more frequently about quests searching for people in neighboring towns were from fifty years ago.
Then it tapered off by the end of the decade.
This matched up with the intelligence from the peddler.
Roland’s mind raced.
If these figures were correct, Jabezo was freed from the sealed land fifty years ago.
Why was it earlier than expected?
Because a town appeared near the sealed land… It was supposed to be a village at first and slowly developed into a town later.
Roland had inadvertently discovered this while looking for clues in a neighboring town earlier; that town was just under seventy years old.
Rural farming activities, or other things, caused the seal to unravel, and then Jabezo escaped from it.
As for why people were disappearing one after another at that point?
Roland took out the Magically Modified Elven Blood from his Backpack.
The effect of this thing was to increase the lifespan of people. Since elven blood could, then human blood could probably do so as well… but it probably didn’t work very well and needed to be collected and refined in large quantities.
This was why a lot of outsiders went missing every year.
The killer didn’t go after the town.
Then in the last Fareins’s Starfire Year, Jabezo inadvertently caught an elf, so there was no need to use human blood.
The male elf was in a semi-sealed state and was rather insensitive to time perception, which was why he thought only two or three months had passed.
He even misled Roland.
But now that the intelligence was in front of him, a lot of things could be deduced.
Roland closed his eyes for a few moments in thought and finally opened them; he had settled on a potential suspect.
Teleporting back to the previous town, Roland once again came to the front of old Beckrum’s yard.
This old guide was pouring red fruit wine for his old lady.
Roland pushed the door open.
Old Beckrum turned his head to see Roland and laughed cheerfully. “Master Mage, what brings you back so quickly-didn’t you say you were going to stay a few more days?”
“It’s almost done; it’s about time to go back.” Roland laughed as he looked at the wine jar in old Beckrum’s hand. “There’s wine-I just happen to be thirsty, can you give me a
glass?”
“Of course, there’s no problem. It’s my own home-made wine. I wouldn’t say it’s particularly good, but it’s not much worse than what’s out there.” As he spoke, he poured a glass and placed it in front of Roland.
Lifting the glass, he looked at the clear red wine inside, so brilliant it seemed like blood.
Roland opened the system view, and then saw the description of this glass of wine.
Item: Potion heavily diluted with wine (Excellent)
Description: A magically improved elven blood potion, diluted with wine to mitigate the potency and effects as to be suitable for the average person’s consumption. Tastes no different from normal wine.
Effect: Slightly increase the lifespan of the drinker.
After reading this, Roland smiled faintly, then pointed his finger at old Beckrum.
“Prismatic Spray!”
A ball of rainbow light instantly took shape in front of his fingertips.
Old Beckrum stood frozen, as if stunned.
But Roland was completely unfazed and unconcerned that he would kill the wrong person.
A jet of rainbow light fired out and was blocked by a blue film of light the moment it was about to hit old Beckrum.
old Beckrum then disappeared in a halo of light.
Teleportation!
Roland immediately turned around and teleported after him.
Then all that could be seen were two halos of light flashing about, and in the blink of an eye, they had disappeared into the horizons of the grassland sky.
Both men flashed a long distance, and the jug, which old Beckrum had been holding before, finally fell to the ground.
The wine inside spilled out and splashed everywhere.
The old woman walked over and picked the jug up, stroking it gently with a gentle smile on her face.
On Roland’s side, the two of them flashed at great speeds, and not much later, they were more than fifty kilometers away.
Seeing that he couldn’t shake Roland off, old Beckrum stopped where he was and his body began to fade.
It was the spatial spell Plane Shift again.
But Roland was prepared this time—the same trick wouldn’t work twice against a Golden Son!
In reality, Roland was tempted to shout that but held back.
He quietly threw out the Dimensional Anchor scroll.
Several transparent spatial chains appeared from the void, rooted in the earth, and locked the space around them.
old Beckrum was forcibly suspended from his Plane Shift, his body going from translucent to solid.
He even suffered a certain amount of magic recoil.
Covering his chest and looking at Roland, his face turned a little white.
“If you keep using Teleportation, I may not be able to catch up with you.” Roland looked at the old man indifferently. “Jabezo, I didn’t expect you to take the form of an old man and give yourself a powerful illusionary appearance. Not to mention ordinary Mages, even I can’t see through it.”
Old Beckrum looked at Roland, then the space around his body distorted slightly, and the entire man changed.
The aged appearance vanished and turned into a handsome blond.
“Looks like you’re the hound Mystra sent.” Jabezo chuckled. “I thought she had forgotten me as an enemy.”
Roland quirked his eyebrows, not retorting.
Instead, he asked curiously, “You should have woken up fifty years ago, so why didn’t you escape from this place? If you escaped, with your illusion skills and hiding ability, I predict no one could find you again.”
“The most dangerous place is the safest place,” said Jabezo, looking at Roland. “I was tempted to say that, and thought so before, but now it seems to be a mere pestilent joke.”
Indeed!
A truly smart prey never returned to a dangerous place; the best thing to do was to stay as far away from the predator’s range as possible.
So what Jabezo did was stupid and completely unbecoming of what a powerful and wise Mage would’ve done.
“A lot of people have disappeared in this town before. You did it didn’t you?” Jabezo froze, and then finally realized something. “I wondered how you’d find out about me—so it was by this clue. I have assimilated into this town. It’s reasonable to say that I wouldn’t be discovered, but… one mistake was all it took.”
Inwardly, Roland admitted that without those missing person figures, he wouldn’t have suspected old Beckrum at all.
“So you admit it?” Roland’s clothes began to sway in the wind.
“Let’s make a deal,” Jabezo said with a smile. “Let me go, and I will give you all my spell models, as well as magic insights from the past few decades. I will get the hell out of here and never appear in front of you again.”
“No less than a hundred and fifty people have been ‘eaten’ by you over the decades, most of them teenage girls,” Roland said coldly. “Go make a deal with them in the Netherworld, you scum.” Countless Hands of Magic descended from the air.
The ice domain spread out extremely fast.
The surroundings soon turned silvery-white and blank.