Chapter 266: The Truth Wasn’t Important

Leon quickly arrived at the Morin Town Inquisition and found a way to obtain the reports on those deceased customers.

While he was there obtaining them after receiving the report, Mr. Lewis, the plantation owner who had been sent for emergency treatment, also died. With that, the number of Leon’s deceased customers had risen to three, and no one knew when another might appear.

Leon quickly skimmed through the reports. The way these customers died was extremely strange. Their entire bodies turned iron-blue and became incomparably rigid. Before they were completely dead, their bodies already began displaying phenomena similar to the coagulation of blood and stiffening seen in corpses, followed by rapid decay, with a rotten stench beginning to emanate from within.

And shortly after rescue efforts failed and all signs of life ceased, each of the deceased displayed a brief phenomenon of reanimation, even attempting to attack the people around them and causing chaos. Fortunately, no serious casualties resulted.

This phenomenon was extremely horrifying, enough to cause intense panic among ordinary people, but it truly was something certain Magical Beasts could cause, enough for the Inquisition and the Sacred Healing Order to conclude that it was related to Magical Beast poison.

After reading this report, Leon became even more convinced that someone was deliberately targeting his business. This was practically tailor-made to smear his business!

“As you can see, it’s a typical phenomenon of corpse-fiend transformation, caused by a Magical Beast’s Corpse-Rot Poison. Carrion Beasts, Revenant Demons, Corpse-Parasitic Worms, all of them can cause this phenomenon.”

A deep, heavy voice came from across from him. Leon raised his face. This was the director’s office of the Morin Town Inquisition, and seated opposite Leon across the coffee table was none other than the director here, Inquisitor Randall.

Inquisitor Randall looked even older than Caron, and already showed obvious signs of gaining weight and losing hair.

But when facing Leon, who was a generation younger than him, Inquisitor Randall still had to show a certain degree of respect.

Because Leon was now a Second-Rank Inquisitor, on the same level as Bishop Beckett had once been.

Relying on the merit of supplying the Church through Underworld resources, he had obtained a rank from Junior Inquisitor within two years, then risen another rank beyond that. From being the Director of the local Inquisition in Hamel Town, he had been transferred to become the Stationed Inquisitor of Saint Rosalia Prison in the Southeastern Archdiocese. Within the Church, he could be considered Inquisitor Randall’s superior.

Most Ordained Personnel in the Church, like Inquisitor Randall, would remain at their initial rank until retirement, with only their benefits increasing slightly with seniority. Those truly capable of advancing in rank were basically either people who could seize opportunities and earn merit, or those with strong connections within the Church.

Although Weiss truly did possess ability, the fact that she could become a Third-Rank Bishop at such a young age and even be selected as a Saintess ultimately could not be separated from her archbishop father, who was only one step away from becoming a Cardinal. Another example of the same kind was Edward Stuart, the Holy Son of the Stuart Family.

“Magical Beasts with Corpse-Rot Poison are very rare. This really is a strange case.” Leon put down the report and said.

“Your Excellency the Viscount, I heard you were transferred to work at the Archdiocese, weren’t you? Why have you started paying attention to cases over here? You couldn’t be here to supervise me, could you? That would put me under a lot of pressure. An useless old thing like me might not be able to keep up with your requirements.” Inquisitor Randall half-jokingly probed Leon’s purpose for coming.

For someone like Inquisitor Randall, who had spent decades remaining in the same post, encountering an elite Inquisitor like Leon, who could continuously accumulate merit by investigating cases on the front lines, really did bring some pressure. He genuinely was somewhat worried that Leon had come to supervise him.

“I’ve only just completed my transfer recently, and there are still some procedures waiting to be handled. For the time being, I’ve been permitted to take care of a few matters in my territory. It just so happened that I heard from a friend about what happened here in River Valley County, and as it happens, he also knew the Baron, so he asked me to come inquire about the situation. After all…… this whole thing sounds rather frightening.”

Leon smiled at Inquisitor Randall and casually made up an excuse.

“Oh, so that’s how it is.” Inquisitor Randall accepted the explanation and casually said, “Still, Baron Lawrence really was miserable. To think privately buying a Magic Potion would actually end up like this……”

“You think the Magic Potion caused it?” Leon stared at Inquisitor Randall and asked, “The Baroness confessed in this report that she also drank the Magic Potion and even begged the Church to save her, but after examination, there was absolutely nothing wrong with her.”

After her husband died in such a bizarre manner, the Baroness had fallen into panic, terrified that she would also die in the same horrifying way, but the subsequent examination found no problem.

“Well, we looked into that too. They weren’t drinking from the same bottle.” Inquisitor Randall explained.

“The Magic Potions they bought were most likely produced in the same batch. Isn’t it strange that only one bottle of Magic Potion had a problem?

And Corpse-Rot Poison is a very rare Magical Beast poison. Generally speaking, would it normally appear in this sort of Magic Potion? Have you tested the Magic Potion bottles they left behind?” Leon fired off a string of questions.

“Uh, we tested them, but because there was very little medicine remaining, we couldn’t detect the toxicity. We also arrested the peddlers who sold them the Magic Potions and tested some of the Magic Potions they had in stock, but we didn’t detect any poison there either. The ones with problems…… may have been only those few bottles.” Inquisitor Randall answered Leon cautiously.

“How was the quality of the Magic Potions?” Leon asked.

“Very good. They should have been goods from that Demon King Fenrir.” Randall replied.

River Valley County and Southport County had both once become the Earl’s territory. Not long after news spread through the Underworld that Fenrir had killed the Earl, Leon had taken control of the vast majority of the Earl’s territory, and some people had also begun giving Fenrir the title of “Demon King”.

As his business grew, Fenrir’s name gradually became known as well. After so much time had passed, even front-line investigators like Inquisitor Randall had heard about him, and the Church had even begun offering rewards for clues about “Fenrir”.

However, low-level Inquisitors naturally had no way of knowing that the “Earl” who sold Magic Essence was Earl Foyle, much less that Leon himself was Fenrir. They only knew that during this period, the Underworld had undergone a violent takeover and change of regime, while the great eastern lord Earl Foyle might have been assassinated by the Western Noble Faction.

After all, even if someone really did connect the two matters at once, it was difficult to imagine that an Earl who controlled both the legitimate and Underworld sides could be killed by an Underworld executive who had only recently entered the scene?

Only a small number of people within the Church had ever known the Earl’s true identity in the first place. Cardinal Stuart already knew the truth, for example, but for the sake of his own interests, he chose to remain silent.

And after Leon took control of the territories, he also released many false rumors to circulate in the Underworld. Half of those false rumors did not alter the fact that Fenrir had killed the Earl, but constantly changed the location, drawing people’s attention away from the true location, Arend Island.

Together with the position and connections he had now successfully built within the Church through Aaron’s relationship, this basically ensured that the Church would not directly suspect him, or at least would not directly launch an investigation into him.

“When I left my post, his goods were already circulating in Southport County too. Do you think someone capable of obtaining Magic Potions of such high quality would create such an absurd problem?” Leon said.

In truth, he was not particularly worried about the local Inquisition conducting a thorough investigation. On the contrary, he rather hoped the Inquisition would investigate more meticulously, accurately rule out any problem with the Magic Potions, and make the related families of the deceased aware of that, reducing the impact the case would have on his business!

“Uh…… even if you say that, the victims had no other common factor besides purchasing Magic Potions. If we don’t start from there, there isn’t any other direction to investigate.” Inquisitor Randall replied awkwardly.

“Then you plan to continue following the trail and investigate the Magic Potion clues?” Leon asked.

“The people we arrested couldn’t cough up any useful clues, and we can’t trace their suppliers either.” Inquisitor Randall said.

“Then how do you plan to handle it?” Leon pressed.

This made Inquisitor Randall feel some pressure. He could only brace himself and answer: “Well, you also know, cases like this often reach a dead end. The families are also urgently demanding an explanation, and the trial can’t be delayed forever, so we can only first hand the people we arrested over to the Church Tribunal to be convicted and dealt with.”

Leon was not particularly satisfied with this outcome. Randall was the typical sort of Inquisitor who had no ambition to advance, but was not exactly completely negligent either. If a case could not be investigated any further, he would put it aside for the time being, but in the end, he still had to first give the influential victims’ families an explanation.

To Inquisitor Randall, finding the truth was not important. What mattered was dealing with the work.

But once the case was shelved under suspicion that the Magic Potions were problematic, and the arrested downstream members were dealt with to appease the victims’ families, the news that his Magic Potions had a problem would spread completely, and the impact would expand in full.

Did that mean his side could only find the truth as quickly as possible? If investigating it took ten days or half a month, by the time the truth came out, his business would probably have already plummeted along with this turmoil!

“No, the truth really isn’t important.” Leon suddenly realized.

Even if he found out there was no problem with the Magic Potions, so what? People who had taken his Fenrir Magic Potions had died bizarre deaths. That was the fact people recognized, and the panic had already formed.

Even if he stopped supplying Magic Potions now and customers continued dying afterward, fear would still make customers suspect it was some lingering effect from the Magic Potions.

And even if he immediately uncovered the truth right now, proving that the problem was not with the Magic Potions but that someone was using some method to sabotage his business, and could immediately make every customer aware of the truth, as long as buying his Magic Potions meant they might be targeted and poisoned to death, hardly anyone would dare buy his Magic Potions anymore!!

In that respect, the method used by whoever was sabotaging his business was undoubtedly vicious enough and extremely destructive.

Perhaps he should learn from the senior Inquisitor Randall before him. What mattered was not pursuing the truth, but…… dealing with the work properly!

That was right. Getting through the immediate crisis first and preserving his business was the highest priority!

“Sigh, I know that with a way of handling things like mine, a capable Inquisitor like you definitely wouldn’t be very satisfied. I have to admit, my abilities are limited……” Randall sensed that Leon might be dissatisfied and began mocking himself.

“No, no, I completely understand. Choosing the safest way to handle things, as my senior, you must naturally have your own considerations.” Leon smiled at Inquisitor Randall, “It’s just that I was thinking, could there…… be another possibility?”