Before nightfall, Roland had walked three or four circles around the east main street and had already scouted out the general range of the quest area. It was basically a circle, and the center point was in a very large brothel compound.
The quest area was about a three hundred meter radius with this building as the center.
In other words, the clues related to the queen’s disappearance were in this area.
The two magic spiders disappeared from the balcony with great speed.
Then, an image or two flashed in Roland’s mind from time to time.
One spider went directly to the most central point of the quest, the extremely luxurious brothel compound.
The other one went from house to house to see if there was anything unusual. Having only two magic spiders to scout wasn’t too efficient, but it was much better than Roland risking being discovered during the curfew himself.
Originally there were three of them. Roland also kept one beside Mijil in case the Shadow Guild came looking for trouble again-only one guard puppet was still a bit unsafe. If he had eyes there, then it would be better to know what was going on, and in case something really happened, the rescue would become more targeted.
He wouldn’t be like a headless fly ramming into things all over the place.
The first spider had lurked unnoticed from the shadowy corner of the street into the backyard of the brothel mansion, then crawled along the wall to a balcony on the second floor and infiltrated the room after verifying that no one was watching
Meanwhile, the second spider had been moving in and out of the merchant buildings on the street, looking for anything suspicious.
These Spell Puppets would inherit the summoner’s common sense and some cognitive abilities, while the magic spider had been specially enhanced by Roland in these areas until they were at a similar level as Roland.
In other words, the anomalies or clues that Roland could find, it was reasonable to say that they could as well.
Roland sat quietly on the balcony, enjoying the night view while savoring fruit wine.
All he had to do was to sit quietly and wait for the snippets of footage that the spider sent back.
But even then, Roland still felt that it was not very efficient. There were only two… If there were a hundred, or even if there were only forty-five, then the efficiency of scouting would be greatly improved.
It was just that as a level-zero spell, the Spell Puppet’s model capacity was so only so large, and now it was just about at its limit. Roland estimated that fixing up another sound transmission function for it was the limit.
In other words, it was fine for scouting a small area or tracking one or two enemies, but it was less capable than desired for a large area search like this.
‘How should I increase the number of scouting magic spiders?’
This was a difficult problem.
If he wanted to increase the number, he had to give up something, but both picture transmission and synchronized sound transmission were important.
“Is there any specialty in spell cloning or something like that?” Roland said to himself.
Then more and more images were transmitted into Roland’s mind. There were merchants working on their tables, scholars reading books, and goblin couples fighting[1]. And when the first magic spider completely entered the brothel compound, there were more images of goblins fighting.
Roland felt a bit helpless, wanting very much to summon the first spider back, but the brothel compound was the central point of the quest area, so the search could not be abandoned.
Two spiders were still too inefficient in their search and found little that was useful or peculiar.
It would soon be morning, and the marble white color of the dawn sky already appeared on the horizon.
Roland reckoned that he might have to return home empty-handed tonight, but just then, the second spider suddenly sent over an image of several black-robed people holding a cloth sack, walking towards a gloomy alley.
Something seems to be wiggling in the cloth sack?
A kidnapping? This world really was dark-at night, just by sending two spiders out, he could see terrible things.
Roland pondered for a while. Not waiting for him to decide whether to go and see what was going on or not, the quest system triggered once again.
Received secondary quest: Save the Poor Commoners.
It was a quest, a system-certified quest-it had to be completed no matter what.
Roland stood up and looked outside.
Although the curfew hadn’t ended yet, this time of day was close to dawn, so the night curfew wasn’t really that important anymore.
Moreover, Roland was a Mage, and even if he was caught violating the curfew at this time, the patrol would most likely turn a blind eye.
Although the queen’s disappearance was orchestrated by a Mage, a few days had passed and the king’s anger had subsided quite a bit.
It was a simple desire of the rank-and-file soldiers to not offend a Mage if they could.
Roland got up and left the hotel, heading straight to the location of the kidnappers.
Since the spider had been following the black-robed men, Roland wasn’t worried about them getting away.
Halfway there, Roland did encounter a patrol.
But just as he guessed, the heavily armed patrol didn’t show any hostile intent when they saw Roland, and the lead officer even gave him a slight nod in greeting.
Roland naturally nodded lightly as well.
The two sides simply walked past each other.
Roland could feel that the soldiers let out a light breath of relief.
Arriving at the entrance of the alley, Roland walked right in.
It was dark inside, and Roland subconsciously wanted to illuminate it with a Light Ball, but he was afraid of being caught off guard and had to stop.
The alley stunk, the disgusting smell of urine mixed with that of feces.
Roland held his nose and walked forward slowly; it was dark after all. After a few turns, he stopped at the corner, thinking about how he should deal with the dozen or so black-robed men.
There weren’t any houses here, just two walls, and further back, a wide wasteland, and even further away, the city walls.
The dull sound of a beating came from ahead.
It was accompanied by talking. “Sironato, now it’s time for you to tell me where the hell you’ve been hiding the person.”
“I don’t… know.” A suppressed voice could be heard. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t say anything, I’ll kill you, and then your wife and son.” A voice that sounded quite gentle said these disturbing words. “I’m a very reasonable person. You wronged me first, but for the sake of old friendship, I don’t want to trouble you. But now you actually hid the person. Don’t you know they’re very important to me? If the person can’t be found, I’ll have to die.” “I really don’t know!” the voice yelled and coughed twice.
“Alas, I really don’t want to do anything to you,” this gentle voice said. “Even though you betrayed me, my life and the safety of my brothers are truly at stake.” This seems… a little off.
Roland looked at the panel given by the quest system and then thought about the quest area, narrowing his eyes slightly.
“Dyat, I really don’t know,” the voice cried out. “I know I’ve wronged you, but I really don’t know about this.”“You really don’t kn
“I don’t know!” The man’s cries grew louder.
“Then forget it.” The gentle voice sighed. “You can go now. I’ll trust you one more time, and if you’re still lying to me, you know the consequences…”
Then there was the sound of stumbling and hurried footsteps moving away.
Roland looked at his system’s panel.
Quest failed: Save the Poor Commoner.
Roland tsked inwardly. He was looking for clues about the queen, but instead, he saw a bug, or loophole, in the quest system!
[1] Not really goblins fighting
