I think that deep down, I knew that Boomy was at the root of this evil. The town were not lacking alchemists, the more potent were among the ratfolk. However, only Boomy could sell it to a random person. Heck, maybe he didn't sell it, but simply gave it away as a test ! Expect the unexpected with this goblin...

"Okay, can you tell me the name of the person you sold this stuff to ?" I asked

The goblin was tinkering, not paying me that much attention anymore "Boomy sold this to his friend."

Wait, friends ?

"What do you mean ?" I asked

"Do you really think Boomy is dumb enough to sell the good stuff to anyone ? Boomy learned his lesson when the elves bought him the goblin-killing virus" the greeny thing replied

Yup. Not exactly his brightest move as it was a hell of a plague. However, Boomy managed to clear the scourge by cloning 'even more goblinoïd goblin', effectively transferring all the viral charge into a small cluster, before we set the camp in which the clone resided ablaze. As I told you, moral and ethics are only shackles to any inventors, and this episode was actually the birth of my friendship with Boomy.

The goblin kept talking after pouring a strange oil into Charles' crane

"See, Groldur keeps numbing Groldur's brain with alcohol. Groldur cannot use Groldur's brain and that is not a good news"

That was fucking rich, given that this commentary was made by a half-machine heavy-drug user goblin.

"Groldur bought this stuff yesterday, around "

Thruthfully, I had no idea I did such a thing.

"When did I did that ?" I asked, suddencovoily concerned for my mental state

"Around sunset, Boomy think. Groldur was kinda weird"

"Thank you" I replied while pondering.

Did my memory loss happened after having taken a large amount of Boomy's drugs ? Nah, he especially precised that I was 'kinda weird'... That was getting weirder and weirder, as things usually do around Boomy. It was time to take my leave.

"Okay, thank you a lot, Boomy. By Charlie" I said, taking my leave. No need for ceremonials with the mad alchemist.

"Be respectful of the hands of the Clang, you piece of meat"

"Bye Groldur"

Yeah, he may be chaotic but he considered our relationship as one of mutual interest. His creations were one of the biggest assets I had at my disposition through my investigations, and I was a nice asset to interact with Broudillac.

Thinking about my next move, I let a kobold lead me out of the Cave. Passing near the entrance, I saw kobolds feeding a giant Vulture. Scrounch had grown well sice the last time I saw him. His drug consummation had grown well too, judging by his sluggish movements, allowing the kobolds to feed him without becoming his food.

...and of course, the coach didn't wait for me. Foot it is, then. It was mid-afternoon, so a little walk could allow me to find the missing pieces of the puzzle.

So, let's sum-up : I woke up inside the Green Sting. I had apparently caused great damage, and fucked the establishment's reputation, using powerful drugs. I somehow managed to get off this mess by using my memory-forging ring, a costly item usable once per month, allowing me to be free of doubt as long as nobody looked at this mess too closely. And it was doubtful that anybody will.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

The disturbing part was that I was supposed to have bought drugs from Boomy. I was clearly not in a normal state when I did that, so this was something to investigate.

It was common knowledge that Boomy and I were an acquaintance, so maybe somebody targeted me to get theses drugs ? And drugged me beforehand to get drugs ? Nah, doesn't make any sense. Maybe it was a question of quantity, he needed more of those highly dangerous drugs to... wreck a brothel ? Maybe it was a total accident after all, this wasn't making any sense. Unable to make any sensible hypothesis, I got back home.

Ha, my home. Not mine, actually, a catfolk old lady named Shui owned the stuff. She was mostly nice, and since she lost her two sons and her husband in the war, I was letting her describing the good old times without complaining. We had a tacit accord, she and I. I paid my rent, she talked, and I didn't care. A good agreement, that was.

"Back again, ya drunk ?" She wisely observed. "You look like shit", she tactfully added

"Yeah, I know. You look great too you old thing." suddenly having an epiphany, I added "Hey you spotted anything weird about me yesterday afternoon ?"

She pondered for a surprisingly long amount of time, probably due to her age, and replied to me "Nah. You looked as usual, and you went out quite late, as usual"

"Thanks" I replied

Wait...

"Hu, at which hour did I went out exactly ?"

"Dunno exactly, but it was very late"

I froze for a moment "And I didn't went out before that ? You sure ?"

"Are you insinuating that I am losing my mind ? You disrespectful brat !"

I let Shui vent her insecurities about her aging, and went straight into my room.

How was I supposed to be both in Boomy's cave and in my house at the same time ? That was... disturbing, to say the least. Such events were usually easily explainable by magic, and while a mage usurping my identity was plausible, his magic being not detected by Boomy's archaic defense systems meant that this mage was very powerful. And this very powerful mage used the goblin's drug to wreck a brothel ? What the hell ? Moreover, any mage trying to deal with me would face a little problem : magic had trouble working on me. It was not unheard of, but people such as me were sufficiently rare that this trait of mine was well-known among the mages, making me a bad target for them. Well, this trait was not totally game-breaking, since magic had a lot of various way to work, and therefore I was still wary of that stuff. Better be safe than sorry, as Shui always said.

Anyway, the possibility of a mage doing such a thing just didn't added up, I wasn't thinking about this the right way. Instead of wondering who could drag me into this, I should have asked myself earlier : who does benefits of this deed ? And given the facts, I could only think of two possibilities. One, a being or association taking advantage from spreading random chaos into the city. In Broudillac, this possibility couldn't be ruled out. It could be revolutionaries upset about the elven administration for instance. The other possibility was that someone was a personal interest to this incident, and that it was targeted. I just couldn't think of anything else plausible.

Of course, there were very slim chances for the brothel being a cover for a demonic cult, and this chaos was a way for the higher-ups to cover the whole thing, but I decided to rule out this possibility for now, and keep it in mind in case things went even more crazier.

For now, I needed to accumulate information about random terrorism attacks or a guy wanting a brothel wrecked. By chance, I knew just the guy.

Charles-Henry "the Red" is an acquaintance I had from a nasty previous case. The big guy had always on his heavy armor, and as strange as it may seem, I never saw his head. From what he told me, this guy has been resurrected six months ago in a cave, near Broudillac. He claims to have been a Knight a century or so ago, and he had a lot of difficulties integrating himself to Broudillac, because of all the 'lower races' he had to deal with. Well, it was a different epoch I suppose, so it isn't excessively surprising that Charles-Henry had such difficulties. Given the fact that he had really been spontaneously resurrected, I suppose. Nah, the real knack with this guy is his mentor, a one of a kind weird elemental spirit named Krolmox, and supposedly the reason why my favorite knee-breaker from Broudillac was alive and kicking. In addition to fresh lungs and flesh, Krolmox seemed to have offered the knight a creed to prevent him from falling into a self-existential crisis after being in the realms of the deads for more than a century : communism. While some races have tried to implement this system before, it never worked well. Possibly because of racism. Yeah, maybe it could have worked with a single-race filled world, but whatever. All the common folks need to know it that this knight possessed earth elemental powers, and that he hated aristocracy.

Yup, Charles-Henry seemed like a pretty good lead : Even if he wasn't implicated in any way, he would surely be able to give me some contacts. The only minor issue is that I needed to present my problem in order to make him accept to help me, one had to be careful when speaking to the Red. That would obviously be a bad move.

Pondering over my possibles courses of actions, I quickly dragged from my nightstand a bottle of liquor and drank a mouthful of it. It has been a very long day, and I slept like an alcoholic baby.