“Sir, we have an issue in a nearby tavern.” A guard said almost casually as he entered the Earls office.

“What is it?” The Earl asked, sitting up straight, straightening the sleeves of his outfit.

“There is a brawl in a nearby tavern that has gotten quite serious. It isn't anything that needs your direct intervention, but I thought you should know.”

The Earl sighed and waved the guard off. “Just bring those responsible to me when you have apprehended them. Now leave for now, I have things to attend to.”

When the guard left the room, the Earl slouched back into his seat again. He leaned his head on one of his hands and closed his eyes for a moment. He spun his seat so he was facing the window in his office, which gave him a good view over his city. As he looked over it, he couldn't keep the sinking feeling in his stomach from coming.

He had felt this way for quite a while now. For the past forty years, he had been ruling over this entire region of the Phoenix kingdom. Despite the amount of influence and power it granted him, he couldn’t help but feel like he was being extremely underutilized.

Most of the other regions were led by someone in the peak stages of their blossoming realm for cultivation. With him being at the late stages of the assimilation realm, three entire steps of cultivation ahead of them, he could probably beat every other region leader to a pulp if it came to that. Not that it ever would of course.

Somebody of his power should hold a position of power in the capital, but due to some unfortunate circumstances and a backstabbing ally, he had been pushed down to the position he was in now.

One day he wished to be seen as Terian Fisk, council member of the Phoenix kingdom. If he ever wished for that to happen, he had one nuisance he would need to get out of the way first. Unfortunately, he just couldn’t for the life of him get the proof of wrongdoings and misuse of kingdom resources he would need to get his enemies thrown from the council.

“Hey, not so rough!” Terian heard a familiar voice shout as he once more sat up straight in his seat. He placed his hands on his desk with his fingers threaded together, looking as prim and proper as ever.

When several city guards walk in with his son's savior in restraints, he was momentarily surprised. Terian was slightly less surprised when he saw the next person to be brought in, with him much more restraints on him.

“Why is it always you getting brought here?” Terian asked, giving one of the men a disappointed look.

“Maybe you are just looking for an excuse to see me.” Grethalt, the towns resident thug said as he smirked.

“Listen, I know you don’t like people poking fun at you, but you can’t just beat people up for it.”

“I told him to stop, and yet he didn't.”

“We talked about what would happen next time you did this. You clearly don’t care for the consequences, so I am sure you won't mind if we send you there right away.”

The man's face took on an entirely different demeanor when he heard that.

“You can’t do this to me!” Gerthalt yelled.

“You are the one who continues to do things you shouldn’t.” He pointed to the guards. “Take him away to you-know-where.”

The man threw various obscenities at Terians as the guards dragged him off. Terian ignored them as he turned to the other restrained individual. He motioned to the guards to release him, then gestured to the seat in front of him.

“Now how about we talk about how you got involved in this.”

_____

Sol rubbed his wrists as the magical restraints were taken off of his wrists. They had done more than just keep his hands bound. The movement of mana in his body had been brought to an almost complete halt. He could still move his mana, but it felt like it was being suppressed. It had not been a pleasant feeling, and his stomach was already churning as his magic started to move again.

He sat in the chair across from the Earl, mumbling a bit about how he should tell his guards to not be so rough when moving prisoners. He wouldn’t have even been arrested in the first place if it hadn't been for the guards showing up at just the wrong time.

Things had been going pretty well for him. He had spent several days gambling in local taverns and inns to make the money he needed to pay for the materials for the enchantment the runesmith was making for him.

That was, until he had started earning a bit too much. Apparently, there was some kind of underground gang in the city. They didn't really do too much, but they did commit the occasional robbery and shakedown. The leader of the gang was Gerthalt, a man who had apparently been having his goons all gamble against Sol as a group, hoping that they could easily win back their money through sheer numbers.

That plan had backfired spectacularly when Sol caught on to their game and started using sin sight to easily tell was and wasn't bluffing. Only one of the gang members had been smart enough to just not say anything when he realized that Sol was good at picking out lies.

Sol didn't think they had any way to tell that his intuition was supplemented by the ability to discern lies from truth, and it was made clear overtime that they didn't know. After he had won all the money he needed, he made the mistake of getting over confident.

He started making way more money than he needed, and everybody he was playing with was slowly getting more and more restless, making more risky gambles and generally just playing sloppily. After an entire week had passed since he started his little winning streak, Gerthalt finally decided enough was enough, and stopped Sol as he had been standing from the table one night.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Where do you think you are going?” The thug had asked. From there, he proceeded to throw Sol across the room. Sol had focused his mana in his back to keep himself from getting immobilized by an unlucky strike to the spine, but that had left the rest of his body more vulnerable. The fact that it had been rushed and sloppy definitely didn't help either.

After Sol recovered from the throw and got to his feet, he stood up and bounced from foot to foot to loosen his joints up a bit. They had gotten stiff from playing cards for several hours. He focused his mana into his arm before rushing Gerthalt and delivering a devastating blow to the man's gut.

At least he had been hoping for it to be devastating. When his face made contact with the man, he felt something give. There had been a momentary moment of adrenaline as he expected a cry of pain to escape the man, but he let out one of his own when he realized it had been the bones in his hand which had failed to hold up. It was an injury that had thankfully been healed before he was brought to the Earl.

It was at that moment that Sol had realized the Gerthalt was at a much higher rank of cultivation than himself. Peak stages of the disciple realm at least, maybe even breaking into the consolidation realm. He had been thrown around the tavern several more times before guards had arrived, but the timing had been really bad.

They showed up just as Sol had tried to throw a punch at the man's jaw. From the perspective of the guards, they saw Sol as an aggressor instead of defending himself and arrested him along with Gerthalt. They had needed to put far more restraints on Gerthalt due to his higher cultivation rank, and Sol could only imagine how terrible that must have felt to have so much mana just halted in his system. Served him right anyways.

Sol explained the entire situation to the Earl, who looked quite tired and annoyed. After the entire story was told, Sol had a question for the Earl.

“Where did you send that guy?” He asked.

“To our mines nearby. Not for manual labor, but to clear out monsters for us.”

“Do you think he will cooperate?”

“Doesn’t have to. The guards will place him in there and seal the main entrance. From there, it is a single path to get to the secondary entrance, where he can leave from.”

“That seems… very inhumane.” Sol said, trying to hide his discomfort with the idea.

“The monsters are a good bit weaker than him. He is at a very low risk of dying. Nobody else wants to clear the mines, so might as well make him do it.”

“Still, that seems a bit extreme just for getting into a tavern fight.”

“Trust me, he deserved this long ago.” The Earl said, waving off Sol's concerns. “He has done much worse, and frankly I regret not giving him a harsher punishment in the past.”

“Why didn't you do that earlier then?”

“Well…” The Earl trailed off, seemingly trying to find words to explain it. “He wasn’t bad for the city in every way. Gerthalt and his gang often fended off monsters on the borders of the city while doing sweeps around the walls. They also discouraged other thieves and murderers from encroaching on the city. I think of it as having picked a lesser evil.”

“Sounds to me like corruption and laziness.” Sol said, not sugar coating it. “You definitely need to take a second look at how you run your city if you rely on a local gang to fend off crime.”

The Earl had a scowl on his face now, and his voice got slightly louder. “Listen, I may have been more casual around you than I am with most, but I am still an Earl. You are in no position to talk to me like that.”

Sol shut his mouth, not wanting to dig himself into a deeper hole than he already had. After several seconds of uncomfortable silence, the Earls eyebrows furrowed a bit.

“Like I said, it is the lesser of two evils. Anyways, I have a small request I would like to make of you.”

“If you are asking for a favor, the answer is probably going to be no. If it is super time sensitive, the answer is also probably a no as I have something I need to get to in the near future.”

“It isn’t time sensitive at all, and it won’t be a favor. You will get more than fair compensation, and I will provide you with the means you will need to get it done.”

“Alright, I am listening.”

The Earl pulled a paper from his desk and slid it across the table to Sol. “I need somebody to get some dirt on this man, and I figured that since you seem so against corruption, then you would be interested in this.”

Sol looked at the Earl for a moment before looking down at the picture. It was off a man wearing a white cloak with jet black hair. The inner part of the cloak had pockets that were lined with potions of all kinds of colors.

“Who is this?” Sol asked, looking back at the Earl.

“That is Sirelle, a member of the Phoenix kingdom council.”

“Woah, hang on.” Sol said, pushing the picture away from himself. “This does not sound like the kind of job that somebody like me should be taking. I mean, I am barely a cultivator let alone one strong enough to lead an investigation against somebody like him.”

The Earl pushed the picture back towards Sol, leaning slightly over the desk to put a finger on the image. “Well, there is a reason that I want you in particular to do this. You see, the kingdom records the births of nearly every single child within its borders. They have an extremely powerful member of the council who is in charge of the library that contains every bit of information collected on every person in the kingdom. My information alone takes up nearly half a book.”

The Earl leaned back in his seat again, continuing. “The thing is, there is only one place where they don't record peoples' births and histories. Care to take a guess where that is?”

Sol thought for a moment before realizing. “Out in the Rim?”

“Exactly.”

“But, why would me being in that library matter at all?”

“Because, the council member who owns the library can track anybody in the records who is weaker than her while they are within the capital. That happens to be well over 99% of the kingdom's population. If she noticed somebody sneaking into a council member's residence or territory, then you would likely be apprehended before ever having even the slightest chance to flee.”

Sol was once more getting skeptical. “It sounds like you are trying to get me to commit treason. I’m sorry but that is not something I am interested in doing.”

The Earl shook his head. “Oh no, you misunderstand. Sirelle is not a very good council member. I have no rock solid proof of it yet, but I know that he embezzled kingdom funds to further his research. He has likely paid off a dozen servants with kingdom money. He also performs experimentation with human souls.”

“Woah!” Sol exclaimed. “Firstly, you should have brought up the human soul experimenting first. Second, how the hell has this flown under the kingdom's radar?”

“I honestly have no idea, but I need you to do this job so we can reveal it to the king and have him thrown from his position.”

Sol sat back for a moment to think before speaking. “So, this isn’t time sensitive?”

“Not really.” The Earl said. “But getting it done in the next few years would be preferable.”

“I am leaning towards accepting this, but I need a bit more time to think.” Sol said. He then left the Earls office after a brief goodbye, and headed straight for the workshop of the runesmith. It was time to see if his cultivation aide was ready.