Chapter 92: Confession
Two people are currently inside Cillian’s hospital room.
One was Dennis Turner, and the other was Dena Fritz.
When they heard that Cillian had been hospitalized, they made a trip here to deliver a piece of news, which happened to be at the same time as the ball.
"Skull Snake Gang has been wiped out."
Dena Fritz said in the most emotionless expression, as if the news wasn’t a big thing.
Well, how could it be a big thing to Cillian if he wasn’t heavily involved in relations with the Undercity?
She said it in a way as if it were something that happened daily, making Cillian slightly afraid of her.
’Women are pretty scary.’
But Cillian immediately dismissed that thought, hoping for something different in their report.
What he wanted was to know if Jack had been found there and arrested by them, or worse, killed. For a moment, Cillian didn’t want him dead yet because Jack could hold valuable information regarding the Shepherds.
Sadly, he was met with disappointment.
Dennis calmly reported.
"Jack Trade is not there. In fact, the Skull Snake Gang reacted quite strangely when they were interrogated by our men. They genuinely didn’t know anything about the Shepherds. We carried out extensive torture and forced them to watch their fellow members die, but they still had no idea about the connection until they suddenly heard the news that Jack was involved with them."
Cillian couldn’t help but frown as he crossed his hands together.
’Hmm... If I consider the Shepherds of Creation’s history from what I know, then they are capable of doing something like this. It’s likely that there are spies and people working under them secretly, and have been doing a lot of operations for years or even decades... I mean, if they are capable of smuggling Pieces over the Academy, then it made perfect sense.’
He then spoke out about what was going through his mind after coming to a conclusion.
"Have you considered that gangs from the Undercity had spies to watch everyone’s movements?"
Dennis and Dena frowned at the same time, finding his words ridiculous.
No, it’s not like they didn’t believe in Cillian and found it nonsense. Rather, after discovering that it was only Jack Trade that has any relation to the Shepherds from the Skull Snake Gang, the suspicions inside their heads were uttered by Cillian himself.
"We’re going to look for it..."
Dena’s face turned grim as she answered. Dennis’ complexion wasn’t good either, as he’s also considering looking into it.
Cillian looked at their faces before shifting the topic to another thing.
"By the way, I have something to ask. What do you think about this? I have a mission that I have yet to solve, and I would like to ask your opinions about it."
Cillian handed over his notebook regarding the Missing Expedition. The two looked into it and started reading about what he had found during his investigation. Cillian was hoping they knew about it until they reacted weirdly.
"Huh?"
It was Dena at first. Then Dennis looked over to Cillian with a suspicious look on his face.
After confirming that the book contained familiar information that Dena knew, she gave Cillian the benefit of the doubt.
"Everyone in the Undercity, whether they are heavily focused on information or not, has received this type of mission."
Cillian tilted his head.
"Missing Expedition?"
Dena shook her head. "No. The mission is to look over these ancient ruins all across Viola."
...
Cillian walked rather quickly after getting off the carriage. His eyes looked over the camp surrounding the hole that had opened after the Runic Gate was cleared and chosen to be destroyed.
Then, he entered a particular camp and saw Eve, who was alone inside. She was surprised to see Cillian.
"Yo, Long time no see—"
Eve wanted to joke about something before Cillian interjected, his tone slightly annoyed.
"Why haven’t you said anything?"
Eve was confused at first before Cillian calmly conveyed his words without sounding too annoying, even if his face was telling otherwise.
He was pissed.
"You made me come here every day and made a fool out of me for coming here and looking for this shit, like this was the only thing that I should put my focus on. I asked you a lot of things on the first day, remember? I even asked if there were similar cases, for fuck’s sake. And what did you say? No."
That was the reason Cillian kept coming here, even though he could have gone to other places with similar ancient ruin sightings to find clues and close this investigation right away.
Yet Cillian was not only kept in the dark about it, but he was also manipulated into thinking that this was all that mattered at the moment.
When Cillian heard that there were other ancient ruin sightings and that some gangs had accepted missions to search for them in the Undercity, he felt rather disappointed with how these Official Ruiners operated.
However, Eve had an explanation for it. She seemed to be confessing.
"Easy now, kiddo. Yes, there are other ancient ruins that have been dug up and discovered in the past few weeks, but this is the only one where people have gone missing. It is an important mission that no other gangs, other than those working directly under Khalish Viola, should do. Do you even know who sent the mission given to you?"
Eve paused and revealed the information that made Cillian almost lose his shit.
"It’s us."
’Huh?!’
Eve began to explain while letting out a short sigh. Just looking at Cillian’s face, which said "I found everything out" after he discovered that he had only been manipulated by them, somehow made her pity him.
"Okay, I’m going to be honest here, so let me make this clear for you. We thought that Khalish Viola was the reason these nine people went missing, and we tried to determine whether he was related to it. We tried to see if the people who worked for Khalish, especially those involved in gathering information, would pass this information to him or use anyone from the Whisper Broker. I just... didn’t think it would be a kid like you.
"But after you had been investigating for a while, we hadn’t found any of Khalish’s men following us or even making threats to stop us from prying. When you were attacked at the ball, we became certain that it wasn’t him."
Cillian found those statements ridiculous, as there were holes in her words that made him retort right away.
"You’re only thinking about this hypothetically. I might’ve been reporting it already to Khalish himself about the information regarding the missing expedition progress."
Eve shook her head.
"No, think again. If this was an important mission to begin with, one that would definitely provoke a reaction from Khalish if he was related to the missing people, a son of a Sparrow would never have been sent here. Someone with the skill set to handle matters like these and silence people like us is someone we should have encountered already. But no, even after giving you bits of information that might have made Khalish curious, he hasn’t made a move at all. That’s why we came to the conclusion that it wasn’t him or anyone related to the Viola Family."
Cillian started blurting out what was on his mind.
"Then who dug out those ancient ruins? Who made the missing people vanish without leaving a single clue—"
But words stopped appearing on his mouth after a quick realization that came almost instantly, the moment he started thinking about his words.
Eve let out a small sigh.
"Shepherds."
She paused.
"I think they are somewhere in the Viola Territory. They have been doing something for the past several weeks related to those ancient ruins from the past era, and they’ve managed to hide without anyone noticing."