Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG

Chapter 148: Inspection

I watched as Erani sat down at the wooden table with Bon—the table I was still sitting at, as well, since I still wasn’t able to stand without help. I’d gotten a bit of healing from Jannin, which helped me feel slightly better, but the real healing would occur from spending some time staying at a high Health value, due to the natural accelerated regeneration that came from that.

Despite not feeling much better physically, though, I was feeling worlds better mentally. I’d beaten the Truth Stone.

The method I’d used to do so was both somewhat complex and deceptively simple. It exploited the specific ways Truth Stones worked to effectively allow me to bypass it completely. Truth Stones really were infallible. There was no way to get past their mind-reading capabilities and trick them into thinking you’d told the truth when you hadn’t. So instead of bashing my head against that impossible approach to things, I went straight past it.

Because I had been telling the truth. Just not to the questions the Bon thought I was answering.

Truth Stones were infallible. But Humans weren’t. So it wasn’t about tricking the Stone, it was about tricking Bon. And to do so, I’d used Index.

Again, it was deceptively simple. I’d come up with my whole fake story before the interrogation, with a name, history, everything. Anything Bon might have asked about, I had a fake answer ready.

And then, once the interrogation started, the moment Bon attempted to ask me the first question, Index screamed in my ears as loud as it could. Since it wasn’t really a living being, it could essentially control the volume of its voice as much as it wanted. And it didn’t run out of breath, either. So it could scream as loud as it wanted, for as long as it wanted. And it did so for the entire time Bon asked his first question, asking for my name, age, and place of birth.

And once he was done, Index stopped, and quickly asked a question of its own: “What is the fake name, age, and place of birth you prepared before this interview?”

And so I answered the question honestly. Since I hadn’t even heard what the original question was, only Index’s version of it, giving the fake information was a completely honest answer with no hint of deception, as far as the Truth Stone was concerned. And Bon was none the wiser. And for some of the questions, ones where I didn’t actually need to lie, Index would just repeat the same question to me. It worked perfectly.

That was how I’d navigated pretty much the entire interrogation. And now that I knew the method worked and I was no longer at risk of being found out, it felt like someone finally removed the iron weight chained to my lungs.

Except, not really. Because we weren’t quite off yet. The plan had worked, but it required Index to do so—something only I could hear. That was what made it work, but it also made the method useless for Erani, who had no such thing. However, despite working with more limited tools, we managed to come up with something that may work well enough.

It was based on the same principle—having Erani answer different questions than Bon asked. Only this time, we’d do it with Ainash. Ainash’s mental words, while not being literal sounds one could hear like Index, could still effectively block out external stimuli. If she ‘screamed’ them forcefully enough, it could be so distracting that you couldn’t really hear much else unless you really, really tried. We’d tested it out earlier, and it seemed to have worked fine.

So, if blocking out the questions worked, then what was the problem? Well, it was the part after, where we had to then go and ask the new questions to get Erani to understand what she needed to say. With Index, it was easy. It’d just listen to what I missed and figure out a way to word it so I could give a fake answer truthfully. But with Ainash…it was a more complicated process.

To start with, Ainash didn’t even understand our language. So I’d have to listen, myself, and come up with the questions Erani needed to hear to be able to give the correct answers, and then I’d message them to Ainash, who would then give that to Erani. So my main worry wasn’t the blocking out Bon part, but rather the part where we translated the new question through Ainash. She was fine, but getting such specific, technical wording through definitely had a risk factor to it.

My only source of relief was that Bon apparently planned on her questioning being much shorter than mine was, since our story about the invasion was pretty much the same. He just needed some basic information to put on record, which ideally wouldn’t take long, or be complex enough for something to be lost in translation.

So the interrogation started, and I tried my best to act like I wasn’t paying too much attention to what was going on, despite intently listening and translating everything over as quickly as possible.

“What is your name and age?”

“Fake name and age,” I messaged Ainash.

“Eita Niin, twenty-five.”

“Alright. So we’ve got Annor and Eita entering, alongside a…monster. I guess you guys can just deal with the paperwork that’ll create on your own. Moving on, you’re from that same village near Waterinn, correct?”

“Your fictional backstory has you coming from the same village near Waterinn, right?”

“Yes.”

The interrogation continued on like that for a bit of time as Bon collected the same information he’d gotten from me. Until finally, it seemed like we were done.

“Alright,” Bon said, “we’re just about done here…Oh, one last thing. You guys said you’d had some run-ins with Demons before, right?”

“Uhh, you’ve encountered Demons before?” I messaged. That one didn’t even need to be fictitious.

“...Yes,” Erani said hesitantly after Ainash translated the question over. She’d probably shifted the term “Demons” over to the term “bad guys,” which I imagined may have caused some confusion.

“And what was the nature of these encounters?”

I repeated the same question to Ainash again, still not quite noticing a point where we’d need to lie.

“Uhh,” Erani frowned when she got Ainash’s message. “...I don’t like them?”

Shit! I thought to myself. I wasn’t sure what’d happened there, but clearly I hadn’t been specific enough. I hurriedly messaged Ainash again, “No, no, as in, what happened during the encounters with the Demons?”

“Oh!” Erani laughed nervously. “Sorry. We fought.”

“...Mhmm,” Bon said, glancing down at the Truth Stone. But it’d stayed completely inert this whole time. “Do you mind lying for me on purpose really quick? Don’t shift your hand or body at all, just answer ‘blue’ to this next question. What color is your skin?”

I relayed the same to Ainash.

“Blue,” Erani said, and the stone lit up instantly. Bon relaxed from his seeming suspicion after that, put at ease that the Truth Stone was working properly.

Erani had talked to me while we’d planned earlier on how to get past this interrogation and we were still trying to brainstorm methods. The main way that people typically got around Truth Stones was just by trying to avoid touching the Stone while answering questions they lied on. On a basic level, this could mean hovering your hand over it or trying to sneak a piece of leather between your skin and the Stone or something, but it could even go as far as finding a way to swap the Truth Stone out for an Unenchanted replica, or by even using illusion magic to create a fake holographic stone that didn’t even exist.

And the easy way for interrogators to get past pretty much all of these methods was to swap between asking regular questions, and questions where the interviewee must intentionally lie. By doing so—and carefully watching to ensure there weren’t any shenanigans at any point between these questions—it effectively stopped most of these methods since they’d have to somehow undo whatever swap they’d done in the first place without tipping the careful observer off.

So, since our method completely got around that, any concerns the average interrogator would have from awkward wording like that would be assuaged by seeing effective proof that there was no foul play going on. Obviously, there were ways to still prevent us from using it, but it didn’t seem like Bon was the type of person to go all-out on some random travelers he had no real reason to suspect anything actually criminal from.

The rest of the interrogation went rather smoothly after that. Bon asked us for any information we had on “weak spots” that the Demons had—he apparently just wanted to seem useful to his boss by trying to find valuable information on them—but we didn’t really have anything for him, so he gave up pretty quickly, ending the interview there.

“Okay,” Bon said, rolling his shoulders and sighing as he leaned back in his chair, as though he’d done anything more than ask us some questions and write down the answers, “we’re done with you here. I’ll just file out my report on you, and you can head out on your nice old way.”

Erani met my eyes.

“Actually,” I said, “we were wondering if we could stay the night here? It’s a day’s walk out to that next town, right? So we’d rather not travel at night. And besides, I’ve got this broken leg, so maybe after a night’s rest it could heal up enough for me to move on more safely.”

Jannin looked over, and so did Poppins, who was currently making himself something in the kitchen area. Bon glanced over at them. It seemed to me like the two of them were trying their best to beg with their eyes for Bon to say no here.

After a moment, Bon looked back at us. “...Aw, what the hell. Sure. It’s just one night.”

Jannin audibly sighed.

“Jannin, you’re apparently doing nothing. Why don’t you go get our guests something to drink?” He turned back to us. “You guys like beer?”

Really, I agreed more with Jannin’s attitude than with Bon’s. I didn’t particularly want to party with these guys, or whatever. But I needed to stick around until midnight until Time Loop refreshed, that way I could get that Arcane Spell Crystal and reset afterward, getting at least some of my Spells past their Rank 9 maximums. Seemed like I’d be walking out of this little outpost much, much stronger than I’d been when I walked in. And if sharing a drink with Bon was what it took, then so be it.

And, honestly, having a taste of civilization—even something as simple as a bit of alcohol—felt like it would do wonders when it came to calming my nerves.

“Sure,” I said with a nod. “Feels like I haven’t had a beer in ages. I could probably use one.”