In the name of the true god

Chapter 121 Turning the Tables

November 14, 448 (Wednesday), 10:00 AM.

The capital's heavy prison, administration building, and conference room.

The Royalist Deputy Warden Steele Fernando, First Warden Melanie Gilbert, Phoenix Griffin, and Curtis Reed, along with the Cleric First Warden Connor Viera and three other priests, sat on either side of the conference table.

The two groups remained silent, creating a tense atmosphere in the meeting room.

As of now.

The tunnels and the capital's sewer system have been thoroughly searched, and no trace of the "escapee heretics" has been found.

Unable to confirm whether Allen Granger left the capital with all the heretics, the capital was forced to remain under complete lockdown.

Meanwhile, the College of Cardinals of the Holy Church of the Wind appointed two archbishops to personally lead the priests in a pursuit to the southwest.

Meanwhile, Warden Urban Adel and Deputy Warden Victor Chambers, as the highest-ranking officials of the royal and ecclesiastical factions in the prison, respectively, went to the royal palace and the church temple after overseeing the initial response work to give preliminary reports on the events to King Leonard and the Cardinals of the Holy Church of the Wind.

"Hehe—" Melanie's laughter sounded particularly jarring in the conference room.

Admittedly, the mass escape of the "forty-two heretics" was an unprecedented and devastating blow to the Royal Capital Heavy Prison.

But deep down, she felt a surge of joy.

After all, no innocent prison guards died this time. Instead, those arrogant priests who did nothing but shirk their duties suffered heavy casualties and had to bear the main responsibility, paying the price for their arrogance.

"What are you laughing at?" A priest glared menacingly at Melanie.

"Was I laughing?" Melanie didn't stop smiling. Instead, she mimicked Chambers' sarcastic defense from before, "I was sad, sad for the priests who were sacrificed."

"Bang!"

Another priest slammed his fist on the table: "Two priests murdered! Forty-two heretics on the run! And you still have the nerve to laugh?!"

"Did I let it escape?" Melanie spread her hands. "I'm the warden of the ordinary prison ward. What's with this attitude towards me when something happens in your heretical ward?"

"As a member of the prison's high command, don't you bear any responsibility?!"

"What responsibility do I bear?" Melanie had specifically reviewed the preliminary incident report. "Didn't your priests voluntarily invite the heretics in to play cards? Didn't your priests unsuspectingly drink the poisoned coffee? They should have been on duty playing cards..."

"Coffee? How can contraband like coffee be brought into the prison? Your repeated violations of duty regulations, leading to the escape of heretics, what does that have to do with me?"

"you----

Thinking of the prison break in her own cell block, which was often used as a source of ridicule by the church faction, Melanie continued to taunt, "And the tunnels. Were your ears filled with alcohol? Or stuffed with cigars? These heretics dug such a big tunnel, and you didn't even notice?"

"us----"

"At the last meeting, I heard Deputy Warden Chambers say without batting an eye that you priests have a hard time ensuring the safety of the heretics' ward. I thought he was just trying to sound weak. I didn't expect you to really be a bunch of useless people?" Melanie's smile widened.

"Are you looking for death?!"

"That's enough." Connor silently agreed with Melanie in his heart, but outwardly he adopted a posture of prioritizing the bigger picture and stopped the argument. "The responsibility for this matter will be determined after everything is investigated. Now, everyone keep quiet and wait for Warden Adel and Deputy Warden Chambers to return."

He had barely finished speaking.

Footsteps approached from a distance outside the meeting room.

soon.

The conference room door was pushed open with a thud, and Warden Adel and Deputy Warden Chambers walked in with cold faces.

"Warden," Deputy Warden Chambers said indignantly to Warden Adel as soon as he sat down, "The church is furious. The College of Cardinals has specifically requested that I investigate the matter thoroughly and handle it properly. I'd like to ask you, what should we do?"

"What do we do?" Warden Adel flipped through the reports on his desk. "Your church has dispatched priests, and we've also deployed our guards and police to jointly blockade and search the area. What else do you want to do?"

"That's a matter of pursuit and suppression. What about our prison system? Shouldn't we properly determine who is responsible?"

Before Warden Adel went to the palace to report, he was also furious about the mass breakout of the "heretics," but when he returned, he was calm and composed, saying, "Tell me about it."

Chambers was given a severe dressing-down by the College of Cardinals in the church temple.

The archbishops are currently in charge of the manhunt, and all he can do is investigate the matter thoroughly and absolve himself of any responsibility as much as possible: "First, the hiring of ordinary prison guards is overseen by the prison's personnel department. I want to know how a heretic like Allen Granger managed to pass through all those layers of vetting?!"

"The personnel department does bear an undeniable responsibility for this matter, and I will deal with it seriously later," Warden Adel said without trying to shirk his responsibility.

Seeing that he readily accepted the burden, Chambers became even more emboldened: "And another thing! Secondly! According to the church's investigation, the tunnel in the heresy ward that leads to the sewer system was definitely not dug in recent years! It may have existed for five, ten, or fifteen years! Why didn't anyone discover it for so long?!"

Before Warden Adel could speak...

Melanie retorted first: "The heretical prison is under the jurisdiction of your church. How could a tunnel appear out of nowhere? Shouldn't you ask your own people about it?"

"Who do you think you are to speak here?!" Chambers was already furious. "You let an ordinary prisoner escape, and after all this time you still haven't found anything. What right do you have to talk to me?!"

"Indeed, I can't compare to you. After all, you released forty-two people, and those forty-two people were all heretics. If the number of people released were linked to qualifications, then not only could I shut up, but everyone present could listen to your story."

"Get out of here!"

"Melanie is right." Warden Adel stepped in at the opportune moment, throwing the question back to Chambers. "The Royal Capital Heavy Prison was built in the 367th year of the Divine Calendar, and it has been eighty-one years since then. For these eighty-one years, your Holy Church of the Wind has always sent priests to oversee and guard against heresy. As for the affairs of the heresy ward, even I have little authority to interfere. Since you enjoy such great power, you certainly cannot escape responsibility."

"What if the tunnel had been dug eighty-one years ago?!"

"You've been here for eighty-one years, and you didn't notice?"

"We—" Chambers stammered.

The mystery of the tunnels is truly unsolvable.

If it has truly existed for eighty-one years, how come there have been no "heretics" escaping from prison before?

If it was only discovered in recent years, how could they not hear the commotion while stationed in the heresy prison?

He remembered that the Royal Capital Heavy Prison underwent a complete renovation in the year 431 of the Divine Calendar, and the Heretic Prison was moved to the second basement floor of the Special Prison Building after that.

If the tunnel was dug out at that critical juncture, they naturally wouldn't have known.

Although this line of reasoning still cannot explain why the "heretics" did not escape from prison during those seventeen years, it is enough to shift the blame back to the monarchists!

"I can vouch for my priests! During their time on duty, there was no unusual activity in the Heresy Quarter!" Chambers said. "Can you guarantee that during the prison renovations in 431, no one used the renovations as a cover to secretly dig tunnels?"

"The renovation work was personally overseen by His Majesty Leonard. Do you really think His Majesty Leonard would make such a basic mistake?" Warden Adel questioned. "Should we, as you wish, place all the blame for the heretics' escape on His Majesty Leonard?"

"I—I didn't mean that!" Chambers quickly denied.

Who is Kawhi Leonard?

He personally arrested and executed Edmund Ravenscrown, the number one heretic.

He even suffered long-term retaliation from "heretics" for this, surviving hundreds of assassination attempts, and losing an eye in one of them.

Such a meritorious person, even if not the king of the Kingdom of Florence, is not someone that a mere church deacon can easily criticize.

What's more, Leonard really is the king of the Kingdom of Florence!

"What I mean is, during the renovation, someone might have secretly dug tunnels without His Majesty Leonard's knowledge!" Chambers corrected his wording. "This has nothing to do with His Majesty Leonard, but some people still can't escape responsibility!"

"What are your opinions?" Warden Adel's gaze swept towards the royalist faction.

Deputy Warden Steele, unwilling to confront Connor, deliberately avoided Warden Adel's gaze.

Curtis Reid, who was in charge of the general prison ward 2, and Phoenix Griffin, who was in charge of the death row and solitary confinement wards, also remained silent, not daring to offend the church.

In the end, Melanie lived up to his expectations, stepped forward, and argued her case rationally.

"Deputy Warden Chambers, do you have any direct evidence to support your claim?" Melanie refuted Chambers's words clearly and logically. "If you have evidence, present it. Whose responsibility is it then will be immediately clear. Without evidence, your eagerness to shirk responsibility suggests you're intentionally trying to cover up your guilty conscience."

evidence----

Chambers' face turned ashen.

Where is he supposed to find evidence?

If any tunnels were dug in recent years, it would be easy to find out the identity of the excavators by relying on those wizards who had sided with the church.

The problem is that the tunnel was built too long ago, exceeding the limit that wizards can explore using the Law of Contact.

"Our church only briefly transferred full authority to guard against heresy to you during the complete renovation of the prison in 431. Theoretically, if the tunnels were there at that time..."

"Theoretically? Does that even hold water?" With Warden Adel's authorization, Melanie said confidently, "I'm asking you, do you even know what evidence is?"

"What is evidence?" Warden Adel asked "on behalf of" Chambers.

"The evidence is that the priests guarding the heretics' quarters neglected their duties! The evidence is that the priests guarding the heretics' quarters violated the regulations! If they hadn't gone to play cards with Allen Granger, if they hadn't drunk the coffee Allen Granger brought them, would they have died? Even if the heretics had tunnels, would they have missed even a chance to sound the alarm?!" Melanie, not satisfied with sitting, stood up and pressed on.

Chambers was once again feeling like he had a fishbone stuck in his throat.

indeed.

If those two priests had followed the prison's regulations, the "heretics" would have had no chance to collude with them from within.

Even if heretics broke into the heretic prison through the tunnels, they would have enough time to sound the alarm.

Once reinforcements arrive, the imprisoned heretics will not be able to escape, and the heretics who break in will also be left behind.

Feeling the burning gazes upon him, Chambers gritted his teeth and retorted, "But the root of the problem lies in the tunnels! If there were no tunnels, what good would it do if Allen Granger poisoned the priest? Could he have rescued him from the front of the prison?!"

"I told you! There's no evidence to prove it's genuine, so you can't blame anyone!"

"Very well!" Chambers stood up as well. "Even if we take a step back and say that we've proposed countless times to transfer the heretics to the church temple, who's been stopping us?! Who's been forbidding it?! If the heretics were imprisoned in the church temple, would this have happened?!"

"Snapped!"

Warden Adel tossed the two documents he had brought onto the table: "This is exactly what I'm going to talk about next."

Chambers paused for a moment, then looked at the two documents on the table.

Two lines of large text were clearly written on the folder.

[Report on the Prison Break Incident in the First General Ward, October 20, 2048]

[Report on the November 2nd Heresy Ward Escape Incident (448·11·2)]

this----

What does that mean?

"I have arranged for separate personnel to reinvestigate the other two prison breaks that occurred in the past month," said Warden Adel. "According to the investigation results, these two prison breaks were not actually that simple—to put it bluntly, the Church of the Holy Wind was the mastermind behind these two prison breaks."

There was a commotion on the church side.

Chambers' forehead began to bead with sweat.

The church faction orchestrated two prison breaks, intending to pressure the monarchy faction and seek a transfer of "heresy," a fact that both sides were well aware of.

However, they did it very cleanly, leaving no loopholes, so the royalists were reluctant to bring the conflict into the open for further investigation.

Can--

At this remote moment, Warden Adel made his decision and established the nature of the crime with such certainty—

What is he trying to do?

"The church is the mastermind behind this?" Chambers asked, applying his newfound knowledge. "What's the evidence?"

Warden Adel said unhurriedly, "One of the guards involved in the first escape has already confessed. He said the priest threatened him that he had to cover the prisoner's escape. If he didn't cooperate, his family members would be immediately stripped of their Holy Church membership. Furthermore, the priest personally promised him that he would protect him afterwards and give him a generous reward—"

"Regarding the second escape attempt, our investigation confirmed that the shackles of the fourth-order implicated wizard, Keanu Archer, were undamaged. This means he unlocked the shackles directly with the key. You yourself stated that several priests were interrogating Keanu Archer at the time. So how did Keanu Archer snatch the key from your group of priests? And how did he unlock the shackles in front of you?"

"The more detailed investigation results are all inside. If you disagree, you can read the contents first before expressing your opinion."

Chambers stared at the two documents, hesitating to raise his hand.

Melanie's eyes lit up, and she leaned over to take the document and flip through it.

She truly hadn't expected that Warden Adel, who seemed to be detached from the matter, would be able to gather so much compelling evidence before she could!

No wonder he has always tacitly allowed himself to go against the church faction!

No wonder the monarchists have never agreed to the church faction's attempt to shift the blame for heresy!

"—Now that things have come to this, I want to know, what exactly are you trying to say by showing these documents?" Chambers was unsure of Warden Adel's attitude.

Aren't they just shifting blame to each other?

What's the point of bringing up old grievances?

"What I want to say is—" Warden Adel said without changing his expression, directly targeting the church faction, "Based on your past practices, on behalf of the Royal Capital Heavy Prison and His Majesty Leonard, I have reason to believe that this collective escape of forty-two heretics was still a deliberate act by you."

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