Strom Mickey was the city administrator of Crookes.
As one of Old Meredith's subordinates, he was the nobleman most favored and had the highest chance of becoming the city's magistrate without the imperial family doing anything.
The reason he used the word 'originally' was because after the Temple Acolyte of the Temple of Life revealed old Meredith's illness in private, Magistrate Lloyd quickly rose to power as a different faction.
Judging from the present situation, Lloyd's faction had overwhelmed Strom's, and Lloyd had replaced Strom as the hottest candidate to become the next city's magistrate.
That left Strom a little flustered.
As the first in command of the city's magistrate, he had clashed many times with the second-in-command, Magistrate Lloyd. The two had long since been at odds with each other, and with old Meredith's tacit approval, they kept each other in check and held each other back.
Even if they didn't directly attack each other, Strom had even indirectly killed Lloyd's only son in one of their clashes, and that incident had inflated the conflict between them to an irreconcilable level.
One could say that every noble in Crookes could side with Lloyd, but not Strom. Once Lloyd took the throne, Strom's entire family would be wiped out by Lloyd.
Strom panicked when he saw that the enemies he had made because of his status and the old mayor's indulgence were starting to hit him when he was down.
To save himself, he didn't hesitate to join a secret society that had extended an olive branch to him.
At first, Strom had thought that it was a cult that worshipped evil gods, but he realized that wasn't the case after joining. They didn't have any restrictions on their faith, and they were more interested in studying various taboos compared to other religions.
Even secular authority was unattractive to them. In fact, Strom believed that they wouldn't even have the intention to seize power if they didn't provide more convenient conditions for their research.
Naturally, that had nothing to do with Strom. It didn't matter if he was used as a weapon or a puppet of a secret society — all he wanted was an aid that could help him return to the top and not be targeted by his political enemies.
That day, when he returned home from the mayor's residence, he couldn't wait to crawl into his underground secret chamber. The badge he kept in his pocket was heating up, which meant that the mysterious people were looking for him.
The secret room was filled with all sorts of letters that couldn't be seen by others and some treasures that Strom had collected. The most eye-catching of them all was a large silver mirror.
After placing the badge into the groove of the mirror frame, the eye-like pattern above the full-length mirror suddenly opened as if it had a life of its own, staring straight at Strom.
Even though he had activated the device many times, Strom still felt goosebumps all over his body from the gaze of the eyeball on the frame.
Ripples stirred up on the surface of the mirror. Moments later, Strom's reflection in the mirror disappeared, replaced by a man wearing a robe and a hood. Only half of his face was revealed, and his features could not be seen clearly.
"Does the Great Ambassador have any orders?" Strom tried his best to overcome the feeling of disgust in his heart, rubbing his hands like a fly and taking the initiative to ask in a fawning manner.
"A group of people has entered Crookes recently. Be careful," the man replied flatly.
"Eh …"
Strom had thought of many possible reasons why the other party had called out to him, but now that the other party had said this, he was a little confused.
That's it?
Considering that the mysterious black-robed men wouldn't suddenly attack for no reason, Strom had a feeling that something was wrong.
"Is there … something wrong with those people?" He asked carefully.
"They must be believers of a certain church, and are investigating the swampmen." The other party's answer made Strom's heart sink at once.
Indeed, he was the one who obtained the swampmen from a mysterious organization and smuggled them into Crookes.
His goal was simple: he wanted to use the swampmen under his control to discreetly replace the real nobles and strengthen his own faction. Of course, it wouldn't be a bad idea to directly get rid of City Magistrate Lloyd if possible.
Still, most nobles would have one or two capable bodyguards around them.
The bodyguards of this world were all believers of various religions, and those who could be hired by nobles as bodyguards were probably not far from becoming supernatural even if they weren't Extraordinary individuals.
Compared to these believers who had considerable combat ability, the swampmen were a little lacking.
While it was true that they could completely impersonate a human, that was only their appearance and memories. Their very essence of life had completely changed, and given that swampmen couldn't develop faith, they simply couldn't deceive the gods for divine grace and protection.
In other words, even if the swampmen were lucky enough to kill a decent cleric and impersonate him, they wouldn't be able to use divine spells or touch the holy water of the original church … considering that combat aura and magic in this world were products of faith as well (they had to believe in the God of War and Magic Violet, one of the Seven Divine Fathers), it was the same for impersonating warriors and mages. All they could do was change their appearance and not their ability.
Either way, it was very difficult to kill a noble and impersonate him right under the nobles' noses. That was why Strom decided to take a roundabout route and have the swampmen replace some of the peasants, so that they could apply for jobs as gardeners and servants to get close to the nobles, before looking for a chance to kill them and impersonate them.
After all, the bodyguards couldn't stay by the nobles' side twenty-four hours a day.
Still, it appeared that the plan was going to fall apart before it was even halfway through. It had only been a few days since he spread the word of the swampmen, and some unknown believers of the church had already come to Crookes to investigate. It would be troublesome if he was caught if that continued.
"Don't tell me they're believers of the Temple of Justice?" Strom asked, feeling a little uneasy.
When it came to villains like him, it was the believers of the Temple of Justice who weren't afraid to die for the sake of justice. Those lunatics were extremists, and had even banded together to infiltrate the royal castle of a great country with just twenty or thirty of them to stab a tyrant in the back in order to stop an unjust war. One could imagine how insane they were.
If the Temple of Justice put him on the wanted list, he wouldn't be able to find peace even if he ran to the ends of the world.
"No, they don't have the divine light of justice." The black-robed man appeared wary of the Temple of Justice. "They probably aren't believers of Aslan, the Lion of Justice."
"Then did they find anything?" Strom calmed down a little when he heard that they weren't believers of the Temple of Justice. "How did they investigate in secret?"
"They … they started from the city gates, knocking on every door and asking if you're a swampman."
The corner of the black-robed man's mouth twitched at that, and he did his best to maintain his air of mystery while answering.
Strom: "???"
What kind of secret investigation was that?
Could this group of people be idiots?
Or would the swampmen admit that they were swampmen?
Strom had checked the swampmen one by one when he obtained them from the black-robed man. While they were less intelligent than most humans, their disguise was carved into their very bones to the point that it was almost instinct, and they were difficult to see through.
The bug that allowed him to see through the hair of their victims had now been fixed. Now, the swampmen would peel off their victims' hair and scalp to cover their own heads after killing them, and it was no longer possible to verify by plucking their hair!
Strom relaxed at that thought.
He had thought that it was a lion, but it turned out to be a groundhog. What a scare.
"Don't relax just yet. While we don't know what they're doing, after questioning normal people, they would say things like 'it's yellow, it's still yellow' or 'it can't be yellow' before leaving cursing. On the other hand, if they run into a swampman, they would shout 'it's red, it's red' while slashing it to death!"
And yet, the black-robed man's words left Strom's heart hanging in his throat once more. "The more swampmen are found, the city magistrate Lloyd would have the city watch help those fellows search for them. One-tenth of the swampmen we gave you are dead, and if you don't believe me, you can feel it with the magitek used to control them."
Strom quickly whipped out something that resembled an abacus and fiddled with it for a while, his face alternating between green and white. It appeared that the black-robed man's information was outdated, and they had lost contact with a fifth of the swampmen.
Strom did not expect that the city magistrate Lloyd would open the door to those believers of unknown origins, but it made sense when he thought about it. After all, the cases the swampmen had stirred up had left the city magistrate Lloyd in a terrible state, causing him to be doubted and pressured by public opinion. Now that someone had popped up to help him solve the problem, he would naturally cooperate as long as he wasn't out of his mind.
If this went on, the rest of the swampmen apart from those who had assumed nobility might be wiped out!
Damn it. Were those fools that powerful?
Strom was panicking beyond measure.
It was as if he had assumed that he was facing a naive groundhog, only for it to shout 'Ah —!', bursting out of its Ki to transform into a Super Saiyan Mouse and charge at him.
How was he supposed to do that?
"Lord Ambassador, save me!" Strom quickly tried to cling to Lloyd's leg.
"We could provide you with more 'research results', but that's all." The black-robed man, however, did not seem to hear him at all. "You're the only one who can save you. Consider this a test for you … "
"After all, we of the Society of the Secret Eye wouldn't keep useless dogs even if we kept dogs."
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