Epic Of The Demonic Sage

Lucius knew that there would probably be more than just these few effects of the divine gift of Duran, but this was all that he could currently find in the library even after reading tens of books about them. The Priest of Duran coming to the Inanis territory was a Double edged sword in a way for them.

"Regardless of this, we do need to do some things," Lucius spoke.

"What do you think we need to do? Gabriel questioned.

"From what I've read and heard till now, the clergy of Duran likes righteousness and justice. This also means that they hate any criminals and will frown upon us if they saw them in our territory.

After all, they are infamous for nitpicking even the smallest of details and crime rate is definitely one of them." Lucius spoke.

"Hmm… I see. So what is it that you propose?" Gabriel asked his son's opinion.

Even if the count himself knew how to take care of some pretty criminals, he wanted to see what his son would come up with.

"Well, I was thinking of coming up with a bounty and reward system. Anyone who reports about a criminal or criminal activity will get rewarded a certain amount of money. As for the bounties, those will be for the more dangerous criminals.

Also, since we currently have a certain amount of servants in the academy that are yet to undergo proper combat training, we can take this opportunity to train them in dealing with crime.

I recommend we post them at every alley and smaller streets of the city. While the guards do patrol the city regularly, they are 'visible' to these criminals. It would be better to keep our servants hidden, not revealing what they are actually doing.

They can do other jobs while in those places and would not seem unusual either. This way, we will have a steady stream of intel coming from all over the city. And… perhaps we may even find some interesting things that we didn't know before." Lucius explained.

Gabriel felt his eyes light up and found his idea to be interesting. The more he thought about it the more it seemed to him. A minute later, he was fully convinced by all that Lucius had said.

"Perfect! We shall do as you said then." Gabriel stated.

"But won't we have to spend extra money on rewarding people? I mean, while we do have the brewery running now, it might still become a bit too much once more people start reporting." Lita voiced out her concerns.

"Hmm, we will only be rewarding valid reports and if the citizens' reports don't come to fruition, we won't reward them and if they dare to make fake reports, it will be they that will be punished instead.

As for the rewards, we won't need to pay anything from our pockets at all. We will just be 'confiscating' all that the criminals have stolen, burgled, robbed or accumulated in many other such ways. They won't need that in the prison anyway… or in the afterlife." Lucius replied.

Having heard Lucius's explanation, Lita felt like it was worth it as well. It was a rather different form of surveillance that they had not seen till now and thus it felt unique to them. Till now, most of the kingdom depended on the guards on chancing upon crime scenes or people directly reporting to the guards once something happens to them.

Most of these times, the victims would seldom be able to recoup their losses, whether they be material or immaterial. Oftentimes, these people didn't report the crimes too as they didn't know what to say or weren't sure. Sometimes they were even threatened by these very criminals to not reveal their identities.

Of course, the Inanis city was relatively safe and didn't have that many serious crimes. Most of it was just petty theft and brawls amongst people. But there were still some crimes that happened. 

Crime would always exist unless there was absolute surveillance on the people. Something like that was not possible here and thus the more likely thing was that the criminals had simply gotten better at hiding their crimes.

Lucius was sure that he would get a lot of reports once his plan was set in motion.

"How long do we have till the Arbitrator arrives?" Lucius questioned.

"That's something hard to answer. If the arbitrator comes straight to the city without stopping for any extra time, he would reach in about ten days. If there was bad weather it would take him more time to about fifteen days.

But… the priests of Duran have the reputation of getting into matters that don't involve them. They like to put their noses into every small thing that triggers their belief. If they witness a crime, they will try to stop it and resolve it.

There is a chance that the priest may get involved in something like that and get delayed. Though even if we consider that, since they were directed by the Church of Alana officially, it would probably take him a month to reach our city." Gabriel answered.

"Hmm… I see." Lucius replied as he thought over the distance.

The Grand Cathedral of Duran, which was considered to be the headquarters, was located to the south eastern edge of the Grantz kingdom. Unlike the Church of Alana and Etara, they didn't really have that many smaller churches around the kingdom.

In fact in total, they only had two in the entire kingdom. The first was their headquarters, the grand cathedral located in the south east and the second was a church located to the western edge of the Grantz kingdom, over a thousand kilometers away from the Land of Etara. 

It was unlikely that they would send someone from the western church as that would take them far longer as the Grand cathedral of Alana was located in the capital of the Grantz Kingdom, which was to the east of the land of Etara as well!