BXBX NOVEL Chapter 51: Questions
"Good morning, Atlan the Porter," she said as she walked over opposite him.
He looked at her and said, "Good morning. Are you a Quill?"
Lizzie immediately felt embarrassed when she heard him say that. "What is Wemby teaching you?! You shouldn't say that out loud."
The Operator waved it off. "It's fine. I don't feel offended by it. It depends on the person whether Knives and Quills are both terms of endearment or insults. I see no hate in his eyes, only curiosity."
She then walked over to Atlan and gave him her hand. "My name is Pterina Pterodinus and I am an Operator, or as you call it, a Quill."
Atlan shook her hand and after, she took a chair and sat down in front of him.
"I'm here to ask you some questions about what happened to the mission."
He looked towards Lizzie and saw that she nodded her head. "Just tell her what happened. Neumann and the others were already questioned the moment they woke up."
With how disastrous the mission could have been, the Savior HeadQuarters were doing everything they could to learn more about what happened. Atlan imagined that the Quills got the brunt of the blame; they were the ones in charge of surveying the symptoms and figuring out the parameters of the mission. They should have known better.
"Can you recount what happened when you all stepped foot in the Remedium?"
Atlan quickly told the truth about what happened during that time. He told her about them finding the Deiztruphia Canzer's lair, and he even told her in great detail how they defeated it.
However, he didn't tell her about the weird thumping pattern he heard during the mission. After all, it turned out that it came from the Sapient Canzer itself, and he wasn't supposed to know anything about that.
Pterina took notes and nodded at Atlan's answer once she cross-referenced it to the other's answer. They all generally told the same thing, which meant that it was the truth.
"Then, we waited for ten minutes for something. Neumann said that a 'blessing' was supposed to come."
Lizzie and Pterina nodded. "Yes. After a successful mission, the god would give out the rewards for completing the job."
"The fact that ten minutes elapsed and it still hadn't appeared meant that the mission still wasn't completed. The veteran Savior should have escorted you all out sooner. Go on."
Atlan then recounted the moment when they decided to go back. "We were just a hundred meters away from the portal when all of a sudden, the floor caved in and we fell into an abyss."
Pterina's eyes then got narrower as she listened intently to his words. This was the very crux of the problem. This shouldn't have happened at all.
"When I opened my eyes, I suddenly saw that I was in a winding tunnel."
"And what happened after that? Did you walk forward, or did you walk back? Did you encounter anything?"
The truth of the matter was that Atlan did encounter three Deiztruphia Canzers all at once. However, he couldn't tell her that. Nobody would believe that a 1st stage student porter like him could survive an onslaught from three different Canzers all at once. Even a team of 1st stage students had trouble fighting against just one.
They would surely get suspicious if they knew he defeated all three.
So, Atlan lied.
"At first, I stayed still. I didn't know where I was, so I didn't move that much. But when I knew that I had to move to find the exit. So, I walked forward, making sure not to make any noise."
At that moment, Atlan suddenly saw something flash in his eyes.
[Unauthorized probe detected]
[Lie detection denied.]
So this is an Operator's LifeSkill…
Pterina's blue battle suit glimmered a faint violet light as she activated her LifeSkill. The edges of her pupils glowed white as she tried to discern truth from fiction with Atlan's words.
She had a job as an 'Inquisitor', with the LifeSkill Truth Detection. She was able to see through a person's blood flow, perspiration, heartbeats, and breathing which helped her judge the authenticity of their words.
She could even see how much of a person's words were lies. She would know if they were subtly putting lies in their truthful words.
There were a lot of suspicious instances in Atlan's story. According to what they knew, the sewers were teeming with Canzers. It was unlikely that Atlan didn't encounter at least one Canzer.
And all of his other teammates found each other in the tunnels. He was the only one they didn't see at all.
No one knew what he did. No one could corroborate his story. But since her LifeSkill didn't notice any lies in his words, she continued the questioning.
"And they all said that the Sapient Canzer left the room to search for you. Did you encounter it?"
Atlan shook his head. "No. Thankfully, I didn't see it."
When Pterina looked at Atlan, she only saw tranquility in his body. There was no turbulence in his breathing, no increased palpitations in his heart, and there was no nervousness in his voice. He wasn't lying.
This did not surprise the Inquisitor. After all, if Atlan did encounter other Canzers, then his body would be brought back to the real world mangled into different pieces.
"That's all the questions I have for today. Thank you."
Once she got what she needed, she inputted everything she heard on the tablet to record it. She then thanked Atlan and Lizzie for their time and she turned to leave.
Before she closed the door behind her, she looked at Atlan with a determined face.
"Don't worry. We'll get to the bottom of this. We will make sure that this doesn't happen again."