"Did you find any clues?" Frode quickly asked, "Did you find out who they were sacrificing to?"
According to what Frode learned from Little Sam, at that time, it wasn’t just the landowners who were conducting the sacrifice; many nobles in the town were involved as well.
This is a typical collective sacrifice event, primarily involving human offerings, filled with a primitive style. In the historical records of the Wizards’ Realm, in similar situations, there is a high probability that the object of the ritual was an Evil God from the Otherworld, using the name of sacrifice to deepen their connection to the Wizards’ Realm and thus enter it.
This kind of situation is quite common in the primitive tribes on the Feran Continent, so every once in a while, various witcher organizations would issue tasks for subordinates to clear out such sacrifice events in Feran’s primitive tribes.
Drue shook his head, "We still don’t know who they were sacrificing to."
Frode frowned slightly, "Then the clues you found are...?"
Drue looked slightly awkward, "The clues found by the Knights’ Order, we still cannot confirm if they are related to the collective sacrifice event, but based on some speculation, there might be a connection we’ve yet to discover."
"Oh, what do you mean?"
Drue adjusted his reading glasses, suggesting Frode enter the castle first.
As they walked into Star Lake Castle, Drue began to recount the clues the Royal Knights found in Dawn Town of the Silver Heron Duchy.
Drue’s account was clear and concise, and Frode quickly understood the gist of it.
The matter began with the Knights’ Order’s investigation into the landowners’ sacrifice.
Because the Silver Heron Duchy is a subsidiary state of the Central Empire, the Silver Heron royal family’s Knights’ Order enjoys a prestigious status there, along with special enforcement rights. Therefore, the Knights went to investigate the landowners’ sacrifice, using their status as leverage, quickly identifying the nobles in Dawn Town involved with the sacrifice.
Unfortunately, the Knights did not find much in the hands of these people. Their sacrifice seemed to come out of nowhere, and questioning them led to no clear answers.
The Knights suspected that it might be that some Otherworldly powerful entity used a memory interference ability; it would probably require an Official Wizard to uncover the clues.
Thus, the Knights first reported this information to Neya.
Because the matter of sacrificing to an Evil God could be either significant or trivial, some Evil Gods are purely curious, while others harbor malevolence towards the Wizards’ Realm. Regardless of the scale of this sacrifice event, Neya promptly reported it to Hurricane Tower, hoping that they could dispatch an Official Wizard.
Whether an Official Wizard would come, or when, was uncertain for the Knights, so they decided to use this opportunity to continue digging into the secrets of Dawn Town to see if other clues could be found.
However, no issues were found when investigating the noble families and their related enterprises. Many members of the noble families didn’t even know someone from their family had participated in the Evil God sacrifice.
At a loss, a knight suggested investigating the slave market.
Since offerings are needed for a sacrifice, they must use living people.
Many nobles participated in the sacrifice, and there were few like Little Sam; most nobles didn’t want to make a big issue, so the offerings they used were bought from the slave market in Dawn Town.
As for using servants as offerings, the nobles were unwilling to do so because servants are skilled and trained in etiquette.
Sacrificing a servant who took so many resources to train? That’s madness. They are not high-ranking nobles from the dominion who can easily afford it; training a competent servant is time-consuming.
The Knights thought that investigating the slave market might lead to something, so they decided to follow up.
Over the next few days, the Knights conducted a comprehensive investigation of the slave market in Dawn Town, and eventually, they did find some hidden clues.
However, the clue was not directly pointing to the nobility of Dawn Town.
Because this clue related to an incident that occurred thirteen years ago.
The reason they dug up an incident from thirteen years ago was mainly due to its connection with a "Transcendent incident."
According to a staff member of the slave market, thirteen years ago, quite a few slave ships sailed from the Outer Sea to the nearby Dawn Port, around ten or so in total.
At that time, people from Dawn Town’s slave market also went, hoping to acquire some high-quality slaves—typically, overseas slaves are pricier than local ones, and from overseas, there are also some humanoid race slaves that cater to the peculiar tastes of some nobles, hence their price is even higher.
They indeed found quite a few impressive slaves, but they managed to get only a handful. The vast majority were bought by another secretive buyer.
And this buyer was the one pointed out by the clue.
This buyer was quite strange, spending generously, even offering high prices for many worthless slaves. This naturally made the slave ship merchants willing to sell to him rather than the Dawn Town slave market.
Because of being outbid, the slave market staff paid extra attention to this buyer.
Then they discovered something peculiar: this buyer’s slave selection criteria were quite bizarre.
He wasn’t interested in the slave’s talents, beauty, or illustrious status but rather... their physique and height.
The slaves he purchased all fell within a particular height range; he did not want slaves who were too short or too tall. Even if those slaves were more valuable, he wouldn’t even glance at them.
The staff member who discovered this secret began to scheme, thinking their slave market also had many height-range slaves, many of which were slow movers, and selling to this person sounded appealing?
Later, upon further contact, the buyer indeed agreed to purchase them.
During the transaction, the staff member engaged more with the buyer. At the time, nothing seemed amiss; it just seemed like the buyer had a unique fixation on height.
But one time, when a staff member delivered slaves to the buyer’s temporary residence, they discovered that the previously delivered slaves had all disappeared. They clearly hadn’t seen the buyer leave, and the disappearance of a large number of slaves should have left traces—yet there was none.
Additionally, the staff member saw a strange symbol at the buyer’s residence...
"A symbol?" Frode asked, "What symbol?"
Drue shook his head, "I don’t know; the staff member forgot."
Frode furrowed his brow. So far, Drue’s story didn’t provide any tangible value, and there was nothing related to the so-called "transcendent element." So what was the point of Drue telling this story?
As Frode pondered, Drue continued, "The symbol was odd. The reason the staff member forgot it was not that he wanted to but because his memory was tampered with."
"Oh?"
"According to that staff member, he thought the symbol might have some meaning, potentially leading to the buyer’s identity, so he tried to memorize it to investigate later on."
"However, the symbol itself is not complicated, but whenever he feels like he’s memorized it, the memory of the symbol vanishes the moment he closes his eyes to recall it."