Episode 014: True Neutral

While there was a high chance of altercations ahead of me, I was fine with the potential violence involved to get the hell away from Aure City. What I wasn’t as sure and committed on was lethality, as I didn’t want to deal with any potential fallout. How I might react to it since, as a law-abiding modern citizen, I never killed anything (other than seafood and roadkill) before and was not sure how I’d react to doing so.

More relevant was the potential trouble of the elves being vengeful and hunting me down after. At this moment, they just slapped a potential crime of me being related to Verk Unodhim’s disappearance and were honestly more concerned with wresting control of the city than the missing Shamaness. If I killed one of them though?

Yeah…

Aure City’s governmental structure was a political bomb waiting to happen. It probably did not help that their race was so long-lived, so they had the time to build their favorable impressions. Shamaness Verk—specifically the position of Shaman in elven culture and society—had been the lynchpin; her presence had been the balancing force between the factions.

Eti Lifeflight was basically an Isolationist. Currently, there was minimal trade with human cities along with exchange of information, but the older elve wanted to shut the “borders” of their land in reaction to this unnamed crisis they had little information about but were racially magical enough to feel the Impending Doom.

Another side, with Vun Solhidur as their figurehead, was taking the opportunity to try to change the governing structure of the city. This was a looser group with different interests, but it could be summed up with: greed. Vun Solhidur was less conservative than most elves but seemed a little dumb, and older elves were using his genial reputation to push forward their own agendas. While this side had the same want as changing the current status quo, it directly opposed Eti’s stance since they needed to open up their borders a bit more to promote the trades they want.

The only other side I counted (there was another elve who had another point of view but no actual plans like Eti or Vun’s Circle) was the faction that wanted to keep tradition while remaining open to other “cities” and “people.” It was the missing Shamaness Verk’s side, composed of Ing Soulhaze, Captain Grine Soulhaze, and most of her group.

Eti was well-spoken when he put on his politician’s demeanor and ignored the human while Vun had the advantage of a likable personality and rather good looks for an elve. Ing was at a disadvantage mostly because her opponents kept on reinforcing ageism arguments to lower the validity of her words, which were appropriately wise-sounding compared to the casual way she spoke with me.

If things continued in this vein, Eti was going to win and I will either be used as a scapegoat or left to rot. Since Ing was having her character attacked, her account when it came to Shamaness Verk’s disappearance was made invalid, so having a false charge placed on me was looking pretty good.

Well, it was not my problem if the elves wanted a civil war—though I doubt it would come to that. I just needed to get out before things really blew up.

[Will we escape, Nori?]

Considering you won’t allow me to make a distraction—unless you changed your mind?

[Nori, no explosives.]

Then not yet.

I sighed. Time for the waiting game; where was a web novel when you needed it?