Chapter 496 Exposed

A week had passed since the day the dead bodies of the ten Linaton Ambassadors had been found in the Otherworldly residencies.

Nial was currently in the Orion Artisan Guild, precisely in the workshop hall, engraving a bunch of weapons, pieces of armor, and prostheses one after another.

He had been busy for the last week but Melheim informed him about the latest news related to the investigation of the incidents.

The public had gotten wind of the letter because one of the maids, who had learned the universal language to serve all the foreign Ambassadors properly, had found the letter lying next to the Ambassador's corpse.

She was also the first to find the corpse and the person, who made an anonymous post online, quoting the message that had been written on the letter word for word. The public questioned the Heaven's Gates organization about the truth to the extent that they were simply being nosy.

After giving in to the public ire, they revealed the truth in the end as they understood that exposing everything they had received in the two anonymous posts would calm down the masses. It may be bad for the government but it was hard for the government to blame them after the Heaven's Gates organization revealed the truth. After all, they had been pressured by the public voices.

Thus, the Heaven's Gates organization exposed everything Nial and Melheim had sent them.

It was obvious, but the public didn't think nicely of the government after they found out what they had hidden from them. An uproar happened and many protestors demanded the officials be replaced.

Things escalated quickly and it looked like a civil war was about to start.

"Good thing that I didn't want to be directly involved…" Nial mumbled while scratching the back of his head. When he wrote the letters, he hadn't taken into consideration that the maids would be able to read the universal language and that she would expose everything to the public.

That was where things began to spiral out of his control…but that was fine. He felt that it was rather helpful to have the public on his side, though they didn't know about that yet. The public would keep the government in check and force it to expose far more secrets on its own, get replaced, or become better while openly showing more than what it had been willing to expose earlier in order to improve its image.

There were still many doubts and questions in his mind but he held back most of them. His focus was on the creation of more and more runic armaments to earn a huge fortune, and nourish the Adventurers in the Onyx Association and the Artisans of the Orion Artisan Guild.

Many Artisans wanted to become Runiciers after they witnessed what Nial was able to achieve with seemingly simple runic constellations, but they quickly realized that it was far from easy to attain Nial's dexterity, knowledge, and composure while engraving runic constellations, and the fact that he had far more practical expertise than anyone his age was supposed to have.

Fortunately, Nial found a way to help the Artisans in the Orion Artisan Guild to improve themselves. The origin humans' standards were extremely low in comparison to other races. That was why Nial found the simplest solution; he asked Master Crevian to become an Instructor in the Orion Artisan Guild, well-paid of course!

Nial had also hired a few more instructors that were well-known Runiciers, and even Alchemists. They were all paid whatever they desired. Nial was basically handing them a blank check but he was not being too charitable and warned that he will fire them if they were asking for the impossible.

The threat of being fired was not exactly harsh under normal circumstances for the Elves. However, as a very prideful race, it was quite obvious that the Elves would feel humiliated and extremely embarrassed if they were to get fired.

But that was not the sole reason for the Elves to be eager to help Nial, after all, he was in possession of unique runic armaments as well. Archmaster Runiciers at his level were extremely rare. He could engrave all kinds of miniature runic constellations by now and his approach in various situations was exceptional, and completely different from the norm.

However, it was exactly this approach that allowed Nial to create various unique runic armaments, including Broken Runic Armaments such as the Heaven's Protectors, or One Strike to Hell.

They could be considered 'bad' weapons because they were expensive and broke after unleashing just one attack but they could be used by Originals of a much lower mana core rank.

All kinds of nobles, rich merchants, even the royalty would purchase Nial's Broken Runic armaments for an unbelievably high price if that meant they could protect their offsprings from assassinations, encountering death during missions in the wilderness, or facing death in various other situations.

And somehow, only Nial seemed to be able to properly create the Broken Runic Armaments. The demand was extremely high but the supply was just a grain of sand at the beach.

That was why many Elven Runiciers wanted to learn from Nial, to make it big even if their talent prevented them from advancing further on the path of a Runicier.

The only instructors that were hard to find were proper blacksmiths. If possible, Nial wanted to get his hands on some Grandmaster Blacksmiths just like the blacksmiths in Alliance City.

Unfortunately, getting them to the Halheim shelter wouldn't be easy.

He could hire some blacksmiths of other races but they were not that proficient. Nial was displeased by their attitude as well, which is why he ended up not hiring any instructors for blacksmithing rather than hiring someone stupid.

More time passed quickly and the situation revolving around the human shelters grew tenser. Nial could clearly tell that the government was made out of idiotic and greedy Originals, who valued nothing more than money.

They straight out denied the credibility of the proofs Nial had anonymously sent to the Heaven's Gates organization. The officials of the government said that they were fabricated, which stirred up even more chaos because more and more videos made by surveillance cameras were discovered.

Hackers had hacked the government's security system to copy the videos and upload them in various websites to expose the truth.

This forced the government to act and hastily make an announcement. However, that announcement was the worst they could have done if they wanted to calm the masses because the result was the exact opposite!

Nial felt like beating every single official of the government into a pulp when he finished reading their statement.

Quickly summarized, the statement said that the government wanted to prevent waging war with other races because they were too weak. They accepted the wrongdoings of the Linaton race's ambassadors because of that, and to make sure that the human race would survive. The victims of the Soul Contract scheme were blamed for signing such a stupid Soul Contract, to begin with. The statement made it clear that such idiots were merely a sacrifice for the greater good.

It was a necessity to maintain peace and to allow mankind to grow faster…

Nial really wanted to overthrow the government and destroy everything related to the government when he read the statement. However, he held back and forced himself to stay calm. He would make things only worse…if that was even possible, to begin with.

The Investigators of the Linaton race had arrived and they were a pain in the ass, however, their attitude was more violent and merciless in the face of the citizen's anger.

They killed several humans who obstructed the Linaton Investigators' way through the shelter. The Linaton race was not welcomed anymore. However, that was not something the tiny Linaton was bothered about. Their response to the public ire was cold-blooded murder.

It was not their fault for being obstructed.

Fear swept through the humans when similar incidents happened in every single shelter. Some humans had to be stupid enough to think that an Original at the Keltia rank was afraid of an unawakened human. It was only obvious that the Linaton's reaction would be drastic.

Nonetheless, it was quite unexpected that the Linaton Investigators didn't even hesitate to behead their obstacles in public. It looked like they were provoking the human race to see if the mysterious murderer would appear to take revenge.

And that was exactly what they had done…