The World Dragon's Heir - Chapter 655: The Spy Math

Chapter 655: The Spy Math

Dominic stared at the information on the pages, trying to find something that would link all of these odd events together.

Everyone with power should know who he was already, at least in a general sense.

Wistover wasn’t hidden, and the Kings hadn’t made it a secret that they had teams here negotiating a regional peace treaty. The Merchant’s Guild also hadn’t been particularly secretive about the source of their new products.

Sure, they didn’t spread it around freely, because they wanted customers to come to them to get what they needed.

But they didn’t hide it.

“Alright, so we can pretty much rule out that whoever is coordinating these inquiries is local to one of the allied Kingdoms. But what might be the common denominator between them?

I’m assuming that all the inquiries were made by humans? Not sorcerers, Techno Witches or anyone else?” Dominic asked.

“We can’t guarantee that. Some of the ones asking about the source of the materials have been mages with questionable lineage, but most of them have been human government workers.

Or pretending to be.

That’s the issue. With the identification of the Duskblade Sect compromised, it has made us think that there might be an entire group spread over the continent that we’re not aware of.

If an identity as secure as that of a group of assassins can be duplicated so well, then how easy would it be for them to simply take on the face of some bureaucrat that we’re used to doing business with?

Most of our contacts are just servants to Noble houses.

The wealthy ones don’t attend these meetings themselves, they send their person to do it. So, we see that Advisor, Castellan or representative often enough that they become a trusted face.

Now, we do have spells on our buildings to detect disguises. However, there are ways to get around that, and not all of the meetings are done within our premises. It’s common enough for wealthy customers to treat our Merchants to dinner when they want to talk business, the same way that I come to the Manor for important matters.”

Dominic nodded. “It might be possible that they are not from this world at all.

You see, I was recently sent an Advisor as a gift from the former Headmaster of the Kinewen Academy.”

Rill gasped, and Dominic paused to let that sink in, as the Merchant clearly knew who he was talking about.

“He says that there are a number of his loyal people living in that world, and he has been in contact with our world enough to be aware of current events. That suggests that his people, or those of someone working with him, might have been looking for information while pretending to be someone else.” He added.

Rill frowned. “But if he sent you an advisor, then he already knew who and where you were. Some of these incidents are recent.”

Dominic flipped through the reports, going over them one at a time.

“Some of them are likely unrelated, as you noticed. Others might be him. I should call in Gordie, so he can confirm if any of these might be his people.”

Dominic stuck his head out of the office and gave Dave the order to call the new advisor over, then returned to the stack of papers on the desk.

“If it’s not them, then we need to find out what it was that they were after.

They wouldn’t have all been asking about the same thing all over the continent without some sort of reason. Especially not in a way that required hiding who they were.

If it was just normal inquiries about trying to poach talent, they could have paid off the Guild for that information.

I mean, it’s not uncommon to get you guys to hire workers with specialty skills.”

Rill laughed at Dominic’s assessment. “You’re not wrong about that. We excel in finding workers who can make the things that our customers need. That’s part of what makes this so strange.”

Gordie came in and saw the stack of documents on the desk and nearly turned around to run.

There was no way that much paperwork was good news.

“Perfect timing. Your Academy, did they have others sent here to investigate me, ones who might be hiding their identity?” Dominic asked.

Gordie gave him a confused look. “Why would we need to do that? We just used a tracing spell and then monitored everything that was going on in the area.”

Rill sighed. “Because someone has been pretending to be all sorts of different people in order to dig into the products that Wistover Duchy has been turning out, and they have been suspected of doing it all over the continent.

Everywhere that we have shipped these goods, we have had imposters pretending to be loyal customers looking into them.

Someone even pretended to be part of the Duskblade Sect to get information.”

“Only, the Sect is here, so they obviously weren’t real members. Alright, let’s see what you’ve found. This might actually be something serious. Or it might just be the Thieves Guild not trusting their own members.” Gordie suggested.

“We have considered that, but we haven’t found any evidence of it.”

The Thieves Guild was everywhere, even more so than the Merchant’s Guild, which didn’t operate in some regions. However, they were not well organized on the lower levels, and rarely had the sort of coordination to actively operate international operations.

One of the larger Mage Sects might have been able to, Gordie thought.

But if it were one of the ones he had studied since his arrival here, they should have also known enough about Wistover to not need to look into the publicly traded goods that were being shipped out from here.

It just didn’t make sense.

Gordie began to flip through the pages the way that Dominic had, only he was taking notes about each of the incidents.

“Some of these are likely legitimate. Like this one, it’s an inquiry by the fifth son directly, not by one of the servants. Most likely the head of household already knows, but didn’t tell the less favoured children who weren’t part of the family business.

If it’s just some son of a mistress looking for a way to make money, it would make sense that he was asking about the wholesale source of the products.

However, this one is all wrong.

It says that a purchaser from the Royal Family in Mitfield came asking about the situation in Wistover. So, they knew that the Guild was shipping goods from there, and had a branch there, but didn’t know that one of their Princes had been here for two months along with a Royal delegation?

That’s too low information.”