Addressing the leader seemed to be enough to snap him out of his stupor. He quickly straightened his coat, glancing at me suspiciously.
“I’m sorry, this meeting is a bit private.” He stated, his voice sounding a bit tight.
“You’re holding it in a public area.” I reminded him.
He stiffened slightly. “That as it may… we don’t have many large meeting areas to speak. Perhaps I can pay for your drink, and a private room.”
“These are wolfkin, do you think they won’t be able to hear a room over?”
He gave a bitter expression. “I mean, we can find you a temporary accommodation that is much more… suiting for your station.”
I lifted the ale, taking a sip. I had Poison Immunity and Disease Resistance equipped. I generally just always kept it on, so I didn’t need to worry about what I ate or drank. Well, I probably wouldn’t eat disgusting things unless I had to, but I also didn’t want to have to deal with diseases. As to why poison was called immunity, while the disease was resistance, I couldn’t guess. They functioned the same way. They had multiple levels and like many dungeon skills, the more you poured into them, the higher the resistance. Frankly, I had never needed something beyond level 1, but I supposed if there was some kind of magical poison or disease, a higher level would be good.
As I drank slowly, the mayor seemed to be waiting for my answer. The wolfkin wore expressions of indifference as if they didn’t care where they were. They casually took sips silently, taking the opportunity to relax a bit. When I finished drinking, I put the glass on the bar and then stood up. Given my size, I wasn’t much harder to see than the mayor.
The crowd of people all flinched. If there was any doubt that they knew something about her, or that she had any connection with what was going on, it was completely gone.
“I-I-I’m sorry, who?” The mayor spoke nervously, although he was sweating.
“You know her.” I declared. “Foxkin girl. 9-ninetails. As I understand it, they’re extremely rare. To see one born, let alone living until you could sell her off to slavery, she’d be hard to forget, I think.”
“A-ah… r-right… Miki… we sold her to a slaver. She was very sick and didn’t want to be an inconvenience to her family any longer. That was many years ago. She likely died…” His voice gained strength as he came up with a new lie so obvious I didn’t need Celeste to tell me the difference.
“Two months ago, she was about a day’s travel east of here, in the wildlands. Then, a group of animalkin came and told her that she needed to return home to help her family. Return here.” I stated, causing the mayor’s expression to turn ugly. “So, where is she?”
I was revealing a lot of what I knew, causing the wolf pack to turn to look at me with surprise. However, they weren’t that surprised. They had known that I had been sent to deal with this menace. If I didn’t have some connection to this menace, then when would their lord have depended on me? As for the rest of the crowd, their expressions were a mixture of shock, fear, and even disgust.
The mayor’s eyes narrowed. “Who is Miki to you?”
I supposed it was time to go for broke. I took a step forward and the disguise around me transformed back into my original face.
“I am Lord Deek Deekson. Miki was my slave. Now, what did you do to her?”