Relevance

Deodeky spread her hands above the desk, and an assortment of items appeared.

The first was a crystal ball, within which was mirrored the surroundings. Obviously, this was how they would record the interview.

The second was another, smaller crystal ball. This one had the words "truth" and "lie" hovering within, the former in green and the latter in red. Some kind of lie-detecting ball?

The third was a single sheet of paper, upon which were scrawled several questions, many of which had words Fate couldn't yet understand.

The last was a bottle of water, perhaps the most ominous of the bunch. It was quite plain, a see-through object of clean glass. But it told Fate that this could very well take a while.

"This shouldn't take long," Deodeky said with a smile, although Fate had a hard time believing her.

She pressed a palm against the larger crystal ball and sent some Mana inside. The image of the surroundings became sharper and more focused before zeroing in on Fate's face. To the side of the playback of his face was the lie-detecting crystal ball, to show the viewers the results.

"Is this necessary?" he asked exasperatedly.

"Seeing a good-looking guy talk about killing imps is going to help the story sell," Semenda said to his right. That nebulous gas swirled in her eyes for a brief second before vanishing. "Don't try to run."

"I won't, I won't," Fate sighed. "Not like it would do me any good." 'Wait, what'd she say?'

"Alright, sound check! 1, 2, 3. Test, test." Deodeky sent another dose of Mana into the orb and it replayed her words perfectly. She nodded, satisfied, and straightened as she grabbed the sheet of paper before her.

"We're here with Royal Mage Academy's number one troublemaker, Fate… What's your last name?"

"Don't have one," Fate said, already tired of this. 'I'm not that much of a troublemaker, am I?'

"Fate it is, then. Tell us, what exactly happened in the Golden Caverns? We've heard tales of a wild berserk enchantment causing you to kill thousands of imps by yourself. Is this true?"

"As far as I know. I don't exactly remember the ordeal, only snapping back to awareness in a room full of imp corpses, with a giant sword in my hand."

Deodeky glanced at the smaller crystal ball, giving a short nod when the word "truth" flashed green. "Next question. You borrowed some Guard armor for this task, the recording within which was leaked to the masses. What do you have to say about that?"

"Nothing," Fate said nonchalantly.

"Do you know who did it?"

"Nope."

Another glance at the crystal ball. "Alright. How did it feel fighting imps? Were you scared?"

"I'd fought imps before," Fate shrugged. "Apparently those ones were kids, but it wasn't that different. A sword kills them better than a pitchfork or a stick, though."

"So you weren't scared?"

"Why would I be scared of a bunch of lazy imps?" Fate raised an eyebrow. "Half of them couldn't even be bothered to train with the weapons they were using. They said it themselves."

"An excellent segue into my next question…" Deodeky grinned, tapping the paper with a fingernail.

'An excellent what?'

"In the fight, you displayed remarkable skill with a sword," Deodeky continued. "Where did you learn to fight?"

"Nowhere," Fate said with another shrug. "Never touched a sword before Monday."

"I find that hard to believe," she said after confirming he wasn't lying. "I'm sure the viewers at home are equally confused."

"I don't know what to tell you," Fate told her. "I don't even know if I'm actually any good. For all I know, the sergeant was just making jokes."

"Uh-huh, sure," Deodeky said, unconvinced. She glared at the lie detection orb after it told her he was telling the truth, starting to wonder if it was faulty. "What were the Guards like? How did they handle the danger?"

Fate twitched as he remembered the way Sergeant Beadren died. And Higgs…

"Higgs, Sergeant Beadren, Madds, Richard, and Brent were all extremely brave, even when faced with endless enemies. I'm proud to have fought at their side."

"Weren't there two others?"

"In my eyes, no. Just five brave men."

"But there *were* two others," Deodeky insisted. "We've all seen the recording by now. They were named Bregg and Gus, were they not?"

"The only Guards that I accompanied were the five I mentioned," Fate said, emphasizing Guards. "The men who stood tall in the face of certain death, two of whom gladly sacrificed themselves to give the rest of us a chance to live."

"So you are saying the other two were not Guards?" Deodeky asked probingly.

"I'm done talking about this," Fate frowned. "Ask the next question."

"Fine. Why weren't there any women on the team? I and my sisters find the lack of representation profoundly disappointing."

Tresbeney nodded with a slight pout to Fate's left as Semenda crossed her arms with a frown. "Are girls just not good enough for your team or something?" the light-haired triplet said as her hair crackled with dark energy.

Fate let out a breath as he shook his head. "Have any of you ever seen an imp in person before?" he asked.

Four shakes of the head were his response.

"Do you know their breeding process?"

"Care to enlighten us?" The pale-skinned Deodeky asked as she slid the crystal ball closer.

"They're a male-only species," he explained. "And they need women to make more of them. Do you know where they get those women?"

"…Oh."

"Exactly. I can't tell you how many times we've lost young girls to attacking imps back at the village. Every now and then they manage to take an adult, and half of the fights are just snatching the women out of their claws.

"If the sergeant had brought along a woman of any age, those imps would have fought twice as hard, making it unnecessarily difficult.

"I've heard of that," Ventraga said. "It's the same reason the Empress only sent women to fight the succubi back in the day."

"Wait," Deodeky exclaimed, her eyes lighting up as she latched onto his words. "What'd you say about a village? You're from a village?"

"What of it?" Fate asked, brows scrunching together. How was that relevant?