At the same time, Zion and Lia were on a journey toward the capital city, and it had been only an hour since they left the previous village. Their hands were tied and mouths blocked with a cloth as they passed through the market area of a town. It almost seemed like the elves were trying to choke them using the cloth at hand. Still, the two of them acted so obediently that the onlookers, who were watching the procession of the soldiers and glancing at Lia and Zion sitting inside the carriage, showed a trace of sympathy in their eyes.

"How unfortunate!" One of the white-haired men selling vegetables on the street side market said, "I think these people are innocent. Just look at the dhampir girl. She looks like she's about to cry. Even at this distance, I can see her eyes red."

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Truthfully, Lia's eyes were red only because of anger, not due to crying, but since it served the purpose, Zion didn't interrupt. Her red eyes would help them gain as much sympathy from the citizens as they could.

Another person standing beside the white-haired man spoke as he glared at the dhampir girl in anger. "How can you sympathize with these people? Don't you remember how they killed all these children? They deserve the ending worse than death!"

"But how can we be so sure that they are the ones who killed all the children?" Another elf buying vegetables spoke with a trace of worry in his eyes as he glanced at the carriage. "Their only fault was that they were present at the wrong place at the wrong time. What if they aren't the real criminals? Aren't we just missing out on the person who could be the real killer? We would help the murderer escape!"

The person standing beside the vegetable stall owner sneered and glared at Lia and her human servant. "What, then an elf did it? I would rather die than believe these words! Citizens of the Viridis kingdom have always been examples of virtue and peace. How can you even think that our people can kill those children? We, elves, have the purest of hearts, so I don't believe there might be someone among us who caused those murders. If you believe this, you're rather a traitor who is misleading everyone!"

The shopkeeper's and the buyer's bodies froze as they stared at the man and hesitated before speaking.

"I think you're right."

"We went too overboard."

While this was going on, Zion, sitting beside the window, heard that conservation and frowned. From what it looked like, these people were putting up the blame for the murder on Lia's and his shoulders. Was this only a coincidence, or was someone deliberately doing this? He pursed his lips and kept listening.

Throughout the journey, all he heard was similar conservation where the citizens were pointing fingers at him and Lia. Even those who hesitated and tried to make others understand that it might be a rumor, others shut them up quickly with their witty words.

This phenomenon only made Zion even more cautious. His mind instantly compared it with how celebrities suffered in the modern world because of being slandered with many such rumors online. He was similar to an online celebrity back then. The ghostwriters hired by the opposing party who wanted to destroy his reputation had made severe allegations and even posted things with fake 'evidence' about how Zion wasn't smart enough.

Many people had bought it at that time. If it weren't for the fact that Zion also knew how to code and hack the servers, he would have been doomed. He blocked all the accounts singlehandedly and contacted the authorities with a report. After that, he had even written a blog about all of these activities and posted it in the forum online under the anonymous author's name. He even used his hacking skills to make it trending.

The netizens were shocked and instantly apologized to him on the social media account.

So he was very clear about the way such slanderous rumors worked. Back when they were in the village, it had only been a night, and everyone in the town knew about what had happened the night before. It wasn't bizarre since he knew things happened like this in the villages in general. Any rumor would pass from one mouth to another at lightning speed.

But now, when he was passing through many villages and cities, he could hear almost every single citizen talking about this. A frown crossed Zion's forehead. Did the speed of spreading the rumor increase? It was almost as if the person who was spreading the rumor received a helping hand….

They traveled day and night and only stopped at inns for a few hours to rest. The security was tight, but Zion knew that if he intended to escape, he would have done that already. But currently, seeing how the case was going on and how the fingers were pointed at him and Lia at an alarming rate, he felt his decision to surrender was good. Now he wanted to go to the capital city and enter the palace.

Why the palace? For some reason, Zion got a hunch that he would receive sn evidence there. So that was why he didn't even try to escape.

Lia was also silent the entire time, and who knows what she was thinking. Her face remained expressionless as she stared into space in a daze as if she were thinking about something in her mind, but from her expressions, even Zion couldn't figure out what she was thinking about.

Soon, they reached the capital city.

Every village that they had entered had massive boundary walls separating the two towns. Every town or city had two gates: one to enter and another to exit and reach another place. After a small forest, they would appear in front of another village surrounded by boundary walls.

This time too, the capital was surrounded by the boundary wall, but the boundary range seemed bigger than all villages or cities he had seen. The gate was shut, and a few soldiers were standing on either side and the fortress with both crossbows and swords at hand. The ones standing closest to the main door held spears similar to the ones he had seen back in the village they were staying in.

But what made him frown the most was the powerful aura that leaked out of the soldiers' bodies. It almost seemed as if it were about 75% of the bloodthirsty aura that Lia would often leak out whenever she would be angry. His squinted eyes stared at them for a long time.

If these soldiers were this powerful, what about the elf queen and the people from her palace? Just how could he find the people to fit the description of the killer he had made and told Lia earlier? Did he make the wrong deduction?

If everyone in the capital were like this, he felt like he would need to go through the case again in his head.