Chapter 355: 354: Rune 'Balance'

Date- 27 Mar 2321

Time- 17:51

Location- Sky Blossom City, Card Stadium, 2km in the sky

Lorenzo Lorn, aka Raining Alchemist, has comprehended and forged many powerful and handy Rules and Runes in his entire life. Still, there's one rune that has proven to be particularly handy for him throughout his career as the trusted minister of the patriarch of the Heatsend royal family. And that rune is 'Balance'; this rune has helped Lorenzo earn another title known as the expert interrogator.

As a rune 'Balance', allows Lorenzo Lorn to do many miscellaneous things, but Lorenzo Lorn mainly uses it to discern if the opposite party is telling the truth, which is not the actual intended purpose of the rune Balance. 

The rune Balance ability is to let Lorenzo evenly distribute different elements of a situation, enabling him to comprehend if the situation is equal or in the correct proportions. There are many ways to use this ability. Lorenzo Lorn mainly uses it in research and interrogation. 

As a tool for interrogation, the rune Balance is not the best fit. Still, the way Lorenzo uses it makes it possible to get satisfactory results with many limitations, but with enough time, he can get to more credible truth.

The way Lorenzo uses the rune is straightforward to understand but challenging to execute flawlessly, which is the reason why he cannot use this ability all the time to discern if the opposite party is telling the truth. Therefore he is an expert interrogator rather than an expert lie detector. 

It is easier to understand how the rune balance works by comparing it to an actual balance used to measure weights. This is how Lorenzo Lorn uses it to infer truth from lies. 

During interrogation, what Lorenzo does is, tell a lie inwardly and load the rune Balance with the weight of his lie while the culprit is answering his question. Then the balance takes the weight of the culprit's answer and compares its weight with Lorenzo's lie. Later depending on whether the culprit is telling the truth or not, the rune balance will change.

If the culprit is telling the truth, the rune balance will remain in equilibrium, indicating that the culprit is telling the turn. What happened here is the rune balance took Lorenzo's answer and culprits' answer to weigh them. Since Lorenzo was lying and the culprit was telling the truth, the weight of Lorenzo's lie balances out the weight of the culprit's truth. Therefore there is no change in the rune 'Balance'. 

Suppose the culprit was lying; the weight of the culprit's lie would add to the weight of Lorenzo's lie. And the rune Balance would indicate that there is no equilibrium since both are telling lies. 

Basically, Lorenzo makes up a random mental lie while the culprit is answering, if the culprit is lying too, then the rune balance will indicate a change, but if the culprit is telling the truth, then the balance will show no change. 

For example, during the conversation with Grinch, Lorenzo executed the same steps on him and discerned that Grinch was lying and there were more hostile card emperors in hiding. 

When Lorenzo asked Grinch, 'Young man, how many of you guys are here in total?' He activated his rune 'balance'

Seeing Grinch was confused, Lorenzo made the question more specific and asked, 'It's below 40 and above 26, right?' 

While asking this question, Lorenzo mentally thought of a random lie that he is sure is a lie like, 'I am 20 years old'. And loaded it in rune 'balance'. 

Since one side of the balance is loaded with lies, then the other side is for truth. Now, if Grinch answers with a lie, then it will be added to the lying side. Since there is no equilibrium, the rune 'balance' will indicate a change. But if Grinch answers with the truth, it will be added to the other side, the truth and the equilibrium is achieved, then there will be no change in rune 'balance'.

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Grinch, hearing Lorenzo question about their numbers, got defensive and hurriedly lied by saying, 'No.' 

Since Grinch lied, the lying side of the rune 'balance' got heavier, and the equilibrium was not achieved. Hence indicating to Lorenzo that Grinch was lying. That means the number of hostile card emperors is somewhere between 26 and 40. 

But using his positioning rain array, Lorenzo only counted 25 hostile card emperors, which led Lorenzo to conclude that there are dozen more or just one hostile card emperor in hiding that he missed locating using his positioning array. 

Lorenzo could have extracted the exact number of hostile card emperors in hiding and much more from Grinch, but the time and place did not allow Lorenzo to repeat his trial and error type of questioning techniques. 

There are rules and limitations to this method of Lorenzo's interrogation. One has to be aware of them for them to successfully use the rune 'balance' as a lie detector,

Lorenzo can load the rune 'balance' with a random lie or truth, and it can be the same for the opposite party under interrogation. How is the rune 'balance' supposed to know if the opposing party in question is telling the truth or not or the opposite party, just like Lorenzo is saying a random truth? 

That's where the questioning comes in, these questions are not just for the culprit but the rune 'balance' to judge whether what the culprit said should go to its truth side or its lies side. 

This way, Lorenzo's random lie or truth is weighed against the culprit's question-specific truth or lie. This is how Lorenzo uses questioning to dodge the loopholes in the rune 'balance'. And also the reason Lorenzo is titled an expert interrogator but not a human lie detector. 

…

"Old man, how sure are you about your array? It will work, right?" Anna asked Lorenzo in concern after all the whole plan laid in Lorenzo's Positioning rain array. If it failed to work as Lorenzo promised, then the Sky blossom city and its people will become a casualty of the Card emperor level battle. 

"Trust me. It will work. It has an 80 percent success rate," Lorenzo thought for a second before answering Anna's question after all the innocent lives of millions were at stake here, and any mistakes will not be tolerated. 

"Wait, earlier didn't you say that it has a 90 percent success rate? What gives" hearing Old man Lorenzo go back on his words shamelessly during such a critical situation Anna was pissed and dumbfounded. 

"This is the first time we are trying out this skill Combo, and there is no telling what can happen. You have to be brave." Lorenzo reasoned his withdrawal claiming that there was not enough data to give an exact answer since this was their trial run using the new skill combo. 

"You are kidding me right now. old man, were you this irresponsible when you worked for my grandfather, or is it just me. Forget it, start the array, and you better hope for your sake that this skill combo works." Anna warned Lorenzo and decided to go through with the skill combo as she did not create any alternative plan trusting old man Lorenzo's perfect plan. Which now seemed not so perfect. 

"Your highness, I advise you not to do whatever it is you are planning on doing. If you think it is only just 5 of us, then you are wrong. About 20 more card emperors are hiding in the city. So please do not act rashly. It may cost you millions of innocent lives." Grinch, who had been watching the southern emperor and Raining Alchemist bicker for a while now, hearing Anna was up to something he warned Anna and Lorenzo not to act rashly. 

"What are you implying, Boy? Are you threatening the Princess?" It wasn't Anna but calm and wise Lorenzo who reacted to Grinch's threat. Lorenzo was not angry with Grinch when he threatened to kill millions of innocent lives in the city, but when he threatened Anna with the city as the hostage, Lorenzo lost all of his calm and stared at Grinch as if he was the murder of his family. 

It might not look like it, but Lorenzo is very loyal to Anna and the Heatsend royal family. This loyalty of his is what let Anna's grandfather let Lorenzo marry her grand-aunt. Being the devoted follower of the Heatsend royal family, how could Lorenzo stay calm seeing the princess he swore to protect be threatened, by a nobody. 

As for the deaths of millions of innocent lives, it did not bother Lorenzo as during the expedition to rid the monsters festering in the southern region he had seen much worse. Hundreds and thousands of large human settlements were wiped out by the monster tide. A mere city was nothing compared to it. Millions die, and millions are born every day, but Anna is different. She is the symbol of billions of lives living in the southern region and billions that sacrificed themselves to make the southern region that it is today. Threatening her was equal to threatening everything he and his friends had fought for.

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