Matthew woke up in a daze, a stench of alcohol filled the whole room. " Good God! How much did I drink last night?" Mathew sniffed his clothes and almost puked, it looked like his shirt had been soaked in liquor.
He quickly got out of his bed, and almost slipped into a pool of liquid on the floor. " Jesus! Don't tell me that I stepped on what I'm thinking..." The viscosity of the liquid remembered Mathew of puke, and he confirmed his suspicions as he turned his head around, and saw the big pile of vomit filling the floor, " Sigh... it looks like I went overboard last night." Mathew's memories were totally blacked out, only remembering what he had done until Allan had left the festival.
He hoped that he hadn't done anything embarrassing, after all, he had just begun to live in Sigebert's body.
Mathew looked around the room for something to clean the vomit, however, he didn't find anything so he decided to go take a bath before exiting his room.
Sigebert's house was quite a good place, it even had a small bathhouse with steaming water. The hot water helped his body relax, and after a few minutes in the bath, he was ready for another busy day again.
-" It looks like I'm quite settled in already." Mathew laughed as he looked at Sigebert's hands, or better saying his hands now. " Taking the life of someone like this is quite weird... but, I can't do anything, can I?" Someone loudly knocked on the door of his house as Mathew mumbled to himself.
-" Hey! Are you up?" Simon's voice had a tone of urgency to it. " You need to come out now! We have something to deal with!"
Mathew quickly dressed, he chose another one of the robes that Sigebert wore yesterday, but, this was red in color. -" Comming!" He was annoyed by the sudden visit, his stomach grumbled in hunger and he hoped to eat something before having to deal with anything else.
However, Mathew knew that he would have no time to eat or do anything else as he opened the door and faced the crowd of angry villagers.
-" H-H-Hey Simon." Mathew looked at the crowd and swallowed, he even wondered if he had done something yesterday to attract the ire of all villagers. " Did something happen?"
-" Did something happen?" Simon looked at the young man with a serious face. " That man you brought! He isn't letting anyone go back to their former places!"
-" Go back to their places?" Mathew finally understood what was happening, and it finally dawned on him the big trouble he had ahead. " Where is Curtis now? Why isn't he letting you guys reclaim your lands?"
-" They need to prove it first..." Curtis's voice rang out from far away, and the crowd quickly opened a path for him. " Or they can wait until we finish dealing with his, and we will grant them back."
-" Prove it? How are we going to prove it? Nicolaus destroyed all the land titles!" Simon shouted, he was outraged that the man still was asking for something like this even after knowing what happened here.
-" This isn't the only way to prove your ownership, tax recipients and others documents are enough." Curtis looked at the group of villagers and nodded. " I just need something else other than their words."
Mathew understood where Curtis was coming from, after all, if they acted solely on their words, the villagers would surely take advantage of this and lie. " This isn't an unreasonable request..." Yet, Mathew too could understand why the villagers were so upset, they had suffered greatly at the hands of the previous magistrate and only wanted their land back. " Why don't we calm down first? It shouldn't take too long for us to review all the land titles and this will all be done." He tried to defuse the situation, as he knew how fed up the villagers were.
-" Won't take long? Do you want us to wait even more?" One of the villagers screamed as Matthew finished speaking.
-" How do we know that you won't steal our land?"
-" Yeah! And what if you can't find anything about the previous owners?"
A Small portion of the villagers was outraged by Mathew's words, while others were on the fence about the situation.
-" How much time do you want? We can't just sit around and wait forever!" Simon had a good amount of trust in Mathew, so he chose to trust him.
Mathew exchanged looks with Curtis, who let out an awkward smile. " Two days! I just need two days!" Mathew hoped that the villagers would accept his proposal without any further troubles.
-" Two days?..." Simon closed his eyes and nodded. " This much time is acceptable! But, we all will be living in Clifton manor during this!" Simon felt that he should ease Mathew's trouble a little.
All the villagers considered Simon to be their leader, so they accepted the proposition without many complaints, and before long the angry crowd dispersed to the various part of the villagers, leaving only Curtis, Sumon, and Mathew there.
-" Oh? Quite the diplomatic man." Curtis grinned as he patted Mathew's shoulders." But. I have to inform you that this may take much more time."
-"Huh? Don't we just need to search for the previous records?" Mathew didn't understand what was so hard about this,
-" Well... You will understand when we get there." Curtis laughed, as it seemed that Mathew had no idea the hole they were both in. " Call your friend too! We are alone, and we need some help."
Simon gave Mathew an inquisitive look, but, he couldn't only answer it with another curious gaze. The two of them sighed in defeat and followed Curtis, who had guided them to a big shack behind the city prefecture,
-" This is..." Memorie flashed in Mathew's head, this was the place where Sigebert had found the first clues to Nicolaus' corruption.
-" This is the place where all the official scrolls are stored." Curtis had an ironic smile as he opened the door of the shack. " And when I say all... " A wave of scrolls rumbled and fell down, almost completely covering the whole entrance of the shack.
-" Are those?" Mathew shivered as he saw the number of scrolls, there were thousands on the ground, and even with so many coming out of the shack they couldn't even walk inside it.
-" Official documents... Tax Fillings, Production and Expenditure Reports, Population census." Curtis grabbed one of the scrolls and threw it to Mathew. " Mostly filled with rubbish, as Nicolaus never seriously wrote them."
-" Do we have to search everything?" Simon was in disbelief, he couldn't understand how these many documents were stored in this little space.
-" Most likely... Some of the villagers said that their lands were taken away ten years ago." Curtis couldn't help but find the expression that the duo made funny. " Oh?! This is just one of the documents storage, there is another one, and of course some vaults in Nicolaus' house too."
-" So many..." Mathew instantly regretted only asking for two days.
-" Haahahahha, Don't worry." Curtis patted his shoulder, his sarcastic smile had grown even more. " After all, we have two days right?"
-" Can we really do this in two days?" Mathew almost fainted from stress as Curtis continued to mock him.
-" Well we have three people to read all of this..." Curtis looked at Simon, and with his eyes full of curiosity asked. " Do you know how to read right?"
Simon stuttered as he answered the man's question. -" K-K-K-Kinda..."
-" Kinda?" Mathew didn't understand what kind of response was that. " What do you mean?"
-" Just the basic you know... My name, places, and things like this." Simon felt awkward as he was now the one in the spotlight.
-" Well... Two people to read all of these." Curtis laughed once again. " But don't worry, we can do this." Curtis finally decided to stop making fun of them and got serious. " We just need to start the land return in two days, not complete it." He already made up a plan.
-Mathew thought about the situation and found that his observation was completely true. -" Going slowly on the retuning land process... we can even put some hassle in the process." Mathew put all his focus on the matters at hand. "So the villagers won't blame us for not completing it all on the second day
-" Yeah... If we only have one person responsible for the returning of the land, it will take quite a while to finish all of them" Cutis looked at Simon as if he was looking at a precious gem. " Especially if this person isn't well versed in writing..."
Simon felt relieved that he wouldn't be forced to read the documents, completely oblivious to the man's devilish plan. " Oh, at least I'm still going to be useful, I guess..." Simon barely knew that this would be one of his last days in peace for quite a while.