As Ian headed to the third floor to examine the clues in Linda's room and the alchemical laboratory,
Sister Reflected Light was taking a statement from Steward Morda.
It sounded bizarre—how could a mere First Energy Level operative of the Church of Light's Embrace, a nun who was not even formally ordained within Light's Embrace, possess the authority to take a statement from a witness—or even a tainted witness—in a major case?
But that was also because the Empire had its own particular national conditions.
Although the Empire had its own law enforcement institutions, the Emperor alone maintained three entirely distinct and mutually independent intelligence and violent agencies for overseeing noble officials and gathering intelligence from foreign nations: the Patrol Knights, the Nobles' Court, and the Mirror Sea Guard.
The Truth Institute and the Spirit Cognition Institute, responsible for managing sublimators, were two of the Empire's great factional mountains, endlessly wrestling against each other.
Yet there were comparatively few institutions truly responsible for matters concerning commoners.
The three departments of "Criminal Law," "Jurisprudence," and "Inspection" were generally known collectively as the Supervision Court, or simply the Court. Their enforcers were called inspectors, and they were nominally the Empire's official institution for handling commoners' petitions, as well as all manner of criminal and civil cases involving commoners.
Ordinary cases of banditry and robbery, kidnapping and extortion, or commoners killing someone and fleeing were normally investigated by the local city's Supervision Court, which would dispatch people to hunt down the criminals and bring them to justice.
But how should one put it...
Not to mention that they could not possibly manage everything— even if they could, would the local nobles let them?
Take Harrison Port as an example.
Fourteen years ago, the chief judge of the local Supervision Court had been rammed