Chapter 340: Heart and Eyes
Would things really turn out that way?
Ruger could not be sure. He could only say that the general outline of the matter was already laid out before him—or rather, the other man's life, the past few decades of it, had all been spread across the table and openly acknowledged. The only difference between Ruger and the other man was that the latter was candidly admitting and displaying what lay on the tabletop, while Ruger wanted to probe what supported it all—the things beneath the table.
Perhaps this was what the test wanted to see.
Ruger felt that he was always trapped in the perspective of a wizard apprentice. Wizards, and those great powers that had existed for ages, viewed matters from an angle utterly different from that of a wizard apprentice who had only lived a few decades.
Perhaps this test did not care about the so-called truth at all. What had truly happened between those brothers was unimportant. What they wanted to see was the examinee's reaction—Ruger's reaction. Everything else was merely the question itself. Though it was their lives, the laughter and suffering of ordinary people on the Island, to the test, it was only a prop.
What they wanted to see was Ruger's response—whether he would think when faced with such a situation, and what he would do after thinking it through.
Would he believe the other man's words? Or would he, like Ruger, harbor the necessary suspicions?
Perhaps every move he made was being recorded.
There might be an examiner hidden in the dark. Or perhaps it was not taken that seriously; perhaps that little ornament he carried had a recording function, and once the test began, it allowed some distant wizard to see everything here. Since they could devise