BXBX NOVEL Volume 5 5.6
「At any rate, I guess I’ll just take these guys back and interrogate/torture them whenever.」
「Torture? Sheesh, such a barbaric way of putting it.」
「I’m leaving the decision-making to the pros, so who knows if they’ll do it or not.」
Rainy responded in an unconcerned manner to the man’s rather hypocritical comment as she stuffed the bamboo mat into a jute bag. If she intended to put the bike with her other belongings, in this case it would be better to preserve the contents and solidify it just in case. During the process, something appeared behind her.
「Out of my way.」
Rainy went a step ahead of the devil-type monster who had attempted to get in her way and got behind them, firing a hit into their vitals to take them down.
「I now have a gift for Deary, so time to withdraw.」
Stuffing in the remains of the devil monster alongside the man into the jute bag, Rainy murmured as she tightened the rope to the rear end of the bike. It wasn’t necessarily the most marvelous harvest, but it was better than nothing.
The next morning, after several parts of the devil monster remains that Rainy had brought in were collected as organs, the remaining meat and hide were processed into food for interrogation.
「Dark God Templar, huh……」
「It would seem that several of those believers have snuck into every organization.」
「Well, that’s rather alarming……」
The king frowned at the information given to him by the man Rainy had captured and pulled out. With the confirmation of priests and their cleansing, they were in the middle of purging believers in the royal palace little by little. Doing it all at once would create several vexing problems, so all they could was settle down and concentrate.
But when you considered the influence they had, it was clear this was a very alarming situation. Anything past this would be troubling, so the king wanted every last straggler eliminated as quickly as possible.
「So what does the situation look like?」
「Call it a blessing in disguise, but other than the trade guilds and a portion of the garrison, they were only in the bottom ranks that had to listen to the higher-ups.」
「Trade guilds, you say?」
「Yes. We think the series of business discontinuations around the academy are due to those people.」
「In other words, the members of Dark God Templar had encroached far enough to crush these businesses.」
The prime minister nodded gravely at the king’s question.
「As to whether there were templar members from the beginning or they were brought in later on, we don’t know. However, their objective is not the privatization of the organizations, but to topple the trust of the public institutions by working injustice to disturb the citizens and to expand suspicion.」
「That’s a rather patient method, but I suppose in the case of our kingdom they didn’t have any other choice.」
「It would appear so, yes. After all, it isn’t impossible, but it is fairly difficult to take over and manipulate the central structure with under-the-table payoffs and irresponsible rumors like they did in Farlane.」
The minister agreed with the king. Layotte already found all of this bothersome, so you could imagine just how repulsed Lorren’s high society and political figureheads were by this, and to an thoroughly intense degree. The inadvertent divulging of information regarding damage done by small talk and the current troubling state of affairs was already, depending on the information, enough for them to receive an all-out attack of slander lawsuits, so this was very hardcore.
「What about the academy’s secretariat?」
「Apparently, he was just a fool who gave in to his desires. It would seem that he didn’t have any connection to the templar until the incident.」
「How will he be dealt with?」
「We don’t know that part yet. We need a little more of a charge before we make any moves.」
「I see, so you are letting him swim around a bit longer.」
「Yes. I think that with things proceeding this far, he will panic and cause even more of a ruckus.」
The minister said, showing a video of the men diligently throwing out scraps and the academy secretariat and cafeteria head chef. Once they had the scene of the crime pinned down, it was probably conceivable to call over the authorities and capture one after the next after arresting these individuals for being caught in the act, but unfortunately, once they had done so, the criminals had reportedly already finished their work and retreated.
From what they could tell by looking at this criminal work playing on the screen, capturing them would be difficult unless they waited in secret. They were accustomed to that much. Besides, you couldn’t convict people for that much of a crime just for throwing trash everywhere.
「Honestly, this would be more than enough to be charged in any normal country……」
「Indeed, it would signify for both us and Farlane, being too fastidious can be problematic.」
While he did look grim, the king nodded at the prime minister. The young king just didn’t seem to understand the present legal structure and how it didn’t charge these people despite their blatant actions. Especially these last ten years or so, too many people got off clean who were supposed to be convicted, so even more so now.
Still, even if he didn’t understand, the king did consider the harmful effect of a slipshod change, so he was currently figuring out where they needed to begin the change.
That being said, Woldeus and the surrounding countries were already swiftly becoming dubious in their state of affairs as it was, so even if a portion of the parliament ignored the king’s decrees (no matter how logical these orders were) and did however they pleased, there was a high probability that only the king would be charged with the responsibility and the people who ignored it would get no penalty because of the legal interpretations and other aspects that he doubtless needed to fix quickly.
And to that end, before the verdict of capital punishment dropped on him due to the ignoring of orders, the king wanted some sort of clear achievement. If things went well enough, he might be able to use this incident as a breakthrough.
「At any rate, I do need to train my intel ability a bit more. It isn’t as if the intelligence squad trained by the predecessor will also swear fealty to me, and more likely than not, they can’t move as efficiently as the girl that His Highness Layotte sent over.」
The king grumbled with a sigh as he ruminated this information squadron that had practically let Rainy intrude, didn’t feel any shame even when confronted about it, and would barely do anything with information gathering, only the minimum. It was probably just because no one thought she was of any value that Rainy was able to go about as she pleased, when in actuality Lorren’s internal information, other than the pieces that the king himself never put into verbal form or behavior, was all being leaked to the surrounding kingdoms.
Honestly, this was more than just a situation in which the head of the country should be ashamed of themselves, but it was also far past the time to be feeling this shame. The king now had to operate under the presupposition that this was an incompetent group of individuals who failed to act in the national interest because they, the information squadron, had refused to swear fealty to the king.
「Yes. In exchange, when it comes to collecting large scale information, I can give you more superior results than she can, as she is but one individual……」
「This might be greedy on my part, but I would like to have both the elements of conspicuous individual power and of strong organizational power, not just in intelligence but in every aspect.」
「It might be difficult to accomplish in a day, but indeed, I shall consider all of this.」
The king and prime minister felt the utmost envy toward Layotte and his personal pawn Rainy, who (unbeknownst to either of them) currently had Hiroshi’s used towel in her hand that she had received in compensation for the souvenir she had brought over, exhibiting her sexual perversion to the max extent as she sniffed it and panted.