Chapter 13
The Rural Government Office That Teeters On The Edge
That day, the gray city lit aglow and the snow covering the main streets melt into sparkling trickles of streams under the gentle warmth of the winter sun .
A few days had passed since the start of René’s bootcamp .
Today, she was out in the open streets with Diana, her tiny body freed from the terrifying confines of the torture device called ‘corset’ . She wore a robe that fluttered behind her with each step yet wrapped her in enough warmth, a clothing easy and comfortable to wear .
“How’s your ‘education’ going?”
“Makes me wanna run away…”
Their destination; the Adventurer’s Guild .
Even if they had received their quest directly from the Earl, it was still proper etiquette to have it be run by the Guild . Those who ignore this process, both the giver of the quest and the acceptor, are strictly educated on how things are done, and if certain lines are crossed, they are blacklisted .
There were two reasons for Iris tagging along . First, of course, was to take some time off and relax . The other was because René wanted to see the Guild with her own eyes for once .
Adventurers were, simply put, experts of Monster Hunting . They specialised in tracking and killed various kinds of monsters . While the society at large does give them the occasional stink eye, they are more often hailed as brave heroes than not, often immortalised in songs and stories even .
René’s current and most pressing threat certainly was that Commander of Knights, but she may have to go up against various strong adventurers before that, so she wished to obtain as much information on them as possible .
…Or so she had reasoned to herself, but in reality, she was simply curious about what was what and, instead of salvaging things from Iris’ memories, she came to see things with her own eyes .
“The proper way to use forks, the proper way to use knives, the proper way to eat, sit, stand, walk… You have to walk in a single line, as if you’re on a tightrope… And, get this, she made me do all that while she piled book after book on my head! Unbelievable!”
“My, my . I’d always thought the balancing books on your head was just an old wives tale, but it seems to be quite true . ”
“Very true . ”
The two talked about the suffering René had to go through in Iris’ training .
Even as a chimeric amalgamation of an Adventurer, an everyday girl (only Royalty by blood), and a dead, overworked corporate slave, René couldn’t hold a candle to the noble-born Countess Catharine, who has been receiving a constant flow of such education since she was born . Even if the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Technology were to oversee and create a syllabus for these things, the level of cramming one would need to do to get a passing grade would surely make even those with photographic memory cry .
“If it’s part of the job description, I want to get paid to learn all this!”
“Ahahahaha! You’re right, you’re right! But Iris, you know, you might have a use for all this in the future . ”
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“Is that how it works?”
“That’s how it works . Imagine, you have your knife-and-fork work down really good, and someone with some good connections sees you and goes, ‘Pipsqueak has the build and looks of an everyday adventurer, but is she actually from a well-mannered family?’ and changes their mind on something about us . Skills like these really come in handy for that kinda thing . ”
So that’s how, René thought .
Certainly it felt like a big minus when one thought of it as extra work without pay, but looking at it from a different perspective, surely there are people who cannot learn these lessons even if they can pay for it . So for René to have this opportunity at no cost seemed to be quite the positive .
In fact, René took it as a big opportunity .
She may have to possess one, perhaps even more than one, young girls of nobility in the near future . Thus to blend in with ease, she felt she ought to learn and engrave their mannerisms to heart .
――Well… Anyway, that’s for later . First things first . Gotta settle things with this shithole country first .
And to do that, I need to find out where this Night Python thing’s hiding and send them all to hell .
It’s not exactly enough to just be the body double of the young lady . I have to deal with everything from behind the scenes so Night Python crumbles .
――I’m sure I’ll be moving personally in the very end but… It boils down to how much I can use the Earl and Dragon’s Throat, huh . I don’t even know who to kill right now, let alone where they are… Okay, first things first, gotta get info on everything I can since I have a physical body now .
I wanna know about Ciel-Terra and what’s what after the coup too . There’s a limit to how much I can pick up from eavesdropping as a spirit, after all .
And, as René wandered the great halls of her thoughts, the two had arrived at the front door of the Guild .
“A quest from the Earl? Righty-o . ” said the Guild Master immediately upon glancing at Iris and Diana .
Seems to be acquainted with us already .
The Adventurer’s Guild sat in the busiest corner of town .
However the two-story building itself was on the smaller side and felt more like a bar for the more well-mannered bunch . While they weren’t actually serving meals here, there were several adventurers sitting at tables, having their drinks and meals bought from nearby stores . In the place where the drinks menu poster would be on the counter, there was a board with quests pinned on it .
Being one of the smaller branches, the Guild Master himself handled work with the Adventurers often, filling in for the absence of a receptionist, who was perhaps assigned to handle the shift of a different time of day . ‘The Master’s got the most free time so long as shit don’t hit the fan around here’, or so the man himself said . Well, truth be told, it seemed like doing these things were more of a hobby than simply filling up the gaps .
The man stood like a bearded boulder, a bit vertically challenged but horizontally quite beefy . He was a dwarf, the second-most common race in the country, the first being humans . Since even as fledgelings male dwarves have beards, humans could rarely tell if a dwarf was young or not, but it seemed that the Master was in the last quarter of his life . The stone-chiseled muscles he was proud of once has since grown soft (humans can’t tell how or in what way) but the man was apparently quite the swashbuckling adventurer himself in his younger days . So in the end, it is simply that he enjoyed watching the young adventurers going about their lives from the counter .
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“Good grief, y’all getting into them graces of our Earl here’s really working good for ye . But lemme tell ya, this time, it ain’t gonna go so easy . Y’all up against a pretty dangerous bunch, hope y’ll listening to ‘im well . ”
“Perhaps . Depends on how things go from here on… If they come at us with everything they have, things will take quite the ugly turn . ”
“Got any advice?”
“Ah, well…”
The Master glanced at a nearby adventurer who was in the process of eating .
Because of the nature of the quest, it would be best not to discuss it in an open and public place as the Guild .
“Let’s talk upstairs… Oi! Wayne! Get yer ass here and man the counter!”
The Master walked past the young man who climbed down the stairs upon being called, while Diana and Iris followed after him .
The Master’s quarters was similar to the Principal’s office of a small school . On top of being built to be soundproof, it was enchanted with a spell that prevented sound from going out as well, so it was the only room fit for having discussions of the discrete nature . Perhaps in larger branches, there would be more rooms of this kind, created with even further enhancements for the sake of partaking in discrete talks, but this was the best a small branch could afford to have .
“So . How much do y’all know ‘bout this recent coup d’etat?”
The very first words that came out of the Master’s mouth froze René’s blood .
She had been treating the destruction of Night Python as a simple exercise to gain more experience, but to think that those two things would find common ground here…
The dregs of her black, cold grudge lit anew in her heart . She quickly calmed herself to not let any of her intentions spill from her expression, for if she let slip any (of the evil kind), the Priestess Diana would surely notice René’s existence .
Fortunately for her, it seemed Diana had noticed nothing .
“As much as the rumors go . ”
“That so . Well, ya better listen up good . ” said the Master as he served the two cups of tea .
By the way, it looked like he was pouring a good few pints of beer into his own cup of tea . Dwarves, it seemed, couldn’t go without mixing alcohol in everything they drank . It would be more appropriate to call his drink teflavored beer than alcoholic tea .
“First, Night Python’s based in the Dukedom of Gerald, or so the popular word of mouth says . They also say the Duke himselfs in tow with Night Python . Well, it’s more of a popular rumor than anythin’ concrete, I say . Got no proof or nothing . Anywho, the Duke’s a big part o’ the Royal Prince’s faction . More like, smack in the middle of it all . Dunno what me Lord’s thinking, but ‘e must’a thought things fishy there, so might as well kick Night Python outta his realm, or somethin’ like it…”
“Umm, what part did Earl Keeley have to play in the coup?”
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“Saying he just watched… Makes the Earl look pretty bad, so I say it’s more to do with ‘is anti-coup sentiment . Everything’d been done and settled by the point the Royal Prince got the Four Great Kingdoms’ backing . Getting all the other big Lords on his side must’a been nothing much ‘fter that . Anyone standin’ in their way after that woulda gotten their lands burnt to the ground, ya know? Was why the man just bit his nails and watched . Didn’t really take part in the coup himself, so I bet ya he gon get treated like an outsider from ‘ere on out . Though I do think taking the county off his hands would be pretty hard…”
The more she listened, the better René why the coup had been so easy to stage .
Hilbert had bought off the bigger Lords using the power the Four Great Kingdoms gave him .
This made the other smaller Lords believe that fighting would be useless .
By the time the former King… In other words, René’s father, had noticed, he was already in checkmate .
Ciel-Terra’s true power lay in the collective will of its Lords, Knights and People . Of course, each Lord’s individual power relied upon the amount of territory they commanded, so if one of the Greater Lords decided to raise the flag of revolution, the damage they could do was immeasurable .
Furthermore, the last ray of hope for the Royal Family was the Order of Knights, working directly under their command… And the leader of said Knights was Lawrence .
For now, Duke Gerald had fallen into René’s hit list, coming after Hilbert and Lawrence . She threw Earl Keeley into the ‘don’t kill unless necessary’ folder .
At any rate, if the Duke was indeed in cahoots with Night Python, things wouldn’t remain as peaceful as now .
“So, the Royal Prince might be using Night Python to get rid of the Earl?”
“Ah, no no no . Wouldn’t be like him to do things so openly . You get what our Lord’s worried about right? . . Night Python’s a criminal syndicate . People of the underground . Things might get outta hand if he lets ‘em roam free . ” Master frowned .
René was finally aware of what madness lurked behind the scenes of this country . Any who opposed the New King might be sentenced to a silent lynch .
No doubt Night Python thought, with how the current state of affairs was, that they would get away with doing whatever they wanted, never being prosecuted by the state so long as the target of their malice was the Earl Keeley . Or perhaps they are currently in an all-you-can-eat mode, using their connections with Duke Gerald and subsequently, the Royal Prince, to silence the State Government on their drastic actions .
“Seems to me Hugh’s worries were on-spot . I’m not too fond of getting caught in the crossfire of a family feud, you know?” Diana puffed out a cloud of purple smoke .
At some point, she had started smoking .
‘Staying in the country itself might be risky’, Hugh had said . On the contrary, if things went too far south, Dragon’s Throat might just be thrust neck-first from the losing side into the coup’s fishier end of matters .
Master spoke, his face still tied in knots .
“Still, I do think Dragon’s Throat should be getting on this quest . I want y’all to keep our Mister Earl safe . ”
“Master… The Guild is supposed to be politically neutral, right?”
“I geddit, I geddit . Just my own thoughts, I’m spitting out . ”
The Adventurer’s Guild was a supranational agency, keeping themselves far away from local political matters . They were recognized and allowed stay in several countries simply because their brand was ‘to not be involved with nor support the politics of any one country’ .
There was no problem in approving quests like ‘the escort of a Countess being targeted by a criminal syndicate’, but when matters grew into an issue concerning the division of the country itself, the Guild would remain neutral .
By all rights, the Guild would normally decline such quests, or negotiate with the client on setting proper terms so neither the guild nor the party becomes involved in politics . These were well within the scope of a Guild Master’s job description, but it seemed such ideological discussions weren’t within the reach of a small branch Master .
“And well, I know a thing or two about Night Python myself . They got thugs to deal with smaller things, and an Ace class adventurer in their ranks, but they ain’t so braindead or free to rush things . I don’t think they’ve got the resources to deal with you four right away, so things ain’t gonna get so hairy so fast . ”
“…Even if they’re being kicked out of the Earl’s realm itself?”
“It’s the mines they’re after . That’s what makes ‘em tick . Besides, they ain’t got the balls to be wagin’ war on the higher ups . They usually just let ‘em aristocrats and officials get a whiff ‘o their stuff and go ‘see ya’ .
An’ if things get hairy for ‘em, they go like the fox and pack up . ‘Who cares about sour grapes? Not worth the trouble’, ya know?”
If there was a country burning in the flames of civil war, would one invest all of their military might into a single skirmish?
Leaving aside the fights that put the survival of the country itself at stake, the answer would be a firm No .
This was what the Master was referring to .
“Well, that aside, they still got men who’ll make trouble . If they see the important peoples bein’ too naked, they might just come in to take a slice of the cake cuz, ‘why not?’ . I’m tellin’ y’all to not let that happen, ya feel me?”
“I will . It’s for the Lord Earl and Cathy . ” Iris spoke before Diana could . René could not let herself be turned away at this point . She would not allow it .
She had designated Night Python as a mere errand to run, but now, it seemed it would lead her to those she wished to purge in her flame of hate . René’s heart and soul had once more ignited with the flames of her grudge .
“…That so . ”
No doubt the Master had no knowledge of René, so he only offered a short laugh .
Diana wore a bitter scowl but… Her upturned lips remained sealed .
Translator: Fried Hedgehog