15

Only the minimum number of mana lamps faintly illuminated the inside of the warehouse.

No outside wind entered the dim, closed-off warehouse at all. Since rough-looking men like Dinarts had gathered there, a peculiar smell hung in the air.

The plan had achieved some results, but it could not be called a success. It was not a complete failure either, leaving behind only half-baked results.

That said, the mood around Dinarts and his men was not especially heavy. Perhaps they had prepared a second arrow from the beginning, assuming the plan might fail.

“What are you going to do now?”

“If the magical beasts couldn’t do it, then we’ve got no choice but to act directly. …Well, we’re not the ones who’ll be doing it, though.”

Dinarts gave a meaningful smile. Then he gave an order to his subordinate.

“Bring them here.”

The subordinate who received the order ran off toward the back.

“What do you intend to do next?”

Rubelmel asked Dinarts.

“Elias’s trade is temporarily paralyzed right now. Until the shipbuilding is complete, they won’t be able to move actively, but they still have stockpiles.”

Large brick warehouses stood lined up at Elias’s harbor.

Ships carrying cargo came across the sea, but not all of that cargo could be sold off immediately. Some goods were even meant to be aged over a long period of time.

Among the rows of warehouses, not a single one was completely empty. Every one of them stored many goods.

“As long as these exist, Elias can hold out to a certain extent. Once the problem with the ships is solved, they’ll probably return to normal operations right away.”

Dinarts shook his head, saying that would not do.

To those looking from outside Elias, the incident that Dinarts had been pulling the strings behind would simply appear to be an attack by magical beasts.

The city would be forced to stagnate somewhat until it recovered, but Elias’s credibility itself would not fall. After all, although the city had suffered damage, they had repelled the “Sea Guardian.”

If they had not repelled it, Elias would likely have been completely destroyed by now. In addition, Elias’s safety would have collapsed because it had failed to defend the city. That, in other words, would lead to merchants leaving.

“In that case, there is only one thing for us to do. We will accomplish what the magical beasts could not: destroy Elias’s safety and credibility. And bring Elias’s functions to a complete halt.”

A different person from the subordinate who had disappeared toward the back came over to Darius and the others’ seats.

“There are no issues with the storage condition of the gunpowder.”

“That’s good. If it had gotten damp, there’d be nothing we could do.”

Darius frowned.

Beside him, Rubelmel seemed to have realized what Dinarts was about to do, and quietly brought her glass to her lips.

“It takes a human to light gunpowder, but we don’t want to die either. What my subordinate went to get are disposable pawns.”

There were plenty of pawns they had obtained without spending any money. Dinarts spoke cheerfully, saying there were as many as the warehouses in Elias, perhaps even more.

Having understood after hearing that much, Darius asked Dinarts a question.

“How did you obtain those pawns? It cannot be easy to make humans obey orders.”

“For humans, money isn’t everything, but it’s most things. But money only matters if you’re alive, and there’s no money worth more than your life. Especially if they’re not knights or people who’ve sworn loyalty to someone or somewhere. Of course, it might be a different story if you piled up enough money to be worth risking their lives for.”

“Do I look like I have that kind of money?”

Dinarts asked Darius.

Without even thinking about it, Darius easily shook his head. Dinarts also mocked himself, saying, “If I had it, I wouldn’t be putting my hands on this sort of thing.”

“If you wanted to move such humans with something other than money, what would you do?”

Darius placed a hand on his chin and thought.

Throughout Darius’s life up to now, he had possessed more than enough money. If he scattered it on the ground, people who would crawl over and obey him would gather.

When he left the Sobi House and began acting together with Rubelmel, Darius had awakened to sorcery. It was a sorcery that made others obey his commands.

There was no way Dinarts, with that villainous face in front of him, had learned such sorcery. In addition, he had said he did not possess a large amount of money.

In that case, the thing Dinarts spoke of that could make others obey was something the inexperienced Darius could not imagine at all.

“Hey, hey, is it really something you need to think that hard about?”

Dinarts let out a laugh as if mocking Darius, who still had not answered after all that time.

Darius grew irritated at those condescending eyes.

“Family, Lord Darius.”

Rubelmel told Darius the answer.

“…Family?”

“That’s right. …It wasn’t a question that should have made you think that hard, though.”

Both Rubelmel and Dinarts continued speaking as though it were perfectly obvious, but Darius was different.

Even after hearing their answer, he could not understand. Why would family come up there? Why would bringing family into it make someone obey?

Family was ultimately just other people who happened to be closest to you. In Darius’s life, his father Zoin had recognized and treated Darius as a pawn. Darius, too, had recognized and treated Zoin as the head of the Sobi House, and as someone he could not defy. At least in Darius’s mind, there had been no affection on either side.

Surely, if it did not bring harm to himself, Zoin would cut Darius off.

And as for Darius himself, if Zoin disappeared, then Darius would become the next head of the Sobi House. Just as Zoin had done, Darius would only behave in whatever way was best for himself.

The life of family, or rather, another person, would not be a reason to move him.

But Darius did not say that aloud.

Even if Darius said it now, nothing in this place would change. He could not understand what the two of them meant, but even so, he decided to quietly go along with it for now.

Rubelmel, who glanced at him casually, looked a little lonely as she saw Darius’s cold eyes.

Then someone knocked on the warehouse door from outside.

“Hey, open up.”

Darius and Rubelmel looked suspicious at the sudden visitor, but Dinarts casually gave the order to open the door.

“Who is it?”

“Don’t worry. It’s the usual brat.”

“A brat…?”

The one who entered through the door as it was slowly opened by a subordinate was a small, emaciated, thin boy.

It was the boy who had stolen Ains’s pouch and had it taken back by Talidge in the back alley.

No one was wary of the boy, nor did they stop him. They simply watched.

The boy walked weakly with soft, dragging steps until he approached Dinarts, then showed him something he had been gripping in his hand.

“This…”

There were several coins in the boy’s hand.

Darius and Rubelmel silently watched the exchange between Dinarts and the boy.

In the dim warehouse, a villainous face stood before the boy’s eyes. Around the boy, adults with villainous faces similar to Dinarts’s looked down at him.

Even in such a situation, the boy did not fall on his rear in terror or wet himself, so as Dinarts had said, this was probably not the first time.

“I see. This is all you brought today?”

“How much more until you… give my father and sister back?”

Dinarts snatched the coins from the boy’s palm, toyed with them in his hand, and looked down at the boy.

“Let’s see… With these coins, you’ll need another thousand. If you bring gold coins, ten will be enough.”

“O-one thousand…”

The boy had brought five coins to Dinarts. For the boy, that was a good amount earned. Usually, earning two coins was considered good, and there were plenty of days when he earned only one or nothing at all.

Faced with that endless distance, the boy lowered his eyes once, but soon looked forward again.

“I’ll work hard, so please, my father and sister—”

“I know. I’m a man too. I won’t break a promise. I’ll guarantee their safety.”

When he heard that, the boy clutched his empty stomach and once again moved his feet weakly, leaving the warehouse with soft, dragging steps.