Internal Crackdown (5)

Chashan wasn’t an idiot.

The moment Comek’s group reported him, they moved their safe house to a different place.

But they couldn’t stop Azadine from storming their hideout anyway. Azadine’s influence on the Chadra Plateau was already absolute, and within that, Chashan’s whereabouts stood out far too much.

Even so, Azadine deliberately brought Comek along… It was obvious to anyone that he was doing it to piss Chashan off.

“Damn it! You stupid traitorous bastard!”

Chashan and his brothers—the dwarven sorcerers—spotted Comek guiding Azadine’s group from the side and exploded in rage.

“Just come inside! I’ll teach you why a dwarven sorcerer’s crimson mana is feared!”

“I’ll burn you until there isn’t even a bone fragment left!”

Chashan and the dwarven sorcerers had piled daily necessities and supplies inside an abandoned old earthen fort, barricaded the entrance, and dug in.

Archers were stationed along the escape route, and at the main gate Selim came in carrying a gigantic door slab—wherever he had found it.

As they warned, the dwarven sorcerers unleashed magic and attacked Selim.

White mana flashed from the door slab Selim held, pushing back against the dwarves’ crimson mana.

Reinforced with wood and iron, the slab didn’t even scorch under flame magic. The material itself was huge and thick, and protective magic was layered over it—so it wasn’t easy to break with spells.

With Selim opening the way like a moving shield, the dwarven sorcerers had no choice but to fall back.

“Surrender, Chashan! Our captain has something he wants to ask you!”

“You crazy bull-headed bastard! You fell head over heels for some Messenger-Clan brat who just arrived in Chadra! You used to be one of the Chadra Five Ogres—aren’t you ashamed? It’s not just your horns that broke, is it? Didn’t your junk break too?!”

“There’s nothing shameful about entering a hero’s banner! I’m proud! His banner is my horns!”

Chashan mocked Selim, but Selim fired back with the kind of words a fanatic would shout.

“You’re truly insane! Damn it! Then let’s die together!”

When things refused to go his way, Chashan, furious, tried to cast a powerful ring-of-flame spell.

In this cramped fort, he could have been caught in the blast and died himself, but after losing twice and becoming a prisoner, he couldn’t imagine living with that humiliation.

But as they began chanting, two eyes appeared on the roof.

Niselda—dressed in a nun’s habit—dropped down and ambushed Chashan’s group. Their consciousness was cleanly severed, and they all went tumbling to the ground.

“Q-quick, kill them!”

Comek fidgeted in panic. In truth, Azadine didn’t need Comek’s help to find Chashan’s hideout in the first place.

With Azadine already controlling Chadra’s talent pool, if you kept hopping between safe houses, you’d just get found anyway.

But from Chashan’s perspective, Comek was a horrific traitor who could never be allowed to live. So unless Chashan died, Comek would never sleep with both legs stretched out again.

“Give it up. He spared you in the first place—why would the captain kill them now?”

But even Rijen’s men—ordinary soldiers—were talking down to Comek now. Comek had been stripped of his squad-leader post and forced to serve as a common soldier, and the others were mocking him.

“Aaaagh… this makes no sense! You crazy hypocrite!”

Comek clawed at his own hair.

Azadine tied up Chashan’s gang and finally succeeded in confiscating their hidden assets completely.

They had amassed so much wealth as drug dealers that the seized funds were so enormous you practically needed carts to haul the gold and silver coins away.

But Azadine wasn’t satisfied with merely taking their money.

“Alright, let’s get to the point. I want to make contact with the Elemental Wailing patients managed by Banreung Academy.”

“Are you insane? Elemental Wailing patients are Banreung Academy’s property. The King of Banreung is of the Yaegas God tribe, but Banreung Academy belongs to dwarves. We put the Academy above the king’s orders.”

“Ah, I guess my words were so gentle you mistook this for a request. Shall we start by neatly shaving your beard?”

At Azadine’s gesture, a subordinate brought over a razor.

“There is a saying about shaving a dwarf’s beard, but I’m curious what happens if you actually do it.”

“You bastard! Didn’t they say the body, hair, and skin come from one’s parents?! You barbaric humans! Are you going to harm this precious beard my parents gave me? Kill me instead!”

“A drug dealer says that? If you care so much about your own body, why didn’t you care about other people’s bodies?”

“Because who cares about the parents of anyone who isn’t a dwarf? I could kill their parents myself if I wanted. Whether their bodies—given by their parents—get ruined by drugs is their choice!”

Chashan and the dwarven sorcerers sneered as if other races didn’t matter at all.

“Hm. You’re all pretty irritating. You might look better if you freshen up with a shave.”

“Ghk! F-fine! You want to find the Elemental Wailing patients, right?”

“You know something?”

“I don’t know! But I still have influence in Dwarven Arrow, so I can investigate through them! So for your own purposes, don’t touch my beard! They won’t listen to a beardless dwarf, either!”

Chashan buckled under the threat of the razor. Losing a fight or being taken prisoner could happen—but having your beard shaved was an unbearable humiliation for dwarves.

If Azadine had actually shaved Chashan’s beard, Chashan would have had no choice but to kill himself.

“Good. So we’ve secured funds, and we’ve also found a lead on Elemental Wailing.”

Not only did Azadine forgive Giacomo for trying to leave the organization, he even agreed to indulge his tantrum—and everyone, even Azadine’s allies, felt dissatisfied.

But Azadine resolved the issue far too quickly.

“How long did it take?”

“…One day.”

Niselda nodded.

“In the end, mercy is the right of the strong. Others can’t show mercy the way you do, Sir Azadine, because they aren’t as strong as you. If they show mercy and are betrayed, they take a blow they can’t recover from.”

“Are you angry? Because I showed mercy that wasn’t worth showing?”

“Not at all. If anything, I’m looking forward to it. In fact, my father and I have a personal matter. Watching you solve even Giacomo’s problem—if anything, it makes us happy.”

“What is it? That’s a creepy way to put it. What are you planning to make me do?”

“It’s not the time yet… I’ll tell you later.”

“Hm?”

While Azadine was talking with Niselda, he raised his hand. A chunk of ice fell from the sky.

“Hail?”

Hail falling in summer wasn’t unheard of.

-Thud… thud-thud-thud….

“Damn!”

The hail was intensifying. Ice chunks the size of knuckles began pelting down.

Even those wearing helmets would be rattled, and those without armor were in danger of being knocked over.

Everyone hurried into Chashan’s fort to avoid the pounding hail, but….

“Huh?”

A moment later, pure white snow began to fall amid the hail.

“…Snow in summer?”

Everyone stared and recoiled in shock.

Snow fell on the Chadra Plateau. The plateau was cooler than other places even in summer, and snow sometimes fell on the high peaks even during the warm season.

But snow falling at midday in the lowlands was an extraordinary event.

Thankfully, it didn’t accumulate, but the temperature suddenly plunged, leaving everyone flustered.

Azadine inspected the damage to the farms that had been turned into a wreck by hail. Here and there, sudden hail had caused extensive losses.

Crops were flattened by the hail, buildings were badly damaged, and people were dead or injured.

“Go around the villages, check on people, and help anyone who needs their roofs reinforced.”

Thinking this hail might not be a one-time phenomenon but something that could continue, Azadine headed straight for Fireglyph.

Fireglyph was wrecked in the same way.

And in the midst of it, he saw Van Dyke Trading Company employees buying up grain circulating in the market.

They were selling materials to reinforce hail-damaged homes and medicine for the injured, while hoarding the market’s grain—its food supplies—in exchange.

‘These bastards… they knew?’

Azadine immediately headed to Van Dyke Trading Company.

“Tch. Azadine.”

Dilia, the branch manager of Van Dyke Trading Company, frowned when she spotted an unwelcome guest.

“You’re stockpiling food.”

“It’s not like we only did it today. We’ve been buying steadily. And in the first place, what else would we buy from the Rescue Knights Order’s territory if not food?”

“Still, it’s strange to hoard when it isn’t even harvest season. Was there an order from somewhere?”

“Vthuma and Korasar finally collapsed. There are so many refugees pouring out that the King’s Church is asking the Rescue Knights Order for support. That’s why Sir Ject came here.”

“So that’s why Sir Ject came. So other places were already in chaos.”

So that was why an inquisitor—said to be the pinnacle of the King’s Church Holy Knights—had come all the way to a backwater like the Chadra Plateau. Everyone expected a food shortage, so they were swarming into the Rescue Knights Order’s territory, the greatest granary on the Hubris Continent.

“I don’t know the details, but the clan is guessing there’s some kind of agreement between the Northern Emperor and the King’s Church—one meant to seize the Rescue Knights Order’s land.”

“Evidence?”

“There isn’t any. That’s why it’s a guess. So what about it, Azadine? You investigate. You hate the King’s Church, don’t you?”

“I don’t hate them.”

“What?”

“I even have a friend who’s a Holy Knight of the King’s Church.”

“You mean Zebec? That famous God-King Slayer.”

“…God-King Slayer?”

Azadine flinched at the familiar epithet.

Usually, “God-King Slayer” was a title given to the Messenger Clan. So why had that name been attached to Zebec?

“Hm? Didn’t I tell you? Hold on.”

Dilia stepped into her office, rummaged around, and pulled out a wanted notice.

“This one, right?”

“Huh?”

Azadine stiffened when he saw it.

It was a wanted notice for Zebec. And the charge was astonishing: the murder of royalty—specifically, it claimed he had killed Darhan-Jadek, the son of Manza-Jadek, the Golden King of Vthuma.