Screw You, Over—
"M-my lord Viscount. Are you truly certain this is wise?"
The servant who had just received the crystal orb Viscount Bjorn held out asked carefully.
"Certain of what?"
"That is… what if that idiot really spills everything?"
"…"
"If that happens, every plan we've laid so far will simply dissolve into—"
"…Pffft! Phh-haha… Puhah…! Ahahahaha!!!"
"My lord…?"
"Ah… really now, you innocent little friend. Do you honestly think that would happen?"
He had only meant to offer his master a word of caution, yet the moment Viscount Bjorn heard the question, he erupted into laughter as though he had just been told the joke of the century.
"Fine, let's say that pathetic pig of a man did blab every last detail. And let's further suppose — though the odds are vanishingly small — that the drunken fool actually sobers up long enough to haul the matter before a proper court and file a lawsuit. Who, exactly, is going to believe him?"
"Who would ever take the word of some lowly, half-witted commoner? The bureaucrats of the Supreme Court? The Emperor himself? Preposterous. We simply deny it. How do they prove otherwise? That is the entire point."
"And even if they do file suit — can that beggar of a count even afford the legal costs? The time a lawsuit would take? At the shortest estimate, two to three years. Can the penniless Evergarden Count family endure that long? No — I rather hope they try. The trial will drag on, but we will win it in the end, so thinning their strength a little before we swallow them whole will only make things easier. Heh heh…"
"Ah…"
As Viscount Bjorn's explanation rolled on through his lingering laughter, every last scrap of unease on the servant's face was wiped clean away.
"In any case, all we have to do is follow the blood trail of a deer that is already as good as caught, thrashing desperately as it flees. The end of that trail will be a plump, well-fattened deer collapsed from exhaustion."
With that, Viscount Bjorn smiled.
"Ugh… mm… Gahhh!!!"
Curmon snapped his head up with a grotesque shriek and clawed his way back to consciousness.
"Wh-where am I…? I was definitely… the Count! The Count…!"
One cheek still burned from having been pressed against the freezing stone floor. Curmon dredged up the last memory before he blacked out.
The Count, who had seemed so far away, had closed the distance in an instant — and then, in the blink of an eye, that thick fist had appeared right in front of his face. It had not been a pleasant experience.
"You're awake?"
"M-my lady?!"
"It seems secret passages do more than simply serve as passages. There are any number of hidden rooms tucked away here and there — I do wonder what purpose they were meant for."
"Y-yes…? Eek!?"
In the center of the pitch-dark chamber, Freya sat upon a creaking iron chair, her figure revealed by the guttering light of a single candle.
"My, my. How cold and hard this is… If one were to bind a person to a chair like this, they wouldn't even be able to struggle, would they?"
She wore the same gentle, benevolent smile she always did — yet the iron chair she occupied, rocking slightly as she shifted her weight, was studded with vicious chains and spikes that painted a thoroughly sinister picture, utterly at odds with her presence.
"M-my lady! What on earth is the meaning of this…! Th-this humble servant cannot begin to understand why you would suddenly do such a thing!"
"Wow… still denying it even after we've brought you this far? This guy's genuinely insane."
"C-Count… sir!"
Curmon slammed his forehead to the floor, desperately appealing that some innocent man was being framed — but the moment Darian appeared beside Freya with a hollow laugh, Curmon's face broke out in a cold sweat so heavy it could have formed a waterfall.
"Reasons? Hey, you bastard! Do you seriously not know what you've done? Huh?"
"I-I… that is…"
"Document forgery and embezzlement. Even counting only the gravest charges, that is already a capital crime severe enough that your neck — and the necks of your entire extended family — could be severed three times over and still fall short."
"That's right, you bastard! …And if we throw in all the petty stuff?"
"It would climb to five."
"…Right! If I cut off that fat neck of yours and turn the leftover carcass into bacon, I could stack it high enough to build a damn castle! You bastard!"
"H-hiiiek…!"
Freya sat perched on that nightmarish chair — the kind that looked ready to put a full stop to five or six human lives without breaking a sweat — smiling as she calmly listed every crime he had ever committed, while Darian, simply terrifying in his own right (especially those fists), loomed around him. Before long, transparent tears had begun to well in the impressively folded tear ducts of Curmon's jowls.
"No need to dance around it now that we've come this far, is there? I'll get straight to the point. Viscount Bjorn — what is the nature of your relationship with that man?"
"Uh… ueh…?"
"What are you zoning out for? Huh? Want me to just—"
"Eek?!"
What? They already know about that too? How?! That's impossible…!
But Freya's question had pierced straight through to his core so cleanly that for a moment Curmon forgot how to speak.
He had assumed this was still only about simple embezzlement. Instead, they already knew about his connection to Viscount Bjorn.
"You understand now, don't you? Viscount Bjorn has no intention whatsoever of saving you. I don't know what compensation he promised you in return… but that ship has already sailed."
"……"
"If you come clean about everything right now, I'll spare your life. Ah — with all five limbs still attached, of course."
"But if you don't talk, you know what happens, right?"
"Th-that is… a-are you… truly going to spare me?"
Freya's whispered words were like a lifeline dropped into the pit of despair where he had fallen, and Curmon lifted his head toward her with a fragile spark of hope.
But.
"Forgiveness is out of the question."
"Eh?"
"Realistically speaking, after causing this much trouble, did you actually expect to be forgiven? What I'm saying is that if you spill everything now, at the very least we will let you pay for your crimes in a humanitarian fashion."
"Th-that is… might I inquire what exactly that humanitarian fashion entails…"
"I don't believe you're in any position to be asking that right now… Surely you're not saying you'd rather refuse?"
"Ah."
"You don't actually want to die, do you? Right? So how about you start opening that snout of yours. My patience is about to run out."
He still had no idea what that "humanitarian" method actually was, but Curmon felt as though he had grabbed a lifeline only to discover it was rotten — and was now freefalling all over again.
And yet if he refused the humanitarian option, these two would absolutely chop his head off like a pig at the slaughterhouse.
"I'll tell you everything."
Ah, to hell with it. Viscount Bjorn. Let's make that bastard eat shit.
"I knew you would. As expected of a man who handles money — your calculations are quite sound."
If that was how it was going to be, then he might as well drag Viscount Bjorn down with him by the pant leg. With that resolve, Curmon slowly began to open his mouth.
"I see, my lady. Your milk tea."
"Thank you, Gordon. Hmm? The aroma is lovely."
Having heard Curmon's full confession and temporarily locked him in the manor's prison — with a suitable excuse prepared for the soldiers — Freya had returned to her study and accepted the fragrant milk tea Gordon offered her.
"I would not ordinarily recommend adding anything to black tea, but given the late hour, I took the liberty of warming it with milk."
"Come to think of it, I haven't eaten either. Have the children finished?"
"Yes. Young Master and Young Miss have completed their evening meal, and the master of the house has just gone downstairs for a late supper. Shall I instruct them to prepare an additional portion?"
"No, that's all right. This will be more than enough."
Even in her modern life she had been a light eater, and after entering Freya's body she was occasionally startled by how tiny her stomach had become — barely managing half of what she used to consume.
"…Viscount Bjorn. He pulled off something quite adorable with a perfectly straight face, didn't he."
The forged promissory notes using Curmon, and on top of that, the Viscount's eyes already crawling freely through every corner of this manor.
This situation was far more serious than any corporate merger and acquisition could ever be.
Funny. For all their hard work, these people would have ended up with their heads on the chopping block for lese-majesty against the Imperial family anyway.
Even so, Freya could only manage a dry laugh.
According to Felix, the Evergarden family's downfall had not been caused by document forgery and mountains of debt at all — they had stupidly destroyed themselves. Without all this effort, the Viscount still would never have been able to claim a territory whose masters had simply vanished.
But now that Freya and her family had possessed the masters of this house, that original ending would never come to pass — and paradoxically, Viscount Bjorn's schemes, which should have been wasted effort, were now marching the family straight toward the guillotine.
"Even with all the evidence laid out, there's nothing we can do. How frustrating."
Curmon's testimony and the crystal orb recovered from his room made it unmistakably clear that Bjorn and Curmon had struck some kind of deal — but that alone could not dramatically change their situation.
Just as Viscount Bjorn had predicted, Freya too had already realized that a courtroom offered them no path to victory whatsoever.
Even in the modern world, with decades of accumulated culture and history behind its courts, people snorted whenever anyone claimed the justice system was fair and impartial.
Freya, who had been one of the heirs to the Hansung Group, had seen from childhood how the law was never a sharp guillotine for those who wrote it and those with enough money to reach those positions — it was nothing more than a child's toy.
So of course an empire with a rigid class system, where nobles permanently occupied every seat of power, had neither reason nor need for its courts to be fair.
And with the Evergarden family's current budget, they did not even have the strength to sustain a long, grinding lawsuit.
Thus Curmon's confession had merely converted suspicion into certainty — nothing more.
"What shall we do about the 'eyes'?"
"…By now, Viscount Bjorn has likely begun to suspect as well. In that case, there's no need to put on a performance of ignorance in front of those eyes."
Bjorn would already know, one way or another, that Curmon had talked.
Wandering around pretending to know nothing under those circumstances would only waste energy and accomplish nothing.
"Then shall I 'handle' them?"
"That word 'handle' does have a certain appeal… but no."
Gordon had immediately raised the word "handle" in response to Freya's words, yet she showed no particular reaction.
She already understood that Gordon was no ordinary man, and that the concept of human rights as viewed from this world's perspective and from a modern one were quite far apart.
Even in the modern world, a few greasy bills were enough to make a handful of people quietly disappear — Freya knew that perfectly well. Murder, for all its gravity as a crime, was simply another tool available to her.
"We've already done more than enough dirty work as it is. We can't keep living so brutally going forward. Just investigate a list of those you suspect of being 'eyes.' After that, use budget cuts as the excuse, write them glowing letters of recommendation, and send them out of the manor. That will be sufficient."
"Understood."
"The most urgent matter right now is somehow paying off the interest that's been piling up and buying ourselves time. Are there any merchant companies we could deal with?"
"Because the Evergarden Territory has always pursued high tax rates and heavy tolls, no merchant company of any real standing exists here."
"Good heavens. There really is no answer, is there."
Merchants were groups that pursued profit.
There was no reason for such groups to settle in the Evergarden Territory — a place with no famous local products, no particularly advantageous geography, and nothing but taxes waiting to drain their coffers dry.
In short, they had warehouses full of goods to sell and not a single merchant company with the capital to buy them. All they could do was stamp their feet in frustration.
"If we wish to sell the valuables currently stockpiled in the warehouses, two methods exist."
"Go on."
"First: sell them to the large caravans that travel in groups and stop here periodically before moving on. However, it will take considerable time for such caravans to reach us, and they are not equipped to purchase large quantities of goods in a single transaction. In conclusion, securing capital this way would take a great deal of time."
"No need to hear any more. At that rate, the manor will fall into Viscount Bjorn's hands long before the valuables are sold."
"Second. I am somewhat reluctant to recommend this, but it is a method by which a large volume of valuables can be sold in a short period."
"That has my attention. Please continue."
"Sell them to the figures of the underworld who have put down roots in this territory."
"…Is our territory's public safety really that poor?"
Until she heard Gordon's second proposal, Freya had been looking at him with an intrigued gleam in her eyes. That gleam instantly drowned in hollow despair.
"Well… the wages paid to the soldiers responsible for maintaining order are low. More than half of those already meager wages are then skimmed off as taxes. With what little remains, they must survive in the Evergarden Territory, where the cost of living is extraordinarily high. As a result, the back pockets of most soldiers on security duty tend to hang rather wide open."
"And there are plenty of people who slip bribes into those pockets and stroll about freely. Haa…"
"Precisely."
How stupid were the original owners of this body? Or is every noble of this era just like that? No — these people are just pure in the worst possible sense of the word.
She could have sat her own son — no, her wife — in this seat and the territory would still have been run better than this. The fact that the current master of this land was her own wife made Freya clutch her throbbing head.
If not for that, she would have abandoned this hopeless territory and somehow carved out a life somewhere new. But even that exit had been sealed shut, and Freya felt a crushing bleakness settle over her.
"…Putting out the immediate fire comes first. Can you get in contact with someone from that side who has the means to purchase valuables?"
"Yes. Leave it to me."
"Good. Tonight looks like it's going to run long—"
"I shall bring another cup of milk tea."
"Make it two, please."
And so the study of the Evergarden manor — a room that had not seen a single lit candle in years — showed no sign of its flames going out, even deep into the night.