Economic Crimes (1)
Roland, having heard the full story, furrowed his brow and shouted.
“Hey, what am I supposed to do with you?”
His expression was one of utter helplessness and pity. Having worked together as the North’s elite for so long, he seemed to hold back any harsher words, merely clicking his tongue in frustration.
“Why! What!”
Jamie, who had shared the information thinking it was a good tip, felt a strange, deep-seated anxiety rising from the pit of his stomach after being scolded.
‘Did I miss something?’
And did Roland catch it right away?
“Ha, Jamie.”
“…….”
“What do you mean, Silver! Silver!”
……?
Roland, who had been watching Jamie with a pathetic look while crossing his arms, finally exploded.
If Aiden or Kalisa had been listening to their conversation, their blood pressure would have spiked just as much.
“You’re supposed to be the adjutant of the North. And you’re still at Silver? Didn’t you say the person who introduced you was Sapphire?”
“W-well, yes.”
“You have so many, uh, decent investors around you, yet you’re still at Silver. Didn’t you say you get a 2 percent cut for every person you introduce?”
“That’s right. Yeah.”
“But you haven’t introduced a single person in the last week?”
“I’m doing it to you right now.”
“Ugh, you blockhead. Anyway, what’s the minimum investment?”
Roland’s eyes sparkled.
Jamie’s shoulders puffed up in response.
It was a march of fools, if there ever was one.
“……?”
Aiden returned after visiting the barracks early in the morning to hold a meeting with the knights and eating lunch there. But for some reason, the atmosphere in the office felt a bit off.
At that moment, Kalisa, who had made eye contact with him, sent a telepathic message. Since it was revealed that she was a witch, she had become uninhibited about using abilities like emotional sharing. Thanks to this, he could communicate with her without opening his mouth if they made eye contact.
He had only just learned this, but apparently, the adjutants had been using it well before she revealed her identity as a witch. Except for him.
According to Kalisa, the other two adjutants were a bit dense. Even when she gave a half-hearted excuse like, “We spend so much time together that we understand each other without speaking,” they would reply, “Ah, I suppose so. We’re stuck in a room together all day without even being able to leave work, so that makes sense.”
Anyway, for Kalisa to feel that something was off, too.
‘There’s definitely something going on.’
Jamie and Roland’s attitudes were distinctly different from usual. The way they kept grinning at each other whenever their eyes met was incredibly suspicious.
- It’s not like they can use that emotional sharing thing themselves.
- I’m not doing it, so they can’t do it on their own.
- Then why do they keep laughing like that?
- I was out on field work this morning and just got back, so I don’t know.
- Can you find out? They look like they’re about to cause some trouble.
- I’ll try to probe them later.
He had thought Kalisa would be able to get them to open up, so he tried to forget about it, but—
“I apologize. They insisted until the end that nothing was going on.”
“And they’ve already left for the day?”
“Yes.”
“Strange, isn’t it?”
“Definitely.”
Kalisa reported that she had tried to uncover the reason for their suspicious laughter all day, but they had kept their mouths shut as if they had conspired, leaving her with nothing but amplified suspicions.
“So, I’ve assigned someone to tail them.”
…As expected, she does exactly what she’s told. By 21st-century standards, it might be a bit excessive, but by the standards of this world, she was the archetype of a competent staff officer.
“Let’s wait and see.”
“Agreed.”
If they had abandoned their work and run off for some trivial reason,
‘Just you wait and see.’
Leaving work early during the spring, when the workload was piling up? Leaving *early*? That was unacceptable. At least, not in this North.
“Ooh, it’s cold!”
Jamie suddenly shivered.
“What’s wrong?”
“No, I suddenly got the chills.”
“Did you catch a spring cold? Is this all just muscle?”
As Roland giggled while poking Jamie’s rock-hard biceps, the employee of the merchant guild in question approached them with two contracts.
“This is Roland-nim’s Silver-grade contract, and this is Jamie-nim’s Gold-grade promotion contract. Please check them and sign. Dividends will be paid on a weekly basis starting from the day you sign.”
“Gold!”
“Yes, you’ve been promoted. Haha.”
It must be because Roland had agreed to invest quite a large sum of money.
“When you move up to the Gold grade, your existing 10 percent dividend increases to 11 percent.”
“Oh? In addition to the existing one?”
“Yes. So, to summarize, since Jamie-nim is now a Gold-grade investor, you will receive 11 percent of your invested amount as a weekly dividend, and in addition to that, you can also receive a dividend equivalent to 2 percent of Roland-nim’s investment amount.”
“I wonder if there’s anything left for you guys after all that.”
At Jamie’s mutter, which hit the nail on the head without him realizing it, the employee quickly added.
“These are benefits we only give to our early investors. Since you are growing with our guild, we aren’t looking to make money off of you.”
“Because we’re family?”
“Exactly. Family!”
“Family!”
Just as Jamie’s mouth hung open and he was about to sign—
BANG—!
The door to the guild’s shabby office was forced open, as if it had been half-shattered.
“Family, my foot.”
And appearing in the doorway—
“Administrator-nim?”
It was Aiden. Roland and Jamie froze in place.
“Did you come to invest, too?”
“You lunatic.”
Even in that situation, Jamie spouted nonsense, and Aiden wrinkled his brow as if he had seen something he shouldn’t have.
“Search them.”
“Yes! Arrest everyone!”
Aiden, as if there was nothing more to see, signaled once to deploy the Northern Army into the shabby warehouse office.
“Uwaaa, no!”
“T-this is…!”
“Save me, please save me!”
“I really don’t know anything!”
Papers flew everywhere, furniture toppled over, the employees who had been playing house were pinned to the floor, and the Silvers, Golds, Sapphires, Rubies, and Diamonds were blankly struggling to understand the situation. To summarize it in one word:
“What a mess.”
Yes, it was a mess. There was no more appropriate word.
In truth, he hadn’t intended to go this far. He had just been curious about the secret scheme his two subordinates were hiding.
- Strange?
- The sign outside says it’s the office space of some merchant guild, but to my knowledge, there is no such guild in the North.
The very first thing Aiden had implemented upon arriving in the North, along with organizing the family register, was the Northern Trade Licensing System. That meant that no merchant guild could operate openly in the North without Kalisa, who had been serving as the head of the Commercial Development Department, knowing about it.
- They mentioned investors, Sapphire, Gold… things like that outside the window, but he said he wasn’t sure of the exact details.
- Sapphire, Gold?
- Could they be people dealing in gemstones?
Aiden had a hunch based on what Kalisa had relayed.
‘I’m a modern person, after all. If I can’t figure out what this is, that’s a big problem in itself.’
A pyramid scheme had taken root in the North.
Back to the present.
“Let go, let go! We were making a legitimate investment…!”
“Legitimate investment, my foot. What’s at the very bottom here? Ah, Silver? Is it Silver? Yeah, you thought I wouldn’t know your scheme to gather a bunch of Silvers and then run off with the investment money, didn’t you?”
“……!”
Aiden found the very act of having to explain this annoying. It was a place where there was no awareness that offering bribes openly was illegal. It was baffling enough that an illegal pyramid scheme had appeared in such a place, but—
“Haa. What do I do with these idiots?”
Two out of his three adjutants had been falling for it. Seeing the expressions on their faces, which showed not even a hint of suspicion until he had stormed in with soldiers, was truly devastating.
Oh, the tragedy.
Should he just hang them up alongside the scammers?
“A-A-Administrator-nim!”
“T-this, th-then…!”
Perhaps they hadn’t completely lost their minds; the two subordinates, observing the situation, finally realized what they had been doing and their mouths fell open.
“W-we definitely received dividends!”
“Of course you did. That’s how you lure in other victims.”
“…….”
They couldn’t even refute it. Wasn’t it Jamie who had dragged Roland here?
“You guys are really…!”
Aiden barely managed to hold back the harsh words that were about to spill out. There were too many eyes watching. Even at a glance, there were dozens of anxious victims, and who knew how many more were dreaming of a rosy future at their homes and workplaces instead of this office?
“Follow me.”
“…Yes.”
“Kalisa, you can handle the cleanup, right?”
“I will confiscate every single ledger without missing a page.”
Jamie was sad. He had wanted to proudly show off to Kalisa, who loved money, that he had made this much investment profit.
“*Sniff*.”
Hot tears welled up in the man’s eyes.
“Oh, give me a break.”
Of course, Aiden wasn’t the type to feel sorry for him, and neither was Kalisa.
“*Pfft*.”
“Well done, very well done.”
Dragged into the office, Jamie and Roland were reflecting on their actions without being able to say a word.
“With this, huh? Can the people of the North entrust you with the management of the territory?”
“We apologize!”
“I opened a stock exchange to provide you with high-yield investment opportunities, and how long has it been since it opened that you went looking for a back-alley shortcut?”
“We apologize!”
“I could understand if it were a sophisticated scam, but common sense—the yield, the way they lure people, the bizarre grading system. Nothing about it is normal, yet you guys are my adjutants, huh?”
Aiden had been dumbfounded at first, then found it a bit funny, but now that he thought about it, he was just irritated. Gritting his teeth, he didn’t even stop to breathe as he berated them, asking where they had left their brains, saying that if heaven had helped them, they should have rounded up the scammers and thrown them into the dungeon the moment they tried to scam Jamie, and that it was beyond belief that they hadn’t just given them money, but dragged their colleagues into it as well.
“We apologize!”
Jamie finally returned to his senses as if he’d been struck in the head with a hammer. He must have been under some kind of spell. Otherwise, how could he have fallen for such a sloppy trap?
“Jamie.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why I’m so angry right now?”
“Because I foolishly got scammed…”
“That’s just unfortunate; it’s not a matter to be scolded for.”
“…Yes?”
“It’s infuriating, but the scammer is the one at fault.”
“Then why are you so angry…?”
“Do you think those guys didn’t know your face?”
The real reason Aiden was angry.
“No matter how much they were just trying to make a quick buck and run from the North, do you really think they would have tried this without knowing the face of the most powerful person in this region?”
“Th-then…!”
Only then did Jamie’s face turn pale. He realized the fact that they might have intentionally approached him from the very beginning.
“They must have used your name for all sorts of schemes over the past week.”
“I, I…!”
“You said it yourself. That I lack awareness of my position.”
“…….”
“The same goes for you. An adjutant who is close and kind to the residents? That’s good. But we are people whose actions carry intent, even when we don’t realize it ourselves. Being careful about even the smallest action. That is who we are.”
“…I apologize, Administrator-nim.”
No other long words were needed. Jamie, having woken up from his vain dream, returned to being an excellent adjutant, for he had understood Aiden’s words perfectly.
“I will sell my house.”
Aiden granted his adjutant’s move with a single nod.