The Merchant's Sin
After wrapping up the loose ends, we returned to Hremar. The thugs who had crawled out of that shadow organization were buried by Franc's clay golems. Since we interred them far from the Worr Grass habitat, there was little chance of discovery. I sent word to Hela to leave the adventurer guild request untouched for now. Then we rejoined the wives waiting at the inn. They took one look at our faces and immediately sensed something had gone wrong, clearing space without a word.
"Here's what happened—" I began by calmly explaining the charcoal powder to Dana and Veronica. The dye situation in Nidavellir and the Twostas Merchant Group's corruption tied to it took less than ten minutes to lay out. After that, it was Franc's turn to speak.
"……My father was an alchemist from Britannia."
Once the party had settled in to listen, Franc continued. "I think he must have been quite skilled. I was too young to understand at the time, but the mother who gave birth to me was his second wife."
As I listened, memories surfaced—memories that weren't even that old. It had been less than half a year ago, on the night Franc and I first shared a bed. When I told her my goal was to take many women as wives, she had shared a little of her family history. Her father-in-law had been an alchemist over sixty, and her mother-in-law, a dwarf, had been his second wife. Even in a world that permitted polygamy, taking multiple wives wasn't easy. It meant her father-in-law had possessed considerable standing.
By comparison, I was the odd one out—someone with an ambiguous social position yet three beautiful wives. "He wasn't a good father, even by generous standards. He had a short temper and hated being interrupted while working. Whenever I studied Britannian or other subjects, he would occasionally praise me, and that alone made me incredibly happy."
Franc's gaze lingered on the inn room ceiling, as though reminiscing about her childhood. Perhaps she was recalling the scent of charcoal powder her father-in-law had supposedly carried. I understood the feeling; the smell of cigarettes my own father used to carry still felt vivid. He had quit smoking when I was in kindergarten, so I never even recognized it as cigarette smell until I visited a PC bang.
"Still, his first wife apparently didn't care much for my mother."
Being my first wife, Franc said this while taking my hand, her eyes still fixed on the ceiling. "Even someone as oblivious as I was could tell our parents argued often…… About ten years ago, when I was around ten, everything finally fell apart."
"……Ten years ago." Larilura murmured as if speaking to herself. Dana scratched her forehead. "The heart of alchemy is the Mages Guild, and the Mages Guild's headquarters is in Romania. Ten years ago in Romania…… that would have been right around the time of the Senate Collapse incident."
"Yes. I only realized it later, but I suspect something went wrong with Father's business partners or workplace."
Franc answered Dana's remark. Ten-odd years ago—the Romania of the period when Tirsi had become a fallen noble. The event I had once likened to a string of IMF crises, though I barely understood it, had apparently affected people outside Romania as well.
"After that, Father grew even more irritable, and his first wife divorced him. She went to live with a daughter who had left home before I was even born. I don't know where she lives now."
Even when speaking of a mother who shared no blood and a half-sister, Franc sounded strangely unlike herself, as though discussing strangers. "With both work and family in ruins…… Father began fighting even more with my mother."
Seated on the bed, Franc drew her knees to her chest. "He never raised his voice or laid a hand on me until the day he died. I suppose that was the full extent of the consideration he had left."
Franc's calm recounting summoned painful imaginings: young Franc curled in a dark room while her parents argued in lowered voices just beyond the door. I felt I understood where her longing for a happy family came from, but decided not to dwell on it. Judging it by my own standards would have been unbearably cruel.
"And this is terribly embarrassing to admit, but…… I don't think Mother liked Father very much either."
Franc buried her nose in her knees, looking sheepish. "I never asked how the two of them ended up married, but the age gap was over thirty years. It's not hard to imagine, is it?"
She paused briefly, glanced at our faces, and gave a small smile. None of us had been able to say a word. "Also…… I actually suspected it might come to this, so I tried not to bring it up on purpose."
We all looked up at her words. "It's just a sad, clichéd old story about someone you know. Of course the mood would turn like this. An elderly father dying from overwork, a daughter regretting everything while watching him pass…… just hearing it makes you want to look away."
"……Thank you, Franc. For telling us."
I said this while holding her head. Franc, after all, must have felt a sorrow far beyond anything we could imagine. "Thank me? I'm the one who's sorry. I only spoke up now, at a time like this."
Even to my awkward gratitude, Franc smiled. "……When my parents passed, they said this. Father apologized for being a worthless dad and told me to be happy. Mother said to cherish my first love or first husband, because otherwise I'd regret it."
We clasped hands again. Our wedding rings clicked softly. "……So even though it hurt, I could move past it. I told myself that Father, who processed dyes, and Mother, who often did sewing work, simply had short tempers by nature."
—Or so I thought. Franc whispered the words under her breath. —But maybe that wasn't true. Perhaps Father's temper……
Perhaps my father-in-law had been the kind of man who never took his frustrations out on his family, no matter how difficult the work. The same might have been true of my mother-in-law. If life had been a little kinder, if they had possessed even a shred more peace of mind, everything might have turned out differently. There might have been a future where I visited Franc's family home in fine clothes, holding her hand, to pay my respects. Her father-in-law might have called me a thief who stole his daughter, beaten me, then shared drinks and talked about the future—only for me to drunkenly mention my harem and end up with a broken leg.
—That future might have existed. If only that dye had never appeared in Nidavellir.
"……Nord. What do we do now?"
Dana asked, unable to hide the fury in her half-lidded eyes. The other two wore expressions no less angry. Of course, none of them struggled to contain their rage quite as much as I did.
"……We'll expose the Twostas Merchant Group's crimes."
I answered while making sure no unnecessary strength entered the arm holding Franc's hand. With the group's destruction already decided, I turned my mind to how exactly we would erase them from the world. "Going through legal channels will definitely take too long. Destroying evidence would be trivial for them."
"So we strike at the ones responsible. Excellent. I was in the mood to smash something—anything—anyway."
—Tap tap tap tap. Veronica drummed her fingers against her crossed arms, visibly impatient. "How?"
"Before revealing the charcoal dye's effects to the public, we need to steal their ledgers and research records. We'll also need an ally—someone with power who can steer public opinion after we raid the merchant group."
We had evidence: the mixture of charcoal and blue powder that had driven the mother bear berserk. If related research records surfaced, they would serve as perfect proof. 'But if they cover it up with bribes or connections, we'll be at a disadvantage.' In a legal battle between an individual and a corporation, the individual was naturally at a disadvantage. We needed someone who also wanted the Twostas Merchant Group destroyed—someone who wielded real power.
Fortunately, thanks to my conversation with Hela, I had a candidate in mind. "We'll inform Hremar's lord of the corruption."
The lord who ruled this city. If we told him about the toxic substance circulating through Nidavellir, securing an ally would be simple. Nidavellir was essentially an absolute monarchy. In cities where officials like mayors or lords were prone to corruption—environments where criminal organizations thrived—it was known that lords conducted shifts. In truth, "lord" was little more than another word for mayor or proxy ruler. 'This must be another difference between dwarves and humans.'
The dwarf noble currently governing Hremar was apparently a stubborn dwarf famous for despising injustice. A textbook dwarf, in other words. If we could persuade him, he would very likely become our collaborator. The Twostas Merchant Group already had extensive connections to criminal organizations. If we played our cards right, the problem would solve itself. Once we had the right backing, we could smash the merchant group and drag those bastards inside out by the collar without fear of condemnation. It was time to show those conscienceless capitalists the taste of revolution.
"How will you inform the lord of the merchant group's crimes? Through a meeting or a letter?"
"That won't work. It would leave a record that we were involved."
Requesting a meeting while revealing our identities? A record would remain that a foreign Master-rank Nord and Doctor Dana Berbeia had sought an audience with the lord. That record would absolutely come back to haunt us later. Yet if we hid our true identities, the lord would never agree to meet us. This was already a city rife with criminal organizations. The moment we requested a meeting citing safety concerns, the request would be rejected outright.
So I chose the safest and fastest method. "—We'll use a clone to slip past the lord's mansion guards and deliver the information directly to him."
When weighing the time required to schedule a meeting against the risk of our identities being exposed, this was clearly the best option. "From what Hela and the locals say, Hremar's lord is an upright man. Even if the information comes from suspicious sources, once he confirms it's true, he'll act."
That said, it would be wiser to delay the actual delivery of the information. The chaos of the beer festival had created gaps in the city's security. Hremar's lord, reputed to be diligent, would have stationed even more guards to fill those gaps. If security grew stricter than it already was, our own movements would be hindered. Therefore, before securing our backing, there were several things we needed to do first.
"We'll find Zoid and hear what he has to say. If he's the merchant master's younger brother who left after a falling-out ten years ago, he'll know something—whether he admits it or not."
I voiced my thoughts aloud. "We'll all wear the Face-Changing Masks and capture Zoid. Even if he's innocent and resists, it doesn't matter. Five against one, we can subdue him without injuries on either side."
If Zoid was truly blameless, we would simply apologize. I could only hope he wasn't the sort of man who would hold a grudge over wounds sustained while being restrained, even while knowing his brother's crimes. 'We can't afford to be picky about methods now.'
It was too late to search for gentler solutions and resolve this through words. Who knew whether the Twostas Merchant Group would grow suspicious from the disappearance of the turbaned man and his lackeys and begin to move? Of course, if nothing had happened in twenty years, they might well be complacent. Such exposures of corruption always began with the foolish carelessness of insiders. It was entirely possible things would go smoothly and we could deliver justice—physically—to those bastards without any trouble. If I hadn't found side effects in the charcoal powder similar to my own Beast Regression, I would surely have thought the same.
"—The Compilation Battalion."
I muttered the name of the organization the party members all knew. "We should assume they or their subordinate groups will be lying in wait. There's too much that doesn't add up for this to be the work of an ordinary dye merchant group."
I felt their attention sharpen at my words. I voiced the sense of wrongness that had occurred to me. "First, their funding. Even if dyes are a profitable industry, Furnace Oak Soot dye is cheap. So where did the Twostas Merchant Group get the money to monopolize the market through sheer spending? From selling charcoal dye? Before they began market manipulation, there were plenty of substitutes like Worr Grass. There's a limit to how far you can push volume sales. If they made their money through criminal connections or other products, their methods are still far too aggressive. In cases like this, it's reasonable to assume someone is providing the funds."
"Next, the matter of profit. No matter how desperate for money they were, selling a toxic substance as dye when discovery would mean ruin? It's not impossible. I've studied Earth's history regarding radiation and lead poisoning. Capitalists who don't care if others die as long as there's profit tend to succeed. I didn't expect the Twostas merchant master to have a conscience. But even if they kept it within their own territory, distributing it throughout Nidavellir offers no advantage. The risk far outweighs the reward. Wouldn't it be better to simply earn capital from charcoal dye and use that money to find other revenue streams? Unless…… the very act of distributing the charcoal dye was the goal?"
The mental side effects of Beast Regression that made anger control difficult. Spreading an effect nearly identical to the side effects caused by the mana of the ancient gods resembling Odin. If that was the objective, it made sense. 'Besides, if they were confident they could cut ties, it wouldn't matter what happened to the merchant master.'
Regardless of who stood behind them, it wouldn't be a reckless move if viewed that way. I had already considered the possibility that the merchant master himself was merely a figurehead. 'My suspicion toward the Compilation Battalion…… stems only from the fact that, among the bastards I know, they're the only group closely tied to the mana of the ancient gods. Even so……'
Still, it felt insufficient to assume we could simply beat down the merchant group and its guards and be done. The merchant group's twenty years of criminal expertise was not to be underestimated. To pull the strings of an entire nation from behind the scenes, having powerful backing made far more sense. '……I should have tried to recover Yerna's memories after all.'
No, there was still time to attempt Seidr. We could decide how to proceed based on the situation. 'In any case, hearing what Zoid has to say comes first.'
Once I finished speaking, Veronica and Dana offered their thoughts with measured caution. "Do you know where this Zoid Twostas is? Even taking advantage of the festival's chaos, subduing a man of his caliber without drawing attention from passersby won't be easy."
"She's right. Even if you use animals, it will still stand out."
They had a point. I was well aware that this world's guards were strangely competent. Carelessness was not an option. But I shook my head. "We don't need to worry about that. We have a lead, and right now I feel like we could even kidnap a Mithril-class adventurer alive."
Whoosh—! I tossed a ten-copper coin toward the ceiling and caught it. It was the money Zoid had given me as compensation for the broken window. When he handed me the coin, he had said this: —Use it to buy drinks for you and your wife. My recommendation is the beer from the Velost region. The heavy mouthfeel is an art form.
Beer from the Velost region. 'That's our lead.'
Right now, Hremar was in the midst of the beer festival, Bijo-fest. Therefore, places selling Velost-region beer would be limited. Why? Because the Brewers Guild would be busy selling their own brews. Selling someone else's alcohol during a festival meant to determine the best beer? It was the height of stupidity—something even someone who only knew the first letter of "marketing" wouldn't do.
'And the taverns contracted with the Brewers Guild would only serve that guild's beer.'
If they accepted PPL money and sold another company's alcohol, the shop would be doomed. The Velost-region brewery guild that had come up here would have placed PPL in Hremar's taverns and inns. In a country of dwarves, that was the standard method of promotion. Since they were a race of heavy drinkers, everyone would come to the taverns anyway. 'But it's unlikely they paid for every single establishment.'
If they had that kind of money, using it for other forms of promotion would be more constructive. In any investment, putting all your eggs in one basket carried too much risk. 'In other words, the establishments serving the beer Zoid prefers are limited.'
We simply needed to find those establishments. People who had come to enjoy the beer festival searching for taverns that sold a specific brew. No matter how you looked at it, it was an utterly ordinary activity. Even if our party went around asking such questions, no one would grow suspicious. With the animals helping, the chance of suspicion was zero.
The clues had gathered. The plan of action was set. Now we only needed to execute it. I explained the operation and our course of action to the group in full, then placed the ten-copper coin on the table like a game piece. "We begin tonight. Everyone, lend your support."