The Information Department
A summons from the Information Department had arrived at the Academy.
They were almost certainly here to dig into the details of yesterday's incident.
Leon and Carotin stepped out into the corridor and found Celia trudging toward them, stretching with a scowl.
"Ugh, I'm dying of sleepiness…"
She'd been called in as well.
The three of them headed for the central staircase together, only for Liana to greet them from the opposite corridor with an elegant sweep of her hand.
"Oh my. So I wasn't the only one summoned?"
Yesterday's frivolous antics might as well have never happened. She had fully reclaimed the poised, haughty bearing of a proper young lady.
"…"
"…"
"…"
Leon, Carotin, and Celia all fixed her with the same faintly unsettled stare. Liana's face went scarlet.
"Wh-what?!"
…Yeah. That tracked.
They shook their heads and started up the stairs.
The moment they entered the third-floor reception room, a man in a crisp black uniform rose to meet them.
"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, young master, and young ladies. I am Daniel Heclemin, Second Team Leader of the Imperial Information Department."
He bowed with precise formality, and his glasses slipped a fraction down the bridge of his nose.
As a team leader in an agency that answered directly to the Emperor, his rank was nothing to scoff at — but of course, deference was still the proper course when dealing with the children of the Four Great Ducal Houses.
After the introductions, they took their seats around a coffee table. A woman in the same uniform as Daniel approached and set out tea; she was clearly a team member who'd come along as his aide.
Daniel took a sip, then opened the conversation.
He spent a moment buttering them up — how brave they'd been to face the assailants, how they were truly stars destined to illuminate the Empire — before asking for a detailed account of yesterday's events.
And then three pairs of eyes turned and fixed blankly on Leon.
"…You want me to explain?"
Three nods. The look on their faces said, Well, who else?
Leon naturally took the lead, with Carotin occasionally jumping in to add flavor. He had nothing to hide, so he told it straight. When he mentioned following Billy because of a bad "feeling," Daniel's brow twitched slightly. But when Leon described subduing two of the attackers himself, the man's eyes went round.
"Hmm…"
Scratch, scratch. Tap.
Once Leon finished, Daniel completed the document he'd been filling out throughout the account and set down his pen.
He drew a long breath, steepled his fingers, and leaned his upper body forward with the air of a man about to deliver something of great importance.
"In truth… the assailants you encountered yesterday were agents of the Republic's Reconnaissance Bureau."
"…"
"…"
"…"
The reaction was far cooler than Daniel had expected. Leon, who already knew, looked thoroughly unimpressed. Carotin nodded as if she'd figured as much. Celia just stared at him like she was waiting for him to get to the point.
Having crossed blades with those agents and felt their unsettling skill firsthand, Carotin and Celia had already assumed they weren't ordinary thugs.
"Whaaaat?!"
Liana, once again the only one making a fuss, suddenly seemed to put something together.
"Ah! Then the incident at the entrance ceremony…"
"Yes. We believe it was connected to them as well."
Daniel nodded gratefully at Liana for at least giving him a reaction that wasn't awkward silence.
"Fortunately, thanks to your decision to capture them alive rather than kill them, we are currently conducting interrogations. However…"
Leon spun his empty teacup between his fingers, already predicting what came next.
"However."
"…Yes. However, anything that might have been useful has already been burned. Catching their trail is proving difficult."
"Why? You've got five mouths that can talk. Are they holding up that well under torture?"
"The mental barriers on them are extraordinarily thorough. If we push too hard, they die on the spot…"
"Hmm."
Leon smiled as if he found that genuinely entertaining. Daniel discreetly wiped a cold sweat from his brow.
They'd been handed five spies on a silver platter, and still couldn't extract a single piece of intelligence — it was a walking advertisement of incompetence. In reality, the Information Department was struggling badly to break the curses on the spies' minds. The situation made it look as though the Imperial Information Department was plainly outclassed by the Republic's Reconnaissance Bureau.
Seeing the faint contempt mixed into Leon's smiling eyes, Daniel hurried to change the subject.
"Recently, the hardliners have been gaining ground in the Republic."
Leon sank back into the sofa and crossed his long legs, the picture of a man willing to hear him out. He already had a rough idea of where this was going.
"On top of that, a Great Demonic Realm has opened in the Republic's northern territories. They're thoroughly poisoned with rage."
A Great Demonic Realm. A passage connecting to the Demon Realm — home of demons and demonic races — that formed when the rifts between dimensions twisted violently open. An ordinary Demonic Realm was bad enough; a Great one meant, bluntly, they were screwed.
The land would erode into wasteland. Monsters, demonic beasts, and demonic races would crawl out whenever they felt like it and launch invasion after invasion. And if a full-fledged demon got restless enough to come through? The cost in coin and manpower to put it down would be astronomical.
Leon continued as if the rest were obvious.
"The Imperial Family has no intention of helping whatsoever. So the Republic might target us as leverage for negotiations. That about right?"
"Uh…"
Leon's words cut so cleanly through everything Daniel had been about to say that the man's mouth fell open in blank astonishment.
For Leon, who had read the original work and already held a fair amount of information, the deduction was simple. The only "means" of closing a Great Demonic Realm on the entire continent belonged to the Empire alone. And the Empire was hardly going to lend that out to the Republic — their longtime bitter enemies, oil and water. All they had to do was sit back and watch the Republic burn.
Negotiations had almost certainly fallen through several times already, and the Republic had gone properly off the deep end. Citizens were dying. Territory was shrinking by the day. Military forces were being poured into a bottomless pit with nothing to show for it. They needed a solution, and they needed it yesterday.
That was when the hardliners who'd seized power started reaching for crude methods. In their slightly unhinged estimation, threats involving hostages or terrorism didn't sound half bad. And the Academy — packed with high-ranking nobles — was an obvious target. The children of the Four Great Ducal Houses — Leon, Carotin, Celia, and Liana — would be especially valuable. As for Princess Esabel, that went without saying.
"That's correct, young master. How did you…?"
The looks directed at Leon shifted. Of course, the others might have arrived at the same conclusion if they'd turned it over long enough — but piecing it together the instant the words left Daniel's mouth was genuinely impressive.
Leon shrugged once to shrug off the stares, then waved a hand at Daniel to continue.
Composing himself, Daniel accepted a long wooden case from the female team member beside him. Even at a glance, the box was clearly expensive. He set it on the table and opened the lid toward them.
Click.
Inside, five golden brooches with elaborate ornamentation lay in a neat row.
"These are… artifacts, aren't they?"
Liana was the first to lean in, sensing the unusual flow of mana.
"Yes. We would like each of you to carry one."
Daniel handed a brooch to each of the students.
"Of course, we hope the need never arises — but these are a precaution. No matter where you are, no matter the hour, the moment you break that brooch, one of the Imperial Knight Orders on standby will arrive via warp."
The students all nodded as they accepted them. An Imperial Knight Order's skill was thoroughly proven. If an entire order came through, they could force their way out of most situations by raw power alone. And embedding large-scale warp magic into something so small was no trivial feat — this had to be the work of at least an archmage. The Imperial Family had clearly put real care into this.
Given that Elprime Academy students were still young and frequently active outside the grounds, the risk of exposure was high. That was presumably why they'd gone this far.
"Security within the Academy and throughout the city of Elaim will also be significantly reinforced for the time being. We plan to conduct multiple thorough searches of the city interior, so an incident like the previous one should not occur again."
Is that so?
Leon smiled faintly at Daniel's bold assurance. He knew full well that the enemies of this world were not so easily cowed.
He cut Daniel off mid-boast about how diligently they were working.
"One thing, Team Leader."
"Yes?"
"We caught five spies for you. Is there no bounty for that?"
"…Well, that is… ahem. There is one prepared, but…"
Daniel frantically gestured to the female team member. A reward had, in fact, been prepared — it was just an embarrassingly small sum to hand over to people of their station.
Someone with that much money, and he's asking for…?
Nobles weren't typically fixated on coin, were they? Upholding a noble's duty and honor was supposed to matter more. And these were the children of Great Ducal Houses? Offering them money for a job well done was practically an insult in itself.
Daniel had never imagined anyone would so openly demand a bounty.
"Hmm-hmm~ hmm~!"
Leon spun a heavy pouch in circles and hummed under his breath. Daniel had fretted that it wasn't much — ten gold coins per person? The only explanation Leon could come up with was that the man had been trying to skim some off the top.
Even funnier: his friends had all handed their rewards over to him.
"I barely did anything, so it's only right that you take this!"
"Leon, does your father not give you allowance…?"
"I-I didn't even do my part properly, so…"
"These overfed bastards."
Raised in wealth and privilege, every last one of them seemed to have a slightly warped sense of money. Ten gold was no small change. And turning down free money was, to Leon, an outright absurdity.
"Still…"
He toyed with the golden brooch Daniel had given him.
"With this, I can put an entire knight order to work, huh?"
They'd given it to him for emergencies, so…
"No matter what I pull, I can get out of it once, right?"
A thoroughly wicked grin spread wide across Leon's face.