The Lower Class Relief Project
Orknodi was not evil.
The evil one was the Weihimhai Foundation, manipulating and toying with her behind the scenes. Yet Orknodi was both the Foundation’s scholarship student and its hostage. A child like her could never break free from their clutches on her own.
She needed help from those around her—the people who had been watching over her.
Arcadia resolved to rally allies.
“Giselle. The enterprise we drafted last time—we must launch it earlier than scheduled.”
“Did we not conclude that rushing into it would only result in an immediate deficit on our part?”
“Circumstances have changed.”
As Arcadia recounted the reality surrounding Orknodi and the Foundation, Giselle’s expression hardened with grave resolve.
“If that is the cause, I can hardly refuse.”
To aid Orknodi, they had to prevent Foundation scholarship students from causing catastrophes. Thus, as the cornerstone of the operation to rescue Orknodi, Arcadia and Giselle’s new enterprise commenced.
Bellocasio furrowed his brow as he reviewed the ledger. The supplies, which should have filled a massive sack to the brim according to plan, barely reached the halfway mark. A distinct anomaly had occurred.
He had spent his time leveraging contract fraud to hoard commodities in high demand across the academy, driving prices through the roof to reap the spoils of a monopoly. But when inventory ran dry, danger loomed. If customers decided it was better to source goods themselves or gather materials to sell rather than visiting his workshop to spend Points, his customer base would bleed away and competitors would crop up.
Jingle-jangle.
He tugged the cord of the service bell, yet his secretary was nowhere to be seen today. The reason Bellocasio, a student of the Administration Department rather than the Knight, Magic, or Adventurer Departments, could establish himself as a shadow mastermind was due to his capable secretary alongside his own cunning. Yet, just as no talent was without flaw, this secretary harbored a fatal defect: she was an incurable slacker.
“…Are you pretending not to hear me when you’re right there?”
The moment he popped the lid off a canned ration, a solitary drop of saliva splashed down from the ceiling. Sure enough, lurking high up against the rafters, his secretary was drooling profusely.
“Deadcat. Do you recall the roster of students assigned to procure supplies for these drums?”
“Three students enrolled in the second-year Knight Department course, Let’s Learn the Body Slam Skill. Michael, Roe, and Sir Randall.”
“Gold is the high-density material of choice for the weighted vests needed in enhancement training, but since gold is ridiculously expensive, more students have turned to lead vests. That’s why we put out mining commissions for lead.”
Yet the lead filling the sacks didn’t even reach the halfway mark.
“Find out right this instant why they failed to meet their quotas. Discover whether monsters appeared in the mines, whether a professor dumped a new assignment that ate up all their time, or if they’re staging a strike.”
“Advance payment.”
“…Take it.”
He held out the opened tin, and Deadcat snatched it in the blink of an eye, devouring the contents in seconds. Five Points per can. It was a preserved ration equivalent in cost to an academy cafeteria meal, but she was a secretary far too capable to begrudge five Points for her services.
Should be about time for her to return.
Less than an hour had passed before Deadcat slipped back inside. On her feline face, marked by three whiskers on each cheek, were flecks of fresh blood.
Dabbing her cheek clean with a handkerchief, Bellocasio asked in a pleasant tone, “How does it feel to stretch your legs outside after so long?”
“Boring.”
“Did you finish what I asked, at least?”
With an expressionless visage, Deadcat produced a crumpled wad of paper. Smoothing it out to read the contents, Bellocasio was struck speechless.
His hands shook with fury as he tore the paper to shreds. They had caught him completely off guard.
“…The freshmen this year certainly have guts. To brazenly repay their debts via third-party proxy while poaching both our laborers and our materials in one fell swoop.”
What Deadcat had brought was an official notice informing him that the debts, including the principal, had been liquidated in full under the Student Council’s statutory interest rate ceiling—and that if he had any objections, he was welcome to file a lawsuit through the Student Council.
“Kill them?”
“…Do you think we’re a contract murder syndicate? No matter how lenient the academy is, killing an underclassman will land you straight in The Great Prison. We haven’t reached that point yet.”
That insolent first-year, Arcadia. A prodigy he had singled out to bring to heel through a fraudulent contract. And now, backed by capital pooled from the upper-crust freshmen, she had caused an uproar.
The founding of a new faction: the Dark Merchant Guild.
Securing manpower and aggressively expanding operations.
It was practically a formal declaration of war against Bellocasio’s contract fraud enterprise.
Even so, there was a stark disparity in weight class. Bellocasio had spent two years since his freshman days exploiting his peers, whereas Arcadia had only just begun her venture. The gap in Points between them was astronomical. In a war of financial attrition, he would never lose.
If he could just ruin the poached workforce…
If he could make them abandon her voluntarily…
If he targeted their clientele…
The grandly named Dark Merchant Guild would wither and collapse on its own once its funds dried up.
“I need to uncover what they plan to do with all that lead and manpower. Box Chowder, one of the dregs from the Red Teeth Mushroom Farming Association, is in the Knight Department, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Use him to gather intelligence.”
“For free?”
“…I’ll have canned rations ready.”
“Tired of it.”
Wait. This isn’t good.
Bellocasio was taken aback by this sudden whim from Deadcat, who rarely ever made demands.
“Then what do you want to eat?”
“I want to scratch.”
“…You’re not eyeing my carpet, are you?”
“A Knight Department student would be nice.” A chilling smile spread across Deadcat’s blank face. “Muscles built carelessly are rough and tough. They feel great to scratch.”
“Don’t tell me those bloodstains from earlier were…”
Slurp.
Licking the droplet of blood from her fingernail, Deadcat spoke with glowing eyes. “A freshman would be even better.”
“…Do not lay a finger on any freshmen without my permission.”
“Can’t hold back for long.”
Bellocasio felt his hair graying from sheer stress at the terrifying sight of the secretary he had recruited purely for her dainty appearance and cheap labor.
“I’ll have to act fast, if only for the safety of those first-years.”
Avoid touching the freshmen as much as possible.
The moment that unwritten rule was shattered, the Student Council would mobilize. The true powerhouses of the academy—those playing in an entirely different league from petty grifters like him. The elites standing at the pinnacle among geniuses gathered from across the continent.
Bellocasio’s heart began to race with urgency.
With the arrival of the weekend, the pest extermination drive neared its end. The mosquitoes that had terrorized the student body were practically wiped out. Rosini, who had taken escort commissions for Points thanks to the soaring value of fire mages, couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret.
“Isn’t there some mosquito mage around who saved a swarm for a rainy day?”
“Keep talking like that in front of clients and they’ll assume you released the mosquitoes yourself, then beat you black and blue. A great way to blow through all the money you earned on medical bills.”
“…You could have displayed some of that venom during our last operation.”
The sharp-tongued Echo gave an arrogant huff and tilted her chin up. “Never mind that. I sniffed out a lucrative job. You did me a favor last time, so consider this an introduction to return the favor.”
“What kind of job?”
“Providing firepower to smelt lead.”
“Lead?”
“An organization called the Dark Merchant Guild has stepped up to rescue the underclassmen.”
The more Rosini heard, the deeper she drifted into confusion. Why did a merchant guild have such an ominous name, and why on earth was a group called the Dark Merchant Guild running a charity project for underclassmen?
Once she arrived on-site, however, everything made sense.
Leading a throng of students, Arcadia fluttered her folding fan to veil her mouth, smiling demurely like a highborn maiden of the Central Empire—though her boisterous, echoing laughter was anything but demure. The spiritual pillar for the female students from the provincial outskirts, a kindhearted girl who loved doting on others, had turned her hobby into a massive enterprise.
“Seniors provide intensive training for students on the brink of failing, and in exchange, you pay off their debts?”
“Indeed. Quite the wonderful initiative, wouldn’t you say?”
“And where do you turn a profit?”
“We collect the Points that the Lower Class students earn through regular academy life once their grades stabilize.”
“Clever.”
Students facing expulsion would gladly surrender all their Points if it meant remaining at the academy. Instead of buying grades with Points, they received affordable personal coaching from upperclassmen that actually improved their skills; anyone with a shred of gratitude would gladly pay.
Someone of Arcadia’s stature could easily generate far more lucrative returns using the exact same Points. It was work she didn’t have to do, work with dismal profit margins. Yet it was an act of goodwill performed precisely because she was Arcadia. The Dark Merchant Guild’s Lower Class Relief Project was, for all intents and purposes, a charity.
“Is Orknodi helping with the training too?”
“Were you curious about why Di is here?”
“She’s a special child, after all.”
Seeing Rosini express her honest curiosity, Arcadia chuckled softly with a proud air. “Our Di happens to possess some rather unexpected expertise.”
“What kind of expertise?”
“She’s remarkably well-versed in weighted vests, lead belts, and various other training gear.”
“…Don’t tell me she trained with all that herself?”
“She even mentioned lead boots and training spoons weighing five kilograms each. Isn’t that fascinating?”
If Lower Class students used equipment like that, wouldn’t they collapse from muscle failure and miss their lectures entirely?
Rather than voicing the question that sprang to mind, Rosini simply held out her hand.
“Fifty percent of the commission fee up front.”
After all, it was the students on the brink of flunking out who would suffer, not her.