20. The Root of All Evil
20. The Root of All Evil
"......Is that true?"
"I-It's true! There was an earthquake out of nowhere, and the Finance Director got pulled into the mine......!!"
"............."
Adam Caines had been locked in his final negotiation with the Count and gone to inspect the rock salt mine personally. And now this.
Finance Officer Marcus, who'd been busy placating the colluding investors and applying gentle pressure by invoking the royal family's name, went completely still.
He wanted to believe this 1st Rank laborer was lying through his teeth. But the ground had unmistakably shaken moments ago, and it wasn't just the fleeing mine workers who'd come running.
An earthquake felt even in the city, and workers fleeing in panic.
Besides, what reason did this laborer have to lie?
Marcus's legs gave out and he sank into his chair, horrified by a reality he couldn't quite accept.
"......This is a disaster."
"B-But the Count is safe—"
"That's not the prob—...... Hah. No. Never mind......."
Whether Count Anton was safe or not wasn't the issue. But the laborer hadn't done anything wrong, so Marcus stifled the urge to vent his foul mood through shouting.
Finance Director Adam Caines was a fellow 1st Rank — someone Marcus felt a certain kinship with. Having seen the man's work firsthand on this audit, he knew the Director's abilities far exceeded his age. But that alone wasn't enough to explain him.
He was the Finance Director of the kingdom's most prestigious academy.
And a close confidant of the strongest martial artist in the kingdom — one of the few people whose name invariably came up when discussing the mightiest on the entire continent.
During the financial audit, the Chairwoman placed the Finance Director front and center.
That alone made it painfully obvious how highly she regarded Adam Caines. The royal family was trying to intervene in the academy, and Marcus knew full well that the Chairwoman was determined to beat them back.
In that context, entrusting the entire audit to a subordinate — even as a show of goodwill — told you everything.
The problem was that her trusted subordinate had just fallen down a mine shaft.
".........."
"Uh, Finance Officer Marcus? Where are you going all of a sudden—"
Tap-tap-tap!
Marcus hastily threw on his coat and ran — past the laborer, past the colluding investors, past the citizens who'd spilled into the streets buzzing about the earthquake.
The lord's castle, when he reached it, was already chaos itself.
"Move the Count immediately! Summon his personal physician!"
"An earthquake, at a time like this! Don't tell me it's like when the mine collapsed before......?"
"Save the ominous talk for later — right now, the rescue takes priority. Get me a status report on the other investors!"
The claim that the Count was unharmed seemed genuine. Had it been otherwise, the confusion would have been far worse.
Amid the panicked, uncoordinated scramble of orders, Finance Officer Marcus strode straight toward Norman Head Butler.
"Norman Head Butler."
"Finance Officer......?"
"I need to see His Excellency the Count."
"Sir, this is hardly the moment—"
"I invoke my authority as a royal finance officer. To conduct a proper audit or review of the books, a finance officer may meet without delay with the highest-ranking person at the audit site."
"A......finance audit? What in the world—"
"Such pretext is needed so that my meeting with the Count draws no undue comment. Now, lead the way."
The gaze he fixed on Norman Head Butler was upright — and absolutely ferocious.
Norman had weathered his share of experiences as a head butler, but he was no match for a 1st Rank who'd clung to a finance officer's seat for over a decade.
Norman complied and escorted Marcus to a room deep in the castle.
"Count Anton, it is an honor to see you again."
"......Finance Officer Marcus."
"I shall dispense with formalities. As of this hour, Count Anton, lord of the County of Beryl, is deemed unconscious due to the earthquake. The Count has neither wife nor children; therefore, under kingdom law, the royal civil servant present in this territory — Finance Officer Marcus Lutel — shall assume temporary control of the domain. This shall stand until Count Anton awakens from his fainting spell. Do you accept these terms?"
"Finance Officer Marcus! This is utterly absurd!"
".........I accept."
"M-My lord?"
"Thank you."
It was an outrage: declaring a perfectly conscious — if somewhat weary — Count to be in a state of collapse so that Marcus could personally seize temporary control of the territory.
Norman Head Butler was naturally aghast, but Count Anton simply nodded, his expression subdued. He did so despite knowing exactly what it meant for a rural territorial noble to hand over control of his domain to the crown, even briefly.
The kingdom law Finance Officer Marcus invoked did exist on the books. But it was preposterously favorable to the crown, and since most nobles had children or other heirs, the law was effectively unenforced in practice.
"You mean to take responsibility, then? You, Marcus Lutel, of all people?"
"I merely discharge the duties of a finance officer, as I always have."
"You speak in nothing but absolutes — I can't win a battle of words with you."
By Marcus's declaration, post-earthquake relief and response now fell to him. And that meant that if things went wrong, responsibility would flow to Marcus rather than the conveniently unconscious Count.
The Count found this baffling. The Marcus Lutel he knew — the man of rumor — was the very incarnation of self-preservation.
The gossip was relentless: his stolid obsession with avoiding blemishes on his professional record was legendary. When he'd gone to audit the academy, hadn't he threatened a noble's child with some obscure, rarely-enforced law?
So why was this same Marcus Lutel now taking on an action that could saddle him with the blame, when he could simply have done nothing?
The answer came soon enough.
"I shall now assume control of the territory in place of the unconscious Count Anton. My first order of business will be to send a message via the territory's mage."
"Norman, summon the mage. But to whom do you intend to send word......?"
"......I am contacting Grandis Academy."
The reason Marcus had stepped forward at personal risk. It was this.
Because aside from the students, he was the only person in this territory who understood the Finance Director's true value.
"A direct line to the Chairwoman, if you please. She may be wary, given that I serve the crown, but tell her this is an absolute top-priority matter that must be relayed."
The Finance Director — the Chairwoman's most cherished and trusted subordinate — had fallen into a collapsed mine in an inexplicable accident.
Hiding the truth would be the worst move. The notion of rescuing him and then pretending nothing had happened was pure wishful thinking.
In situations like this, the one person you least wanted to tell was the one you had to inform first and fast.
I need to contact the royal family as well.
It was unlikely, but if the imperial guests currently at court got involved, they could be enormously helpful. If the crown wanted to earn the Chairwoman's favor, they'd respond with urgency.
And reporting such news — and the initiative it showed — would lower the odds that Marcus himself would be dismissed.
But in this moment alone, Marcus wasn't thinking about self-preservation or job security.
......I'm afraid.
The Chairwoman, who had just learned her most trusted subordinate had been in an accident. The Chairwoman who had once, entirely on her own, carved an enormous basin into the earth.
......There was no guarantee she wouldn't reduce this territory to the same state.
*
Whoa.
What the hell? What just happened?
An earthquake-level tremor had rumbled through everything, and just as I'd tried to run, something had yanked me in — I'd been sucked clear across a considerable distance and dumped down a hole.
And as for that.
"Student Rus, Student Rus!"
"......Finance Director."
"Student Rus, are you alright!?"
"I'm...... fine."
Rus had saved me.
I'd taken a few hits from rocks on the way down. Unlike me, who was covered in cuts and scrapes from debris, Rus was completely unscathed. So much so that my worrying felt faintly ridiculous.
So this is the gap between 1st Rank and 6th Rank? Honestly kind of humiliating.
"I'm glad you're unharmed. As for where we've ended up—"
"Up there."
Up? I lifted my head in the direction of Rus's finger and spotted a faint glimmer of light waaaaay off in the distance. That light was the only reason I could make out Rus's condition and the direction of her finger at all.
Yeah, climbing back up that way is out of the question. Which means.
"We'll have to find another exit."
"......Do you think there is one?"
"There definitely is. Besides this main shaft, Shafts No. 2 and No. 3 had other smaller entrances beyond the ones we saw from the surface. The layout was practically a maze."
I didn't have every detail of those maps memorized, but I at least knew that other exits existed.
Honestly, the smartest play would be to sit tight and wait for rescue. But.
"A rescue at the Count's level is probably impossible. I saw a lot of equipment get wrecked in the earlier tremor, and the only hope on that front would be the hired 5th Rank mages."
Simply falling and being pulled back up required fundamentally different levels of force. Even Rus at 6th Rank couldn't climb back out that way — so what could a handful of 5th Rank mages do?
To pull off a rescue here, you'd need a 7th Rank or an 8th Rank...... Yeah, that checks out.
The Chairwoman's going to handle everything anyway. That's a big part of why I wasn't feeling an overwhelming sense of crisis right now.
And I've got a solid bodyguard right next to me, so why sweat it?
That said, just sitting around didn't sit right either.
I hadn't planned it, but here I was inside the rock salt mine — and with a bodyguard right beside me, no less.
"Let's explore the mine. We might even figure out why it collapsed in the first place."
Maybe I'd find the cause of the disaster that torpedoed my futures trading scheme and wrecked the academy's finances. The fundamental cause was obviously the Chairwoman, but still.
Rus simply gave a light nod at my suggestion, despite the possible danger.
Agh. More importantly.
"Student Rus, can you see well ahead of you?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll rely on you for navigation. Everything other than right here is complete darkness for me."
We were inside a sealed mine. Any object that could produce light had been hauled off ages ago, and the only illumination came from that distant hole we'd presumably fallen through.
Even that was so faint that moving away from it would render me totally blind. Without hesitation, I took Rus's hand.
At least she's cross-dressing as a man — makes it less awkward.
Holding a guy's hand while groping around in the dark would've felt a little weird, you know?
When I took her hand, Rus flinched for a moment, then moved ahead of me. It was too dark to see her face.
"While we're at it, Student Rus — have you noticed anything strange?"
"Strange...... in what way?"
"This mine collapsed. All three shaft entrances we saw on the surface were blocked by piles of rock and dirt. And yet one tremor punches a hole open, exactly wide enough for the two of us to fall through."
And look at the space we're walking through now. If the ground-level entrances were choked full of debris, shouldn't a space like this have caved in long ago?
I'm no expert, but a hole precisely the size of two people — and nothing else — existing in that condition was definitely suspicious.
Even stranger: I'd been pulled in and fallen as if sucked toward that hole, despite putting good distance between myself and it.
"It's possible the mine didn't collapse because of reckless expansion or hitting an underground water source...... but for some other reason entirely."
"............."
It almost felt as though the collapse hadn't started from inside the mine, but rather that someone had deliberately buried the entrance to seal it off from the outside.
What in the world had happened inside this rock salt mine?
I kept a decently firm grip on Rus's hand and followed closely. It was so dark I couldn't see a single thing. I couldn't even see Rus's hand in mine — ridiculous.
"Shafts No. 2 and No. 3 branch off at a fork along the main shaft's primary path."
"......Which should we check first?"
"Let's head to Shaft No. 2. Student Rus, do you see anything man-made — signs, markers, anything like that?"
".........Nothing at all. Everything's either broken or smashed."
"Understood."
So that's how it is.
I didn't know how long we'd walked through the dark holding hands, but at some point Rus abruptly changed direction, and I got the sense we'd entered a new space.
"We're in Shaft No. 2."
"Hm, are we?"
Shaft No. 2, was it.
I set aside the strange feeling that this place seemed oddly familiar and asked Rus.
"How did you know?"
"......Pardon?"
"I never told you which way to go at the fork to reach Shaft No. 2. Yet you seem very well acquainted with the layout. Only Finance Officer Marcus and I saw the structural maps."
"............."
"You also said every signpost and man-made marker had been destroyed or removed. And yet you entered Shaft No. 2 without a moment's hesitation."
"It was obvious."
"That place you mentioned before — the one where you made your money from a mine. The place where you saved Finance Officer Marcus."
".........."
"Was it all...... this rock salt mine?"
"......Yes."
I'd guessed as much, but hearing the actual answer still hit rather hard.
So what Rus had meant when she said she'd been at the rock salt mine.
"I know this is a deeply rude question, but I'm asking anyway."
"I didn't destroy the min—"
"Uh, how much did you make?"
"Excuse me?"
"Didn't you succeed at futures trading, Student Rus? That's how you were able to offer fifty times the monthly rent, isn't it!? Just how much money do you have......!?"
"............."
Stuck cleaning up after someone who'd failed at futures trading, and now face-to-face with someone who'd succeeded at the exact same thing.
The same feeling I'd had about Julius, who'd also cashed in on futures — it was back.
God, I'm so jealous it physically hurts......!!