16. The Worst Crisis
16. The Worst Crisis
We'd successfully leaked the hair-loss inducer using Finance Department equipment, but to be perfectly honest, "leak" and "danger" aside, the academy never really descended into chaos.
That was only natural. Unlike last time, we hadn't placed a massive deliberate order as part of a plan—we'd simply detonated leftover surplus at a convenient location. It was even outside the academy grounds, so the students weren't unsettled in the slightest.
Grandis Academy was the size of a modest city, so wrapping the entire campus in hair-loss inducer had been financially impossible from the start.
Still, a leak was a leak. And because it happened to be a hair-loss inducer, some merchant companies and visitors, wary of going bald, voluntarily withdrew. It wasn't a major crisis.
"From an auditor's perspective, that ought to be more than enough reason to turn back..."
"...Do you think he ignored it because he's already bald?"
"The intelligence we received says Finance Officer Marcus is traveling with a single escort knight. The odds of the knight also being bald are low."
"So he's just pushing through regardless? I'd heard he had an upright character, but that's a bit..."
"Upright or not, it's irrelevant. What matters...is that the audit hasn't stopped."
I considered using the Finance Department equipment again, but true to its nature, a single use had already fried it.
What did they say again? That when the hair-loss inducer leaked, the samples they'd produced from their recent work had detonated along with it?
Frankly, now that we'd managed to generate some actual revenue and the hair-loss treatment research was no longer quite so pressing, the best course was to keep the equipment secured at the academy for as long as possible. I'd brushed it off.
In any case, the shock had knocked it unconscious, so it was unusable for now.
"By the way, Finance Director? Where did you go earlier? You came back huffing..."
"I knew it was a rotten lifeline, but I grabbed it anyway on the off chance."
"Pardon?"
"It means I wasted my time."
Damn it, Kassandra. I was desperate enough to accept even that shoddy prophecy of hers, and what did I get?
—Well...if you just sit tight, it'll all work out, senior!
—What exactly will work out?
—Everything!
Work out, my ass. Sure, things will work out. My head will roll, the Chairwoman's authority will crash and burn, our finances will be exposed, and the academy will be "normalized" into oblivion.
The fact that I went to hear that when I knew better than anyone it was nonsense makes me a legend, but that junior of mine, Kassandra—her prophecy is an even bigger legend.
Like hell I'm ever going back.
"Madam Chairwoman."
"Yes, Finance Director."
"How is your physical condition?"
"If you mean my internal injuries, they've fully healed. But raising Rigid Energy on a large scale like last time..."
"Doing that would make it obvious to anyone that the Chairwoman is the only possible culprit. You just need to use your strength...appropriately."
"Use my strength...?"
"Just enough."
Enough to knock down a single mountain, shall we say?
*
Crackle. Crackle.
As evening fell and the sun began to set, Finance Officer Marcus and his escort knight dismounted and settled beside a campfire.
They'd laid out blankets and bedrolls and were now stewing dried meat and shriveled vegetables. Stew in name only, really—it was nothing more than fuel to keep them moving, taste aside.
Finance Officer Marcus raised his spoon without a flicker of expression.
"...Finance Officer, are you all right?"
"To what are you referring."
"Everything that's happened along the way. Crossing the mountain, the sudden boulders tumbling down, the landslide... It's only thanks to the trees and rocks mysteriously shifting course that we survived, otherwise we'd both be dead."
"We didn't die. Isn't that fortunate."
"But! You were injured throwing yourself in front of me!"
"Mm."
As the knight said, one of Finance Officer Marcus's legs was tightly wrapped in a crude, makeshift splint and bandages.
The bone wasn't broken, but the leg was badly sprained and swollen enough to force them to keep resting here.
He hadn't been hurt by the tumbling rocks or trees. Neither Marcus nor the knight knew that the very person who'd caused the landslide had used Rigid Energy to protect them when they seemed about to be injured—though that was only because a certain Finance Director had insisted, repeatedly, that wounding them would be a disaster.
Marcus's injury actually came from throwing himself forward to save the knight, who'd frozen up in the face of the sudden disaster.
The knight, clearly ashamed, clenched his teeth.
"I'm truly...so very sorry. And I call myself an escort knight..."
"Pay it no mind. The audit is unaffected."
"Even so!"
"So long as you, my escort, remain in good condition, I can sleep soundly tonight, can I not? Above all, trading a single leg of a mere 1st Rank to protect a promising knight is something to be commended, not apologized for."
"Finance Officer..."
Marcus Lutel, the Finance Officer, was an anomaly: he was 1st Rank.
That fact attested to the ability that had let him rise to the position of Finance Officer, but even more so, it was the shackle that bound him.
He was a talent who, by rights, should have been aiming for Minister of Finance long ago, rather than stopping at officer level.
That label—1st Rank—coupled with his upright character, had kept Marcus stuck as Finance Officer for well over a decade.
While everyone he'd once been peers with had climbed the ladder, Marcus remained nothing more than a Finance Officer.
As if the post itself were already a luxury for someone of his rank.
"Isn't that all the more remarkable! That you rose that far despite being 1st Rank..."
"If I'd been even 2nd Rank, I could have risen higher, no doubt."
"Of course you could have!"
"In that case, I would have thought: 'If only I'd been 3rd Rank.' 'If only I'd been 4th Rank.'"
"..."
"Ambition is bottomless. I'm content with where I am."
There was not a trace of wavering in Marcus's face. The Rank system was cruel. Unforgiving.
Some debate the walls of talent and effort that divide 3rd from 4th from 5th Rank, but the vast majority of the continent feels the chasm of talent between 1st and 2nd Rank alone.
It's a gap the countless geniuses and prodigies can't empathize with. To them, 1st and 2nd Rank are distinctions you overcome from birth, or with the most trivial effort.
Yet very few ever rise from 1st to 2nd Rank. The absolute proportions bear that out: far more people lack talent than possess it.
Finance Officer Marcus was among the talentless. Since childhood, he'd trained his mana and drilled with the sword in hopes of reaching 2nd Rank, yet he'd lived his entire life at 1st Rank.
There'd been a time he resented that, a time he'd been consumed by resentment and fury.
Not anymore.
"I have a wife. Children. A post. And I'm grateful to have people like you who place their trust in me."
"Finance Officer..."
"Mere matters of Rank or promotion—these things mean more to me."
The escort knight was 4th Rank and came from a viscount's family. In terms of Rank or status alone, the gulf between him and Finance Officer Marcus was immeasurable.
But Finance Officer Marcus possessed something that transcended such distances.
While the knight was at a loss for words, Finance Officer Marcus smiled and sprinkled something into the stew.
"Finance Officer? What is that?"
"Pepper and salt. I have plenty."
"What?! How could you afford something so expensive...?!"
"This is a situation where we could easily end up bald, is it not? I spent my own money to buy every purification scroll I could manage, but I still felt nothing but regret that I couldn't do more."
"But how did you manage to acquire so much when even the supply trains hardly carry any?"
Salt and pepper themselves could be found, but the amount Marcus had just produced was clearly substantial.
Typically, stew is seasoned by throwing in heavily salted preserved meat. Adding actual salt crystals like this was pure luxury.
It would be a struggle to purchase on an ordinary Finance Officer's salary.
"I received it from a connection I made in the past. Don't refuse, go ahead."
"Finance Officer..."
"Eat up. It's an old superstition, but they say eating plenty of salt wards off baldness. Though, given the state of my own head, I suspect it may be a lie."
At Finance Officer Marcus's sheepish smile, the knight finally burst out laughing as well.
He looked back and forth between the stew, floating precious pepper, and Finance Officer Marcus's bandages.
"To be honest, I'd planned to forcibly drag you back to the royal capital after you fell asleep. The instructions I received were too ominous to ignore. The hair-loss inducer leak near the academy, this landslide—it all felt like pressure telling us to turn back immediately."
"..."
"But...it seems there are other things I should be worrying about."
"What might that be?"
"Using my ki to heal your leg, and then heading straight for the academy. I'll follow you wherever you go, Finance Officer!"
"...Thank you."
*
"A mere 1st Rank bastard!"
"Ah, um. That would include you as well, Finance Director."
"Why does this lowly 1st Rank keep stubbornly pushing forward! Take a proper rest for once! Just turn back!"
"..."
I genuinely couldn't understand it. Finance Officer Marcus was only 1st Rank, wasn't he? Why was he willing to grind himself into dust to do this job?
The Chairwoman's gaze was oddly meaningful, but while having a good shout was supposed to make me feel better, I felt like shit.
"I'm told his leg wasn't fully healed, so they've reduced their pace. They'll likely arrive half a day later than planned."
"I...expect so."
"At this point, we have no choice."
I could keep employing the Chairwoman, but once they crossed the mountain where that demonic Finance Officer was currently positioned, the terrain opened into plains. It became far harder for the Chairwoman to manufacture landslides or sudden natural disasters.
And if I pushed it carelessly and the knight or the demonic Finance Officer caught on, that was its own danger. Besides, who could have guessed they'd press on with the audit despite a landslide and a sprained leg?
It hadn't taken long for the 8th Rank Chairwoman to trigger the landslide and return to the academy, but by now the auditors had probably crossed the mountain and reached the plains.
Follow the plains far enough and you'd hit a few territories; past those lay the basin the Chairwoman had carved out recently. After that, the academy would be practically right in front of them.
The closer they got to the academy, the less likely they were to give up and turn around.
"First, Madam Chairwoman, conceal yourself for a while."
"Pardon? Ah, you mean to summon her?"
"Yes. Please."
"Understood."
The Chairwoman did something, and just like that, she vanished into thin air.
I immediately pressed the bell on my desk.
And pressed it. And pressed it some more.
The door flew open.
"Stop, stop it! Once is enough! Why do you always insist on pressing it a dozen times?!"
"Because it's that urgent a matter."
"What on earth have you been doing since yesterday...?"
The bell was an artifact directly connected to someone's dormitory. After I'd hammered it repeatedly, a female student finally burst through the office door in a hurry.
She hadn't even had time to properly wash, rushed as she'd been by the endless ringing, but I didn't care.
"Student Milia. No, Bishop Milia."
"...Why are you suddenly being so creepy?"
"The time has come to re-establish our bond of trust."
"What the hell are you—"
"A financial audit is coming."
"Oh."
"If we're not careful, my connection to your Order could be exposed. I need the Order's assistance."
"...? It's just a financial audit. And there hasn't been any money between you and me anyway."
Ah. Tch.
The connection, you know? The connection? Anyway, the point is trust.
And even if that weren't the point.
"If the audit arrives, I'm going to be in a bit of trouble."
"Seeing the way you look, Finance Director, I always figured you were on the take somehow."
"If I'm found out, I'm finished. And once my head rolls, the relationship between the Order and the academy ends. Your chance to recover the holy relic goes up in smoke. And what's more."
"...What's more?"
"I won't die alone. I'll expose everything about the Order before I go."
"You psychopath."
"What was that?"
"I said you're a demonic bastard."
The demonic ones were the auditors on their way here, but whatever.
In any case, Milia couldn't refuse, no matter how much she complained. Our relationship was completely one-sided; what I said went. The fact that Milia could become the Wish Order's youngest-ever bishop was due to the academy's backing, and she couldn't afford to sever that connection.
After spitting out a few more curses, Milia scowled and glared at me.
"So, what do I do? I should mention upfront, the Order is..."
"Ultimately, the Order is a reactionary organization, a terrorist group, correct? I don't intend to ask for any delicate work."
"...Would assassinating the auditors do the trick?"
"I've already considered that option, but it's the absolute last resort. I don't want to solve an immediate problem by creating an even bigger one."
So. What the Order needs to do is simple.
Aren't you a terrorist group?
"Do what you do best."
"What we do best...?"
"Terrorism. Conveniently enough, the auditors' route passes through a few territories."
Fine. Let's say the hair-loss inducer didn't matter because they were already bald, and the landslide was somehow narrowly overcome.
But what if a sudden terrorist attack led the territories to lock down all outside access?
Especially now, with everyone on edge after that very recent academy terror incident?
'This time.'
They'd never make it.