Private Army (4)
Meanwhile, at that same hour, Erinn and Ser-Aria were inside a building in Obern. To conceal their identities, they had wrapped themselves in cloaks, donned strangely shaped masks, and covered their hair with hoods as well.
"Erinn, I think we found it."
"Looks like it~."
The place they stood in was a jewelry shop belonging to the Achilles ducal house. After lightly subduing the shopkeeper who had protested against them rummaging around freely, they had entered the underground passage connected to the store.
They had found nothing of what they wanted in the ten buildings they had visited earlier, but at this final stop, they had finally struck gold.
"Still, digging through all eleven places paid off~ I thought we were just wasting our time♡"
"Puhaha, right?"
Ser-Aria lifted her mask just enough to take a long pull from her bottle, then let out a satisfied sigh.
"Kyaha~ Looks like the other side's roughly figured us out, though."
"…Well, it'd be weirder if they hadn't~."
From the underground space below them came the presence of a great many people. The sheer number of signatures packed into a basement was proof enough that this was the private-army training facility Yureinia Achilles had prepared.
"We can't kill them. Everyone here is evidence."
"That's gonna be a pain. Means I can't use magic either."
"What, Aria?"
Erinn drew an ordinary sword she had taken from Aurum Aquila in place of her Holy Sword.
"Getting cold feet~?"
"Puhaha, who said that?"
Ser-Aria likewise took up her bow, nocked an arrow, and aimed it down the corridor toward the end where the presence clustered.
"I just said it was a pain!"
With Ser-Aria's short shout, the door at the far end of the passage burst open and armed men poured out.
"Kill them without fail! There are only two of them!"
"Yes, sir!"
At the order of the man who looked like a commander—
"They know full well they can't afford to be found out~."
"As long as we don't kill them, right?"
"That's right~."
Erinn's smile turned faintly wicked.
"As long as we don't kill them, it's fine♡"
At a glance, Erinn and Ser-Aria looked cornered. The illegal private soldiers spilling from the basement were numerous, and the two of them were only two.
Had this been open flat ground, even with their strength, sheer numbers might have been enough for the soldiers to overwhelm them.
But this was a narrow one-way passage. No matter how many men they had, at most five could approach at once.
That single fact completely canceled out the numerical disadvantage Erinn and Ser-Aria faced in that moment. However well-trained the soldiers might be, for a Hero and a Divine Archer—the empire's special strategic assets—handling five men at a time was hardly difficult.
Whiiish!
"Keep pushing! Finish them as fast as you can!"
The instant Ser-Aria released her bowstring, the arrow flew and buried itself in the shoulder of the commander bellowing orders. It did not pierce flesh. The shaft only grazed skin and, with perfect precision, snagged nothing but cloth before pinning him to the wall.
"Ghk!"
His clothes yanked violently upward, his head snapped back and slammed hard into the basement wall; at the same time his throat was briefly crushed. The dual shock of impact and momentary asphyxiation dropped him unconscious in a single stroke.
All from one arrow. It was skill bordering on a circus trick—the kind of display that made clear why Ser-Aria held the title of Divine Archer.
"Instructor?!"
"Nice shot~."
With that, Erinn sprinted forward to meet the soldiers who had already come out.
Thwack!!
Before the lead soldier could even react, she kicked him under the chin, then used that same foot to push off the wall and spin her body around.
"Wha…?!"
Thud!!
She immediately struck the nape of the soldier beside him with the flat of her blade and dropped him. Then she planted a foot on the back of the man collapsing forward.
"Th-this is…!"
Crunch!
She kicked off that back, whirled, slipped past a sword thrust, and drove her own blade in. The soldier who had swung at her went down with his shoulder run through.
"Gyaaah!"
"Don't be such a baby, you're not dying~♡"
Erinn yanked the sword free in a flash, seized the head of the man she had stabbed in the shoulder—
Crack!!
—and smashed her knee into his nose, knocking him out cold. She released his head and flung him aside. In an instant the four soldiers who had been at the front were down.
"You little—!!"
"Damn it!!"
The soldiers who charged in fury at the sight met the same fate.
Thud! Thwack! Crack! Boom!!
They could not keep up with Erinn's agile movements at all and went down helplessly—noses broken, forearms cut, legs snapped.
And that was not all. While they were already frantic just trying to track her, arrows from Ser-Aria behind her flew with exquisite timing, pinning the collars of soldiers trying to reinforce against the wall.
It only stopped them for a moment, but the problem was that while they yanked the arrows free and tried to advance again, they could watch in real time as the men ahead of them steadily dwindled.
Even the rare few who luckily broke past Erinn were no better off. Calling it a breakthrough was generous; she had simply decided they were fine to leave to Ser-Aria.
Indeed, for an archer, Ser-Aria swung her bow like a club and flattened the sword-wielding soldiers who reached her in the blink of an eye.
The courage that numbers had given them evaporated in moments.
"W-wait…."
"She's too fast…!"
"Who the hell are these people…?!"
The soldiers in the rear could not even properly track Erinn's movements. All they saw was their comrades who had gone ahead collapsing one after another to cheerful impact sounds.
These were men who had lived through extreme training in a lightless basement, training that put ordinary soldiers to shame. And yet…
Why are we being completely overrun by just two intruders?
How was this absurd spectacle even possible? Now, without anyone needing to charge first, the tiny intruder herself was charging in and thrashing the soldiers to pieces.
The men falling one by one became dozens, then hundreds. Their line was pushed steadily back until, before they knew it, the intruders had finished descending the stairs and were crossing the threshold.
Thud!!!
"Guh…!"
With the last soldier kicked under the chin and sent sprawling, the intruders fully entered the room.
After dropping so many soldiers, the only damage the two of them had taken was a few tears in their cloaks. Not a single wound. Faced with that ridiculous sight, one soldier stammered,
"M-monsters…!"
"Did you hear that, Aria~? They're calling us monsters~♡"
The small intruder snorted a laugh and pulled off her hood and mask. The face that appeared made the soldier's eyes go round.
"What kind of monster looks this pretty, I wonder~♡"
Was it because the face was too beautiful? That was part of it—but there was not a citizen of the empire who did not know that face and that gleaming platinum-blonde hair.
"H-He…!"
Crash!!
The instant the soldier realized Erinn's identity, his head was driven into the floor. At that, Ser-Aria also removed the stuffy mask she had been wearing.
The remaining soldiers who confirmed Erinn and Ser-Aria's faces lost all will to fight on the spot. They finally understood why, no matter how hard they tried, they had never even touched the tips of these two's toes.
These were the empire's special strategic assets. Each one of them held military value exceeding an entire imperial legion—they were the Hero's party.
The Dern Empire's greatest fighting force spoke in a voice full of considerate kindness.
"If you stay quiet, I'll knock you out as gently as I can~♡"
"Hmm…."
Having subdued the private-army training facility in moments, Erinn and Ser-Aria were now searching every corner of the interior. They dragged the officer who had been knocked out earlier along with them, combing thoroughly for anything connected to Yureinia Achilles.
Ser-Aria spoke with admiration.
"Wow, how did they wipe the traces this clean? There's nothing, Erinn."
Any evidence that Yureinia Achilles had been involved here had vanished without a trace.
"I-I keep telling you, this place has nothing to do with the Achilles ducal house…!"
"Nothing to do with it? This is a building owned by the Achilles house to begin with—how could it have nothing to do with them?"
Of course, the mere existence of a soldier-training facility inside a building owned by the Achilles ducal house was enough to prove a connection between the house and this place. The problem was that there was no evidence tying Yureinia herself to it.
But this alone isn't enough….
The will of the Achilles ducal house was effectively Yureinia's will, yet officially she had not yet inherited the title. This much would at least keep her from opening her mouth about the present affair—but Erinn wanted to drag her down completely while she was at it.
As she fretted over whether there was anything more, a thought suddenly struck her.
"Aria, where's the ledger for this place."
"Ledger?"
Ser-Aria rummaged through the piles of documents and found the ledger recording the goods that had flowed into this basement.
"Here."
No matter how secret a place might be, a ledger like this was naturally going to exist. Running an organization required bookkeeping—unless you were a genius who could hold every fine detail in your head.
Erinn scanned it once through. Then she gave a contemptuous little laugh.
"Such a pathetic bit of sleight of hand… Did Yureinia Achilles really handle this herself?"
The ledger listed where the training equipment used for the private army had been purchased. It meticulously recorded that iron swords, wooden swords, armor, and everything else needed had all been bought from different places, and yet—
That makes no sense whatsoever~♡
Operating a private-army training facility this secretly while dealing with this many different suppliers was absurd. If the transactions had truly gone as written, far from hiding the secret, it would have been the equivalent of announcing to the entire world, "We're training soldiers here."
So the ledger had been falsified. There was probably one real name among them, and everything had come from that single source.
"Aria, head back to Aurum Aquila right now and check which of the trading houses on this list actually exist~."
"You sure? We have to link up with the Left General tomorrow. It might take a while…."
"It won't take that long~? Aurum Aquila is a major trading company that does big business across the empire, so they'll at least have a grasp of how trading houses are distributed inside the empire."
"Ah, true."
Ser-Aria said,
"But even if we figure out which trading house it is, investigating that place too… No matter how I look at it, we don't have time for that as well."
"Hmm~ You're right about that."
Erinn felt a slight twinge of regret that she had not secured a little more time. Realistically, though, Salisius—who was moving under the Military Minister's orders—would have a hard time buying them any more than he already had.
There were more places to investigate than I expected, so it took longer….
That left two options: give up here, or hand it off to someone else. The first was out of the question. There was no reason to quit when they had come this far.
"Then let's pass it on and go~♡"
"Pass it on? To who?"
At Ser-Aria's question, Erinn nodded.
"We've got reliable comrades, don't we? Aria, you contact them. A brief explanation might make it hard to grasp the situation, so fill them in as thoroughly as you can."
"…You want me to tell Freya and Letisia to come to the empire? They'll both definitely get detained. Wouldn't it be better to leave them on the front line?"
"No, I mean the others."
The others. At those words, Ser-Aria said,
"…You're going to call Albrecht?"
"Yep~."
Ser-Aria said,
"…Honestly, I don't think Albrecht has any reason to come. He's not even in our party anymore. We only worked together briefly when we took down the Legion Commander of Oblivion."
"No, he'll come~."
"How can you be so sure?"
At Ser-Aria's question, Erinn smiled without meaning to—not her usual mischievous grin, but a smile that looked thoroughly pleased.
"Because Albrecht's that kind of person. He's a total softie~♡"
"……Well, that's true, but."
Ser-Aria reacted as if she understood Erinn's point, yet at the same time she looked a little puzzled.
"Wasn't the whole idea to keep him out of this political mess? You used the porter excuse every time and never even brought him to the reports."
"That was the plan… but I'm starting to think that isn't always the best thing either."
Erinn said,
"I trust Albrecht, so I should know how to entrust things to him too~."
"…Yeah?"
Hearing that, Ser-Aria gave a light laugh. She had definitely changed. Just as Albrecht had said back when they cleared the Lizard Lord dungeon, Erinn had a tendency to fall short when it came to trusting her party members and leaving things to them.
It was not that she did not trust them—more that whenever something came up, she insisted on solving it herself. A bad habit.
Ser-Aria did not know it, but that habit had formed naturally from Erinn living her life over and over. The idea that she knew a little more, that she understood something extra, so she had to handle it herself had been instinctually drilled into her.
But that Erinn… living with Albrecht, talking with him, and coming to understand her true feelings had changed her.
As if it were nothing special, Erinn said with a slightly cocky smile,
"We'll go get ourselves quietly arrested and trust the kids while we wait~♡"
"But Erinn, I won't get arrested."
"Huh?"
"What happens if a human empire detains a High Elf princess is obvious as day. I'll get questioned for a bit, but I'll be released soon enough. The Left General said he came to arrest you, not that he was arresting us."
Come to think of it, that was true. Salisius had clearly said he had come to arrest "you"—Erinn—and had never said "you two."
"Wait, then…."
Realizing it, Erinn froze for a second. Watching her expression harden a little, Ser-Aria laughed, puhaha.
"Go suffer a bit!"