The Pursuit Squad
At the very moment the pursuit squad was being assembled, over at the Kodana Exchange.
The market opened at twenty-five million liras per coin.
The Imperial Palace had dispatched monitors to keep a vigilant eye over the trading floor. The fact that the court had pinpointed the Hero's whereabouts—and that a pursuit unit disguised as an inspection team had been deployed to capture him—held the potential to violently rock market prices.
While the squad's departure was officially classified, the investors' intelligence network defied all imagination. Rumors circulated so freely and openly that everyone already knew Short Bingo, who was hardly a major market whale, had bought a brand-new house in the 3rd District, or that the young master of Count Sesemori's house had been flogged within an inch of his life after squandering his entire principal.
"Remain on high alert. Groundless optimism might trigger an artificial surge, just as it did during the Second Prince's fact-finding committee."
"What if we suspend trading altogether until the Hero is secured?"
"Out of the question! A trading halt would spark immediate riots! We must maintain a wait-and-see approach while enforcing the strictest possible information control!"
Whether those anxieties were justified or not, the Kodana Exchange buzzed with unusual vigor today. Yet according to the intelligence officers deployed by the Court Department, the primary reason was not the pursuit squad. It was not because privileged aristocrats, privy to insider rumors, had turned out in force to brace for disaster or seize a sudden windfall.
The ones driving up trading volume right now were the commoners.
These were not bottom-rung day laborers toiling for starvation wages. The vast majority were merchants running decent-sized storefronts, or families who had once been quasi-nobles before slipping down the social ladder over successive generations. Still, upper-middle class or not, they certainly were not high nobility with access to state secrets.
The sole reason they had swarmed the exchange was straightforward: ever since price fluctuations began ticking in increments of one hundred thousand liras, price swings had become constant and frantic. The comparatively lowered barrier to entry also made dabbling far easier. It remained a substantial sum of money, of course, but an industrious middle-class citizen could at least scrape together enough to take a gamble.
"I pulled in four hundred thousand liras in just two hours, haha!"
"Ah, goddammit! I bought in right before the closing bell yesterday and prayed on my knees all night, and now this shit happens...!"
In essence, they were devouring each other's hard-earned savings.
For the moment, it remained a small-scale movement driven by a modest crowd, and the societal fallout was limited. In this stagnant, slightly bearish market, one out of three or four pocketed a bit of spending money while the rest bled small losses.
Even so, the Court Department sensed impending crisis. The situation was concerning enough that an urgent briefing had been placed directly on the Emperor's desk. Because nothing like this had ever occurred in imperial history, no one could articulate the exact danger, yet everyone instinctively understood that this phenomenon boded nothing good.
They needed to secure the Hero as quickly as humanly possible. Fortunately, Imperial Inspector Eric Wellesley was already on the verge of departure.
I spent a mere three hours assembling the pursuit squad. Yet for the time invested, the resulting roster was shockingly extravagant.
To begin with, there were five Experts, including myself.
Of course, Experts came in vastly different calibers. There was a world of difference between an Expert Low-grade, who could barely squeeze out a shimmering haze of aura before drooping in exhaustion, and an Expert Peak-tier, who could blast lethal crescent shockwaves through the air at will.
And in the squad I had gathered, every single Expert except one operated at the absolute peak.
There was a baron in his mid-thirties who had served with distinction in the Black Iron Knights before retiring to inherit his family domain, a knight in his early forties with over two decades in the Imperial Guard who had recently joined a ducal house as a senior retainer—and who had actually been my direct superior back when I was a green recruit—and several others of similar standing.
There was even foreign nobility among our ranks—specifically, an aristocrat from the Kingdom of Lesotona.
"...Until recently, I served as vice-commander of the Forest Knights."
He looked remarkably young to have held such a high office. Word had it he was celebrated as the undisputed prodigy of his generation back home. Granted, Lesotona was merely a minor realm neighboring the Grand Forest that the Empire had never bothered to conquer because it offered little strategic value, but a knight representing an entire sovereign nation had nonetheless fallen under my command.
Naturally, he hadn't relinquished his vice-commander post just to answer my summons.
"...To tell the truth, Kodana has kept me stranded in the Imperial Capital for the past several months."
Watching the way he bit his lower lip until it turned pale, I could instantly tell he had been catastrophically liquidated. I decided against asking for the exact figure.
The only member below peak-tier was Katie, an active knight of the Imperial Guard.
A young female knight who resembled a baby bear, she had volunteered herself, proudly boasting that she excelled at scouting despite her cuddly appearance. In truth, it felt less like she was there to scout and more like someone had attached her as an aide out of concern for a newly minted twenty-five-year-old inspector.
They must have worried I'd struggle to manage a pack of crusty old veterans.
And naturally, I brought mages along.
One imperial court mage, and one tenured professor from the Academy's Magic Faculty. Both were 6th-circle archmages, and one of them happened to live right next door to me.
"...Professor Weber."
It was Professor Weber, who had rushed straight over from teaching his classes the moment my call came. Having previous military campaign experience, he was already strapping on his horse tack and gear with practiced hands.
In a sense, he was a celebrity discussed far more frequently than I was, all thanks to the unforgettable impression he had made during the great market collapse. A tenured magic professor openly weeping and begging an exchange clerk young enough to be his nephew to save his life had spawned endless gossip, and he had subsequently achieved legendary status for organizing that grand stoning spectacle against the former Second Prince.
I had heard the Magic Tower mocked Professor Weber as an utter disgrace to the craft, but in certain circles, he had earned genuine acclaim for his lightning-fast incantations and exquisitely delicate mana control.
On that historic day in the plaza, he had fired Breath of Earth eighteen consecutive times.
Thanks to that barrage, Matthias's face had been reduced to an unrecognizable pulp, but without realizing it, Professor Weber had apparently achieved a massive breakthrough as a mage. Magic wasn't something one was supposed to cast eighteen times in succession while standing rooted in one spot.
"To be frank, I intended to put all of this behind me after making such a disgraceful spectacle of myself in the square. I felt too mortified to look my students in the eye."
He had once addressed me casually with 'young man,' but now formal honorifics rolled off his tongue quite naturally.
"You certainly arrived quickly for someone who wanted to put it behind him."
"...The truth is, I came because of the children once more."
He explained that an increasing number of magic students were dropping out to hunt for work. Needless to say, they weren't applying for glamorous postings; they were taking jobs managing communication crystal orbs in backwater rural estates or distant merchant outposts.
"Because they desperately need money, I take it."
"I try everything to talk them out of it, but what can I do when their families are literally starving?"
While the imperial court was pushing for tuition waivers, tuition was no longer the primary issue driving these cornered youths away. They had to support ruined households, and sitting behind a communication crystal was the only immediate breadwinning work available to them.
"How can an educator stand by and watch young people who haven't even tested the limits of their talent spend all day rotting in front of a communication crystal? ...Not that capturing the Hero will magically resolve everything, of course."
Even so, he couldn't bear to sit idly by. His quiet, weary conviction brought a solemn hush over the air.
Still, with a roster like this...
It wasn't merely decent—it was formidable.
On top of this, personnel from the Holy Kingdom were scheduled to rendezvous with us shortly: the former cardinal of the Imperial Capital diocese, a young bishop hailed as the future Pope, and the finest paladins the Church still had left. Under normal circumstances, gathering such a line-up in one place would have been an impossible feat.
Every single one of them shared a common bond.
With the sole exception of myself, every man and woman here had suffered devastating financial ruin because of Kodana.
Some had lost every asset to their name, saving only the roof over their heads; another was stranded in a foreign empire for months on end with no domestic ties; and others were top leaders of a theocracy whose very national survival hung by a thread.
"You might draw some uneasy glares, Eric. Looks like the market's heading down again today."
Just before we set out from the capital, Bingo had voiced that concern while catching me for signatures—we were in the middle of snapping up more prime real estate. Bingo looked genuinely unnerved by the murderous aura pouring off these high-and-mighty figures. He also seemed terrified that one of them might recognize his face.
Yet his worries were completely unfounded.
"...Don't sweat it. Those folks don't have the luxury to care about me. Every eye here is fixed solely on the Hero."
"Still... human nature being what it is."
It was true that I was an object of bitter envy throughout the capital. Not only had I liquidated my Kodana at the absolute peak, but I had received a title by imperial decree and held the backing of the Imperial Guard Commander himself.
Yet from the grim faces gripping their reins, not an ounce of malice was directed at me. If they harbored any complaint, it was singularly one thing.
"Eric... no, Inspector. When are we departing?"
That we weren't riding out this very second.
Every one of them was practically buzzing with impatient adrenaline, licking their lips and drawing deep breaths, while even our warhorses snorted in sync with their riders' fury.
I'd better get them moving before someone blows a fuse. I swung effortlessly into the saddle.
"Let's ride."
Seven of the swiftest, most impeccably trained warhorses in the capital broke into a ferocious gallop. From veteran knights with thousands of hours in the saddle to mages whose combat experience hadn't made them any less clumsy on horseback, not a single person uttered a complaint, even though clinging to a charging steed at full tilt was no small feat.
Instead, it was the horses that flagged first.
The beasts whinnied in distress. Sprinting at a breakneck pace bordering on a dead gallop, their stamina rapidly drained under the strain.
Should we ease up slightly? No matter how fine the mounts, they couldn't sustain this pace forever. Just as I was about to signal the riders flanking me, I dropped my hand.
The figures waiting for us at the first milestone outside the capital made the gesture unnecessary.
⟨ Curtain of Radiance ⟩
Without so much as a greeting, the Holy Kingdom contingent slammed us with an invigorating blessing that purged all fatigue. A former cardinal, and a bishop whose holy power ranked among the absolute highest in the Church—by any objective metric, these were men of vastly higher status than anyone in our company.
They merged effortlessly into our formation.
"Your Eminence Cardinal Edin—"
"I'm not a cardinal!!"
Surging with boundless vitality that welled up unbidden, the warhorses thundered forward. Far from merely maintaining their pace, it felt as though they were accelerating with every stride.
The moment man or beast showed even the slightest hint of exhaustion, the clerics slapped on another blessing without skipping a beat. I was a veteran with plenty of field experience, but seeing divine power slung so casually from the back of galloping warhorses was an entirely new spectacle.
Perhaps overdosed on divine buffs, a paladin who looked younger than me surged ahead, completely unable to contain his fervor—as if intent on trampling the Hero under his hooves the instant they crossed paths.
"WAAAAAAAHHH!!"
Perhaps the furious headwind slamming into his face had stung his eyes raw. Whatever the cause, droplets of moisture whipped from the corners of the nameless paladin's eyes, scattering into the rushing wind.