The Syndicate

Immediately after those mysterious suckers made their move, the Kodana Exchange began buzzing openly with restless tension.

A floor of twenty million liras was an infuriatingly awkward figure. Dumping at this price to salvage what was left felt unbearable considering how steeply the market had plunged right after the opening bell, sinking as low as 6.4 million. Yet stepping in to buy more seemed utterly insane while the screams of the Hero, who was being beaten half to death just outside, still echoed through the hall.

"Aaaaargh...!"

Whatever was being done to him out there, the Hero wept and shrieked at the top of his lungs. A few investors nervously fingering their coin pouches hesitated, letting out heavy sighs. It was a literal dilemma—damned if they jumped in, damned if they walked away.

Barely two hours had passed since opening, yet the investors packing the exchange were locked in the most excruciating agony of their lives. Buy in? Cash out? Or merely stand by and watch? Amid all the indecision, only one thing was certain: every single soul holed up in the exchange had abandoned their livelihoods. In truth, honest labor was the furthest thing from anyone's mind.

The "syndicate" responsible for stoking this madness was stationed in and around the exchange even now. A handful of utterly nondescript commoners carrying staggering sums of physical cash blended seamlessly into the surging crowd. Imperial intelligence had already tagged several of them, but moving in to seize them on the spot was out of the question. Arresting people merely for buying Kodana would ignite an immediate riot.

Could they be under charm magic?

A few agents harbored such suspicions and requested mages adept in mental manipulation, but with over ten thousand people swarming inside and outside the building, a mage had zero room to pinpoint anyone. Just as the collective tension threatened to snap, someone finally caved.

"Ah, fuck it. I don't give a damn!"

All in!

In the end, seduced by the illusion of an unbreakable floor, people began loosening their purse strings one after another.

Ever since putting the Hero on public display before the exchange, I had remained at the Imperial Palace. It wasn't to collect any bounty or accolades for dragging him back in chains. Given the atmosphere choking the Imperial Capital, discussing medals was entirely out of the question. What weighed on us now was the catastrophic fallout awaiting the city once the closing bell rang.

"Baron Wellesley, I hate to burden a man who just returned from such an ordeal, but we cannot even estimate the number of commoner investors. It appears the merchants in the Western Commercial District have been trading over the counter among themselves—not that they possess the slightest grasp of what over-the-counter trading even means."

"...Good grief."

"The sheer volume dumped by nobles in sheer despair—coins lying abandoned like corpses around the twenty-million mark—were scooped up by an immense crowd. Of course, as of this hour, no one has suffered a fatal loss, nor has anyone secured a meaningful profit. There is only blind, frantic anticipation."

"......"

In other words, while I had been off running down the Hero, the capital had drifted straight toward total madness.

Not that the Imperial Palace had sat idly by. At the very least, they had successfully barred junior officers of the Imperial Guard Knights and mid-level bureaucrats from diving into the fray. They had also prevented estate stewards managing noble and imperial manufacturing workshops from marching in with large bundles of capital.

And ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠yet...

"We couldn't stop the shopkeepers who run their own establishments. Those folk firmly believe they possess an innate genius for the flow of money."

"......"

Restaurateurs, dry-goods merchants, tavern keepers, and the like. Even if they went bankrupt, it wouldn't bring the capital's real economy to an outright halt. However, public sentiment was bound to turn dangerously volatile. Considering each proprietor employed at least two or three shop hands, the ripple effect would surpass anything we could anticipate.

And an even darker issue loomed.

"They appear to believe that even if ruin finds them, the crown will compensate their losses."

Those grim words came from Minister of Justice Count Necker, who understood the agony of financial ruin more intimately than anyone in the room.

Compensation?

Looking strictly at the raw numbers, it wasn't mathematically impossible. Moral hazards aside, Kodana's market price had plummeted so severely that perhaps ten billion liras could somehow placate them. Yet their wish could never be granted.

"...That is entirely out of the question. If we bail them out, we would be obligated to compensate the nobility's catastrophic losses as well."

"Naturally, it cannot be done. The trouble, Baron Wellesley, is that commoners will claim the throne showers wealth upon highborn aristocrats while treating common folk like dirt. ...Even though our aid to the nobility consists strictly of emergency shipments of daily necessities to estates choked of liquidity, designated solely as relief supplies for the serfs."

Just listening to the briefing made my temples throb. Even so, I couldn't complain. Right now, countless clerics across the Holy Kingdom were fasting and offering desperate prayers day and night—every consecrated soul except the imprisoned Pope and Saintess. The Holy Kingdom usually surpassed even our court in vicious factional politics, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠yet they were now unified as one. Compared to the frantic death throes of the Holy State, the capital's condition might actually pass for stable. Though calculating the final butcher's bill remained equally impossible for both.

"Well, then..."

Just as I was about to pitch a proposal to brace for what came after the closing bell—after Kodana's final breath—the council chamber doors slammed open.

"Urgent dispatch from the field!"

The emergency runner belonged to the Intelligence Castle, a bureau answering solely to the Emperor. Though cut from a vastly different cloth than the Imperial Guard Knights, they were an elite unit down to the bone. Because this was not an era of continental war, their routine duties were confined to monitoring provincial lords and watching the borders of the Demonic Realm. Ever since the Kodana crash erupted, however, they had been worked ragged.

There was only one reason men of their caliber would look this pale: disaster had struck the exchange.

The atmosphere in the chamber, which had just been stewing over the aftermath of Kodana's demise, instantly froze. The ministers blinked in utter incomprehension, and honestly, I was right there with them.

"What kind of lunatic pays twenty million for that trash...?"

Madness was the only diagnosis. Pure gold coins embossed front and back with the Hero's unmistakable visage possessed lower purity and a slightly smaller radius than standard imperial currency. Melted down for scrap gold, each coin was valued at roughly ninety thousand liras. Anyone buying them for twenty million couldn't possibly possess a sound mind.

Theories regarding the buyers' backing ignited across the table.

"...No matter how low the valuation has slipped, purchasing over a dozen at once? A commoner cannot wield that scale of cash. Someone is providing capital from behind the curtain."

"We cannot overlook the possibility of nobles from the Microcia Archipelago or the Inel Kingdom pulling the strings. They might be desperately pumping the market for fear of bearing the brunt of human wrath once Kodana collapses completely."

"Could it be... the Demon Army?"

From terrified foreign aristocrats swallowing coins to divert retribution, to a subversive operation by the Demon King to artificially sustain Kodana's lifespan and plunge the human capital into total anarchy—every conjecture sounded plausible.

The Demon King's forces... it's not out of the question.

Granted, it was exceedingly rare for the Demon Army to stage direct provocations within the capital. Anti-Demon Barriers were maintained at every major intersection, ensuring that any creature wielding mana above a certain threshold would be flagged instantly. If a demonic operative was pulling strings, it had to be a remarkably low-ranking fiend.

Then again, considering the Empire's current state of decay, the Demon King would naturally find this irresistible. Enthralling a handful of naive commoners to play puppets on the trading floor is child's play.

Yet the ministers, carried away by their deductive posturing, were overlooking one glaring reality: identifying the culprit wasn't the only urgent priority. Shattering this market manipulation scheme right now was equally paramount.

I listened to their squabbling before speaking up in a quiet, measured voice.

"My lords. Apprehending and wringing the necks of the perpetrators—let us refer to them as the syndicate for now—is certainly critical. But what is far more pressing is dismantling their operation. Allowing Kodana's lifespan to drag out any further will breed unmitigated catastrophe."

"Come now, Inspector Wellesley. That is precisely why we must apprehend the wire-pullers and interrogate them at once."

"By then, the damage will already be done."

What if we failed to break this stunt before sunset?

The second the market closed, taverns across the capital would become fertile breeding grounds for wild conspiracies. Baseless rumors claiming the Imperial Palace was secretly defending the price floor would be the mildest among them. People would easily convince themselves that the crown was merely 'disciplining' the Hero to knock sense into him before reassigning him to active duty—even with his severed hand hanging from his neck.

It wasn't because I held commoners in contempt; that was simply the raw, irrational psychology of an investor.

"Forgive my bluntness, but this is a market where rumors once spread that clutching a Kodana coin could ward off illness."

"Ah, er..."

A few ministers shifted their eyes uncomfortably, clearly nursing their own guilty consciences.

"Tomorrow? No, without waiting for tomorrow, even at this very second there are commoners agonizing over whether they should buy more. Low-ranking nobles from the countryside are no exception."

"......"

"We must end it today."

The ministers yielded to my stance. I hadn't worried about being shut down. Only a few months ago, I had been scrambling just to protect my meager neck and coin, but now I was formally the Emperor's closest crisis advisor.

Of course, if the solution I bring to the table is utter garbage, they'll tear into me soon enough.

In the solemn silence that settled over the chamber, I set my mind to work. Should I ask the court aristocrats to dump whatever remaining coins they held? No, the volume held by a few ministers was nowhere near sufficient. Dumping a trivial sum might backfire, cementing the commoners' delusion that Kodana was truly indestructible.

We lack supply. There's just not enough volume.

As I racked my brain, a certain hoard suddenly crossed my mind.

"Pardon me, Court Minister. Where are the seventy Kodana coins confiscated from Matthias currently held?"

"...They were absorbed into imperial assets. It's not as though we could throw them away."

"Do you happen to know what became of the hundred and fifty coins Matthias pawned off on the Holy Kingdom?"

"Roughly half were liquidated internally by the capital's diocese. But the rest were practically hurled back at us the moment the whereabouts of the Hero Party came to light. They seemed to be making some sanctimonious political statement, but since the crown could hardly accept them for nothing, we dispatched daily necessities in return."

Which meant the Imperial Household still sat on roughly a hundred and fifty Kodana coins.

That was a massive ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠supply.

Dumping them crudely to hammer the price into the dirt would spark immense outrage, but if deployed with finesse, it could coax commoner investors into cutting their losses organically. Better yet, it would flush out the identity of the syndicate.

The problem lies in the execution...

Those hundred and fifty coins belonged strictly to the crown. We couldn't send royals or imperial proxies into the exchange; rumors would explode across the trading floor. Nor could we resort to nominee trading like the disgraced Hero. No matter how noble the intent to dismantle a hostile operation, the political fallout of getting caught was too lethal.

"If we fail to drag the wire-pullers into the light, the throne will easily be accused of fleecing commoners," a minister grumbled with a heavy sigh. "...Sigh. What a disaster. It's not as though we can gift them to someone for free and order them to sell."

I had been listening absently to his complaints when I suddenly froze.

Of course, the thought of gifting the imperial Kodana to someone wasn't what seized my interest.

However... what if we simply lent them out?