Cleaned Out
Scott could only stare, dumbfounded.
The wide-open, utterly emptied warehouse seemed to be mocking him personally. His mind had gone snow-white; not a single coherent thought would form.
*What in the... how did this happen?*
As Scott stood frozen in place, unable to move so much as a finger, one of his men came sprinting over in a panic and held out a crumpled scrap of paper.
"Captain, there was this inside the warehouse..."
Scott received the note as though in a trance and read it.
Thanks for the loot.
The deliberately scrawled, crooked handwriting sent his blood boiling in reverse. His hand clenched of its own accord, crumpling the paper into a wretched ball, and humiliation set his whole body trembling.
"You little... thieving BASTAAARD!"
What began as a low growl finally burst out of him as a full-throated roar. The fury-laced bellow rang across the brilliant blue sky, but of course, no answer came back.
He should have realized from the start.
When he'd risen from bed, the young brat who'd begged to stay just one night had vanished without a trace. The drawer where he kept his money and valuables had been emptied down to the last copper, and the carefully stored weapons and swords had disappeared along with everything else.
The sense that something was terribly wrong struck him hard across the back of the head—and the moment he remembered telling that little whelp where the warehouse was, he'd come sprinting here without even properly changing his clothes.
And so... Scott was greeted by a warehouse stripped bare.
"What the hell were the sentries doing?!"
"They seem to have been ambushed and knocked unconscious. They still haven't come to."
"Damn it all!"
It was impossible. One person had knocked out several guards, then—without being spotted by a single soul—moved that entire mountain of supplies away without leaving so much as a fingerprint?
"Impossible..."
Overpowering the guards was one thing, but hauling off all that cargo was physically impossible unless you could work magic. Clearly, accomplices had infiltrated the city.
Just then, a subordinate came tearing over from the plaza, raising a racket.
"Captain! B-Big trouble!"
"Now what?"
"The, the main gate... the Imperial Knights...!"
Scott's face drained to the color of blank paper at the words his subordinate gasped out between heaving breaths.
"Knights? How many? Is it the pursuit squad?"
"No, it doesn't seem to be the pursuit squad... only three of them."
The answer his subordinate hesitantly offered was entirely unexpected.
"Three? An advance party?"
"We're holding them at the entrance for now, making excuses..."
But stalling wouldn't last long. The Security Department had neither the authority nor the strength to bar the Imperial Knights—and right now they'd lost every weapon they might have fought with besides.
Scott was barely sane by this point. But there was no time left to deliberate, because a thunderous shout erupted from the far end of the main road.
"Clear the road! Imperial Knights!"
"What?"
There was no time to react. The knights could already be seen galloping toward them from down the street.
"Damn it—what do we do? Don't just stand there like idiots, somebody say something!"
"Wh-what? But we don't have anything to..."
The suddenly berated subordinate replied in flustered confusion. If they were exposed like this, there would be no escaping brutal punishment. His anxiety and terror had reached their peak—and yet fleeing was impossible too.
In an instant the knights had closed the distance. They reined in their horses and dismounted lightly onto the ground. Truly worthy of the Imperial Knights—even the aura they gave off from a standing start was extraordinary.
Just as his body tensed up of its own accord, the youngest-looking of the knights stepped forward.
"You're the captain of the Security Department?"
*Gulp.*
Scott swallowed involuntarily. The young knight's razor-sharp glare looked ready to run him through at any moment.
"Y-yes, that's right. Scott, captain of the Security Department. It's an honor to..."
"Spare me, we're busy—just the essentials. Have any suspicious individuals visited this city?"
The young knight cut coldly through Scott's stammering, dazed reply. At the unexpected question, Scott's eyes went wide.
"I'm sorry—suspicious individuals, you say?"
Hadn't they come because of a tip that the city was harboring the Cult of Cernion?
"Did a young man come to this city last night or not? We're tracking him."
The *young man*—without question, that was the youth who had introduced himself as a follower of Cernion.
When the dumbstruck Scott's mouth simply flopped open and shut, Arthur clicked his tongue.
"Your soul's left your body. Don't tell me you've already been hit."
"H-hit? What on earth do you mean?"
"You're aware of the recent alert order regarding the Evil God Cult, I trust."
There was no way he could claim otherwise, so Scott nodded. Judging that normal communication was going to be difficult, Arthur let out a short sigh and began explaining, step by careful step.
"A new breed of fraudster is rampant lately—posing as the Evil God Cult to extort money and valuables."
"...Fraud, you say?"
"They operate in groups of three. One invokes the name of the Evil God, claims he'll proclaim the god's word, stirs up the locals, and gets them buying up goods at a reckless pace."
*Incitement. Purchasing goods.*
The two words rang out with unnatural clarity, lodging in Scott's ears as cold sweat trickled down his spine.
"No, wait. That can't be..."
"Then a companion joins and says he'll administer a baptism, feeling out the situation—and once he judges things have progressed far enough, he gives the withdrawal order to the one who came first."
"..."
"The middle figure keeps their whole body covered, so you can't tell their face or even their sex. After that one visits, the instigator soon leaves the village. And the last to appear is the youth I just mentioned."
By now Scott's soul had completely departed; he stood pale and vacant, staring blankly into empty air. Which was a blessing, or perhaps a curse—because he missed the moment Arthur, mid-explanation, briefly failed at keeping his composure and crumpled his face into a scowl.
"Golden eyes, a face that's unusually... *handsome*, slightly long hair, a young man still carrying a boyish air. That one makes off with every last coin, valuable, and purchased good in the place... *Haah*. You haven't seen him by any chance?"
The truth was, Arthur was in the throes of violent pangs of conscience at that very moment. Scott, for his part, was so hollowed out that his jaw hung open as if it might drop clean off.
And that youth was, of course, Arendt. Several hours before dawn, Arthur had been helping that too-handsome bastard sneak every last item out of the warehouse.
There had been no grand technique, no elaborate trickery. They'd simply walked in, muffled their presence, and robbed the place blind.
The Security Department hadn't even registered as opponents. Moving that much cargo unseen had been a slog, admittedly—but far from impossible.
The sheer volume of it nearly wrenched their backs out as the two of them hauled it all, but hey. They were the Imperial Knights, after all.
*That's the problem, right there. That's exactly it.*
He was a knight, and yet—was this really something a knight could do? Ever since the moment he'd crept out of the city hugging an armful of grain and weaponry, Arthur had been drowning in a searing wave of self-loathing. Getting helplessly dragged along by Arendt's schemes had become a familiar pattern somewhere along the way, but how did the bastard manage to make it *new* every single time?
The thing in front of him was a half-wit preparing for a rebellion, but the guilt gnawed at him all the same.
While Arthur was being buffeted by this storm of conflicting emotion, one of the guards frozen stiff beside the Security Captain moved his lips.
"W-wait just a moment. Fraud, but..."
At the bewildered voice, Arthur snapped back to attention.
"Sounds like they've already come and gone. He showed you a miracle of the god, I heard—a little conjuring trick. Am I right?"
"..."
Everyone clamped their mouths shut, apparently seeing something to be wary of. Arthur clicked his tongue.
"Any half-decent mage can paper over a trick like that with sleight of hand. And from the look of things, you've already been picked clean."
"..."
"Come to think of it, was this the place where they reported the destruction of a sacred image?"
Even so, Arthur faithfully played the role assigned to him. His soul was crowded with existential questions—*why on earth am I doing this?*—but there had been no other choice.
The reasons were exactly two. First, short of Arendt's proposed method, no other viable approach existed. And second, the two people who'd happened to come along turned out to be utterly useless in precisely these situations.
Blissfully ignorant of all this, the terrified captain and his men merely exchanged haunted glances, green as spring grass.
"Have you seen that brat and his two companions? Report everything that happened here, and in detail."
Arthur let a quiet thread of killing intent seep from his settled breath.
"And one more thing. Fraud victims or not, what you people have done is not something that can simply be waved away. So understand this: right now is your last chance. Who knows? You might yet be forgiven generously."
He meant it literally. At this point, they could still play the victims of a con—rather than traitors.
*'God damn it...'*
Where had it all gone wrong? Whether those three were genuine fraudsters or truly people proclaiming a new god's name, the outcome was identical.
The ones holding the power of life and death over him right now were neither god of light nor god of darkness. It was the swords hanging at these knights' belts. Before a blade of cold blue steel, any god who couldn't save him—light or dark alike—was a god he didn't need.
At last the Security Captain gave up all hope and bowed his head deep, and behind him Licht and Laios—who had been standing like a pair of planted sacks of barley—let out sighs of relief.
Arthur shot the two of them an unfriendly glance and delivered his final line.
"Gather the people. And bring out everyone who had contact with the ones who came first. We have things to discuss."
* * *
Outside the main gate stood an abandoned warehouse—the safehouse that formed the foundation of this entire operation.
"See? Told you they'd take the bait."
When Arthur returned to the safehouse clutching the tattered shreds of his conscience, he found Arendt half-reclining on a mound of grain sacks arranged into a sofa, munching on biscuits.
At the sight, Arthur couldn't bring himself to deliver so much as a scolding. Judged purely by results, the operation had been flawless—every single thing had unfolded exactly according to the bastard's script.
The city's leading citizens had been summoned to the plaza, where Laios himself stepped forward, revealed his identity as Knight Commander, and laid out the whole story—the truth of the incident Arendt had manufactured, that is. Stockpiling goods in the name of a holy uprising, then making off with the lot: that was money laundering. And the "miracles of god" the swindlers had displayed? Nothing but crude magic.
Faced with the airtight explanation—and with the knights treating them not as would-be rebels but as victims of fraud—the citizens who had at first been skeptical began to listen. Their diligently gathered stockpile had been stolen from under them, after all.
Besides, the whip and the carrot had been brandished with exquisite skill: refuse to cooperate, and the capital's temple would descend on them at once to press charges of heresy; lend a hand in the Imperial Knights' investigation, however, and the whole affair would be quietly buried. Who could do anything but nod along?
And so, thanks to Arendt's silver tongue and a strategy of magnificent, brute-force simplicity, the unidentified preachers with their ghoul and their Breath of Mnemosyne had been reduced to common swindlers.
If one were being pedantic about it, the fraudsters-and-thieves label fit the knights themselves rather better.
In truth, the knights had no grounds to complain about that, either.
Licht let out a low groan.
"Exactly as you said... the artifact's suggestion has been broken. We needn't worry about what comes after."
The instant the faith cracked, there came a faint *pop*—something audibly shattering—and wisps of dim mana drained out of the brainwashed faithful. The victims themselves noticed nothing, but the knights felt it, plain and clear.
Arendt's hypothesis—that the Breath of Mnemosyne drew its power from faith itself—had proven out.
While the seniors and the Commander each pressed a hand to their foreheads, sighing under a thick haze of despondency, Arendt glanced at them, *tch*-ed his tongue, and pulled himself upright.
"Anyway, that's how it is, Scott. Don't go trusting people you've just met."
The one receiving this wisdom was the Security Captain himself, who had been escorted here alongside the knights. Having watched Arendt sprawl lazily atop the very supplies he'd spent years treasuring, Scott seemed to have no spirit left to flee anywhere.
That unforgettable handsome face was, without question, the same one that had smiled so guilelessly at him just the night before. But the manner, the speech, the very atmosphere—there wasn't a trace of last night's young man to be found.
*Pfft.* Arendt burst out laughing and gave the Security Captain a light tap on the shoulder.
"You wanted to know my name, right? Arendt von Eckhart. Ring any bells?"
"Nnghh..."
Unable to bear the accumulated shocks, Scott finally fainted and toppled backward.