See You Again
Listen up, everyone.
When none of them so much as twitched, I clicked my tongue in irritation.
"Is there not a single one among you willing to speak with me? Strange. You clearly have grievances against us—that's why you're staging this little demonstration, isn't it?"
At that, one man answered with obvious reluctance.
"How could powerless folk like us hold a conversation as equals with Your Young Lordship? And if it were just the two of us alone, wouldn't that be no different from an interrogation?"
"Hmm. If that's the issue, then all of you come along to the manor. I'll even serve tea and food. We can take our time talking things over there, all together."
"Th-that would be…"
They still hesitated, so I let out a long sigh.
"Honestly. This won't do, that won't do. Tell me—what reason do we have to listen to a single one of your demands?"
"……"
"This isn't dialogue. This is just you throwing a tantrum and daring us to do something about it."
They exchanged uneasy glances until the same man finally spoke again.
"Then does House Luminara truly intend to revive this city? To be frank, until recently you were only a baronial house. Yet now you've suddenly slapped all these restrictions on us—how could chaos not follow?"
"Oh, he's right!"
The merchants murmured in agreement.
"What matters most to us little people is peace and stability. But what happened the moment that Scriben fellow arrived? The policies he announced in the new lord's name sent food prices soaring, and the whole city was thrown into turmoil, wasn't it?"
Emboldened, the protesters raised their voices. A few nearby residents began to mutter as well.
To them we were nothing more than outsiders.
The previous lord of this place had been an apostle of the Evil Book Society, yet their daily lives had never been greatly affected. If anything, things had grown a little more uncertain after we took over.
Even so, the ones actually causing serious trouble right now were groups like these—people gathered purely for their own profit.
If this really had been the residents' honest opinion, I might have listened.
But judging from Scriben's letter, this was a carefully planned crime. They were using the territory and its people as a pretext to pressure us, when in truth they themselves were the ones inflicting the damage out of pure greed.
And I was not the sort of man considerate enough to simply leave such bastards alone.
"Well then…"
"Ah!"
The moment I opened my mouth, a child pointed at me and shouted.
"It's Inquisitor Cael!"
I recognized the boy. He was the one who had been wearing the brooch Edgar the priest had handed out for his demon experiments.
One of the residents asked, "You know that gentleman?"
"Yes! He's the one who caught Father Edgar before and told us the brooches were fakes!"
"Ah, so that was him…"
"Well now, what a coincidence."
The surrounding residents began to murmur among themselves.
"See? I told you so!"
"It really is him…"
"Then at least he's not a bad person like the old lord, right?"
"What? So the tighter inspections really were for the city's protection?"
This wasn't the same village where Edgar had been, but word had clearly traveled from mouth to mouth.
Never expected help to arrive like this. Things should go a lot smoother now.
I swallowed a smile and looked over the flustered protesters.
"As the residents already know, I am simply doing my utmost for their sake. Things may be a little chaotic for the moment, but that fact does not change."
"……"
"Now let me ask you something. Are you truly doing all this for the people of this city—or for your own profit?"
They had no answer. The man tried to protest.
"We are residents of this city as well."
"That doesn't mean every resident is a good one. Father Edgar proved that well enough."
The man quietly ground his teeth.
"…We have stated our position, and the day is growing late. We will withdraw for today, Young Lord Cael."
"Very well. Should you ever feel like talking, come find me anytime."
"…Yes."
As the man turned to leave, the other protesters followed. He seemed to be the leader of the local merchants' association.
"Listen up, all of you."
I called them back for a moment.
When they looked over their shoulders, I saw them off with a small smile.
"See you again."
Next time, though, it would not be as the eldest son of House Luminara. We would meet as an Inquisitor of heretics.
Whether the man understood the meaning or not, he bit his lip hard before turning away.
As the crowd slowly dispersed, Scriben let out a deep sigh of relief.
"Whew, they're finally gone. Thank you for coming, Young Master."
"Sure. You've aged since I last saw you."
"I'd rather have more work than this. Dealing with people is never easy."
Scriben pushed up his glasses and asked,
"So what do you intend to do now?"
"What else? We crush the bastards pulling the strings from behind as well."
"I see."
"Anyone come to mind?"
"There is one place for now. Most of the protesters are connected to the Monks Merchant Group. If we keep it simple, the odds are high they orchestrated this entire uproar. They even had some sort of arrangement with Baron Skallen."
This had once been the Skallen territory.
The lord was gone, but those who had enjoyed his patronage still remained.
"However, the head of the Monks Merchant Group and his officers are currently imprisoned in the Holy Empire on the strength of my testimony. So we can't be certain who is actually behind the disturbance."
Still, it didn't feel like genuine discontent that had simply boiled over into protest. Food prices rising this sharply solely because of Scriben's policies was hard to believe.
"Not everyone who worked for the Monks Merchant Group was arrested, though, right?"
"That's true. Others would know the distribution channels well enough to manipulate grain prices to some degree."
Scriben continued.
"The real problem is that the scale is far too large to be something mere city merchants of this size could pull off on their own. They would have to keep jacking up market prices until we cave to their demands—and as merchants themselves, that bleeding isn't free."
"Exactly. You can't pull a stunt like this without capital."
I thought for a moment, then spoke.
"What if the head of the Monks Merchant Group who got arrested… wasn't the real one?"
"Pardon? I checked myself—he was definitely taken into custody."
"That's not what I mean. What if the man they arrested was never the true master of the group in the first place?"
"…You mean the Monks Merchant Group's head was only someone's proxy from the very beginning?"
"Then it would also explain how they can still move so cleanly even after their 'leader' was locked up."
There had been cases like that before. Bastards who set up a puppet to take the fall for any crimes while they pulled the strings from the shadows. And those sorts were never ordinary people.
"That could be. Baron Skallen wouldn't have dealt with them for no reason."
Scriben mulled it over and then nodded.
"Then we need to find out quickly. If food prices stay like this, the residents won't trust us either."
I tilted my head at that.
"Why do you care about that?"
"Pardon? But these are Your Young Master's people now, aren't they?"
"No—why are we fretting over food prices at all?"
"What do you mean…?"
When Scriben still didn't understand, I heaved another sigh.
"You really have gone soft in the head. Did you forget our territory is primarily agricultural?"
"I know that, but we only just finished dealing with the blight, didn't we?"
"Wheat might be one thing, but mung beans and buckwheat grow fast. The fields that just recovered from the blight will harvest a little late, sure—but we can use the produce from the fields that were never infected first. Later we can make up the difference with the recovered ones."
"Ah…!"
I glared at the awestruck Scriben.
"You idiot. You sit at a desk staring at paperwork all day, so of course you don't know. That's it—once this mess is over, you're going to plow some fields."
"Haha…"
"Don't laugh. Before I harvest those teeth of yours first."
"Yes. My apologies, Young Master."
In a way, it was fortunate.
If even Scriben hadn't thought of it, no one else would have either.
"No need to sell cheap. Normal prices will move just fine. The permits are ours anyway."
"As expected of you, Young Master."
We had always planned to ship the surplus crops from Luminara proper into Haven City. The schedule had simply been moved up a little.
"We'll use this as bait. If there really is a true master behind the group, they'll report to him that the plan has gone sideways."
"Then we only need to watch which of them has the authority to make decisions. A brilliant strategy."
"We move right away. I'll go write a letter to Father first."
"What should I do?"
To the diligently flattering Scriben I turned on my heel and answered,
"Don't respond to anything. Just sleep at the manor."
"Thank you, Young Master."
"Deacon Bella. Go with him and sing him a lullaby."
"Yes, sir! Inquisitor!"
Whether that counted as a reward or a punishment for Scriben, I had no idea.
One week later.
The protesting merchants gathered in one place.
"Haha. They looked like they might do something, yet there's been no response at all."
"That's why dissatisfaction is starting to surface among the residents as well. The market situation hasn't shifted once in the week since."
"Of course, as merchants who sell goods ourselves the damage isn't small—but compared to what we'll gain afterward, this is a price worth paying."
One merchant looked toward the man seated at the head of the table.
"Lord Jacob, if things continue this way, the Monks Merchant Group will truly become ours, won't it?"
Jacob was the man who had led the protests and spoken with Cael.
"Of course. Though by then it won't be the Monks Merchant Group—it'll be the Jacob Merchant Group."
"Haha, what does the name matter? Securing a seat in a group of that scale is what counts."
Jacob nodded.
"To that end we need to extract various monopoly rights from the viscount's house. Both the ones that originally existed and the ones that never did."
When the head of the Monks Merchant Group was imprisoned, many of those monopoly rights had naturally lapsed. They needed to reclaim them—and acquire entirely new ones as well.
"Even so, monopolies aside, why are we pushing so hard to ease the stricter inspections?"
"I don't know either. 'That person' ordered it, so we simply obey."
"That person" was the one who had proposed putting a merchant group the size of Monks into Jacob's hands.
"But I suspect it has something to do with smuggling."
"Ah, I see."
"In any case, if things stay like this they'll have no choice but to accept our demands. How could they possibly overcome the residents' resentment?"
The merchants nodded in agreement.
One of them asked worriedly,
"But Luminara proper is farmland, isn't it? Will that side be all right?"
"Most of their fields can't grow anything because of the blight. They can barely feed themselves, let alone distribute crops."
"That bad?"
"Yes. According to That person, Baron Skallen himself spread the blight. And the only one who knew how to cure it was Baron Skallen."
"But Baron Skallen is gone now."
"Exactly. Still, in case they learned something through interrogation, I paid a visit to the Luminara territory not long after the baron died. All I heard were the residents' sighs."
Jacob shrugged.
"Honestly I have no idea how they managed to take this territory and become a viscount's house. Even if their eldest son did help catch Baron Skallen, it was a house that was going to collapse on its own."
"Haha, true enough."
"Well, we only need to take what we can get from them."
In the end it didn't matter to them if this place went to ruin. They would suck it dry first and simply move on to another territory afterward.
They were smiling at the thought of the fortune about to roll in when—
"E-everyone! You need to come outside right now!"
A merchant flung the door open and shouted. Jacob looked puzzled.
"What's the matter?"
"New crops are being distributed and sold as we speak!"
"What?"
Ripples spread through Jacob's eyes. The others' mouths fell slightly open.
New crops? They knew every single trading partner that supplied this city.
Who the hell was selling crops without going through them?
They had even quietly pressured anyone not belonging to the merchants' association who might try to bring goods in privately.
"Where?!"
"This way!"
They hurried to the spot.
The first thing that met their eyes was a long line of residents.
Following the line, they found the very shops they had been leaning on now selling crops at perfectly ordinary prices.
"Where on earth…"
It wasn't a quantity any of them could have sourced privately. And those shops alone couldn't handle the distribution either…
"Lord Jacob, look over there."
The man pointed to a sign hanging on one of the shops. It read:
Cheap and delicious crops from Luminara proper!
The other merchants reacted violently.
"L-Luminara proper?"
"You said the blight had spread there and we didn't need to worry!"
"What the hell is going on?!"
Had they cured the blight in the meantime? Or had they recklessly hauled in the harvest from the still-healthy fields?
No. They wouldn't do something that stupid. The residents of Luminara proper would rise up if they did.
They had cured the blight.
And enough time had passed that they now had the surplus to ship crops elsewhere.
Damn it. A variable I never even considered—I paid it no attention at all.
Still reeling, Jacob ground his teeth and answered,
"Keep your voices down. Are we advertising what we did?"
"……"
"I will report this matter to That person. We'll reconvene later."
"…Understood."
Once they had scattered, Jacob hurried away.
He arrived at a small logistics warehouse.
Inside were boxes of various sizes and types. Jacob grabbed a small chest in the center.
Click—
Inside the chest lay a crystal orb. A communication magic tool.
- What is it?
When the connection opened, an arrogant male voice flowed out.
"Lord Labek, there's been a problem with the plan. They're currently selling crops they brought in from Luminara proper."
- Hmm? That place shouldn't be able to farm because of the blight. And you confirmed that yourself, did you not?
"Well… I only checked right after Baron Skallen died…"
- You idiot!!
The voice thundered.
- You should have checked again after they were elevated to viscount! Do you think the Holy Empire casually hands territory to someone unqualified?
"I-I'm sorry… They had only just become a viscount's house, and afterward I was busy looking after other matters…"
- Unbelievable. To think you could be this stupid.
Jacob pressed his lips tight, then asked,
"What should we do now?"
Silence stretched for a while before Labek ordered,
- Spread the rumor that the crops are blighted. Then the residents will understand why they're so much cheaper than elsewhere. Plenty of them already know a blight once hit the Luminara territory.
"Understood."
- Tch. Can't you even think of something this simple on your own? Be moderately stupid, would you?
"I'm sorry."
- Cut the line.
"Ah, just a moment. And also…"
That was when it happened.
A thin red line appeared across the wrist of the hand holding the communication magic tool.
Then, as if sliding free, the hand dropped away without a sound.
"…Huh?"
Faced with the sudden sight, Jacob let out a questioning sound instead of a scream.
There was no time for a scream afterward either. A powerful impact slammed into his abdomen and his body lifted into the air.
KWAANG!
Jacob crashed through the boxes and slammed into the wall, coughing up a mouthful of blood.
Only then did he realize he had been ambushed. Groaning, he lifted his head.
"Who the hell…"
"I told you."
A cold voice brushed his ear.
A neat, immaculate black priest's robe. A sword stained with blood that stood in stark contrast.
"See you again."
Standing there was not the young lord of House Luminara, but an Inquisitor of heretics.
"How did you…"
I had followed him the moment I saw Jacob rushing off somewhere. And sure enough, I had caught a lead.
Ignoring the man, I walked toward the communication magic tool. He hurriedly shouted,
"L-Lord Labek! We're under attack!"
But that voice never reached its destination.
The instant I severed his wrist, Bella had wrapped the communication tool in a sound-blocking spell.
I gestured to Bella standing by the door. The man fell silent and the magic around the tool dissolved.
I picked it up, hand and all.
Not a Zarkan Empire communication tool.
So this likely had nothing to do with the empire.
- What is going on?
To answer him I altered my vocal cords.
Crunch—
I had heard Jacob's voice to the point of nausea over the past week of protests; mimicking the vocal cords was no problem.
"Ah, my apologies. A rat suddenly jumped out."
- Tch. Making a fuss over something so trivial. So what did you want to say?
"Would it be possible to meet in person? That eldest son's movements have been… unusual."
- Handle some third-rate Inquisitor yourself. I have no desire to waste my precious time on someone who can't even manage that.
I had expected he wouldn't take the bait so easily. The man was cautious enough to use a puppet merchant leader, after all.
I stared blankly at the communication tool for a moment. Smaller than the Zarkan ones, with a deeper blue tint to the crystal orb.
I know what you are.
I spoke casually.
"Today he suddenly said something. 'The moon's shadow is not dark.'"
It was a code phrase used by the Moon Shadow Group—a collective of mages within the Holy Empire.
If the man was the member of the Moon Shadow Group I suspected, he would react.
- …What? He truly said that?
Bullseye.
I swallowed a smile and asked,
"Yes. Some kind of hint, do you think?"
- No, that is…
He started to explain, then fell silent. After a moment he spoke as though he had made up his mind.
- Very well. Tomorrow, ten o'clock at night. Meet me there.
I had no idea where "there" was.
Fortunately the one who could tell me was right beside me, so I grinned and agreed.
"Yes. I will be waiting there."
Wherever it was, for you it would become hell.