Sixty Percent
Luoyang Sword House, Jangro-won.
The Grand Assembly Hall.
"A-approval, six-tenths! Invalid, four-tenths…!"
Elder Hwangmok's voice, trembling despite himself, rang out high across the chamber.
"Therefore—another re-vote!"
What had been three-tenths last time had become four-tenths now.
"It went up?!"
"How in the world…?!"
Elders shot to their feet. The hall erupted in a single roar of agitation.
And that agitation was of an entirely different character from the shock of the first re-vote announcement.
"…The result changed again!"
An elder of the Third Young Master's faction slammed his desk.
"Didn't the Eldest Young Master's side claim they met with no one?!"
"They met with no one!"
The elder who had been tasked with watching the Eldest Young Master's rest chamber raised his voice, face twisted with indignation.
"Not so much as a single rat approached that room!"
"Then what—did the Eldest Young Master's side send ghosts to persuade the elders?!"
Even standing in the open center of the Grand Assembly Hall rather than their own rest chambers, they jabbed fingers at one another and shouted.
Ordinarily such a spectacle would have drawn every eye in the room.
"You said you had secured firm answers, did you not?!"
"We even offered better terms!"
"…The threats should have worked!"
But similar scenes were unfolding in every corner of the hall, so none of them particularly stood out.
"Is the Eldest Young Master going to trample the pride of our Elder Council like this?!"
One elder, driven past endurance, actually climbed onto his own desk and pounded his chest.
"Elders of the great Luoyang Sword House! Fellow elders! Will you stand by and watch our Elder Council collapse like this?!"
His tone was as inflamed as he could make it—yet everyone present knew the emotion at the root of that display was pure crisis.
"Fellow elders! Change your hearts! If the Elder Council of our great Luoyang Sword House falls like this…!"
They all knew. They had no choice but to know.
"…If this continues, the next result will be—"
Every last one of them felt that sense of crisis.
"The Eldest Young Master…"
They felt the fear of the Eldest Young Master, vivid and immediate.
"…Though the lunch hour has arrived, no one may leave Jangro-won while a re-vote is in progress. The prepared boxed meals will—"
Elder Hwangmok's announcement was all but lost in the uproar and confusion.
The Moderator's Rest Chamber.
"Huuuh…"
Elder Hwangmok, who had been struck on his very first session by the disaster named the Eldest Young Master, sat collapsed in his chair.
"You've had a hard time of it."
Jangrowonju patted Elder Hwangmok's shoulder in consolation.
"I'll take my meal in my own office, then. Don't skip yours either. Eat something."
"Y-yes. Please go ahead…"
At the exhausted reply, Jangrowonju gave a bitter smile, turned, and stepped out into the corridor.
"Honestly…"
Having quietly closed the door for Elder Hwangmok's sake, Jangrowonju sighed.
"It's the lunch hour. Can a man not be left alone to eat in peace?"
At his words, the figure who had been concealing himself farther down the corridor stepped into view.
"It is the lunch hour—but it is also the precious half-shichen granted us until the next vote."
Emerging into a shaft of sunlight that fell from the lofty ceiling into the narrow passage was an elder of the Yeon bloodline.
"So I must ask the Council Head for his understanding."
The phrasing was mild; the gaze that came from those bloodshot, vein-threaded eyes was not.
"…I can guess well enough why you've come looking for me."
This was the face of a man driven to the cliff's edge.
To the Yeon-bloodline elder who looked ready to spring forward and tear out a throat at any moment, Jangrowonju spread both hands open.
"I have nothing whatsoever to do with this affair. I can swear it."
At the word swear, the Yeon-bloodline elder snorted.
"Ordinarily, a vow from the Council Head would of course have been trusted."
He approached Jangrowonju slowly, murmuring in a low voice.
"But of late we have been hearing, through multiple channels, that the Council Head has been growing rather close to the Eldest Young Master."
The Yeon-bloodline elder came clump, clump, closing in until he stood almost under Jangrowonju's nose.
"We know that you were the one who received the Eldest Young Master upon his return after the Valley of Sin incident—and that you met with him in secret any number of times afterward as well."
Even a cornered rat will bite a cat, they said.
And these were elders of the Luoyang Sword House—corrupt members of the Yeon bloodline who wielded vast influence within the clan—now driven into a corner.
"So tell me. How could we not suspect the Council Head?"
He came close enough that his breath could be felt.
"Council Head."
Jangrowonju felt every hair on his body stand on end before that chilling killing intent.
"If we are to die—"
Looking down at the already short-statured Jangrowonju, the Yeon-bloodline elder bared his teeth.
"—then we of the Yeon bloodline will destroy every enemy we can destroy, and go down in a blaze of glory."
A threat that bordered on outright madness.
Even if they somehow seized victory in this vote, the Yeon bloodline would suffer no small damage from so naked a threat.
But as the last vote's result had shown—they were already at the edge of the cliff.
They had no more moves left.
"…I see."
And yet—
"There is certainly room enough to suspect me."
Jangrowonju, every inch the Small Giant of his reputation, did not yield a single step from where he stood. He even smiled on his wrinkled face.
"Then what if I do this?"
He looked straight into those bloodshot eyes and spoke each word with deliberate clarity.
"In the next vote, I will deliberately feign a mistake—and make my own ballot public."
"…"
The Yeon-bloodline elder's eyes widened.
"Of course," Jangrowonju continued in that same measured tone, pressing back as if to reverse the pressure entirely, "I will cast my vote in favor of the no-confidence motion against the current Banker."
"That should be enough to satisfy you, yes?"
Silenced for a moment by the unexpected counterstroke, the Yeon-bloodline elder finally turned away.
"…We will be watching, Council Head."
His footsteps receded down the corridor and vanished.
"Hoo."
As Jangrowonju let out a breath, the door behind him opened a crack and Elder Hwangmok poked his face out.
"…He's lost his mind. An outright threat—and to the Council Head, no less."
Jangrowonju only shrugged without answering. Elder Hwangmok ventured carefully,
"…Council Head."
He glanced about and lowered his voice to a whisper.
"Truly—has the Eldest Young Master said nothing to you at all?"
Jangrowonju gave a bitter smile at the question.
"…He did say something."
"I knew it!"
Elder Hwangmok's face shifted in an instant from vindication to something else entirely.
"Then you might at least have given me a hint beforehand…!"
"Wouldn't have done any good."
"Still, I could have prepared myself—"
"That isn't what I mean."
Cutting Elder Hwangmok off, Jangrowonju smacked his lips and answered.
"The Eldest Young Master said to me: 'Council Head, do as you please.'"
"…Pardon?"
At Elder Hwangmok's blank failure to understand, Jangrowonju smiled wryly again.
"I wore the exact same expression you just did when I first heard those words."
"Th-then…"
Jangrowonju nodded.
"Yes. The decision I just made—I simply did as I pleased."
Third Young Master's faction, rest chamber.
"…The Yeon-bloodline elders are going around making baseless threats, I hear."
At the report brought by one of their number, the others let out a collective murmur of dark amusement.
"…They've finally gone mad."
"…It may not be entirely without effect."
One elder shook his head.
"But for all that, a method that crude—"
"—has clear limits."
The first vote had been seven to three.
The second, six to four.
"We may not know by what means the Eldest Young Master's side is producing these results…"
"…but that the tide is tipping their way is all too plain."
"We need something more certain. Something sharper."
"Damn it…!"
One elder clutched his head and groaned.
"If we could at least identify the traitors…!"
At that, they all sighed.
In this moment, the surest method was exactly what he had said: find those who had broken the agreement, and crush them.
"Easy to say…"
"…If that were possible, would we be sitting here like this?"
Behind them, the boxed meals sat stacked and untouched.
No one had even thought of reaching for them.
"There are simply too many factions and cliques…"
"There were far too many combinations that added up to thirty-three."
More sighs.
"And now it isn't thirty-three—it's forty-four."
Indeed.
Finding combinations that summed to thirty-three had already been hard enough.
Now forty-four?
No one said it aloud—but none of them could deny that a deep color of defeat had settled over them.
Then—
"…"
A sound from the corner. The elders nearest it reacted.
"Elder Gu? What did you just say?"
Elder Gu, who had been sitting in the corner for some time wrestling with an abacus, suddenly shot to his feet.
"We were never supposed to be looking for combinations that add up to forty-four in the first place!"
He hurled the abacus aside and shouted.
"We've been looking in the wrong direction entirely!"
As the elders stared at him in bewilderment, he pounded his own chest in frustration.
"First it was thirty-three! Second it was forty-four! What we need to find is those eleven men!"
His voice rose.
"We only need combinations that add up to eleven!"
One elder folded his arms, looking unimpressed.
"Elder Gu, of course combinations summing to eleven are easier to find than ones summing to thirty-three or forty-four, but…"
Another joined in.
"Finding them won't reverse the situation—"
"You people—your vision has grown far too narrow! Narrow! That isn't it at all!"
Elder Gu shouted again.
"Why should we leave the re-vote as a weapon for the Eldest Young Master alone to wield?!"
…
Every man in that room was an elder of the Luoyang Sword House.
That much alone was enough for them to grasp his strategy.
"…I see."
"We use the remaining time first to find those eleven men, restore the balance of a collapsing vote—"
"—and then this time, we force the re-vote."
They all nodded.
"That much is easy."
"No matter how the Eldest Young Master's side votes this time—"
"—if only half of us who made up the six-tenths last round cast invalid ballots—"
"—a re-vote is guaranteed, and we buy ourselves all the time we need!"
Elder Gu clapped his hands hard.
"Exactly! That's it!"
There was no reason to leave the re-vote as the Eldest Young Master's tool alone.
That was precisely what he meant.
"And with the time we gain—"
"—we squeeze those eleven for every scrap of information, and from them dig up the clues that lead to the remaining thirty-three…!"
A path to a reversal had opened.
Vitality returned to the Third Young Master's rest chamber.
"Good—then we start at once by finding combinations that sum to eleven—"
"No need!"
Elder Gu smiled.
"I've already narrowed several of those combinations down. All the rest of you need do is go find the men."
"Elder Gu!"
"Excellent!"
Then another elder, struck by a sudden idea, spoke up.
"Come to think of it—aren't there people who could produce an even better effect than if we went ourselves?"
"Of course…!"
An elder who caught his meaning burst out laughing.
"The Yeon-bloodline elders!"
"They're already threatening people without regard for fire or water."
"If we hand them this information, those Yeon-bloodline elders will throw themselves at the targets like mad dogs without fail…!"
Sinister smiles spread across every face among the Third Young Master's elders.
Once the blocked path had been forced open, luck seemed to turn as well; things began to fall into place one after another.
"This is no time to sit around!"
"I'm coming with you…!"
Elders were springing up from their seats without waiting for anyone else when—
"Th-this is bad!"
The door burst open and an elder who had been outside came rushing into the rest chamber.
"R-right now—at Jangro-won—the Central Audit Department…!"
The Central Audit Department.
The sole organ of the Luoyang Sword House empowered to audit even the Elder Council's own sessions.
They had stormed into Jangro-won.
And of course, at their very front walked the white-haired, white-eyed ghost—Dokgo Ya-yeon, Head of the Central Audit Department.
"Th-the Central Audit Department—what is the meaning of this sudden intrusion?!"
She looked down from her tall frame at the elder who had planted himself in her path, and said,
"I have been informed that the Deputy Banker of the Sword House Bank is present here."
"…That is true."
The elder admitted the fact, yet did not yield.
"He has been under a great many suspicions, but I was told there was no evidence."
Another elder stepped forward carefully.
"If you are thinking of fabricating evidence, I suggest you abandon the idea."
Other elders near the entrance added their own remarks.
"This is the Elder Council of the Luoyang Sword House."
"Any clumsy little scheme will be exposed in short order."
But Dokgo Ya-yeon, Head of the Central Audit Department, answered with her characteristic complete lack of expression.
"A short while ago, new evidence was submitted by tip."
"New evidence…?"
"A tip…?"
She drew a single sheet of paper from her robes.
"This is not a judgment reached by the Central Audit Department on its own."
"Th-that is…?!"
The elders who saw the vivid seal stamped on the paper recoiled in shock.
This detention order is issued under the authority of the Supreme Operations Council of the Main House.
It was the moment a boulder hurled from outside the board smashed the entire game to pieces.