Word Magic
"What should we do? Mayor? What on earth are we supposed to do?........"
After Jonathan Karma and his wife vanished from the room, the factory owners fumbled for answers, but there was no way Mayor Bias had any sharp solutions. Yet he couldn't afford to show weakness, so he forced himself to straighten his posture.
"Who are we? We are people who have lived on this land for at least a hundred years. The history of the Scrap Yard has been with us!! We will not stand by and watch the tyranny of Karma Company! Never!! Let us fight however we can! Fight and endure, we must!!"
"The interest payment is due in exactly two weeks. We will be in trouble if we don't receive the payment."
"It's troublesome in many ways if the South and even the Magic Tower have turned away."
"Haha! Why is everyone acting like this!! Not all of our business partners have cut ties!! Our dealings with the North and the East are still solid!! We can pay with the proceeds from them!"
"But what do we do about the furnace that's gone cold?"
"We rebuild it!! And besides, the ordinary iron furnace may have stopped, but isn't the Arcane Furnace for smelting magic metals still intact? We can hold out! Why is everyone talking so weakly!!"
Mayor Bias desperately raised his voice, but the factory owners already knew this was a finished game.
No.
Mayor Bias knew it better than anyone.
"First, we must gather the workers again. We gather them and restart the factories. We must resume production of magic metal first. The only way is to slowly rebuild the furnace after we amass capital again with that."
"Do you think the workers will gather again?"
At one factory owner's remark, Mayor Bias clenched his fist tightly.
He would never have said such a thing under normal circumstances.
But since the situation had come to this, he had no choice but to concede.
"Let us raise the workers' wages. If we do that, they will gather again. What will they do? Abandon the jobs they've been accustomed to their whole lives and go settle somewhere else?"
"......Will they?"
"Of course!"
He said that, but Mayor Bias felt so anxious he was going insane.
Yet he desperately suppressed his unease, trying his best to see a positive direction.
Because if he collapsed, everything would collapse.
"Let us endure!! We can endure!"
The moment he shouted that.
Someone knocked urgently on the door once more.
Mayor Bias thoroughly disliked that desperate knock.
Even the nuclear bomb Jonathan Karma had just dropped and left was already a massive blow.
He truly wanted to avoid any further burdens being piled on.
But reality did not flow according to his wishes.
"Mayor Bias!! It's someone from the Police Bureau!! Mayor!!!"
At the shout, which was nearly a scream, Bias had no choice but to finally tell him to come in.
"Come in....."
"Mayor!!"
Before he even finished speaking, the door burst open and a police officer came rushing in, panting.
"Th-the inquisitors from the Black Fortress are heading here!!"
It was expected.
Since they said there would be a high-intensity tax investigation.
They were probably coming for a tax investigation and to look into why several Mammon followers had emerged among the factory owners this time.
But at the next words from Chief Georg.
"And the Heresy Inquisitors of the Pantheon are searching the Police Bureau!! The confidential documents in the Bureau are about to fall entirely into their hands!!"
"Ah, fuck!! Seriously!!"
Mayor Bias had to curse obscenely once again.
The secret and sticky connections between the police and the factory owners.
It was the worst possible moment for the reality to be exposed—that they had been used as a private security service for the factory owners rather than for protecting the human rights of imperial citizens and eradicating crime.
The manifestation of the Demon King.
Faced with this extraordinary matter, the Pantheon's response was dazzlingly swift.
In less than a day, veteran holy knights and priests, rapidly dispatched from each order, were rushed to the Scrap Yard with the authority of Heresy Inquisitors.
The Black Fortress also significantly increased the number of its inquisitors and sent them down to the Scrap Yard.
And the common point between these two organizations was that they were under Iomene's command.
And currently, Iomene was thoroughly furious.
"Otto."
"Give your command, Princess."
"The Black Fortress will handle the tax investigation of the factory owners."
"It will be done."
"Silence Order, please enter the city and investigate whether any contamination from black magic or sorcery remains."
"As you command."
"Heresy Inquisitors of the other orders will go investigate the Labor Theorists. You must investigate thoroughly! The truth of what happened! Why this situation occurred! Report to me via magic communication the moment you investigate! Dismissed!!"
Thanks to the Scrap Yard being emptied out as most of the workers had left, Iomene was able to boldly set up an investigation headquarters right in the plaza located in the city center.
And before long, investigation results began to come in one by one.
-There were no individuals among the Labor Theorists contaminated by black magic, nor any traces of sorcery.
-The worker side has a large number, so it seems it will take some time. We are investigating with wide-range detection, but so far there are no traces of black magic or sorcery. It is clean.
There were no remaining Mammon followers.
Most of their identities had been completely exposed from the start by the Saint's Pillar of Light, and the immediately deployed Ketratus had mopped up the majority, handling the cleanup neatly, so it would have been stranger if anyone remained.
-And it is as expected, Saintess.
-The living standards of the workers are extremely poor.
-Child labor was commonplace, and there are very many workers suffering from malnutrition.
-There are also many accounts of continuous assault and intimidation by the police.
-They wielded the pretext of rooting out Labor Theorists like a carte blanche for misconduct. Unreasonable exploitation and excessively low wages. It is said that merely protesting against taking responsibility for industrial accidents led to immediate imprisonment in the detention camp under the charge of being a Labor Theorist.
-It is not just one or two cases, Saintess. The workers' condition is very serious. There was a reason Mammon took root here.
After receiving sufficient reports, Iomene held back no longer.
"Al Madai!!"
Among the Ketratus members standing guard around her, Al Madai rushed forward with a highly disciplined expression.
"Give your command, Saintess."
Iomene looked at him and smiled brightly.
"I trust you had a good time with High Priest Miromel."
Al Madai shut his eyes tight at those words.
Turning back time briefly before they came back down to the Scrap Yard.
That is, during the short period they returned to the capital to report to the Emperor.
Iomene had gone back to the White Order and shown the Ketratus, who had disobeyed her words on the field, what the price was.
"High Priest Miromel."
"Speak, Saintess."
"Shall I tell you an interesting story?"
"What is it?"
"I was commanding on the field, but the Ketratus did not follow my orders. It seems they found me untrustworthy."
"........"
"They came out saying they would prioritize the Codex Proelium over my command. Is that correct? Moreover, according to the Seven Commandments stipulated in the Codex, they are supposed to render absolute obedience to my orders. Isn't that a contradiction?"
"........I will correct it. Saintess."
"There's no need to correct it. It was my oversight. It's only natural that a Saintess who has not even trained for three months would seem untrustworthy on her first real deployment. My goodness! The Chosen of Dulanear is untrustworthy! Doesn't that sound exactly like saying Lord Dulanear himself is untrustworthy?"
"M-my apologies. I will ensure this never happens again."
"Yes. I will trust that you will."
After the conversation ended, Miromel immediately summoned Al Madai.
"Al Madai."
"Yes."
"Take off your armor and stand straight."
The gruesome noise of a kick to the shin and the chilling sound of a slap rang out for a time in High Priest Miromel's room.
"Do you take the Saintess lightly? Huh?"
"N-no, that is! She is still an inexperienced person who hasn't experienced battle, so according to the Codex Proelium, we were to act on her behalf......."
"Absolute obedience to the Chosen of Dulanear is what the Codex demands, you bastard!!! If I receive even one more report that the Ketratus disobeyed the Saintess's words, I will throw all of you into the punishment cell for a year! Understand!!!"
Al Madai limped out of Miromel's room and returned to the Ketratus.
"Assemble all the kids. Ah. Tell them to come without their armor on."
And supposedly, a similar burst of shin-kicking and slapping sounds raged for a while.
And currently.
"You must not kill anyone. No shooting or stabbing blindly just because you're suspicious."
Seeing Iomene grinning, Al Madai snapped to attention with a highly disciplined manner.
"Of course. I will render absolute obedience to the Saintess's words."
"We must subdue the Scrap Yard police."
"The police, you say?"
"They are people who used violence for private gain, not law enforcement. Group lynching. Arresting innocent citizens just for being Labor Theorists, putting them in detention camps, and extracting confessions through acts close to torture. Subdue them all and confiscate their weapons."
At those words, the shoulders of the Ketratus members tightened with tension.
"To what extent may we use force?"
"Use of weapons is forbidden. Fists and miracles. Only non-lethal suppression will be permitted. If they use firearms, you may use your weapons. Once suppression is complete, hand over field command of the facilities to the Black Fortress inquisitors. They will be in charge of inspecting the police."
"Understood."
"Al Madai."
"Yes, Saintess."
Iomene smiled at him.
"Do not kill them."
"Yes. It will be done."
"Just don't kill them."
"......."
"The police here. They are extremely vile bastards. If they resist or get prickly...... just don't kill them."
A similar smile appeared on Al Madai's lips.
"It will be done."
And so, all the Ketratus, except for the small number tasked with guarding Iomene, scattered and headed for the police facilities across various parts of the Scrap Yard.
They didn't even need many.
With about two to three people per police station, it was over.
"Disarm all weapons and bring them before us. This is an order from the Saintess Iomene, the Emperor's deputy."
Muscular monster-like men standing over two meters tall.
Armor that wouldn't even get a scratch if raked with a heavy machine gun.
Pistols close to cannons and cold steel that seemed capable of bisecting not just a person but a bear in one stroke.
And once that single word was spoken, most police officers would silently gather every weapon in the facility, or station, and hand them over.
Of course, there were those who simply refused to disarm.
The Scrap Yard's central Police Bureau came out quite prickly.
"Block them!! You bastards!! We have to stop them from getting in here at least!! If the documents inside here get exposed, you and I are both fucked together!! Stop them even if you have to shoot!! Stop them by any means necessary!! Stop them!! Stop them!!"
"I-I understand!"
The police chief desperately tried to prevent the Ketratus from entering the Bureau.
This was because too many documents and items that must not be handed over—not yet burned or destroyed—remained inside the Bureau.
Following the chief's orders, the police armed themselves and blocked the entrance to the Bureau.
They created barricades and human barriers, trying to defend it somehow.
But from the Ketratus's perspective, the police's actions were merely cute antics.
There was no need to even use their fists to break through their defense.
"Th-this is clearly illegal trespassing!!......"
"You gonna shoot? Then I will shoot too?"
"........."
"Put it down."
Al Madai's Word Magic, spoken at the front, was sufficient.
"Stop them somehow! I said stop them......."
"You're going to stop me?"
"......."
"Move aside."
With a single word he disarmed the police and dismantled the human barrier, and Al Madai lightly pushed aside the flimsy barricade to break it down before heading straight for the chief's office.
"St-stop them!! Stop them, I said! St!......."
The chief desperately shouted orders at his subordinates until the very end, but the moment Al Madai stepped inside the chief's office, he too had to shut his mouth.
It was because he instinctively realized that stopping the man was impossible.
"Let's take a walk together. Give me a tour here. Chief."
Al Madai lightly lifted the police chief with one hand, tucked him under his arm, and began wandering around the inside of the Bureau.
Al Madai's Word Magic was absolute.
"Oh! There's a safe here? Chief. Open this for me."
"Th-that is not possible........"
"Open."
Displaying the miracle of every safe and secret archive opening with a single word, Al Madai strolled through the Bureau and finished his tour of the interior before long.
"Thanks for the tour! Chief!!"
After setting the chief, whom he had been carrying under his arm, down among the huddled, disarmed police in the lobby, Al Madai patted him on the shoulder.
"Regrettably, we must be going now. But don't be too sad!"
"......"
"The Black Fortress will be playing with you now, you see! Ah! There they come, just in time! Have a good time!!"
Al Madai waved his hand heartily before taking all the Ketratus members and leaving.
And the place he vacated.
"I am Otto Delmark of the Black Fortress."
Was replaced by Otto, who came inside the Bureau smoking a cigarette without revealing any emotion, and dozens of Black Fortress inquisitors.
"We don't want to go as far as forced confessions or torture either. So I hope you will cooperate willingly with the investigation."
Otto's voice was far more polite and quieter than Al Madai's, but that only made it more terrifying.
The chief felt like crying.
There was nothing he could do.