Chapter 12 — The Mastermind (2)
“So I was right. You really were hiding something too, tax officer.”
“Yeah. I also know the information you gathered on me is inside that safe.”
“We haven’t even figured out your name yet. What value could that information possibly—”
“Too much talking.”
A blade was pressed against Henri’s neck.
Henri’s legs trembled in fear as he opened his mouth.
“I-I-I’ll die the moment I open that safe! You think I’m actually going to open it?!”
“Hehehe. I wonder if you’ll still be saying that after we torture—”
BOOOOOOM!
One side of the wall suddenly collapsed, filling the room with thick dust.
The tax officer groaned, blood running down his head after being struck by the debris.
“Ugh! Are the knights already here?”
The dust soon cleared, and their vision returned.
But contrary to what they expected, only a single wolf beastman stood beyond the collapsed wall.
The tax officer hurriedly picked up his sword.
His subordinates also recovered from their shock and gathered around him.
“Who the hell are you?!”
“Me? What was it again? Chief something... Ah!”
Raul raised his sledgehammer.
“Chief Secretary for Security. My name is Raul.”
A powerful blue light instantly gathered around the head of his hammer.
“Huh?”
“What?”
The tax officer and his men stared at him in confusion.
That hammer had obviously been used to smash through the wall.
But now Raul was aiming at the floor.
“Fuc—”
BOOOOOOM!
The floor collapsed.
The tax officer and his men reached the basement faster than any elevator ever could.
“Aaaaargh!”
They were instantly rendered helpless as screams filled the area.
Some broke their legs from the fall, while others were buried beneath piles of rubble.
But Raul wasn’t finished.
He raised his hammer again.
“You bastards actually made me sprint at full speed. I’ll send every last one of you to the Lord.”
“N-No!”
If the knights who arrived moments later hadn’t stopped him, Raul might have killed every single one of them.
After capturing Administrator Henri and the tax officer, I began interviewing the administrative officials.
Calling them interviews was generous.
They were closer to interrogations.
I separated every official ranked middle management or higher, isolated them from one another, and visited them one at a time.
The moment I entered each room, I handed them a blank sheet of paper.
“Write down every corrupt act you know about on that paper.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve just become the new lord. Don’t you think I need to chop off a few officials’ heads as an example?”
The official’s face stiffened.
“Just remember this. The more you write down, the higher your chances of keeping your head attached to your shoulders.”
On top of the threat, I casually played with the Soul Harvester while staring at him.
“Eek!”
The administrative official immediately began writing down every corrupt act he knew.
This interrogation method used the prisoner’s dilemma.
If everyone covered for each other, it would be difficult to punish anyone.
But when they were isolated and pressured like this, they had no choice but to expose their colleagues’ crimes for their own survival.
In the end, testimony damaging both themselves and their coworkers poured out.
After all the interviews were finished, I spread their written statements across a table and looked for the people whose crimes had the most matching testimonies.
As expected, the biggest problems were Administrator Henri, who had been acting as the lord’s representative, and the tax officer.
Most of the others only committed minor corruption to make ends meet.
Reprimands and salary reductions should be enough punishment for them.
If I punished every corrupt official severely, I would run out of people to run the territory.
I couldn’t get rid of everyone at once.
The best choice was to fire three or four of the worst offenders, then train lower-ranking officials and gradually replace the others.
I also decided to keep records of their crimes so I would have proper justification when replacing them in the future.
I immediately sent a servant to summon the Knight Commander.
This was serious enough to require the knights.
The moment Knight Commander Axel entered, I gave him my orders.
“Sir Axel, we have detailed testimonies now. Confiscate all the property belonging to the officials on this list and arrest their entire households as well.”
“Yes, my lord!”
Axel answered loudly before quickly leaving.
While I’m waiting, maybe I should do some fishing.
I decided to start with the tax officer.
According to the reports, he had planned to break Henri out, force him to open the safe, take the money, and flee.
But was that really all there was to it?
The military infirmary.
The tax officer had received treatment for his injuries and was now tied to a bed under the watch of several soldiers.
I sat beside him.
“Name.”
“Jerome Gray.”
“Who are you really?”
“You already know, don’t you? I’m a tax officer.”
As expected, there’s no way he’ll answer honestly.
Appraisal.
[Castiel Dupois, Age 40]
[Son of Quentin, a knight of Carcassonne.]
The sons of knights usually became knights themselves.
Yet I couldn’t sense any aura from this tax officer.
I didn’t know what circumstances had led him here.
For now, I decided to use the information from Appraisal and see how he reacted.
“Castiel Dupois.”
“H-How...?”
His eyes went wide.
His lips trembled violently.
Apparently, hearing his real name from my mouth had shocked him badly.
“Ready to answer me now?”
“Ugh!”
Crack.
I heard the sound of a tooth breaking.
He had hidden poison inside one of his molars.
It was an old method—if his identity was ever exposed, he would bite down on the poison and kill himself.
I quickly forced his mouth open and tried to remove the poison.
But his face was already turning blue.
The poison reacted with his lungs almost instantly, causing fluid to fill his airway.
He began suffocating.
“Cough! Cough...!”
“Too late?”
Someone willing to kill himself this quickly was most likely a soldier.
He had probably done it to prevent us from discovering where he came from.
Unfortunately for him, killing himself had basically told me—
Yes, there’s someone behind me.
I turned to one of the soldiers guarding him.
“Do you know a place called Carcassonne?”
“Yes, my lord. It’s a mountain pass connecting Perrier territory and Toulouse territory. Baron Carcassonne, a vassal of Count Perrier, rules it.”
Perrier territory bordered Marcel on the west.
Would they really have a reason to send an operative into Marcel?
Or perhaps the true culprit was Toulouse, the territory beyond Perrier.
There were too many possibilities.
I still didn’t have enough information to identify the mastermind.
I need more information.
I’ll postpone my judgment for now.
Next, I decided to try fishing with the former acting administrator.
I took a bottle of alcohol and went to the prison where Henri was being held.
I rinsed my mouth with the strong distilled liquor and splashed a little over my clothes so the smell of alcohol would cling to me.
I even staggered slightly as if I were drunk.
When I entered the prison, Administrator Henri was sitting there blankly, looking completely defeated.
This guy doesn’t seem like the type to kill himself.
How should I play this?
It would be easy to extract information through torture or persuasion.
But using him to affect whoever was behind him was a different matter.
First, I used [Low-Level Appraisal] to examine Henri’s information.
[Henri Bron, Age 47]
[Son of the late Zidane, a traveling merchant of the Kingdom of Franche.]
Maybe I can use this.
I kicked the bars of Henri’s cell.
CLANG!
“Eek!”
Henri flinched.
He looked terrified that I might cut his head off.
It wasn’t difficult to extract information from someone who was already intimidated.
Pretending to be drunk, I staggered over and stopped in front of him.
Henri frowned when he smelled the alcohol.
“Fix that expression.”
I glared at him.
“You’re a traitor, remember?”
“Oh, heavens! A traitor? I only wanted the money... No, I mean, everything I did was for the territory...”
I pushed my face closer to the panicking Henri.
“Your father’s name was Zidane, wasn’t it?”
“How do you know that?”
Seeing Henri’s shocked expression, I guessed that it was probably something almost no one besides him knew.
I began speaking as though I knew everything about him.
