Chapter 44: Chapter 44

Confronted by Shan in the darkness, Bolin could not immediately demand what he was doing barging into his house.

Just as a person who unexpectedly encountered a tiger in the forest would not dare to shout at it, the moment he saw those flashing eyes, his brain froze completely.

However, he was also a seasoned knight who had experienced all sorts of situations.

As Shan took a bold stride toward him, Bolin finally snapped back to his senses and shouted.

“Sir Shan! What on earth is the meaning of this outrage in the middle of the night! Do you have no sense of honor!”

As he shouted, Bolin clenched both fists and assumed a combat stance.

He knew all too well that as a warrior, his opponent’s skills were several notches above his own.

However, the figure caught in the faint moonlight was clearly unarmed.

Unlike fighting with weapons, physical frame had a far greater impact than skill in a bare-fist brawl.

Although he was not particularly tall, he was still about half a head taller than that boy, and having spent his childhood in the city slums, he was thoroughly accustomed to fistfights.

A mere greenhorn who had done nothing since childhood but dig mindlessly into handling spears and swords.

Before his thought could even finish, two green lights dimly embroidered the air.

Bolin, who tried to block the incoming kick with his arm, was flustered when he felt no impact for some reason.

‘What is this?’

He could not tell because the dim moonlight made it hard to see, but Shan’s leg, which soared up diagonally, had risen to a higher point before it could be caught by his arms and was coming back down in an axe kick.

Thwack! The back of the foot struck precisely against his temple, and Bolin’s consciousness cut out instantly.

Shan looked down at the fallen Bolin and thought.

‘That gave me a start.’

Originally, his plan had been to administer the medicine received from Cheryn while he was asleep and carry him off, but he had not expected him to open his eyes and wake up the moment he closed the door, causing a brief delay.

At any rate, since he had knocked him unconscious, it did not matter much.

As planned, Shan trickled a small amount of the liquid into the unconscious Bolin’s mouth, hoisted him onto his shoulders, and left the room.

Bolin’s two squires staying in the annex were intoxicated in a sweet, dreamless sleep, unaware that their master was being taken away.

“Heave-ho.”

Like a leopard hauling prey several times its size up a tree, Shan easily scaled the wall while carrying Bolin, who had a sturdy physique half a head taller than him.

If anyone had seen him roaming the alleys or leaping from roof to roof carrying a person in the dark night, they would undoubtedly have pointed fingers at him as a criminal.

Not that they would have been entirely wrong, though.

*

Hiding in shadows whenever he occasionally ran into night watchmen, he moved for roughly thirty minutes.

Shan successfully entered Count of Palles’s mansion, which Cheryn was using as a villa.

The princess waiting inside, her guards, and Roden greeted him.

“I’m back.”

“You returned quickly. Did you administer the medicine?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm, why does he look like he was knocked out by physical trauma?”

“Just as I entered the room, he woke up from his sleep, so I hit him once to put him back to sleep.”

“No wonder! For now, let us bring him inside and interrogate him.”

A space for interrogation had already been prepared in the mansion’s basement.

In the middle of the pitch-black basement lit only by a few candles, Kagon bound Bolin to a chair, and Aran doused him with cold water to wake him up.

Shan and Roden realized anew that the two were performing such actions with complete naturalness.

It seemed this kind of kidnapping and interrogation was clearly not something they had done only once or twice.

“Cough, gasp… W-Where am I?”

“Bolin, no, should I call you Cadec? Filing down healthy teeth just to conceal an Altoan’s characteristics shows truly impressive patience. If it were me, I couldn’t even have dared out of pain.”

At Cheryn’s words, a look of shock washed over Bolin-Cadec’s face.

It was only natural, given that the secret he had kept hidden his entire life came out of the mouth of some young girl he had never even seen before.

Just as she said, his identity was not merely a knight sponsored by the Brotherhood, but an Altoan knight raised by them directly.

Disguised as an ordinary Westerner by filing down his long, prominent tusks.

‘How on earth…?’

By what possible means did she know a secret that only the top executives of the Brotherhood possessed?

And what was the reason for kidnapping him here?

Could it be because of the report he had sent.

“[Razgrafina, Aldiob, Samurgragante!]”

When Cheryn, who had taken off her amethyst glasses, chanted an incantation, Aran, who was beside her, grabbed Cadec by the hair, forcing his head up to make eye contact with Cheryn.

At that moment, Cadec’s eyes, which had been thoroughly terrified, abruptly went slack.

It was a spell that Shan himself had experienced through the vampire, one that charmed the target to temporarily suppress their reason.

“N-No…”

“Yes.”

As a knight, Cadec tried to rouse his Fighting Spirit to resist, but the situation was far too disadvantageous for that.

That was because in the extreme situation of suddenly getting beaten up out of sleep and dragged to a basement, it was difficult to properly exert Fighting Spirit, the power of the mind.

Furthermore, the drug Cheryn had instructed Shan to administer beforehand also had the effect of clouding the mind and lowering resistance to this kind of magic.

Although its primary effect was strictly closer to a sleep inducer, that is.

“Good, it took full effect. Your name?”

“I am… Bolin…”

“No, your real name.”

“Cadec…”

Watching him submissively answer all the subsequent questions, Roden inwardly swallowed a groan.

‘So this was it.’

He felt as though he had learned a small secret behind Cheryn’s overwhelming intelligence-gathering capability.

If one could wring the truth out of others in this manner, it would certainly allow one to construct a powerful intelligence network.

Of course, one would have to hold no fear of staining one’s hands with other people’s blood…

While Roden was lost in thought, Cheryn continued to extract statements from Cadec.

Originally a slum dweller from a southern port city in Pendia, he had been recruited by the Brotherhood since childhood due to his outstanding physical capabilities and physical traits that made it easy to disguise himself as a Westerner.

Subsequently, through various connections, he became Bolin, the adopted son of the knightly House Anix, growing into a fine knight-errant who even received knighthood.

Presently, as a mid-level executive of the Brotherhood, he had been tasked with delivering the letter to Shan and checking how much of an obstacle his squire, Roden, would pose to their plans.

Naturally, he was also the very person who had submitted a report to the higher-ups stating that in order to recruit Shan, it was necessary to eliminate Roden first.

By that fact alone, Cadec could never leave this mansion alive.

“Good, well said. What a good boy…”

Having succeeded in extracting his background information, Cheryn, with a sinister smile, continued to coax further words out of him.

Information such as the main hideouts of the Brotherhood remaining in the capital and the identities of its top executives.

Regrettably, Cadec did not know who the head of the Brotherhood was, and as for high-ranking executives, he only knew one or two from whom he had directly received orders.

It seemed that to wipe them out in a single sweep, they would need to capture and interrogate more of them.

Having extracted every useful piece of information possible, Cheryn asked all of it once more to verify if anything had changed before finally concluding the interrogation.

“Good, there is no more information to draw out from this guy. Kagon?”

“Yes, Princess.”

At Cheryn’s call, Kagon nodded, pulled out a rope, and tightly strangled Cadec’s neck.

Slitting his throat with a blade on the spot would make cleanup difficult, so they were disposing of him through strangulation.

Watching Cadec’s face turn blue from suffocation, Roden asked a question.

“What will be done with the corpse?”

“It will be disposed of as magic experiment waste. You need not worry about being caught.”

Not a shred of guilt showed on the princess’s face as she answered like that.

Of course, the same was true for Shan, leaving only Roden feeling inwardly uncomfortable at the scene of kidnapping, murder, and body disposal.

Though since this was an affair started for the sake of his life, he did not let it show, of course.

“Then, who should we go capture next?”

At Shan’s question, filled with bloodlust, Cheryn momentarily felt an impulse to point out a hidden faction belonging to her brothers.

If it were this powerful warrior, he would probably tear whoever the opponent was into shreds and return.

Her thought lasted only a moment; shaking her head lightly to overcome the temptation, she offered an earnest reply.

“First, before we conduct the next hunt, I would like to make a proposal.”

“What kind of proposal?”

“This organization called the Brotherhood… Digging into its structure, it looks even more vulnerable than expected. It would be a bit of a waste to simply cut it away as it is.”

The Brotherhood was operated on the principle of strict hierarchy and secrecy.

A structure where each member absolutely obeyed the orders of their superiors, and all information and authority were held solely by those at the very top.

Understanding the meaning of her words, Roden let out a quiet sigh.

“Don’t tell me… instead of bringing down the Brotherhood, you intend to seize it?”

“I do not think it would be a bad thing for you two either.”

Saying so, Cheryn looked back and forth between Shan and Roden.

“Sir Shan’s dream was to become the lord of a fiefdom where Altoans could live to their hearts’ content, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“No fiefdom in the world can be run solely with incompetent commoners. Competent bureaucrats, merchants, and warrior classes are essential. Those are precisely what Altoans currently lack most desperately.”

And by its nature, the Brotherhood had a relatively high proportion of Altoans belonging to such classes.

For under the guise of being brethren, they were leeching off the blood and sweat of the majority of Altoan paupers to secretly infiltrate the privileged class.

If they shattered the Brotherhood like this, naturally all the Altoans who had received higher education or possessed special talents would either die or lose their foundation and fall into ruin.

Cheryn’s proposal was that rather than doing so, it would be better to devour it, chop away everything unnecessary, and put it to useful purpose.

“By severing the upper management of the Brotherhood and placing a plausible figure to take that spot, the organization can easily be brought under control. There are many things that could be done with it. Striving to improve the living standards of Altoans as originally purported, or relocating them there in the future when Sir Shan acquires a territory.”

“Who is that plausible figure? Sitting just anyone down seems like it would easily cause problems.”

To Roden’s question, Cheryn unexpectedly pointed at him.

“But I am not an Altoan.”

“The majority of the Brotherhood’s members do not even know who their leader is anyway. Does race matter when commanding an organization anonymously?”

“Then Your Highness could also do it directly…”

“I am already busy. As it is, focusing my attention on matters here lately has caused me to miss several official events and neglect movements within the royal court.”

Therefore, if they seized the Brotherhood, it would be entirely the portion of Shan and Roden, Cheryn added softly.

Roden felt that her proposal was certainly not bad.

He felt once more that for both Shan and himself, it was better to have something that could at least detect hands approaching in the darkness, even if it could not block them.

Belonging to the criminal organization known as the ‘Council’, the Brotherhood could fully serve as sensory antennae to pick up on such things.

Although he preferred not to get involved with such insidious forces if possible, with them showing interest first, pretending to be clean on this end was not going to make them back off with an ‘Is that so?’

“What do you think, Shan?”

“If it helps later when building a fiefdom for Altoans as the Princess said, I like it. If Roden takes charge of it, that gives me peace of mind too.”

“Is that so…”

At Shan’s answer, Roden closed his eyes for a moment, let out a sigh with a ‘Whew,’ and then opened his eyes wide.

“Very well. Let’s give it a try.”

*

Only after daybreak did Shan and Roden secretly slip out of Cheryn’s villa and return to the Weavers mansion, sleeping soundly until the sun reached high noon.

And that night, holding a single letter, Shan left the mansion alone and roamed across various parts of the capital.

Inside the letter were written the addresses of the Brotherhood executives in the capital, which Cheryn had obtained through interrogation.

Their line-up was surprisingly diverse.

A retired low-ranking official, a respected scholar, a high-class courtesan who had once received countless courtships from numerous nobles, and even a priest of the Old Faith who should naturally hate Altoans more than anyone else.

Regrettably, most of them were not paying particular attention to guard security.

It could not be helped, as trivial stories about one of the mid-level executives vanishing for a day were not passed along to each and every person.

Of course, even if they had known that fact, it was questionable whether they would have realized they were about to be attacked immediately.

After the first kidnapping, Shan’s infiltration skills had become even faster and stealthier than before, fueled by experience.

Scaling walls and climbing buildings without making a sound was the bare minimum.

As for doors locked with locking mechanisms, he could easily pick them using merely two long, thin, flexible iron rods.

Combining his sensitive fingertip touch, hearing, and spatial perception, he could grasp the interior of a lock literally as if looking right into it.

Thanks to that, the sleeping executives were wrapped in blankets and kidnapped out the window as soon as a few drops of medicine entered their mouths, knocking them completely unconscious.

The operation, which began shortly after darkness fell, ended only right before the sun rose the next day.

The Brotherhood executives Shan gathered overnight had to be interrogated by Cheryn for several days straight in the basement Count of Palles’s mansion, blurting out every bit of information they knew.

The identity of the Brotherhood’s leader learned in that process was even more astonishing than expected.

“The Marquis of Beshalia’s mistress… so, a paramour is the head of the Brotherhood?”

“That is correct…”

“Not the Marquis himself?”

“The Marquis is… utterly infatuated with her and grants whatever she desires… so they did not… bother to recruit him…”

Even granting that none of the top executives were nobles, to think that even their leader was merely a noble’s mistress.

At the shocking revelation, not only Shan and Roden, but even the princess’s two guards looked at each other as if finding it fascinating.

After a brief moment, Roden realized that Cheryn alone was not showing much of a surprised reaction to that fact.

It could simply be due to incredible self-control, but his intuition told him that the princess seemed to have already known this fact.

After all the information was extracted, the top executives of the Brotherhood were all strangled to death with cords and packed into sealed wooden boxes.

Tomorrow, their corpses would become experimental waste of the Magic Society and be flushed into the river.

Since every single one of them was trash that squeezed blood from their brethren while enjoying meager power and wealth, there was no reason to leave them alive.

“What shall we do with the leader?”

“Hmm, dealing with her right away would be a bit troublesome. Beshalia is quite far from here.”

Of course, if Shan rode Arwin, he could arrive in a few days, but doing so would inevitably draw too much attention.

If a knight riding a Horais warhorse visited and shortly after the Marquis’s mistress was murdered or went missing, would it not be far too suspicious?

Above all, given her status, there was a high likelihood of her sharing a bed with the Marquis of Beshalia, meaning one would effectively have to sneak into the Marquis’s bedchamber.

The difficulty was on a different level compared to at most kidnapping somewhat well-off commoners.

“For now, it would be best to take our time and dispose of her later. At any rate, we have severed every executive that woman could use as her limbs.”

Though they could not do anything about the brain, all the heads and necks through which the brain’s orders would be transmitted had been severed.

Now it was their turn to replace the severed heads and necks.

*

One week after all top executives had disappeared.

Among the Brotherhood executives, those who were not disguised as nobles or knights (and thus could operate without attracting public attention) gathered at the Golden Theater.

Some of them had their strongholds not in the capital, Hasra, but in neighboring satellite cities.

“Long time no see, Olof.”

“You’ve grown quite old yourself, I see.”

“Who’s old!”

Even while meeting old comrades after a long time and laughing off past memories, the executives constantly glanced around out of the corners of their eyes.

Ever since the Brotherhood was established, this was the first time that all executives were gathering in one place like this.

Moreover, had not the top executives known to a few among them disappeared not long ago?

Their thought was that this summons must be related to that.

At that moment, two people stepped onto the theater stage.

“Hmm?”

“That is…”

The two who appeared were wearing animal masks that covered not only their faces but their entire heads.

They were shaped like a lion and a horse respectively; the Lion Mask had a robust physique like a knight, while the Horse Mask was slightly shorter in stature with a slender build and extraordinarily long legs.

The Lion Mask spoke in a booming, resonant voice.

“Ye who labor day and night for our persecuted kin, I express my gratitude for responding to the summons despite your busy schedules!”

“Who on earth are you?”

“I am the envoy sent by the leader.”

When the leader was mentioned, every single executive of the Brotherhood wore a tense face without exception.

That was because in the Brotherhood, where a vertical class culture was rampant, the leader was a presence no different from a king to them.

Scanning the executives once as if checking the atmosphere, the Lion Mask continued.

“Not long ago, due to a conflict within our Brotherhood, an accident occurred in which the Vanguards departed this world.”

At the statement that the top executives had lost their lives in internal strife, the Brotherhood executives looked at one another with startled expressions.

Could this truly be the reason several executives had vanished not long ago?

“Accordingly, to prevent the Brotherhood from collapsing after losing the Vanguards, the leader sent the two of us. From now on, we shall reorganize and overhaul the organization right here.”

“Have you heard anything about this?!”

“No, not at all!”

“Don’t tell me Sir passed away…?”

After chattering noisily among themselves for a brief moment at the unexpected words, one man among the executives with a relatively large frame shouted.

With a menacing face full of knife scars, he looked like a thug or mercenary at first glance.

“Show us proof! Proof that you’re a person sent by the leader!”

“If I were not a person sent by the leader, how could I have contacted everyone through the official chain of command?”

At the Lion Mask’s cool-headed point, the man who had stepped forward groaned with an ‘Ugh’.

Just as he said, all the executives gathered here had assembled after receiving letters written with secret code words used by the Brotherhood.

Anyone capable of knowing each of their identities and using separate codes matching them was naturally an insider.

If the top executives had lost their lives, then naturally those two could only be envoys sent by the leader.

But a moment later, thinking of a way to refute, the man shouted once again.

“Traitors… you might be surviving traitors! Are you not trying to eliminate the other Vanguards and take over the Brotherhood?”

“That could be so.”

The Lion Mask conceded it readily.

Of course, the top executives, the Vanguards, knew the code words to communicate with the leader, but executives below the middle rank did not know them.

Thus, there was no way to know whether he was someone sent directly by the leader or not.

“However, just because there is no proof does not mean we can allow the organization to fracture. Choose. Will you submit, or will you rebel? In accordance with regulations, traitors to our race shall not be left alive.”

At the words ‘traitors to our race’, the executives swallowed hard in unison.

For they had witnessed how many people had been purged internally under that pretext until now.

Befitting a secret society, the Brotherhood’s regulations were strict and cruel.

However, the man who had rebelled first alone did not yield to such threats.

If the Lion Mask’s words were true, the moment he seized the initiative here, he could devour the Brotherhood as is.

While middle managers like him worked themselves to the bone, how envious had he been of the Vanguards at the top, who handled everything with a single nod?

Burning ambition squelched the intuition sounding warning bells inside him.

“Do you think I’ll be scared by that kind of threat?! The rest of you, listen well! There’s no need to listen to the words of bastards who might not even have been sent by the leader…”

“Horse.”

At the single word from the Lion Mask, the man wearing the Horse Mask tramped down from the stage.

His bizarre gait, which somehow seemed to float, combined with the uniquely blank Horse Mask to give off a grotesque impression.

“Y-You wanna go?”

As the thug-like man pulled out a hatchet, several people around him drew weapons like short swords or clubs.

Their duty was to exploit Altoans within the capital and collect taxes, making them practically identical to thugs.

Although inferior to the few knights whose identities were known only to the top executives (Cadec was one of them as well) they were effectively the Brotherhood’s supreme martial force.

Just as the thug thought to himself that bringing more guards than other executives just in case had proven worthwhile.

“Eliminate the traitors to our race.”

With the Lion Mask’s command, the Horse Mask’s body sprang forward with a thud.

A bizarre movement as if his ankle joints bent at two angles.

At the instant the thug tried to swing his axe in a preemptive strike, the Horse Mask drew the sword at his waist at unseen speed.

With a swoosh of cutting wind, the thug’s head tumbled to the ground, spraying blood.

“Boss!”

“You bastard!”

The fate of the few minions who charged in outrage over their boss’s death was not much different from his.

Each time the blade flashed, reflecting light from the candles placed all around, limbs were sliced cleanly off or viscera spilled from torsos.

“Arghhh!”

The youngest thug, screaming in terror, realized their disadvantage and tried to flee, but the Horse Mask, with his signature bizarre stride, leaped over several seats with heavy thuds and finished him off by thrusting his sword into his back in an instant.

As the seating area of the luxurious Golden Theater became stained with blood and filth, the other executives right next to it froze in terror.

As the essence of the Brotherhood was a criminal organization, even those lacking martial talent were by no means completely blind to combat skill.

‘A knight…!’

Even if he was not an ordained knight, it was certain that he was a combatant on par with one.

Otherwise, how could it be possible to cut down five or six people in an instant with a single sword?

Looking down at the blood-reeking seats, the Lion Mask declared in a somber voice.

“So, who is the next traitor?”

As everyone shook their heads frantically and swore allegiance, a chuckling sound came from inside the mask.

“Remember. The Brotherhood knows who you are, and where and what you are doing. The price of betrayal will be paid not only by yourselves, but by your families together. That is the price of betraying the blood flowing through your veins.”

The executives prostrating everywhere across the seating area thought to themselves:

Whoever the Lion Mask before their eyes might be, even if they actually met the leader, it would not feel this terrifying.

Judging by how he had sent contacts directly to them, the intelligence network within the organization had likely not collapsed yet.

Considering that the moment they betrayed, that monstrous Horse Mask would come for them, they had no choice but to submit.

“For the everlasting prosperity of the Altoan race,”

“To prosperity!”

Following the low declaration came a chorus of responses so desperate it bordered on pitiful.