Chapter 75 : Chapter 75
Chapter 075
Kalmond and the subordinates gathered all the gold and treasures the Black Pig Gang had possessed into one place. There were gold bars, gemstones, and piles of Gold Coins.
“Count it all and see how much this comes to in Gold.”
“Yes, understood.”
I left the counting to Kalmond and Eluna. If I let the other subordinates handle it, there was a good chance they would slip a coin or two into their pockets while counting. Not that I would have minded too much, but Kalmond definitely would not have let that slide if he caught them.
While they were still in the middle of tallying everything, I picked up the Bribery Ledger once more.
Earlier, I had only looked over the total amount and the rough list, but now I needed to see exactly who had been connected to the Black Pig Gang, and how.
I was especially curious whether any of the butlers were tied to this place.
Even if receiving bribes had not necessarily been in exchange for anything specific, this list still needed to be verified just in case.
I poured Mana into my eyes and began reviewing it.
“......Hmm, as expected, it doesn’t seem like there are any butlers in here who would really get caught up in this.”
I turned the page.
Then I found a familiar name.
“Adeline’s Weiss. If that Weiss means......”
At that moment, the face of the butler I had met at Rosetta not long ago came to mind.
Could this Weiss be the very same butler who had told us to get lost back then? The head of the Butler Corps Secretariat, and His Excellency the Marquis’s Dedicated Butler as well.
So he had been taking his cut after all. Well, with a disposition like his, it would have been stranger if he were actually clean.
He was the sort of man who knew exactly how to use power properly. There was a high chance he had been receiving Protection Money from places other than just the Black Pig Gang.
“But there’s no way to know how he spent the money he took.”
The ledger recorded only things like when, to whom, and how much had been delivered. There was nothing about how the funds had actually been used.
The two men who would have known were already dead, and the Butcher likely had not known this much. He had been the joker of the group. And even if he did know, he did not seem like the sort who would talk.
Just in case, I asked the bastard who had revealed the location of the safe, but he said he did not know that much.
With no other choice, and still left with a trace of unease, I turned to the next page of the ledger.
“Huh?”
“What is it? Is there some problem?”
At the sound I made, Kalmond and Eluna glanced over from where they were counting. I waved a hand and told them to keep doing what they were doing.
The ledger said this:
Young Master Prah. 1,000 Gold.
Unlike Weiss, Prah’s name included the title Young Master. That meant this really was Young Master Prah, the second son of the Adeline Marquis House.
The second son of the great Adeline Marquis House had taken 1,000 Gold from an Underworld organization?
I reviewed the ledger carefully again just to be sure. It was not a coincidence. It was something inevitable. And in the process, I noticed a kind of pattern.
“These bastards...... they’d been paying Young Master Prah 1,000 Gold every month.”
Regular tribute.
This was not a simple matter. There was a strong chance it was political funding.
I went through the ledger again, but there was no sign of tribute having been paid to either the eldest son or the third son. Instead, the only traces were of payments to people connected to the second son’s side.
I pressed a hand to my forehead.
“This is going to get troublesome.”
It felt as though the situation had twisted into something far more complicated.
It was not that I had been careless. I had simply lacked information. I had never imagined that the succession struggle would extend all the way into Underworld organizations.
In short, the Black Pig Gang had been an organization funding Young Master Prah in order to make him the successor.
And I had crushed that organization with my own hands.
I could not even begin to guess what kind of backlash might come.
“Young Master Prah is going to hate this. Young Master Hamel will love it. Damn it. If possible, I really didn’t want to get dragged into the succession fight.”
It felt as though I had been swept into it whether I liked it or not. I turned the ledger over in my hands for a moment and thought.
Of course, it was not as though there was no solution.
If I continued paying the same 1,000 Gold as before, or even a little more than that, there would likely be no problem at all. Young Master Prah was probably the sort of man who wanted money above all else.
And if he occasionally needed the strength of our organization, I could always lend it to him.
But if I did that, then the future of our organization would become uncertain. If either the eldest son or the third son ended up being named successor, we would vanish without leaving even a trace.
A while later, once the count had finally ended, Eluna reported back.
“There are 6,520 Gold Coins in total, and once the rest are converted into their Gold value, it comes to around 10,000 Gold, Master.”
“Ten thousand Gold? With that, we could expand our organization tremendously.”
“Of course. We could secure a new hideout, increase our members to over a hundred, and issue new weapons as well.”
Kalmond said it with a voice full of anticipation. Smiling, I met that anticipation gladly.
“I don’t need any money, so use every last bit of this War Booty to expand our Avengers forces. Don’t waste it. Understood?”
“I shall obey, Boss.”
“And give each of the men who distinguished themselves in this battle 5 Gold as a reward.”
“Is that not too much?”
Kalmond voiced his concern, but I shook my head.
“They’re men who risked their lives and fought for the organization. If it’s 5 Gold for the price of a life, that’s cheap. No more objections. Pay them. And tell them that from now on, there will be rewards whenever we win.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Kalmond saluted and left, leaving only Eluna and me behind.
“Eluna, are you free?”
“Yes.”
“Then review the documents with me. If there is anything among these papers mentioning the Delfino Merchant Company, the House of Count Astria, or Young Lady Sapiela, set it aside without missing a single thing.”
Eluna immediately got to work. I sat down beside her and helped review the documents myself. There was no small amount of material, so it looked as though it would take quite a while.
How many hours passed like that?
At last, after reviewing the final document, we let out a small sigh.
“There wasn’t a single document like that.”
“I came up empty too.”
That meant the Black Pig Gang had no connection whatsoever, at least on record, to either Young Lady Sapiela’s kidnapping incident or the Delfino Merchant Company. They were not even doing business with them.
If that was the case, then there were only two possibilities.
Either they left behind no evidence at all, or they had never had any dealings from the start.
Which was it?
At that moment, Kalmond came back inside.
“Boss. Are you staying here tonight? I can prepare separate sleeping quarters for you.”
“No. I need to go back. How are the men taking it?”
“It’s practically a festival.”
I nodded in satisfaction. Then I gathered the ledgers and other documents I had separated to one side and stood up.
“Take care of the cleanup. I understand that they’re happy, but tell them to lie low for a while. Some other bastards might come storming in.”
“You need not worry about that part.”
“How do you plan to use this place?”
“We’ll use our original hideout as the headquarters, and this place as something like a forward base. It would be a waste to abandon it. The facilities aren’t bad.”
That made sense. When I first infiltrated this place, all sorts of mechanisms had been installed. If we reactivated them, they would be useful for stopping intruders.
After hearing the rest of the brief report, I gave my final order of the day.
“I’ll come by the tavern where Eluna works tomorrow, so if there’s anything to report, do it there.”
“You worked hard today, Boss.”
“You’re the ones who worked hard. Get some real rest.”
With Kalmond and Eluna seeing me off, I headed straight back to the mansion.
***
When I returned to my quarters, I threw off my robe and all my equipment, then sprawled out on the bed. The moment the tension left me, fatigue came crashing in.
Under normal circumstances, I would have fallen asleep just like that, but now was not the time.
Things were probably already moving quickly. There was a good chance that Young Master Prah’s side had already heard the news that the Black Pig Gang had been annihilated.
And not long ago, Young Master Hamel had carried out a targeted Tax Audit.
On businesses run by the Black Pig Gang, no less.
That meant there was a strong possibility that Young Master Prah, who had been receiving kickbacks from the Black Pig Gang, was already in a very foul mood.
“I don’t care if Young Master Hamel’s name gets dragged into this, but the problem is attention turning toward me.”
Arthas and I had led that Tax Audit. On top of that, Young Master Prah’s side had recently tried to dig up information on both me and Young Master Hamel through Rohan.
“I should report this to Young Master Hamel after all.”
I gathered the secret ledger and documents I had acquired from the Black Pig Gang’s safe and left my quarters.
When I went to Young Master Hamel’s residence, sure enough, Sir Paramela greeted me with an awkward look on his face. It seemed the man really had drunk himself into a stupor today.
“Today really won’t do.”
“It really won’t do for me either. Please open the door. I’ll wake him myself.”
“You could lose your life.”
“If I fail to report this, it’ll amount to the same thing. Please open it.”
Perhaps because he sensed how urgent the situation was, Sir Paramela opened the door.
The smell of alcohol was overwhelming inside. Just how much did he have to drink for it to stink this badly? At least he was alone in bed, which was a blessing if nothing else.
I stepped closer and woke the Young Master.
Naturally, Young Master Hamel resisted by waving his hands, smacking my cheek, and throwing whatever he could grab, but the moment I said one sentence, his eyes flew wide open.
“I’ve gotten entangled with Young Master Prah.”
Young Master Hamel sprang upright as if in the middle of a fit.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Young Master Prah had been receiving regular tribute from the Black Pig Gang. This is the evidence.”
I held out the secret ledger. Irritably sweeping back his hair, Young Master Hamel opened it. He was a sharp man. It was not difficult for him to grasp what it contained.
“That filthy bastard! He takes underworld money without a single thought for the family’s honor? Damn it!”
Young Master Hamel was genuinely furious. I was not sure about the family honor part, but in any case, the mere fact that there was a connection to the Underworld would be enough to cause a problem.
I continued my report.
“And according to the Avengers, the Black Pig Gang had no relationship whatsoever with the Delfino Merchant Company. The same goes for the House of Count Astria.”
“That’s a little unexpected.”
“It seems the kidnapping of the Young Lady will require further investigation.”
Letting out a sigh, Young Master Hamel tossed the ledger aside and collapsed back onto the bed. My report still wasn’t finished, you bastard.
“However, Young Master, there is one thing that worries me......”
“What is it?”
“Because of this matter, there is a high chance Arthas and I will become targets of Young Master Prah’s side. Of course, I am not deeply connected to the Avengers, but the recent targeted Tax Audit does trouble me.”
“So?”
“I think it would be best if I stayed out of sight for a while. Only until things calm down.”
Fortunately, Young Master Hamel seemed to agree with me, because he pushed himself upright again. Staring straight at me, he spoke.
“Are you asking me to send you to another Territory on some assignment? If anything, that would make you stand out more and make things worse.”
I looked at Young Master Hamel with a faint smile.
“I have a good method. A very natural method, one no one could object to. And one that would also be good for Young Lady Sapiela.”