Chapter 52 - Stalker vs. Stalker (7)

To Ivan, this might look like a horrifyingly primitive, premodern society, but that was outrageous slander. Naturally, the people of this world were competent. (The incompetent had not survived.)

Competence did not always lend itself to good, however, so most capable elites and members of the upper classes built up their corruption with astonishing finesse. (This was why Counterintelligence Command believed human nature was inherently evil.)

As everyone knew, corruption among the competent was deadlier than corruption among fools. All the more so when it developed beyond personal enrichment into a challenge to the social order.

Such was the case with ambitious souls who decided to join the demons and swim in bigger waters.

“What should we do with these two?”

“Why ask? You sound like an amateur. Let's handle this professionally. Professionally.”

Dmitry shrugged and turned away, the hem of his long coat billowing behind him. As he turned his back, two dry gunshots rang out.

BANG! BANG!

He lit a cigarette to their accompaniment. A drag, then an exhale. The burning tip glowed red in the dark room.

“Sick to death of these bastards.”

The more sophisticated a society's systems became, the deeper into the shadows the ambitious buried their ambitions.

In this world, every surviving schemer was exceedingly competent. As mentioned earlier, the incompetent ones who had exposed their ambitions during the war had all been weeded out.

One might call it a global experiment in eugenics.

Put in the form of a traditional syllogism, it went like this:

1. Every rebel, terrorist, or dissident still active today has some talent.

2. Yet the social order of the United Kingdoms remains secure.

3. Therefore, all counterintelligence personnel hunting these “competent rebels” are more competent still.

Only four years had passed since the war ended. Every kingdom's foundations had been damaged beyond their capacity to endure another war.

On top of that, most of the working population had disappeared. Primarily into demons' stomachs.

Events were following much the same course as when the Black Death had strengthened the rights of the common people. There was one difference, though: the nobles exploiting them were overwhelmingly powerful. Literally so, wielding mana.

Conflict between the masses and their exploiters was, naturally, all but inevitable. It would blaze up at the slightest fanning of the flames.

When a major incident shook society, the culprit was whoever reaped the greatest benefit.

A shortlist of those who stood to gain most from a country going up in flames would look something like this:

Demons under the Colonial Administration's rule. Neighboring countries. Domestic rebels. Royals sidelined in the succession. Thinkers enamored with populist ideologies.

“Whew...”

Dmitry exhaled a sigh with his cigarette smoke. There were so damned many. They were scattered across every sphere, at home and abroad, and now Krasilof was even on the brink of civil war.

Krasilof's Counterintelligence Command would have to work through another night.

It was another tiresome summer night, no different from any other, year after year.

Until Prizhenkaya went up in flames.

* * *

Ivan was a peace-loving man, so he tended to solve most problems through dialogue.

The one minor problem was that most people in this primitive age barred the doors to their hearts and refused to talk.

But as a resourceful modern man, Ivan solved this problem with ease.

Bars were made of wood, and all wood broke beneath an axe.

Thus, among its many applications (bottle opener, can opener, head opener, etc.), Ivan's axe was currently serving as a door opener, throwing wide the barred doors to his conversation partners' hearts.

“Every... Aaargh!! I'll tell you everything! S-stop! Stop!!”

“Shh. I haven't even started.”

“I-I said I'd talk!!”

Ivan shook his head at this amateur ideological activist.

Information offered before the heart was fully unbarred had an extremely high probability of containing lies.

To improve its reliability, therefore, a more open heart was necessary. Physically opening up the area containing the heart generally opened the figurative heart as well.

“Uuurgh...!”

“I'll heal you now.”

“Kill... me...!”

“Don't say such sad things.”

Ivan whispered gently as he took out a healing potion and sealed the man's wide-open heart back up.

Simply repeating torture was a poor move that degraded the resolution of the information. Information was easily distorted; depending on the circumstances, people frequently came to believe entirely different memories were true and spoke accordingly.

To bring down a psychological barrier completely, Ivan too had to set aside his modern intellect for a moment and equip himself with the barbarity of the age.

After a brief counseling session accompanied by warm consideration (incisions that avoided vital organs) and meticulous treatment (no stinting on healing potions), the fifth spy he encountered finally spilled the truth, eyes vacant and unfocused.

“Sir Daionar... Uurgh... has already arrived... in Prizhenkaya... The signal to begin... won't come from us, from us... Sir Daionar himself...”

“He's already operating here?”

“Y-yes... The liaison role is just... a... front. We're waiting for him to act... as well...”

“What is Daionar after? Does it end with abducting Esidisi?”

“No...”

The spy, supposedly Daionar's contact, gazed vacantly up at the sky, then abruptly tapped the ground.

As though that were answer enough.

When Ivan's eyebrow twitched, the man coughed up blood and barely managed to continue.

“Here.”

“... Here?”

“Prizhenkaya... Long live... the r-revolution... Put the people's sword in the p-people's hands... Above humanity... only God... beneath the kingdom of heaven... Cough! Ah, aaah...”

He was broken.

Ivan clicked his tongue and stood.

If Daionar, supposedly arriving tomorrow or the day after, had already infiltrated the city, would he really postpone the operation now that his attendants had been carved up?

No, he would not. Exposed, he had nowhere left to turn. Returning to Droan would only introduce him to an enraged Einar's axe blade.

Prizhenkaya was a great city with a sprawling metropolitan area. Finding a foreign spy who had entered illegally, someone he had never even met, would therefore be a little harder than finding a Mr. Kim in Seoul.

But to find a snake, one had to beat the grass.

Once Daionar realized his base had been exposed and several of his attendants and operatives had been left alive with unmistakable signs of torture, he would become extremely anxious.

“Esidisi should be home by now.”

Ivan set off, mulling over what it meant to target Prizhenkaya itself.

He would secure Esidisi first, then, if possible, intercept Daionar before he could attack her and ask him.

He was rather curious about the psychology behind the delusion that attacking a child of the Hero's Party could somehow provide a means of taking Prizhenkaya.

* * *

Esidisi and Morde strolled quietly through the streets at night.

“Wow, I really can't get used to this. Can you, Uncle? How can the streets be this empty?”

“This is what happens when a state is incompetent, Eshi. Do you see what a great ruler your father is?”

“Oh, yes, well. I'm sure he is...”

Krasilof had fought the last war under a single monarchy. Naturally, it had declared nationwide martial law and spent over a decade on a war footing.

Peace might have returned, but a militaristic state like that could hardly change in a mere four years. Droan, however, was different.

Throughout the last war, Droan had remained a loose confederation of a dozen or more Jarls, each governing a state of his own.

These tribal states had no single centralized authority. Naturally, individual citizens' rights were far more developed than in other nations.

Even some random warrior off the street, if you followed a friend of a friend (×7), would turn out to be the brother-in-law of the paternal cousin of someone on brotherly terms with a Jarl. That was what a clan society meant.

The frightening part here was that the streets were littered with warriors. In any case, this had allowed public safety to develop along more modern lines.

Unlike in civilized society, people without manners got an axe in the skull in tribal society. With everyone so polite, what was there to fear on the streets at night?

Good heavens, the man next door had been robbed? Astonishingly, the robber was likely the man two doors down from him. It was a closed society, after all. The next day, that robber-neighbor would lose his head or a hand.

After living in a society like that, the nighttime streets of Prizhenkaya seemed bleak and unforgiving indeed.

Even now, almost three months after arriving in the city, Esidisi still struggled to adjust.

“Oh, Uncle. Have you been to that shop? Their waffles are really good.”

As a rule, waffle shops near universities were not places to eat alone. They were the domain of the mercilessly popular.

Esidisi had therefore never eaten a waffle there. She had, however, often stared blankly at the people eating inside before going home.

Passing the closed waffle shop, she wistfully kept pointing out nearby good restaurants to her uncle. (Meaning restaurants that looked good.)

“Ah, yes. Their strawberry waffles are delicious.”

“...?!”

What Esidisi had overlooked was that Morde was extraordinarily popular.

The Knight Department fundamentally respected strength. In other words, it was a department of men who lived by the law of the strong.

They could hardly dislike a Droan man who prided himself on being a man's man. Besides, Morde was big-hearted, rich (courtesy of Great King Einar's expense allowance), and usually kind to boot.

Only then did Esidisi, who was scorned for precisely the opposite reasons, turn to Morde with a profoundly wounded look.

Traitor.

The world was full of nothing but traitors.

Having discovered this merciless truth, the twenty-year-old university student hung her head and muttered softly.

“Let's just go home. This isn't fun anymore.”

“Shall we pick up something to eat on the way?”

“No!”

A short while after they turned for home, someone unexpected, but welcome, appeared before them.

“It's been a while, brother.”

“... What brings you here?”

“Why else would I come, if not on His Majesty's secret orders?”

“Uncle!!”

“Oh, Eshi. Have you been well? It's only been three months since you left, but it already feels like ten years. Having our dear niece at the palace really does make all the difference.”

“Hehe, Uncle. You've been well too, haven't you?”

The man who had appeared beneath the street's mana lamps was enormous, his unruly, spiky hair swept back in a wild mane.

It was Daionar Erickson, Einar's Huscarl.