Chapter 54 - Stalker vs. Stalker (9)

One common misconception is that rain weakens a scent. It is a minor misunderstanding that owning even a single dog would clear up.

Rain dulls the sense of smell, not body odor. And a mere summer rain would not impair a superhuman's senses.

Getting wet naturally intensifies body odor. That would hold true even if you dripped distilled water onto a laboratory mouse in a sterile room, never mind the state of hygiene in this premodern world.

Besides, the man he was tracking was from Droan and had only just arrived in the city after running for days on end. Even setting aside Droan's characteristic disregard for public health, a foreigner's scent was easier to distinguish.

“The Foreign Ministry residence...?”

Ivan stared blankly down the trail of scent and repeated the words.

Even by Earth's standards, there were three places an illegal entrant without a visa should never go.

A rural employment agency offering suspiciously high wages.

A provincial factory employing an oddly large number of people from the same homeland (or a farm, or really any workplace involving fields).

And finally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As always with lists like this, the last item was the most important. The first two merely worked you to death; the last carried out the actual execution as official business.

South Korea simply sent illegal entrants home. Generous Krasilof would offer two options instead.

1. Go home and be killed by your king.

2. Follow our laws and be killed by us.

To put a more “aristocratic” spin on it, they offered the marvelous choice of repatriation or citizenship. (In this world, dead citizens were still citizens. They had to pay taxes.)

Krasilof's Foreign Ministry was a vast department combining the functions of South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a military force (directly subordinate to the ministry rather than the Royal Household or Military Administration), and a police agency for foreign nobles (this world had no nationality-based jurisdiction).

And the Foreign Minister who headed it was Crown Prince Alexander, eldest son of the reigning King Kirill II.

“This is... too sloppy.”

Ivan frowned.

By any commonsense assessment, Crown Prince Alexander was behind the entire mess unfolding in the capital.

This peculiar missing royal, whose whereabouts remained unknown, must have colluded with the capital's guards to smuggle the Dwarves into the country.

The targets were probably the Hero's Party's children, making his objective internal strife or chaos throughout the United Kingdoms.

He had set several schemes in motion with a single move, which surely made him an exceptionally skilled player. That made the present situation all the more strange.

Harboring a foreign terrorist who had entered the country illegally inside the Foreign Ministry would leave even South Korea's foreign minister fearing for his life. (In Krasilof, the outcome was certain. He would die.)

Ivan rolled his shoulders and attached a rope to his axe.

'It's been a while since I infiltrated a central government ministry.'

He had never said he hadn't done it before.

During his active service, he had carried out nearly every kind of special operation with “infiltration” in its name. (Except the Demon King's castle.)

* * *

At that moment, Prizhenkaya was simultaneously enduring righteous civic activists plotting bombings, national separatists abducting VIPs, and guerrilla attacks by armed communist bandits (literally communist bandits, since they were Dwarves).

If anyone ought to have suppressed this chaos first—and preemptively—it was the capital's Guards Division and Counterintelligence Command.

Given that the capital's Guards Division had allowed the armed bandits to attack, it seemed to be acting under Alexander's influence. That much could be explained.

Which left Ivan thinking:

'What in the world is Counterintelligence Command doing?'

There was a reason this perfectly reasonable question could not be answered immediately: nearly all of Counterintelligence Command's agents had split into two groups and were carrying out affairs of state in separate locations.

“This is, this is... treason...!”

“Treason, you say.”

Dmitry and the Counterintelligence Command agents had occupied the Guards Division commander's office.

He sat with his legs crossed in the office's plush chair, taking an exquisite cigar from the desk drawer and placing it between his lips.

SNIP.

The adjutant standing at his side swiftly clipped the cigar's tip and offered a flame conjured with mana at his fingertip. The cigar hissed as it caught, sending up a haze of smoke scented with almond and vanilla.

“Do you even know what treason means?”

“Y-you... What you're doing...!”

“No. Treason is the charge laid upon losers who fail. In the attempt, it is revolution. In failure, treason. And in success...”

He took a deep drag, then slowly exhaled. Through the thick smoke, the lieutenant colonel's vivid blue eyes flashed.

“A royal command.”

“How dare you...! How dare you rebels!!”

“To speak of rebellion in our presence. You're a very brave man, Brigadier General.”

Dmitry gave a faint laugh and flicked his fingers. His adjutant placed a heavy pistol in his hand.

Holding it, he tapped the desk, where two reports and a transcript lay.

“This is the subsurface survey report you prepared after the recent Dwarven terrorist attack outside Prizhenkaya. This is your perimeter security log for the past month. And this... is something we acquired ‘by chance.’ A transcript of classified telegrams.”

“How... did you get that...?”

“Getting curious about anything labeled classified is our job.”

Dmitry chuckled and leafed through the transcript.

“Recipient: Crown Prince Alexander. As for the main substance of the report... Oh. You drew up civil engineering projects and field exercises to conceal the digging noises of a Dwarven combat engineer battalion tunneling beneath the capital? How meticulous.”

“I-it's a frame-up! I've been framed!”

“Surely you mean you've been daring? That daring adventure of letting demons into Prizhenkaya... You have a surprisingly adventurous spirit. You should have chosen something other than soldiering.”

Dmitry gazed down at the brigadier general, kneeling and sobbing, drenched in blood.

With the cigar still between his lips, he asked casually:

“Where is the real Crown Prince Alexander now?”

“Th-the real one? What do you mean...? His Highness the Crown Prince is at the Western Palace, of course...”

“We could learn a thing or two from him about cutting loose his pawns. How does he keep such a complicated plan moving without revealing so much as his location?”

Dmitry rose with a bitter smile. Facing the brigadier general, he slowly raised the pistol.

“One question before I carry out your sentence.”

“Spare me. I, I know nothing. I've been framed, framed. Her Highness the Princess... Ah, no! No, let me see Her Majesty!”

“Where do your loyalties lie?”

“Wh-what do you mean? With this country, of course... With the great royal house of Krasilof...!”

CLICK.

BANG!

A dense haze, quite unlike cigar smoke, dispersed from the muzzle, and the brigadier general's mouth fell silent.

Dmitry handed the pistol to his adjutant, put on his gloves, and turned away.

“Enter it in the record. The traitorous faction that plotted to subvert the state has been put to death by royal command.”

“Yes, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“The false Crown Prince?”

“Teams Two and Five report that they have successfully secured the Western Palace.”

“Team Three?”

“Fifteen minutes ago, they successfully ‘protected’ the ‘former king’ from the ‘traitors'’ terrorist attack.”

“Good. The explosives in the city?”

“Team Four has finished identifying all emplacement locations and quantities. Lieutenant Colonel, shall we order them to begin disarming...?”

“No. That's not what we'll do.”

Opening the commander's office door, Dmitry spoke quietly.

“What would a coronation be without a celebratory salute? If they want to blow up Prizhenkaya, let them.”

“... Then the people at the blast sites...”

“Evacuate the civilians. Why spill innocent blood needlessly? What matters is the explosion, not the damage.”

Foreign criminals had planted the bombs.

Crown Prince Alexander had hired those criminals and blown up Prizhenkaya.

His aim had been to seize the throne amid the chaos, but he had been successfully thwarted. The Crown Prince had subsequently disappeared, and the king, shocked by his son's rebellion, had relinquished power.

Since all of this was grounded in fact, Counterintelligence Command needed only to announce it to the citizens and the international community.

“Then the Hero's Party's children...”

“That was my old superior's job to begin with. Leave it alone. Lieutenant Colonel Petrovich dislikes anyone encroaching on his jurisdiction.”

The man who would fasten the one remaining button in this affair was a woodsman.

Ivan Petrovich, the finest field agent the Extermination Unit had produced during the war.

That took care of everything. Dmitry smiled faintly, his heart lighter.

* * *

Esidisi trembled at the pain reverberating through her head and barely managed to open her eyes.

The dark room was terribly bleak... Just like a prison... No, wait. It really was a prison.

What? Why had they brought her here? A prison...? Had she committed some crime...?

Esidisi, who could look to the heavens without a single shred of shame, felt deeply wronged.

“You're awake, Eshi?”

“B-Bella! And Oscar, too?!”

She spotted the two of them in a corner of the cell and beamed. Of course!

“You've come to rescue me!”

“No, we were captured too.”

Isabelle and Oscar answered with hollow smiles.

* * *

'They've captured the Thilles kids too.'

Ivan clicked his tongue as he looked down at the wounded, unconscious Dian.

He had found him in an interrogation room on the second floor of the Foreign Ministry residence.

Unlike Morde, this one had no life-threatening injuries. That was fortunate. It meant there had been no traitor from Thilles.

Had Thilles been involved in this affair as well, Dian would never have been brought here alive. They would have had to kill him to silence him.

Ivan clicked his tongue and opened the interrogation room door.

'Counterintelligence Command... needs training.'

With so many holes in its protection of state guests, how could it even call itself a domestic intelligence service?

Ivan was appalled. Nothing like this could have happened when he was on active duty.

He set off, devising countless training programs for Counterintelligence Command.

SPLASH. SPLASH.

Broken mana lamps flickered in the corridor of the Foreign Ministry residence.

Blood and rainwater pooled across the floor, sending up wet squelches with every step.

Along the shortest route to the top floor, the remains of every armed combatant who had stood in Ivan's way flickered red beneath the lights.

He walked silently down the corridor, his breathing not even labored.