Chapter 55

Whereabouts (2)

A man came rushing out from the back of the shop and bowed ninety degrees before me. It was none other than Adlan, owner of the Adlan Trading Company and an officer of Frecce’s merchants’ guild.

An officer of the merchants’ guild was no minor figure in Frecce. Within this city, his standing was comparable to a noble’s.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come, my lord!”

Yet Adlan treated me with the utmost deference. His courtesy was so excessive that it left me momentarily dazed, but I soon collected myself and spoke.

“What have you done about what I told you last—”

I paused and closed my mouth again. I had slipped straight into addressing him as a subordinate.

Frecce was a free city. It had social strata, but no formal class hierarchy. My noble status carried no weight here, so naturally, I couldn’t go around talking down to everyone.

Adlan was plainly older than I was. Still, that manner of speaking had slipped out from habit—not so much a habit of nobility as one left over from my days in the allied army.

The allied army had a strict hierarchy, and as Chief of Covert Operations in the special warfare unit, I had generally been the one giving orders. Issuing them quickly had made me accustomed to speaking that way. The habit had stayed with me, and the words came out on their own.

It would have been different in the Kingdom of Battenberg, but in a free city, I had to follow its laws.

“Ah, my apologies. It’s a habit. I spoke too familiarly without thinking.”

“Not at all, my lord! Please don’t give it a thought!”

Instead, Adlan waved his hands as though my apology were unthinkable.

“Lord Adrian, you are the esteemed young master of a count’s house! I’m only a lowly commoner, a mere peddler. Please, speak however you please! Hehe...”

He rubbed his palms together as he spoke. He looked every bit the fawning sycophant, but there was no malice in it. Rather, he regarded me as his benefactor.

Understandably so. Adlan dealt primarily in wine, an expensive indulgence that limited his main clientele to the upper classes. Thanks to me, the number of nobles coming all the way to Frecce specifically to buy monster meat had skyrocketed. In a sense, he was the merchant who had benefited the most in the entire city.

And, well, if he insisted that strongly, there was no reason not to drop the formalities.

“Then I’ll do that.”

“Oh, please do! Please do! Now I can finally feel at ease!”

Adlan sighed in relief, as though a weight had finally been lifted from his shoulders. He was practically treating me like a king. Apparently, he had made even more money than I’d thought.

And here in Frecce, money was absolute power. Merchants’ guild officer or not, everyone was equal before money.

“So, what happened with the matter I mentioned last time?”

“You mean your request to investigate a man named Ian?”

When I nodded, Adlan put on a confident expression.

“At your request, Lord Adrian, our merchants’ guild sent people to free cities aaall across the continent!”

There was such vigor in his voice that they seemed to have achieved something. My eyes lit up, and Adlan promptly continued.

“... Unfortunately, however, we could find no trace of this man Ian you mentioned.”

He immediately wilted. The confidence he’d shown just moments ago vanished without a trace. Now he was watching my face for a reaction.

... Why had he sounded so confident, then?

At any rate, they hadn’t found any trace of Ian.

‘Ian, where the hell are you wandering around looking for me?’

Past or present, I could never figure out what went on in his head. Though strictly speaking, it was my past self who had done all the wandering.

Still, the search hadn’t been entirely fruitless. I now knew that Ian wasn’t in any of the free cities, which narrowed the search. Above all, the merchants’ guild’s information network was still active, so I would hear immediately if he visited one later.

Just as I was swallowing my disappointment, Adlan spoke.

“There is one exception, though.”

He glanced at me again, then slowly continued.

“We weren’t able to check Violess.”

“Violess?”

Violess...

“You mean the lawless city?”

“Yes, yes, that’s the one.”

Violess.

Like Frecce, Violess was a free city. But instead of specializing in a particular industry such as commerce, livestock farming, or mining, it was a city without law or order. A lawless city.

Free cities had no absolute authority such as a monarch or a lord. That also meant losing control over the various criminal organizations and armed groups. Extreme freedom had destroyed even the bare minimum of law and order, and powerful men had seized control, imposing rules of their own. Thus, in the lawless city of Violess, force was absolute power.

That was why merchants stayed away. With law and order gone, contracts could not be trusted. Those who went there to trade often left stripped of everything, so merchants didn’t even dare attempt the journey.

Yet there was one trading company that did business in the lawless city—

“The Dark Merchant Company has that place firmly in its grip...”

“The Dark Merchant Company?”

“They’re an exceedingly shady lot, my lord.”

Adlan went on to explain this and that about the Dark Merchant Company, but I had no need to listen. I already knew about them.

In fact, I knew more about them than he did. All the information I had gathered through my operations and investigations as Chief of Covert Operations in the special warfare unit remained intact in my head.

The Dark Merchant Company.

As the name suggested, it was a secret alliance of merchants operating in the shadows.

“They mainly deal in illegal transactions and prohibited goods, such as slaves. They amass enormous fortunes, mostly through the black market.”

Naturally, they disregarded things like laws and morals. They would stop at nothing for profit, freely trafficking in all manner of unethical, vile merchandise.

“You can assume that all the illegal weapons, poisons, ancient relics, forbidden magical items, and cursed objects circulating across the continent were distributed by those Dark Merchant Company bastards.”

It was a vast organization running a continent-wide black-market network. Through it, they forged deep ties with criminal groups, corrupt politicians, and even aristocratic society in every nation, sharing profits with a variety of factions.

“But all their members and officers remain completely anonymous, so no one knows anything about the Dark Merchant Company.”

They were meticulous enough to ensure that even their business partners remained strictly anonymous.

“No one knows who runs the Dark Merchant Company or who belongs to it. No one knows where they’re primarily based or how they operate, either.”

Adlan scratched the back of his head, looking troubled. If even a merchant, whose livelihood depended on information, said that, it was safe to say the organization was thoroughly shrouded in mystery. That was also why it was called the ‘Dark Merchant Company.’

That wasn’t its actual name. People had given it that name because they didn’t know what it was really called.

More precisely, they had used ‘dark (Dark)’ to mean ‘unknown (Hidden Form Knowledge).’ It meant that nothing could be known about the company, as though it were shrouded in darkness. ‘The Unknown Merchant Company’ would have been more accurate, but it sounded awkward and was too long, so people simply called it the Dark Merchant Company.

In any case, everything about this secret organization, including its identity, was shrouded in mystery.

But I knew.

During my time in the allied army, I had investigated the Dark Merchant Company and uncovered its true name.

Devotees of the Fallen Souls.

That was the Dark Merchant Company’s true name.

It sounded more like a religious organization than a trading company, and that was exactly what it was. The Dark Merchant Company wasn’t a merchants’ organization, but a kind of religious order—a dangerous religion that worshipped darkness and forbidden knowledge and wielded the world’s hidden powers. Its goal was to tear down the continent’s order and lead the world into chaos and destruction.

I had also investigated its important members one by one. I knew everyone from the handful of leaders at the very top to its middle managers and trade brokers. And ultimately, I knew the being who owned the Dark Merchant Company—the ‘god’ its devotees believed in and followed.

One of the six Sovereigns who served the Emperor.

The Sovereign of the Abyss.

He was the god worshipped by the Dark Merchant Company’s devotees.

* * *

The Sovereign of the Abyss, one of the six Sovereigns who served the Emperor.

The allied army called him [The Inexplicable Terror of the Unknown].

As the name said, it could not be explained. And so it could not be countered.

The Saintess’s miracles. The Archmage’s mental defense spells. The Spirit Mage’s spirits. The Blacksmith’s arms and armor. All were useless before the Sovereign of the Abyss’s [The Inexplicable Terror of the Unknown].

As a result, the allied army could obtain no information whatsoever about him. What kind of being was he? What were his abilities? We couldn’t even discover what he looked like.

Of course, information about the other Sovereigns, especially

◆Player's Will[EX] resists the Void of Memory!

could be pieced together to some extent.

But whenever anyone approached the truth about the Sovereign of the Abyss, they were driven mad by inexplicably overwhelming terror and fear. The same was true when facing him.

During the war against the Sovereign of the Abyss, no one in the allied army had faced him directly. Neither I nor even the army’s heroes were exceptions.

There had been only one person.

Ian, the Hero and Supreme Commander of the allied army.

Only Ian could face the Sovereign of the Abyss, because he alone did not succumb to [The Inexplicable Terror of the Unknown].

Player's Will[EX].

But it did not grant complete mental immunity. It merely kept the mind from collapsing on the spot.

Ian had been afraid, trembling in terror just like the rest of us. Yet he had overcome it, confronted the Sovereign of the Abyss alone, and ultimately succeeded in annihilating him.

Afterward, Ian had described the Sovereign of the Abyss like this.

[“I suppose you could call him the final evil, rising from the center of eternity and uttering the whispers of chaos.”]

[“What?”]

[“Or perhaps the last unholy being, born at the edge of the abyss and surging unchecked through endless time.”]

[“What are you talking about?”]

[“A formless evil wrought by chaos in the abyss of infinite perpetuity, ceaselessly undulating at perpetuity’s center—the final negative entity created at the bottom of hell, you might say.”]

... He spouted so much bullshit that I couldn’t make sense of it. Every time I asked about the Sovereign of the Abyss, he said crap like that.

The allied army had therefore surmised that lingering damage from the Sovereign of the Abyss was confusing him. We thought that even though the Sovereign had been annihilated, merely thinking back on him inflicted mental damage on Ian.

And though we hadn’t known it then, Player's Will[EX] didn’t grant complete mental immunity, either.

The Sovereign of the Abyss was already gone, anyway. There was no need to grill Ian about him, so I had stopped asking.

‘If I’d known things would turn out this way, maybe I should have asked for more details.’

I couldn’t help regretting it now.

In any case, the Dark Merchant Company—the Devotees of the Fallen Souls—believed in and worshipped that very Sovereign of the Abyss. They had been granted power and Authority by him. That was why they couldn’t be dismissed as a mere trafficking ring.

They were a vast power that controlled the continent’s wealth and influence from behind the scenes. They simply hadn’t revealed themselves.

“There are even rumors that they use kings as puppets and control their kingdoms,” Adlan ventured cautiously.

But that wasn’t just a rumor. It was true. The Dark Merchant Company was deeply involved in the politics and economies of the various kingdoms. That was what made them so frightening.

They had political patrons and aristocratic allies in every kingdom. They could even mobilize royal armies, so the official law enforcement authorities couldn’t easily touch them. They were far beyond anything a mere free city’s merchants’ guild could handle.

And later, when the Emperor invaded the continent, that had played a decisive role in its near-instant collapse.

Just one year.

That was all it had taken for every kingdom and city on the continent to disappear from the map.

All of this pointed to one thing.

‘The Dark Merchant Company was already on the move this early...?’

It meant the Emperor was already making preparations. The Dark Merchant Company might worship the Sovereign of the Abyss, but he was ultimately one of the six Sovereigns who served the Emperor. In other words, the company was acting according to the Emperor’s will.

‘And he’s already finished his experiments on the lycanthrope, too...’

The Emperor truly was meticulous beyond belief.

Obviously, I couldn’t leave the Dark Merchant Company alone. Just like the lycanthrope, they had to be rooted out completely.

It seemed that, both to look for traces of Ian and to investigate the Dark Merchant Company...

‘I’ll have to visit Violess myself.’

It looked like a trip to the lawless city of Violess was in order. But I couldn’t do it alone.

The Sovereigns were on an entirely different level of strength. Even the allied army’s heroes had been powerless against them. Only Ian could stand against them.

But with Ian’s whereabouts still unknown...

‘I’ll have to cure Seraphia first.’

The only one who could stand against the Sovereign of the Abyss was the Sovereign of Bitter Cold.