I came to my senses.
In an instant, I began checking myself.
Did I look convincing?
Was my posture confident?
Did it look like I was consciously trying too hard to seem confident?
Only after inspecting every condition did I finally open my mouth.
“Now that we've come this far, I suppose there's no point hiding it any longer. I am not a member of the Spider Society.”
The Black Knight's eyes narrowed.
He seemed to think, I knew it.
“Then where did you get those clothes?”
“I got them from the Spider Society.”
“You bastard, again!!”
The Black Knight shouted as though having a fit.
As though the very notion of meeting the Spider Society and receiving something from them was absurd.
But the magic tool didn't activate.
His expression twisted.
“Explain. Earlier, you said you were dragged here to sell noodles. And now you're saying you met the Spider Society?”
“Exactly as I said. I received the clothes from the Spider Society. And I came here to make noodles.”
“…….”
Instead of answering, his eyes twisted strangely.
Why?
All I'd said was that I received the clothes from the Spider Society.
Why was that enough to make him react like this?
There was something inside that reaction.
Now that I was cornered, it felt like my only lifeline.
“Black Knight Parthenon. You must not learn anything beyond this. It would be more than you could bear.”
For now, I pretended to be composed and impressive.
It was the only thing I could say.
Then he drew his sword.
SHING―
“Shut your mouth. A bastard who doesn't even know what the Spider Society is has no right to speak.”
My heart began pounding again.
The sensation of the blade tearing open my cheek came vividly back to me.
But if I stopped now, I'd die anyway.
I thought desperately.
How to borrow someone's heart: Show them what they want to see.
Then what did the Black Knight want to see?
“Why do you insist on asking about something you cannot bear to know?”
I didn't give him a chance to act.
I continued speaking.
“What benefit would knowing more possibly bring you?”
Come to think of it, it was strange.
Earlier, the moment that organization member thought I belonged to the Spider Society, he'd been terrified.
And here, the Black Knight had prepared an entire show just to determine whether or not I truly belonged to the Spider Society.
But the strangest thing of all was my own body.
My cheek was fine.
Not merely healed.
There wasn't even the slightest lingering discomfort.
That meant they'd treated me with extraordinary care.
‘Until just now, I'd been treated like a VIP.’
What kind of mysterious organization could make even a ‘Regional Public Enemy’ this nervous?
“Tell me. There may be a more amicable way to resolve this.”
But the Black Knight merely hardened his expression.
“Hey, brat. Are your fucking ears plugged?”
Uh.
He grabbed me by the collar and hurled me onto the floor.
CRASH!
“Urgh!”
His strength was truly enormous.
I tried to rise, but something like a boulder pressed down on my chest.
It was his foot.
“Just answer my next question. Even if you are not Spider Society, that does not change the fact that you are suspicious. You are probably a gangster. Answer me. Are you a gangster or not?”
Damn it!
The question I'd known would eventually come had finally arrived.
The moment I answered, I'd die no matter which answer I gave.
From here on, it was a gamble.
Pinned beneath his foot, I pushed up the glasses beneath my hood.
“Your order of questioning is strange. If it were me, I would first ask which member of the Spider Society gave me these clothes.”
The Black Knight's eyes twisted again.
He tried to speak, so I cut him off first.
“Parthenon. You dare claim to know the Spider Society? Then do you also know my friend, a man named Arman?”
Arman.
The name of the man who'd owned these clothes.
And the question I'd thrown at him at this moment was exquisitely timed.
The Black Knight faltered.
His rhythm was different from when he'd been composed.
It was an extremely familiar kind of hesitation.
And right there, I realized something shocking.
‘Huh?’
He'd repeatedly said things like, ‘You don't even know the Spider Society―’ and ‘How dare you invoke the Spider Society―’
Because of those words, I'd naturally assumed he knew about the Spider Society.
‘This bastard…?’
Does he not know what the Spider Society is either…?
He must know something.
But perhaps he didn't know much.
If I'd never even heard the name, maybe he had only heard the name and a little more than that.
“Stop changing the subject! Of course I know Arman well.”
Then he snorted.
“I'll ask one final time. Are you a gangster or not? If you refuse to answer here….”
The Black Knight continued with all sorts of terrifying threats afterward, but I no longer cared.
I had a feeling.
This bastard doesn't know.
The proof was in his questions.
Not one question he'd asked could actually identify a member of the Spider Society.
Suppose you were interrogating a spy.
Naturally, wouldn't you ask about some trait of ‘our organization’ that a spy wouldn't know?
That was why sayings like, If you don't know OO, you're a spy, existed in the first place.
But the Black Knight hadn't done that.
Why?
‘Because he doesn't know either!’
Then an answer came to me.
‘The perfect answer.’
Not every statement could be divided cleanly into true and false.
Somewhere, there could be words that were neither lies nor quite the truth.
And I found those words.
“I shall tell you only a little. ‘Right now,’ I am not a member of the Spider Society.”
Not in the past.
Not in the future.
But it wasn't a lie.
“What else?”
I placed a hand on the collar.
Then I said,
“It has been about a week since I left my organization.”
It had been about a week since I'd left the Guard.
“So I am no longer a gangster.”
Because I was a guard.
“And these clothes were given to me by Arman of the Spider Society. If you ask what relationship I had with him, the answer is simple. I was the one who heard his final words.”
Apparently, the Spider Society was something like nobility.
And I'd just openly declared that I'd heard the final words of one of those nobles.
To make us seem close!
I'd even subtly made it sound as though I were formerly from the Spider Society.
Every single thing I'd said was ‘true.’
After a long silence, the Black Knight snorted.
“No. No. That cannot be.”
Huh?
The eyes inside the Black Knight's helmet had gone cold.
“From where I stand, it seems only that you evaded lying with deliberately ambiguous answers.”
Damn it.
He was more suspicious than I'd expected.
“How about this, then? Do you really think it makes sense for someone from the Spider Society to be held here making noodles?”
“That is my own affair.”
“Enough! Whatever the case, I still believe you are a fraud. If you truly belonged to the Spider Society, and were therefore a member of Eden's finest intelligence organization, then… yes. Can you decipher something like this?”
A bolt of lightning struck my mind.
‘The Spider Society is Eden's finest intelligence organization?’
Now that I finally knew what it was, all the confidence I'd built up shriveled away.
‘That's… that's way too big….’
Eden was the name of the largest criminal cartel republic on the continent.
It was also the country where I had been born.
Its population numbered an astonishing 11 million.
The soldiers affiliated with it and scattered across the continent numbered an astonishing 500,000.
It was a transnational cartel-state known to the world as the ‘Republic of Evil.’
And the Spider Society was the intelligence organization of that enormous criminal cartel?
Then I could understand how the Black Knight had treated me until now.
Information was a value at the heart of war, politics, economics, and society.
By analogy, they were something like the Imperial Council of Elders.
And even His Majesty the Emperor treated the Council of Elders with due respect.
‘The problem is….’
They're far, far too important.
If I were a rat, I'd try to pretend to be a reasonably imposing fox, only to discover I'd actually been pretending to be the tiger that ruled the entire mountain range.
“You! Look at this.”
Around then, the Black Knight threw a sheet of paper in front of me.
“That is Level 1 classified information belonging to an alliance of hostile organizations. Countless comrades died just to obtain that single document. We had given up because neither our mages nor our magic tools could decipher it.”
Even as he spoke, the Black Knight didn't appear to expect anything.
As though saying, Like a bastard like you could possibly understand it.
“If you truly belong to that magnificent Spider Society, then go on. Decipher it.”
I unfolded the paper.
The white part was paper and the black part was writing, but it wasn't any script we used.
‘A cipher?’
I'd placed first in the Empire-wide recruitment exam and had studied a fair amount about intelligence and security, but I'd never seen a cipher like this before.
“You don't know, do you? Of course you don't. The mage who attempted to decipher it for us was an S-Grade mage who had once been a Magic Tower Master. His fee alone was worth 1,000 gold, and even he found it difficult. What possible skill could a bastard like you have to decipher―”
“It's the report's table of contents.”
At last, the deciphering inside my head was complete.
“……The t-table of what?”
“The table of contents. The page at the beginning of a book that tells you what the entire book contains.”
The translated image surfaced in my mind.
“Hmm…. In order: Blueprint for the Northern Invasion Plan. Points of Caution and Weaknesses of Northern Forces. List of Northern Regional Public Enemies and Plans for Their Assassination. List of Northern S-Class Wanted Criminals and Plans for Their Assassination…… and so on. The report consists of 5 sections. 17 pages total. It seems the south classified it as Level 1 intelligence as well.”
I was incredibly fortunate that what he'd handed me as a test was ‘unidentified information.’
Revealing what was hidden was precisely the field where the 「All-Seeing Eye」 excelled.
And it was the only ability I had.
So now, I was saved―
“I see. I made a mistake.”
That was when the Black Knight let out a hollow laugh.
“Since you can say anything you please about something no one understands, you apparently decided you could answer however you wished.”
Inside the helmet—
anger filled his eyes.
He raised his hand.
I didn't even have time to protest.
SMACK!
My head snapped sideways.
As my consciousness began to fade, I heard the Black Knight's voice.
“What should we do with this bastard?”
“Send him to the herb mine. I heard a few more workers died there. Make him gather herbs.”
“And the clothes?”
“Take them away! You intend to let that piece of vermin impersonate them again?”
…….
…….
…….
…….
…….
…….
…….
…….
…….
….
“Good. Parthenon. Is the campaign against the south proceeding well?”
“Yes. Thanks to the trust you have placed in me.”
The Black Knight bowed his head before his new lord.
The ruler of northern Gesenna's vast territory.
Count Hamuan.
When placing people beneath him, he cared nothing for their origins, dispositions, or ideologies.
The only thing he valued was ability.
And through that belief in ability above all else, he had become the ruler of northern Gesenna.
The Black Knight had long wished to serve a man like this.
“I shall make my report.”
As his lengthy report continued, the Black Knight briefly remembered an incident from 2 weeks earlier.
It concerned a young man who had claimed to belong to the Spider Society.
A young bastard who had only just lost the traces of boyhood.
He had lied without so much as blinking.
Even the Black Knight himself had nearly been completely taken in.
‘A brat like that has already opened his eyes to the art of fraud.’
In any case, the bastard was clearly a fake.
There was no need to include him in the report.
“―That concludes my report.”
“Good. Very good. You're doing well. Yustaf of the Bloodstorm was a troublesome man. An impressive achievement.”
“All glory to my lord.”
The Black Knight bowed deeply.
The report was over.
The Black Knight turned to prepare for the next campaign.
That was precisely when an utterly unexpected conversation began.
“Ah. By the way, Parthenon.”
“Yes.”
“There was a report earlier about someone claiming to be one of the venerable elders of the Spider Society. Was there anything more about that?”
“Yes. He was determined to be a fraud.”
“I see. What a shame. If someone like that had truly been here, this war would've been much easier…….”
Even Count Hamuan addressed them with the utmost respect.
The Spider Society.
Because if northern Gesenna were a single person, the Spider Society would be the part responsible for its brain.
‘What a joke.’
Anyone who had ever held even a slightly high position in Eden couldn't possibly be unaware of how great the Spider Society was.
They had bound the once-fragmented Eden into one.
They had proclaimed the founding of the nation to the continent.
And they had gathered together countless people who had been driven to the edge of a cliff by the Empire's persecution.
‘To think that bastard dared impersonate beings like them. What a colossal nerve.’
To Parthenon, the Spider Society held an even more special meaning.
A friend he'd grown up with like a brother had told him that the ones who saved them when they were starving to death as children had been the Spider Society.
And that wasn't a story unique to Parthenon.
The Spider Society had truly saved countless children driven into the Imperial borderlands.
Some said their purpose had merely been to secure the population necessary for founding the Republic.
But that hardly mattered.
It did not change the fact that they had fed children who were starving to death and kept them alive.
Tens of thousands of children revered the Spider Society.
One of those children grew up—
and became the Parthenon of today.
And that bastard had dared impersonate the Spider Society before someone like him…….
“Well~ I suppose we'll have to settle for looking at something like this instead.”
At that moment, Count Hamuan smiled faintly.
“Something like this, my lord?”
“Adjutant Makion from our Intelligence Department managed to decipher part of the south's Level 1 classified intelligence.”
With that, Count Hamuan lightly tossed the translated document onto the desk.
“There are 5 entries in the table of contents, and the first chapter is apparently called Blueprint for the Northern Invasion Plan― Thank goodness they managed to decipher it. Their operational plan is written out in detail in chronological order. I'll distribute it to all the officers by tomorrow, but you may as well take an early lo…….”
As Count Hamuan spoke in his gentle voice, Black Knight Parthenon's eyes widened until they looked ready to split.
“…….”
It felt as though an enormous hammer had struck him in the back of the head.
A single instant stretched like taffy.
And by the time his consciousness seemed to extend from the room all the way to the horizon—
“Parthenon?”
“Pardon? Ah.”
Black Knight Parthenon's mouth fell wide open.
Even before his lord, he could no longer control his expression.
“……!!”
He was horrified.
“What's wrong?”
“N-No… it's noth…….”
On the way out after finishing his report, Parthenon's steps grew faster and faster.
At some point, he was running.
That didn't change even after he climbed into a carriage.
“Faster! Go faster!”
He chewed viciously on his lip.
‘He really was Spider Society……!’
The proof was the southern classified information the young man had deciphered.
That brat really belonged to the Spider Society!
And Parthenon hadn't even realized it!
‘Has it really been 2 weeks already……?’
It felt as though his insides were collapsing.
What sacrilege had he committed?
Parthenon shouted at the coachman.
“Did you gorge yourself on grub meat!? Go faster! Faster!!”
EP3
「 Somehow, a Chef 」
END