From inside a black mask, a voice like scraping iron rang out.
"Dechion, you fucking son of a bitch. I will give you a taste of the heat."
Leianna, an officer of the Liberation Order, one of the two heads of the Liberation Army.
Leianna intended to show in full today why her byname was Assault Captain.
"Selling the nation was not enough, you dared to sell the Crown Prince as well?"
Intelligence delivered through Lady Creina. Therefore its truth was certain.
She did not know exactly what means he had used to take part in trapping the Crown Prince, but that old man Dechion was a fucking son of a bitch who deserved to die at once.
Because the crime of selling that person out was heavier even than the grave crime of national betrayal.
SWISH—!
The black cloak fluttered as she flung both arms out.
Leianna appeared to be a giant of roughly two meters in height, but in truth most of the inside of the cloak was filled not with her body but with other goods.
The reason Leianna was called Assault Captain.
Because she loved bodily assault, no, bomb assault.
CLICK!
A building that bore the fine name of Heavenly Garden despite being erected to serve as a filthy den.
Mana wiring was connected to the mana bombs installed throughout it.
"He should have been killed long ago."
The Five Enemies Within the Palace and the Five Enemies Outside the Palace had seized enormous wealth and power in return for selling the nation.
However, Dechion lacked skill, and his power had waned considerably compared to the beginning. From the Liberation Army's standpoint he was a target they could kill whenever they wished.
They had left him alone only because it was a net loss once the aftermath was considered.
Now that they knew he had been involved in the Crown Prince's arrest, everything had changed.
The Liberation Army had decided to destroy Dechion with all their strength.
"I will kill you, after giving you the greatest possible pain."
What sort of expression would the old traitor make if the dream he was building by devoting everything scattered to ash along with an explosion?
Leianna smiled cruelly and pressed the switch.
CLACK!
A mana signal that set off dozens of detonators was fired.
***
He met Winter in front of the hotel.
"Ah, Your Highness. A subject of the Empire greets a member of the great Divine......."
He waved his hand.
"I told you not to do that. I said to omit the salutation because it is a bother."
"Would it not be good for your image to do it now and then when we are outside?"
"We're outside, so all the more reason not to. What are you talking about?"
"Your Highness seems more down-to-earth than I expected."
Beyond down-to-earth, Zion Bliobelt was someone who, in a prince's body, could sleep on the roadside under a blanket of fallen leaves.
"You handled the matter you went for properly, I take it?"
"Of course. It was easier than expected."
While Zion himself went to meet Creina, Winter had been set to conclude the negotiation with Reijo.
"He agreed that once Your Highness makes one more large-scale purchase of grain spot securities on the designated date, he will present the sponsorship funds immediately. To be precise, it is a write-off of the farm payment."
One might say the two amounted to the same thing, but in fact they did not.
Because making Reijo one of Blen Industries' partners had bound the rights to the farm payment into a complicated contract.
Clauses differing from one another, yet turning into a net the moment they were entwined.
"I have secured Reijo's trust for certain."
"How can you be sure?"
Boarding the elevator, a levitation-type magitech device located inside the hotel, Winter answered.
"Reijo pulled in about 30 percent more at the exchange than expected. It means he gathered funds to the point of overextending himself."
It meant the probability of Reijo's utter ruin had risen by 30 percent, no, more than that.
He shook his head.
"Winter. Just how vile does a person's nature have to be to devise such wicked schemes?"
"But what Your Highness will grasp at the end of those wicked schemes is immense."
"Keep devising them diligently."
Today, Reijo, having swallowed whole the bait Winter dangled, had gone through with a large-scale investment.
It was an aggressive investment that included not only ordinary securities but even "futures" products.
"Your Highness may not know it, but high-ratio futures investment has a nickname."
A bomb. Because either your mind blows up or your fortune does.
"Since Your Highness' first investment, the grain market has stabilized considerably despite the continuing rumors of war. A member of the Divine Race, a prince no less, openly bought up rice spot securities, you see."
No matter how much he was called trash, a prince was a prince. That a prince had invested meant he knew certain information!
With that psychology, the market's follow-up investment was bet in the direction of stable rice prices.
"Reijo must have felt keenly just how enormous the formless power Your Highness holds is."
Zion quietly thought to himself.
'Winter, I felt it keenly too. To think a single individual's investment could bring about change in a market. To think the status of a prince was worth this much.'
Trash though he was, a prince was a prince. In the course of it all, Reijo would have caught a thick scent of money.
At that point Winter had subtly let slip a certain strategy.
"As expected, the moment he realized market manipulation was possible, his eyes turned."
He must have thought it was a game of putting money down to eat money.
So he would have scraped together every fund he had and did not have and gone through with a short-term futures investment.
"I do not know the principle, but you said the profit is five times the rise in rice prices?"
"And the loss is five times when the price falls. It does not matter if it lasts only a very short while, we only need to induce a plunge of 20 percent or more."
That alone would strip Reijo of his entire fortune and ruin him.
To borrow Winter's expression, a default while in the black? The magic of cash liquidity? At any rate, he had apparently designed some such trap.
"So the casting of the net is truly important, Your Highness."
DING-DONG.
They got off the elevator and walked down the corridor.
Who would cast the net that would capture the two fish?
It was the final condition and the weak point of the scheme Winter had devised.
"You have not forgotten who I am, have you? A prince, a prince. Anything can be solved with a single word."
In truth he had solved it not as Zion Riobelt but as Zion Bliese.
The act of terror the Liberation Army would carry out was the very net Zion had cast.
"I say this just in case, but you may command me at any time, freely."
"That will not happen."
"I say it because I am worried. Please do not forget that Your Highness' entire fortune is invested under a borrowed name in the position opposite Proprietor Reijo's."
In other words, if things went wrong, their side too could have its entire fortune liquidated.
Being anxious, Winter had prepared a net of his own, separate from Zion's.
From Zion's standpoint it was a more violent, more wicked measure...... one he could never permit.
"Winter Flowering."
At the call of his full name, Winter tensed slightly.
"Yes, Your Highness."
From what Zion had observed in their short time together, Winter was of a temperament that would achieve his ends by any means necessary.
Enough that he had drawn up a plan to incite a violent uprising in order to make grain prices plunge, regardless of how many people were caught up in it.
Winter was perhaps thinking inwardly that serving the worst trash in the Empire was quite comfortable.
'He probably thinks I will accept any radical means without hesitation.'
But Zion Bliese was different from Zion Riobelt.
If he asked the Liberation Army, an act of terror could be done with a single click while spilling only Imperial blood, so was there any need to shed pointless blood?
'Simple is best. And the shock and aftermath are far greater when the Liberation Army steps forward.'
"Do not worry, Winter. A fortune is waiting for us."
Only then did Winter smile faintly. Watching him, Zion recalled the time not long ago when he had dug up additional gold bars and dumped them out right in front of his nose.
He was a fellow who normally kept a razor-sharp poker face, but he was honest only when money was in front of him.
It was probably because of the environment he had grown up in. Marquis Remiconin's influence would have played a part as well.
He stroked the ring on his finger.
'He is not a good man. But he is not so untrustworthy either. Nor is he someone I cannot keep at my side.'
He had yet to find the reason the ring had responded to Winter, unlike the farm.
So even if there were parts where they did not mesh, he intended to watch a while longer.
Apart from the ring and his usefulness, he had also grown curious about the Deberian man Winter Flowering himself.
'Once Reijo and Dechion are dealt with, I will have to dig deeper into Winter.'
***
"A pleasure, Director Dechion. I am Reijo."
"The pleasure is mine as well. I shall call you Proprietor Reijo."
The two shook hands and took their seats.
After a couple of claps, lovely women filled the space beside them.
But instead of the women's faces, Dechion admired the splendid building outside the window and emptied his glass.
It was a building holding his great ambition, one he was building by devoting everything he had.
"I invited you here, Proprietor Reijo, because I wish to speak about the Ninth Prince."
Reijo drew his brows together. There was something he sensed in the manner of speech that omitted honorifics.
"I hear you are doing quite well thanks to the prince? How long do you think the effect will last?"
"Ahem."
Dechion's words struck a sore spot. The market being stabilized by the prince's investment could last a day or two, but it could not go on forever.
"That is why I must earn big now, while the effect is good. Hahaha."
It was the reason Reijo had mobilized all his spare funds for a high-risk investment.
"And once the effect wears off? Given the Ninth Prince's temperament, there is no way he will sit still if the sponsorship funds decrease."
"Ahem......."
"I have a good idea, Proprietor Reijo."
Dechion leaned forward.
"Look out the window. I have named it the Heavenly Garden, how is it? Do you think it suits?"
"At a glance it looks as though enough money to create a dozen or so decent businesses went into it. It seems it would be hard to pass the break-even point with any ordinary line of business...... surely it is not Director Dechion's?"
Dechion snorted and tossed out a single remark.
"It will be a place where one can enjoy heavenly pleasures."
Reijo, a seasoned businessman, immediately grasped his true meaning.
"There must be someone who will permit pleasures that are not permitted."
"You have hit it exactly."
When he first resolved to sell his country, Dechion was fifteen years old.
Fifty years after the nation's fall, Dechion had become an old man of sixty-five.
"A brothel where everything is permitted. How is it? Do you still think it will be hard to pass the break-even point?"
"You have a way to avoid the Police Bureau's investigation, I take it?"
"That is precisely why this old man is taking on debt, selling off everything but the body he stands in."
He had invested in a single brothel the enormous sum that could only be gathered by selling a dozen or so businesses.
Because he was certain that the profits derived from the powerful figures who would gather there would be at least dozens of times that, or more.
There had also been the permission and encouragement of the personage he served.
"In return for raising me to partner, would attending upon His Highness and providing enthralling hospitality not be the duty of a subordinate? And then, once the prince is drunk on liquor and women and other things......"
Dechion had as many enemies as he had vast greed.
What if the daughter of a businessman he was on bad terms with, or of a political enemy, happened to run into the utterly drunken prince?
"From my standpoint it seems doubly delightful things would happen! Would you not like to become doubly delighted as well, Proprietor Reijo?"
"Your true intent in making such an offer to me is......."
"To be slapped by a child and still have to kneel and perform the salutation every time we meet, the mere thought is dreadful. I have no intention of facing the prince, so I would like to entrust the process to you."
For Reijo it was a very tempting offer.
Because a great profit would come back for only a little trouble.
"The Ninth Prince, while under sentence of exile, committed a crime difficult to describe in words. If word reaches the capital, it would be news that stirs up another great uproar. I understand Director Dechion has ties with someone in the First Prince's faction."
If the disgrace of the Ninth Prince, who could be considered part of the Third Prince's faction, were delivered to the First Prince's side?
The First Prince, having obtained a weapon with which to attack a political rival, would rejoice and hand down a reward.
It was, truly, eating the pheasant and then its eggs as well.
"Now then, let us toast. To our future, as dazzling as the Heavenly Garden."
"Hahaha, wonderful!"
It was as the two raised their glasses high.
KABOOOOOOOOM!!!!
Flames writhing like a devil's tongue.
A mushroom cloud filling the empty space where the Heavenly Garden had been before they knew it.
"......."
"......."
Reijo admired, with vacant eyes, a sight he would never see again in his life.
It was an exceedingly beautiful explosion.
***
KABOOOOOM! KABOOOOOM! BOOM, KABOOOM!
Zion whistled as he admired the splendid fireworks.
"Whew, Leianna's skill is as good as ever."
Leianna was a master of terror who could grandly blow up only the targeted building without a single casualty.
It was no exaggeration to say she had been responsible for more than half of the bombings the Liberation Army had committed.
"Winter."
"......Yes."
For some reason Winter looked appalled.
"To think you had even prepared a bombing......."
He had not gone so far as to prepare it.
'And besides, that is not something to be said by a bastard who suggested scattering money to incite a large-scale riot, is it?'
That was when it happened.
Far off, an old pig came running at breakneck speed. Beside him was a middle-aged pig as well.
"Dechion! To meet you in a place like this!"
"......."
He gave no salutation, not even a reply. He did not even stop running.
It meant his eyes had properly rolled back.
Well, the building he had invested his entire fortune in, one that had even been on the verge of completion, had collapsed.
Going mad was no crime, then.
'That is the case when you have committed no crimes, though.'
Reijo, following behind him, had likewise lost his reason.
When the times grew unstable due to things like terror, grain prices fell because of the Empire's market intervention.
In other words, Reijo's investment funds were melting away in real time.
"Y-Your Highness!"
Reijo, spotting Zion, wore the expression of a man who had seen a lifeline lowered from heaven.
"Your Highness! To think you were here of all places! Y-you must come to the exchange with me. At once, hurry!"
"I would rather not."
"......What did you say?"
"Winter. Go and catch him."
"Yes."
Winter ran over swiftly and knocked Dechion down.
Even with his eyes rolled back, it was not easy for an old man to beat a young one.
Zion, throwing his arm half by force around Reijo's shoulders, walked toward Dechion.
"Dechion. Reijo. My dear partners."
He took out the partnership contract.
"There is still time left on the deadline, but... your most important assets seem to have melted like cotton candy as of this moment. I feel needlessly uneasy?"
Zion Bliese smiled coldly.
Zion Riobelt's mouth twisted savagely.
"You both know there is a clause like this in the contract."
The clause stating that the investment funds must be deposited into Blen Industries' account by the designated date.
Not even one minute of delay was permitted, but moving the deadline forward was always possible.
It was even a poison-pill clause under which, if one of the investors deposited first, the deposit deadline was shortened to the following day.
"It was a clause you created, Dechion, and that you agreed to insert, Reijo. I understand. You must have been worried that this prince would put off the deposit day after day."
"That clause was not us...... Winter Flowering, you bastard......!"
What was that expression? He looked like a man who had been betrayed.
No wonder Winter had succeeded in slipping in the clauses he wanted so casually.
'It seems he was putting on an act of conspiring to stab me in the back.'
Well, even if Winter designed and induced it, in the end is it not the fault of the one who fell for it?
Now it was time to tear the flesh from the two fish caught in the net.
"Starting tomorrow, I bestow upon you the honor of becoming this prince's official partners in earnest. Refusal is refused."