Chapter 56: Try Finding Loki

"Not since the investiture ceremony, I believe?"

Following Mort, Adelbert was waiting in the alley. A secret meeting in an unexpected place—because I was currently at war with the Finance Department. From Adelbert’s position as Finance Inspector General, meeting me openly would be awkward in any number of ways. Hence the secrecy.

"Right now, the Military and Finance Departments are at each other’s throats."

"I know. Thanks to your efforts, the corruption is being dragged further into the light."

"So why did you come looking for me?"

Adelbert smirked and leaned his back against the wall.

"You’re doing well. Thanks to you, Father is getting increasingly cornered."

"Are you the insider in the Finance Department, Inspector General?"

Adelbert didn’t answer my question. But that was answer enough. He was the Finance Department insider who had passed information to the Judicial Department. Had the second-in-command deliberately leaked internal information to topple the first?

"The organization called Rafel operates under aliases from the executive level up. You won’t learn anything by catching foot soldiers. But if it’s you, you should be able to track down even the smallest lead, right? Try finding Loki."

"Loki? You mean Thor’s brother from mythology?"

"Rafel’s upper echelon worships mythology over Catholicism. You can find him, can’t you?"

Even though it was an alias, if Loki was active under that name, I could naturally search for him with the scouter. But was Adelbert handing over high-grade intelligence like this simply to oust the Finance Minister? It was too dangerous a contact for just that. Regardless, I had no choice but to accept his information.

And my gaze turned to Mort.

He was the one who had tried to eliminate Rüdiger and me through scheming. If it were up to me, I’d want to retaliate on the spot, but could I afford to provoke men who trafficked in dangerous plots like these? Mort seemed to have lost interest in me, having already achieved his purpose.

"Who in Finance went after my subordinate?"

"You mean Ted Meyer? I carried out that scheme."

"...What did you say? And you’re here trying to make a deal with me?"

"Don’t be angry, Sir Streit. There’s a reason for everything."

The Finance Minister had already detected the insider’s existence and naturally suspected Adelbert first. So Adelbert explained that by taking a jab at me—the most threatening figure on the opposing side—he could deflect the Finance Minister’s suspicion, making it look as though he were running a scheme against me rather than leaking information. He attributed the ploy to Mort, but naturally I was far from pleased.

"You know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, right?"

"I’ll take Ted Meyer’s brother under my wing. The Meyer brothers will serve as our connection. Surely it’s burdensome for you to remain hostile to Finance indefinitely?"

Let’s find a compromise. Adelbert’s intention was clear.

Even through the scouter, he was telling the truth.

I was a member of the War Minister’s family, but should I fight Finance to the bitter end?

Finance was one of the duchy’s four departments and the institution managing state funds. If Adelbert—who already had a connection to me—rose to Finance Minister, not only would the hostile relationship between the Military and Finance Departments improve, but we could broker deals to mutual advantage. The political benefits were obvious.

I eventually accepted Adelbert’s proposal.

That was how my secret meeting with Adelbert ended.

I returned to Michael immediately.

"While you were gone, brother-in-law, I conducted interrogations, but as expected, not one person could clearly identify anyone at the executive level. They were definitely operating under aliases internally."

"Textbook damage control. They clearly know how to keep their leadership hidden."

The arrested Rafel members genuinely didn’t know much about the organization they belonged to. The rank and file had been receiving orders from middle management, not the executives, because Rafel had meticulously severed the connection between the bottom and the top. Just as Adelbert had said.

Simply mobilizing the army was enough to neutralize a slum organization.

Rafel was well aware of this, so they used aliases to prevent the leadership from being exposed—and that strategy had succeeded. The duchy troops led by Michael and me had arrested nothing but low-level lackeys and had zero information about the leadership. That was why Rafel had survived so long among the slum organizations.

Adelbert, however, knew about them in detail. He must have cultivated his own pipeline. So he fed me information and directed me to bite down even harder. If the Finance Minister got cornered as a result, Adelbert would exploit the situation to his advantage.

I was being used, but the Finance Minister’s downfall was in my interest too. How dare that man go after my soldier’s family. So there was reason to prioritize arresting the person operating under the alias Loki. The clue-tracking function, which could follow footprints, was currently my only viable tool.

"Brother-in-law, can you lend me soldiers?"

"Of course, but why the sudden request?"

"I want to examine the scene one more time."

I was able to secure fifty duchy soldiers from Michael. Combined with my retainers, I’d be commanding a force of fifty-three. The feeling of leading armed soldiers through the streets was genuinely exhilarating. Rafel’s territory was already sealed off, so not a soul was to be found.

I activated clue tracking through the Searcher Scouter. It didn’t take long to find footprints presumed to be Loki’s. This was why it was called the Streit family’s tracking technique. I found Loki’s trail in the area where the slums and the brothel district met.

I’d pinpointed the location of the man operating under the alias Loki.

The bastard was hiding in the brothel district, just on the edge of the slums.

Rafel’s main operation was handing over women they’d ensnared to the prostitution guild, and it turned out the two had been working hand in glove. Originally, the prostitution guild had been partnered with Schlange, but after Schlange murdered Deputy Inspector General Rüdiger, a suppression unit was deployed and Schlange collapsed.

I recalled that Schlange’s executives and leader had been executed on the plaza scaffold. After Schlange rapidly lost power and scattered, the prostitution guild joined forces with the expanding Rafel and hired Rafel’s men as watchmen. Rafel couldn’t interfere with the guild’s operations, however, because the government regulated it.

The prostitution guild paid enormous taxes, which kept it perpetually under the Finance Department’s eye. Hiring Rafel members as watchmen was meant to protect the merchandise—the prostitutes—from violent customers. So the prostitution guild probably didn’t have a deep relationship with Rafel proper. That said, Rafel could still plant people inside.

"Surround it!"

I had the soldiers encircle the prostitution guild’s headquarters. Naturally, the guild members were thrown into a panic by the sudden appearance of a duchy knight backed by duchy troops. The archer unit was already training their bows on the entrance, and shield-bearing forces had surrounded the entire building. It was far simpler than sealing off an entire street.

"I’m Münster, in charge of the Night Guild."

"Night Guild? Not the prostitution guild?"

"It’s the Night Guild, Sir Knight! Do you think we’d actually name it the ’prostitution guild’?"

Starting with the bureaucrats, most people called it the prostitution guild, so I’d assumed that was its real name until now. Come to think of it, I’d heard the brothel district had a separate official designation. Establishments whose primary business was prostitution had sprung up overnight, and the crude nickname eventually displaced the proper one.

But in practice, no one bothered with polite terminology for this lowest rung of society. So people called it the brothel district and the prostitution guild with open contempt. And that usage stuck as if it were the official name. As far as I knew, the Night Guild was a kind of subcontracting body that managed the brothel district on the government’s behalf.

The reason the government maintained the brothel district—even though the church condemned it and every manner of crime festered there—was that it generated enormous tax revenue. And the district fell under Finance’s sphere of influence, since Finance collected the taxes. In fact, most guilds operating on the public road were essentially inseparable from the Finance Department.

The influence of Finance, which directly collected taxes, naturally outstripped that of the other departments.

The exceptions were the mercenary guild, which was tied to the Military Department, and the construction guild under the Administrative Department. However, the construction guild occupied an ambiguous position because it also faced heavy pressure from Finance. So the other departments seized opportunities like this one to chip away at Finance’s influence.

And at the spearhead was always the Military Department, which snarled over budget disputes.

The hostility between the Military and Finance Departments was nothing new.

Whenever the Military Department drafted defense plans, Finance repeatedly blocked them on budgetary grounds. Each time, the Grand Duke would mediate some compromise, but my hot-tempered father-in-law despised Finance bureaucrats with a passion. He’d been seething for years, and this time he’d well and truly seized his chance.

The other ministers had also sided with the Military Department, so the duchy troops gained legitimate grounds to operate on the public road. They still had to foot all the operational costs, so from the Finance Minister’s standpoint, it was the most infuriating situation imaginable. To rein in the duchy troops, he’d need to rally the princes.

However, setting aside the expense, there was simply too little time to mount a response.

So the Finance Minister must have hurriedly hidden Rafel’s executive-level personnel who were connected to Finance’s inner workings—but he couldn’t silence the true insider. The reason Adelbert could meet with me in secret was that Finance’s leadership was too overwhelmed to respond effectively. The Military Department’s assault had been that ferocious.