༺ City of Adventurers (4) ༻
“What, what is this madness! Can’t you put that down immediately!”
“Ignore it.”
Schultz continued to read the ledger as I instructed.
Each time he read the densely filled documents, Schultz’s eyes narrowed and his lips sealed tightly.
“Profit…! What the hell is everyone doing! Why don’t you stop it!”
“But, but….”
The clerks in the office showed a bewildered expression.
Well, they had every reason to. After all, five guards who had hurriedly rushed over upon hearing the mayor’s summons were now sprawled out in the corner of the office.
Of course, they were taken care of with care. It was only a light concussion, so they would naturally wake up in an hour or two.
After quickly reading through the ledger for about 30 minutes, Schultz closed the ledger and spoke.
“Sir. I’ve read through all of this year’s financial data.”
“How did it look to you?”
“Clearly, there are a few inconsistencies in the ledger that catch the eye. Despite their efforts to hide it, there are abnormal figures appearing here and there. They’ve collected a surprisingly large amount of tax, but the amount differs significantly from the tax sent from Shubaltsheim, to my knowledge. Hmm… this doesn’t seem to be the whole story.”
There must be a ledger somewhere that records the real figures.
Mayor Roman spoke with a confident tone.
“It’s just a common accounting error when recording ledgers! You can’t get me with just that! I don’t know what you’re looking for here, but I absolutely won’t tell you!”
Aside from that arrogant expression, it was clear that this alone was insufficient to track his crimes.
But it didn’t matter. I knew from the start that it would be like this. No matter how stupid the mayor might be, he would definitely hide the most important thing where only he could see it.
I lightly kicked the floor. It seemed like just a casual step, but it was a precisely controlled movement to spread the sound widely.
Thump-
The sound spread out in a circle around me. And I felt a discordance as the wave of sound passed through the walls and the floor.
“Over here.”
“What, what…? Wait, no! Not there!”
Fortunately, the source of the discordance was very close. It came right from within the office.
I picked up the luxurious wooden desk all at once and threw it to an appropriate corner. As I slightly lifted the monster fur carpet spread on the floor, the safe underneath glaringly revealed itself.
“Where’s the key?”
“There, there’s no such thing!”
“Hmm….”
In truth, I hadn’t really expected a response when I asked.
Judging by his expression, it didn’t seem like he had the key on him right then. And I couldn’t waste time looking for a key whose whereabouts were uncertain. Unlike the hidden safe, a key would be difficult to locate using the same method as before.
But that wasn’t a problem.
I firmly grabbed the handle of the safe and applied force.
Creak- Snap!
The safe, which seemed to resist for a moment, eventually couldn’t withstand my strength and shattered disappointingly. I wouldn’t usually describe breaking a door as ‘opening’ it, but such minor details were not important.
The mayor’s voice echoed in dismay.
“No, what… It was a safe made of the highest grade black steel, capable of blocking even a sword strike…”
After casually tossing aside the door that had crumpled in my grip, I checked the contents of the safe.
Inside the safe was a pile of documents presumed to be the real ledgers, ten platinum ingots, and a thin scroll that emitted a magical aura.
I tossed the ledgers to Schultz and examined the scroll. I wasn’t an expert on magic, but the pattern drawn on the scroll was familiar to me.
If my memory serves me right, this was a teleportation scroll.
So he had a way to escape at the very least, saving his own skin.
When the ledgers went into Schultz’s hands, Mayor Roman’s face turned to one of horror.
“No, no! Not that!”
As the mayor fluttered his hands as if to rush towards Schultz, I shot a weak force at him. At that moment, the mayor gasped, his complexion turned pale, his knees lost strength, and he collapsed to the floor.
Then, perhaps sensing the noisy commotion, someone entered the office.
It was Elizabeth.
“What’s going on?”
Elizabeth looked surprised at the messy office and at Schultz and me in it. However, the quick-witted lady seemed to grasp the situation promptly and turned her gaze towards Mayor Roman.
As Mayor Roman made eye contact with Elizabeth, he awkwardly tried to get up on his weakened legs, eventually stumbling towards her. Looking desperate at her feet, he cried out.
“Your, Your Highness! Please stop them! I’ve been loyally serving the royal family with all my heart until now, this treatment is absurd!”
“Hmm….”
Elizabeth sidestepped Mayor Roman without a second glance. Then she approached Schultz and asked,
“What did you find out?”
“I’m still reading, but… I’ve roughly got it.”
Schultz spoke without taking his eyes off the ledgers.
“It looks like there was never any money allocated for the adventurers from the start. The city’s treasury is already completely empty. They’ve always taken more taxes than necessary, and most of it seems to have been transferred not to the administration but somewhere else. W? It seems to be this person.”
“W… W… I see.”
Elizabeth seemed to realize something after pondering over the initial several times. Then, she looked at the mayor and spoke with the same well-crafted smile she had on their first meeting.
“It seems that the royal family that Mayor Roman claimed to serve is a bit different from the one I know.”
“That, that’s…”
“Anyway, your personal use of the city’s assets is a clear and serious crime. The city’s assets are the city’s strength. And the city’s strength is, in the end, the empire’s strength. You have weakened the empire’s borders in this way, so this might be considered a treasonous offense.”
At her words, Mayor Roman’s face turned into a thoughtful expression.
“T-t-treason…!? Treason, you say! That’s preposterous! Please spare me, Your Highness the Third Princess!”
I lightly struck the back of the neck of Mayor Roman, who was pleading noisily. Now that his guilt was apparent, there was nothing to hide.
“Ugh!”
Having quickly fainted, I left Mayor Roman behind and turned my gaze to Elizabeth.
She cautiously asked,
“What will you do now?”
Of course, what needed to be done had already been determined.
“I have to meet the adventurers.”
***
There was no longer a mayor in Shubaltsheim. However, it was not difficult to summon the adventurers.
“A royal decree, what is this all of a sudden…”
“So the rumors of a royal visit to this city were true?”
Using the seal ring bearing the mark of the Third Princess, Elizabeth sent letters to each adventurer guild, and soon three adventurers appeared at City Hall, leading their guild members.
They were the guild leaders of the three major adventurer guilds in Shubaltsheim.
All of them were S-rank adventurers who had reached the master class.
Once I confirmed that they had all gathered in the reception room, I entered with Elizabeth.
The three guild leaders gaped in astonishment at Elizabeth’s white hair and crimson eyes. Among them, a man in armor kneeled and paid respect to Elizabeth.
“I greet Your Highness, the Third Princess.”
Seeing this, the other two guild leaders, a dwarf, and a plains tribe adventurer, awkwardly rose from their seats and bowed their heads.
Elizabeth gently nodded her head and spoke.
“Please rise. And the two of you, there’s no need to be so formal as you are not citizens of the empire.”
“If the princess says so… Ahem.”
“Then I’ll do that. These formalities are quite awkward. So, why have you called us?”
I sent a signal to Elizabeth. She nodded her head and immediately gave me the floor.
Perhaps they assumed the princess would speak, they looked at me in surprise as I stepped forward to speak in her place.
The dwarf warrior gruffly opened his mouth.
“Who’re you?”
Instead of answering, I dropped the bundle I was holding onto the desk with a thud. Inside were ten platinum ingots. And the mayor’s seal ring.
The three adventurers were not particularly surprised by the platinum ingots, but they were startled by the mayor’s ring.
“As you can see, Mayor Roman is no longer.”
“Hmm… seems so. So?”
“So, I would like to place a request. The content of the request is, of course, to protect this city from the undead.”
The dwarf warrior spoke with a gruff expression.
“Look here. I don’t know who you are, but do you think you can just show up now, offer this pittance, and expect us to fight? Nothing has ended yet!”
“What’s the problem?”
“What’s the problem? Ha! That damn mayor treated us adventurers like dogs! If he told us to bark, we barked. If he told us to bite, we bit! We put up with it because it was a miserable situation, but now he’s gone and you want us to fight for free because the city is in a bit of danger? Who do you take us for, suckers?”
The dwarf slammed his axe into the ground and shouted.
“Our pride as adventurers has been insulted, that’s what! Now the mayor is gone, and we’re expected to take this money and obediently fight again? Are you also treating us like idiots? Ah!?”
“Pride… Hmm, pride.”
“Yes, pride! We have our pride!”
I said with a neutral expression.
“Does a mere tomb raider have pride?”
The reason why Shubaltsheim is called a city of adventurers.
It’s because it is the city closest to the Kingdom of Ionia. Because the kingdom fell so swiftly, most of its assets were well-preserved, and this city prospered greatly from the goods that the adventurers brought back as they traversed the undead-filled kingdom land.
So, the word ‘tomb raider’ was not entirely inaccurate.
However, the dwarf warrior seemed genuinely insulted.
“What? This, this guy-!”
I released a powerful killing intent.
The air in the room grew colder, and the dwarf who was about to raise his voice shut his mouth tightly. The other two adventurers were the same.
Elizabeth was behind me, so she was not affected by the killing intent, but for some reason, her complexion paled a bit. She seemed to be recalling the previous killing intent she had experienced.
I quickly retracted my killing intent. Then, the dwarf warrior muttered in shock.
“You, what are you…? You’ve subdued all three of us with just your aura? Just how high is your level…?”
Such domination was necessary.
Adventurers, in general, have lived through tough times, so they tend to be stubborn and have strong pride. They have a tendency to dismiss what someone weaker than them says, regardless of what it is. I heard it from a former colleague.
I opened my mouth in a calm tone.
“If you truly have pride, then fight now for the people of this place.”
The reception room fell silent.
The first to speak was the male adventurer in armor.
“I’ll do it.”
“What? Hey, this guy…! You have no reason-“
“Haven’t we decided to fight together if the city is truly in danger? It was a situation where we should have stepped forward. He solved it on our behalf. We have to repay this debt.”
“No, damn it, that’s…”
They seemed to have realized from the start that I was the one who had fought the undead.
The plains warrior also picked up three platinum ingots and said,
“There are about 3,000 under me. If it’s a gold coin per head, that should be enough for an advance payment.”
A single platinum ingot is worth 1,000 gold coins. Of course, naturally, a single gold coin was far from enough as an advance payment for an S-rank adventurer.
With his face all scrunched up, the dwarf warrior let out a deep sigh and spoke.
“Damn, if it goes like this, I’ll be the only fool… We all agreed to keep our pride intact even when accepting the task….”
With this, all three major adventurer guilds have promised to join the fight.
Once again, when the city is attacked, they should be able to hold out a bit even without me. That meant that the students were a bit safer now.
“Phew….”
Finally, the environment was set for me to move around freely.
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