Chapter 17
THE CARRIAGE WITH MIRA and the others aboard arrived safely at the security office’s headquarters shortly after.
The traffickers’ ringleader was taken to the interrogation room. Meanwhile, Kagura, Tyriel, the security chief, and the guild branch chiefs disembarked. Mira tried to get out as well, but she faced a serious problem.
“Come on, Eizenfald. Time to go.”
“Can’t we do this a little longer?”
Mira had been sitting in Eizenfald’s lap—or rather, she’d been forced to sit there.
That was Kagura’s brilliant plan, her means of fitting seven people into a six-seat carriage. All they’d needed to do was sit tiny Mira on Eizenfald. Mira complained at first, but she’d been overruled, given the need to leave at once. As for Eizenfald, he was in pampered-baby mode, ecstatic to be so close to his mother.
“Don’t act spoiled, please. We still need to save more children.”
“Yes, Mother… I understand.”
Recognizing the importance of that, Eizenfald gave up and let Mira out of the carriage. Still, his face betrayed sadness and loneliness.
“Good grief. Don’t be so sad. I’ll happily spend time with you another day. Anything for my adorable son.” Mira stood up, turned around, and put a hand on Eizenfald’s head.
Incredibly, that was all it took to light his face up with a sunny smile again. “You mean it, Mother?! You promise?!” He seemed ready to jump for joy.
“Yes, I promise,” Mira replied firmly.
Watching in frustration, Kagura tried to hustle the loving parent and child along. The others present seemed much more confused by the interaction.
“Did he say…‘Mother’…?”
“A-and she said ‘son’…”
“What in the world is their relationship?”
The three wondered aloud. They refrained from asking, though, seemingly too scared of what the truth might be.
***
Without further delay, the group finally entered the interrogation room. Near the front of the room, the ringleader sat in a chair with restraints as a doctor and priest treated him.
While the pair checked the condition of his skull, working to restore his consciousness, they discussed his condition, gasping over the man’s horrific state.
“How in the world does someone end up like this?”
“The fact that he isn’t on death’s door… I don’t know whether he’s just lucky, or if he’s got a cockroach’s ability to survive.”
The security and guild chiefs admired the use of force on the ringleader. He’d been subdued in a way that made resisting capture impossible but kept him in good enough shape to restrain and interrogate. At this rate, when he woke up, they could grill him quite effectively without resistance. That brought terrifying smiles to their faces. This was the leader of a child trafficking ring, and their joy no doubt stemmed from a hatred of that sort of scum.
Mira herself was taken aback by the ringleader’s state. I can’t believe he ended up like this…
Eizenfald had just brushed his hand lightly in the man’s direction. Granted, that had smashed the ringleader through a wall, but that was all Eizenfald had done. In light of that, the man’s injuries were worse than she expected. His shattered armor had stabbed his skin here and there, and many bones were broken. He’d incurred heavy injuries, but most shockingly of all, none were life-threatening.
Still, I’m not sure how much I can coax Eizenfald to hold back…
Teaching the dragon restraint would certainly be a difficult trial. That was clear from the state of his most recentopponent.
Eizenfald, meanwhile, was fascinated by human tools. He stood in front of the interrogation implements, wondering excitedly how they were used. Combined with the added knowledge of his inability to restrain himself, his excitement made for a terrifying sight.
Meanwhile, Kagura continued to hold and stroke First Pupil while she worked.
***
“Shall we start?”
Once preparations were finally complete, the interrogation began.
Having regained consciousness, the ringleader quickly understood the situation he was in. Seeing the security and guild chiefs, he maintained absolute silence, but it was a wasted effort.
Mira smirked at Kagura. “I suppose it’s your turn, then.”
“Oh, fine,” she responded.
She approached the ringleader confidently, and rather than having the security chief use his various interrogation implements and techniques, she simply cast confession magic to drag information out of the man.
“My word. I never imagined such magic…” The security chief’s eyes widened. In this moment, he was witnessing a technique that made all his skills and experience seem obsolete.
The two guild chiefs were shocked as well; the Mages’ Guild chief looked particularly stunned.
By that means, Kagura extracted answers to every question they had. Through the interrogation, they learned who the trafficking ring had been involved with and where documents on their dealings were hidden. That revealed the other kidnapped children’s whereabouts. However, the kids had been sent all over the place, and it would be difficult to track them all down and regain custody of them. In some cases, they might need to use force.
That was exactly why they’d brought in the two guild chiefs, however.
“I happen to have close friends among the adventurers there,” one said. “Leave it to them. They’ll rescue those children in no time.”
“One of my junior officers handles that area,” the other explained. “I’ll pass this on to him.”
As one would expect of people managing guilds in this great hub of trade, the branch chiefs were extremely capable. These two could handle saving the trafficked children since they could deploy numerous adventurers precisely to handle the task. Arrangements for tracking and reclaiming the children were made in no time.
After that, the group gained yet more information from the ringleader. His organization wasn’t just involved in human trafficking; they planned to dabble in other organized crime too.
That meant the ringleader ended up revealing the names of many shady characters running rampant in Ligret. The security chief was overjoyed, of course. A wicked grin crossed his face as he imagined cornering the criminals.
Mira took the opportunity to ask about Fuzzy Dice—whether the ringleader saw him when he came to the Creek Company, how he moved, and how strong he was.
Unfortunately, the answers weren’t clear. The ringleader had been keeping watch that day, but Fuzzy Dice’s visit had already ended before he noticed it. The others present had essentially the same experience. Apparently, Fuzzy Dice had knocked them out.
He’ll be no match for Eizenfald, but he is strong. To be able to put this guy to sleep so easily…
It seemed the phantom thief was quite powerful in his own right.
Security had already arrested the warehouse man who’d groped Mira and incurred her wrath. According to the guard in charge of him, he’d been writhing on the warehouse floor when they arrived. He testified that a terrible, unworldly stench wouldn’t leave his nostrils.
That was due to the stink magic Woofson had cast on Mira’s orders. Of course, they were the only two who knew that.
***
Once the general interrogation was over, everyone gathered in the chief’s office. They began discussing another matter, for the interrogation had yielded one more piece of interesting information. It pertained to where the kidnappers planned to sell the kids in the basement of their mansion.
As the conversation began, the security chief and the Warriors’ Guild branch chief spoke up in apparent understanding.
“To think we’d see Baron Ardoloris’s name here, of all places.”
“So he was guilty after all.”
“That disgusting, lecherous rat,” the Mages’ Guild branch chief added. Her ladylike demeanor had evaporated.
Based on the reactions of those three, this baron seemed problematic at best.
“You three know of him, I see,” Mira remarked. “Could you tell me about this baron?”
“Me too, please,” Kagura added.
When they asked what sort of man he was, the three locals looked hesitant.
“Hmm… I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” the security chief said, glancing at Tyriel. From how he and the others were acting, this was bound to be something they didn’t want a little girl to hear.
“Hrmm. That gives me a clue, I think,” Mira said. “Still, please share. We can take the ugly details.”
“Yeah, we can handle it,” Kagura added. “We need to know, especially if this baron is evil.”
“I’m ready too.”
Despite their appearances, Mira, Kagura, and Tyriel weren’t actually little girls. The three had already read between the lines, and they urged the chiefs to speak without reserve.
“All right. Let me explain, then,” the Mages’ Guild branch chief answered. No doubt she thought this would be easier for them to hear from a woman’s mouth. “This has been a rumor for a while now…” she prefaced, before sharing all the dark hearsay around Baron Ardoloris.
***
When she finished, the three listeners had one thing to say.
“Perv.”
“He’s definitely a pervert.”
“Pervert. For sure.”
Baron Ardoloris was, without a doubt, seriously perverted.
Eizenfald alone couldn’t really follow the branch chief’s explanation. He’d lived a sheltered life regarding these matters. Regardless, the rumors about the baron were as follows.
He’d proposed marriage to girls under ten years old dozens of times. After being rebuffed on a number of occasions, he tried to secretly arrange to skip past the whole “acceptance of proposal” part, but he fortunately failed.
There’d been instances of him giving candy to children—only little girls, of course. He’d urge them to eat it right there on the spot. He was found out when a little boy went crying to his parents about not getting any. His parents came running, took his sister home, and resolved the situation without incident. When the candy was examined, the shocking truth became clear: It was laced with an aphrodisiac.
Baron Ardoloris was also known to force people to offer their daughters as payment for debts, even fabricating debts to that end.
What would’ve happened if these kidnapped children were sent to the baron? It was a good thing they’d stopped this episode before it got out of hand. They heaved a collective sigh of relief.
After their initial discussion about the baron, the security chief excused himself for a moment, then returned. He placed a sheaf of documents on the table.
“I got a little curious,” he said.
He began leafing through the documents, which they’d picked up in the base they’d seized. What were they?
“Get this,” the chief explained. “It’s a list of Creek Company customers!”
Former employees of the Creek Company and similar enterprises had formed a new human-trafficking ring, and their home base had contained a ledger listing the Creek Company’s clients. Someone must’ve brought it there. As far as the investigators could tell, the traffickers used this list to identify and contact possible customers, successfully identifying people to sell children to.
“I think I see the name you mentioned.” The security chief pointed at a list naming Baron Ardoloris. According to the ledger, he’d dealt with the Creek Company twice in the past. Both entries listed his purchase as “luxury goods,” but given the circumstances, those goods were likely humans.
The chief presented another document. This one was the real problem. It was a recent contract. The baron’s name wasn’t written on it, but it was easy to identify his role from the ringleader’s testimony and circumstantial information written on the contract.
“Cute girls under the age of ten,” the document stipulated. “If I like them, I’ll pay extra.” It even bore the names of three of the four girls they’d found in the basement. They clearly hadn’t just been chosen at random.
“I worry for those children.” Mira shuddered.
They’d prevented anything worse from befalling the kids…this time. There could always be a next time, though. Worse, it now seemed likely that the baron had purchased girls before. If so, they had to worry about those kids as well.
“Yeah. We need to resolve this fast,” Kagura agreed, naturally, and asked the chief how long he thought it would take.
At this point, the security office and Adventurers’ Guild Union would work together based on the information they’d gained thus far. They’d surely get to Baron Ardoloris soon enough. However, the thought of the girls he’d targeted—and those he’d purchased already—made it clear that they had to act sooner rather than later. To stop the children from being victimized, they needed to drag Ardoloris before the law. Their main concern was how long that would take.
The security chief’s face clouded, and the two guild branch chiefs simultaneously furrowed their brows as they grumbled among themselves.
“We’d prefer to address this as soon as possible, but there’s some trouble,” the security chief explained. According to him, Baron Ardoloris was a high-ranking military official and was technically in charge of the security office. That made open action against him difficult. “Our positions could be on the chopping block at his discretion, you see. Even with this virtually certain evidence, we can’t go any further. We’d only seal our own fates by trying to do justice. My people have people they must protect too.”
Ardoloris was definitely guilty, but they lacked the smoking-gun evidence to prove it. On top of that, he could monitor all the security office’s moves. If they forced an investigation based purely on suspicion, he’d squash any evidence and fire everyone who’d acted against him.
Having revealed these circumstances, the chief let out a solemn sigh and hung his head.
The guild branch chiefs added on to this, telling the story of a past incident with the baron. They said a number of security office members had been fired simultaneously one year earlier. At the time, the security chief and some coworkers were attempting to investigate the baron secretly.
The baron found out about their efforts, and as a result, dozens of guards lost their jobs. The chief only kept his because someone had covered for him, pretending to have spearheaded the investigation.
“Things would’ve ended differently if they’d only had more concrete evidence,” the Mages’ Guild branch chief muttered at the end. They now needed not suspicion but real evidence that the baron had bought a little girl from human traffickers. If they just had that, even a big-shot military man like Ardoloris couldn’t escape the law.
But the client list here didn’t have precise details on the baron’s transactions, leaving plausible deniability. Even the recent contract wasn’t signed by the baron, so it had little value as evidence.
“The current case was resolved before the kids were sold, anyway, so it’d be difficult to tie to him,” the Warriors’ Guild branch chief noted. Crossing his arms thoughtfully, he added that it might be different if they’d apprehended the baron after the deal.
“From what I’ve heard, it doesn’t sound like he’s about to give up,” Kagura remarked. Since the baron was a die-hard pervert, she warned, he’d try this again—and the girls he’d requested specifically would be in danger.
The situation made his obvious guilt clear, but the lack of conclusive evidence meant that they couldn’t punish him yet.
A moment of silence ruled. What could they do?
After a while, the Warriors’ Guild branch chief casually—yet pointedly—suggested, “If we could just get evidence of a deal, we might be able to wrap this up.” He said it as if talking to himself, yet he clearly wanted the others to hear. He glanced at Mira.
Kagura caught on to his insinuation. “You mean…finish the deal instead of leaving it incomplete?” If there was no evidence now, they could make evidence. They even had the deal’s details in hand already. Glancing at Mira, she decided the plan was workable.
“Ooh—I just realized something,” the security chief added. “We can’t move against the baron openly, but it’d be fine for us to patrol the area for security’s sake. And if a victim ran out of the mansion just as we passed…”
In the middle of patrolling near Baron Ardoloris’s mansion, they’d stumble upon an abducted girl and take her into protective custody. If that incident was backed up by statements from any number of concerned citizens, even the baron couldn’t squirm out of prosecution.
It seemed like the perfect plan. The security chief lifted his head, looking at Mira in anticipation.
You little… She chuckled, chagrined at how openly they’d backed her into a corner.
They basically wanted to continue the infiltration operation from earlier, posing as human traffickers and completing a deal with Ardoloris to create irrefutable evidence. They’d have a “victim” escape his mansion and be taken into nearby guards’ protection, all in public, making the baron’s actions impossible to sweep under the rug.
But to do so, they required a girl who had the looks and the strength to carry out the plan. Three pairs of expectant eyes gathered on Mira.
“Oh, I know! We just need to finish the deal ourselves!” Tyriel finally realized what they were suggesting…or, rather, genuinely believed she’d hit upon a stroke of genius. Then she even volunteered to play the faux victim.
The angel burned with a sense of justice; Kagura, on the other hand, was flustered by her repeated volunteering. So was Mira. The “victim” would be going into the belly of the beast, so to speak. They couldn’t possibly send Tyriel and subject her to whatever the baron’s wicked whims were.
“No, no,” Mira said. “I’ll go. Will that do?”
Just as the others had anticipated, Mira desperately volunteered in order to save her friend. She’d done this once; she’d just have to do it again.
This time, she begged for a cushion for her box.
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