Chapter 2 — 감찰국
Part 2, Chapter 37
Inspectorate
While Elric and Mephisto exchanged a few quiet words, Black’s interrogation began.
Questions rained down on him.
“Director Black of the Inspectorate. Is it true you planned the massacre in Huilan?”
“It is. What I did this time was solely the result of my irresponsible scramble to prove loyalty to the Fourth Prince, and the Golden Lion only granted my desperate request under duress.”
Contrary to expectations, the hearing proceeded smoothly.
Councilors asked, Black answered. He neither dodged nor denied his faults, and his easy admissions made it awkward to press him harder.
“Therefore, I will take responsibility for everything that has happened and step down as Director of the Inspectorate.”
At that addendum, Elric’s brows knit.
‘I didn’t think he’d play it like this.’
He’d expected at least one attempt to parry the questions they had prepared.
This way, the value of Chance—whom they’d worked so hard to bring in—plummeted.
Though the most important piece still remained.
Just then, Black glanced Elric’s way and smiled.
A quick, bright grin.
“…?”
Elric’s expression tightened. Something in it put a small nail of unease in his gut.
At that moment, Karl, Sean’s attendant, slipped into the hall.
Wearing a grave look, he leaned to Sean’s ear and whispered.
Whatever he said turned Sean’s face to stone.
Sean angled his head toward Elric and met his eyes dead-on. His lips shaped silent words.
-They just found Chance dead. Goddamn it.
“…!”
Elric’s fist clenched.
‘…So there was a gambit after all.’
He had thought it too convenient that the other side yielded so readily, as if they’d given up.
In the end, they’d made their move.
The question was how they’d gotten to Chance at all.
He’d been moved in secret, with every measure taken to avoid detection….
Had they planted eyes on the inside?
“In addition, I’d like permission to conduct a few verification steps with the accuser’s witness—Chance, Deputy Director of the 6th Bureau.”
As if reading Elric’s thoughts, Black met his gaze and let the corner of his mouth curl.
Pure derision.
As if to say, can you still call him in?
Those pitch-black pupils seemed to declare, I know exactly what you’re going through.
“…”
“What’s the matter? As I understand it, the next step is witness testimony. Is there some problem?”
Smiling, Black prodded Elric.
“I, too, have something I wish to ask him, so if you could indulge me, I would be gratef—”
Bang!
The tightly closed doors of the hall burst open. A guard, pale and gasping, staggered in and shouted:
“T-the accuser’s witness has… has died!”
At that single sentence, the hall erupted.
“Order! Order! Everyone, be silent!”
The Chair hammered the gavel hard and raised his voice.
Only then did the room settle, if barely; the confusion refused to lift.
The darker the mood grew, the deeper Black’s sneer became.
The Chair demanded, voice ringing:
“What do you mean? Explain, in detail! A witness, dead? Here, in this sacred Council? Are you telling me someone perpetrated such an atrocity?”
“T-that… is the message. There are signs he was killed by an outside intruder…”
“Ha! Unconscionable!”
The Chair’s face flushed crimson with rage.
The same was true of the other councilors on the dais.
The Council was the Empire’s chief governing assembly. While it was in session, even the Emperor could not lay a finger on it—this chamber was held as inviolable.
And a murder here?
It was a blatant affront to the nobility and a slap in the Empire’s face.
“Damn… I’d hoped to clear up a few misunderstandings between us, to repent of my mistakes. It seems I won’t be allowed.”
Black arranged his features into a show of regret.
Several councilors sensed he was involved, but none dared move rashly.
Until hard evidence appeared, they couldn’t back the Inspectorate into a corner.
‘And that evidence will never see the light of day.’
Such was precisely the Inspectorate’s talent.
Black turned a broad smile on Elric, who sat there staring.
‘Do you see it now, whelp? This is the Inspectorate’s reach. Your fledgling kind has no way to grapple with it. We are the Empire, and the Empire is us. That a ruined house, long overdue to vanish, should dare lift its head?’
With Chance dead—their key witness—Elric’s side could only lose ground.
Every eyewitness who could attest that the Inspectorate colluded with demonfolk had now vanished. Their lord, Cromhel, was scrubbed clean of suspicion.
Granted, this would force Black himself to shed his office completely.
But so what?
What mattered wasn’t a chair.
It was where power lay, and who wielded it.
Black had already arranged to present himself as retired from public life and to move the 1st Bureau from the shadows.
By the time Cromhel took the throne, a long time would have passed; few would even remember him.
Then, at the proper moment, he would step back in to claim the Director’s seat of Bureau Zero.
To rule the Empire from the shade. To become the king behind the curtain, the Empire’s shadow.
‘Heh-heh-heh.’
With Chance dead, there was nothing Elric could do.
No matter what he said, he lacked the proof to make it stick.
The Chair and several adjudicators were already coaxed to their side, thanks to weaknesses the Inspectorate had quietly turned up in advance.
With that, it was all over.
Black’s smile widened.
Time to seize the final momentum.
* * *
“…Another stack like this today?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Azure Lion, Herman, stared at the piled newspapers with an exasperated face.
Every last one had Elric on the front page or splashed across the headline.
In fact, there wasn’t a paper or magazine printed lately that wasn’t carrying some story tied to Elric.
As a result, the ducal castle in the Eastern territory—where Herman was currently staying—was in chaos it hadn’t asked for.
An absurd flood of papers and magazines arrived every day, and the attendants spent ages sorting them all.
Not that Herman was sparing it much thought.
In some ways, he was a pretty lousy boss.
On a hunch, he picked up the one at hand.
“The Mervinger–Inspectorate Hearing: Who Will Prevail?”
“Mervinger—What Drives Him? Justice, or Treason?”
“A Crown Prince with an Uncertain Future and Mervinger’s Cozy Ties!”
…
Some pieces did touch on Cromhel or the Golden Lion, but they always looped back to Elric in the end.
“Good grief…”
Herman lowered the paper with a click of his tongue.
It was his liege—and son-in-law—Elric, so he couldn’t not pay attention.
But the content was so samey he was starting to find it tedious.
“Times like these, having a famous son-in-law is a real burden.”
“Isn’t that just like Elric?”
When Herman let out a deep sigh, Isabel laughed beside him.
Then she startled and stroked her belly.
“Oh my! I think the baby already understands we’re talking about her dad.”
“Hah…!”
At his smiling daughter, Herman squeezed his eyes shut in frustration.
A wave of resentment for Elric rose up out of nowhere.
He’d turned his precious girl into this—and hadn’t even shown his face once since.
‘Come to think of it, those two haven’t been around either.’
The Red Lion and Nameless crossed his mind.
A few days ago, a letter had arrived for the pair. They glanced through it, then vanished somewhere without a word.
To his questions, they offered nothing but a faint smile.
‘Whatever it is, Elric definitely asked them for a favor.’
Otherwise, those two—who preferred to stay out of worldly affairs—had no reason to move.
The problem was the kind of weight the pair carried in the Empire.
Considering that not long ago, both had been branded “traitors”…!
A jitter ran up Herman’s spine as a bad feeling took hold.
‘Don’t tell me…’
He eyed the newspapers still stacked like a mountain.
‘…We’re not going to get even more of these, are we?’
He hoped his worry was needless.
* * *
Ssssk—
Someone ghosted over the roof of the Council Hall.
Avern, Deputy Director of the Inspectorate’s 1st Bureau.
His steps were so soundless that no one sensed him.
Those who mastered it could erase their presence completely.
He was on his way back after killing Chance on Black’s orders.
‘Heh, that was almost too easy.’
He rubbed his left shoulder. Through the collar, the skin showed the faint tracings of several brands.
All of them powers gained through his deals with Lilith.
At first, bargaining with demonfolk had made his skin crawl, but once he’d used the power, that squeamishness had long since evaporated.
He was far stronger than before, and depending on how he used it, the abilities were handy in all kinds of situations and places.
This mission was no different.
Of them all, the
He’d slipped into Chance’s room, killed him, and slipped out again—and no one had felt his presence.
Not even the guards in the adjoining room.
‘So the Inspectorate will finally be mine.’
Avern’s grin reached his ears.
With Chance eliminated cleanly, he would be the one to slide into the seat Black vacated.
Not that Black was the sort to give up power without a fight.
So what?
All power centered on Cromhel in the end.
Fall from his favor, and you fell from power.
Avern was confident he could sweep Black aside and become Cromhel’s right hand.
“Idiot.”
He threw a big sneer at the man who’d handed him such a chance—Chance.
He could still see the man’s eyes vividly, right before death.
Tongue-tied and stammering as his head came off.
A laughable end, even in hindsight.
“Well, thanks to him, the job was easy.”
He was savoring visions of his rosy future when—
A chill skittered up his spine; he jerked, back stiffening.
Then a voice came.
[From where I’m standing, you lot are the idiots. Now what?]
‘Who…!’
Instinct screamed an enemy was here. Avern snapped his head around.
But—
Crack!
A knee smashed into his jaw before he could even finish the turn.
His head snapped back the way it had come.
“Gh—”
With his chin nailed cleanly, his consciousness started to blur.
He strained to hold on to the last shreds, but his body refused to answer.
‘Who the hell…!’
And just before he blacked out—
A wooden mask filled Avern’s eyes.
* * *
Black swept the hushed hall with a glance and spoke again.
“Before I resign. I’d like to make a confession of conscience.”
The sudden declaration drew every eye back to him.
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. I did set a scheme in motion concerning Huilan—but it truly was a place that deserved a purge.”
“What outrageous nonsense!”
“There were far more innocents—!”
Black let the protests from Elric’s side wash past as if he’d expected them.
The Chair raised a hand to quiet them and asked:
“Do you have proof?”
“I do.”
At Black’s signal, Inspectorate agents brought in a large crate and a stack of documents.
Thump!
They set the crate before him.
Then they began handing bundles of papers to the councilors and reporters.
“What is this?”
“Please look closely. Proof that the Revolutionaries were active in Huilan.”
“But mere papers alone cannot prove such a thing!”
“Of course. Which is why I prepared one more piece.”
Black’s hand went to the crate. When he opened it, eyes around the hall flew wide.
Inside lay none other than a Revolutionary officer—Blue-Eyed Jeff.
His bounty was so high that everyone present recognized him.
“This criminal is a commander the Golden Lion put down. And yet!”
Black flicked a glare at Elric and pressed on.
“Why, then, did Duke Chanseong try to stop it?”
The shocking claim threw the chamber into uproar again.
“What? He tried to protect the Revolutionaries?”
“Then don’t tell me…!”
“Spare us the denials. We’ve already secured witnesses to testify about what happened. As we investigated, there was one thing we could not understand.”
Black raked the room with a thin smile.
“No matter how we looked at it, we could not discern Mervinger’s true intent. Will you explain yourself?”
In other words: had he thrown in with the Revolutionaries?
But—
Twitch.
“…?”
Watching Elric steadily, Black furrowed his brow.
For some reason, the corner of Elric’s mouth was twitching.
He seemed to be desperately holding back a laugh, careful that no one else noticed.
And with that, a bad feeling crept up on Black.
The Talent-Devouring Mage