Chapter 143 – How to Catch a Big Fish
First of all, assuming that the beautiful girl mask is a hero, I guessed why she suddenly came to my house last night.
Usually, most of the money was left with the Government General and the bank, so the only money in the house was the cash used for occasional drinking.
Even that, I hadn’t been able to go even once because I was busy with work recently, so I had accumulated quite a bit of money, but it wasn’t an amount that the rumored pretty girl mask was aiming for.
Then it was that I was aiming for something else, but among the things I recently acquired, the only thing with high cash value was an ingot of Orichalcon.
However, if the market suddenly released an ingot of Orichalcon, it would be easy to trace back, so there was only one last thing left.
“Is it a tribunal?”
With half of the code deciphered, I took out the copybook I had brought to the Government General’s office from my desk drawer and was convinced of that.
It seems that among the characters written on this trinket, someone is directly or indirectly related to the hero.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come to retrieve it myself.
Thanks to the sudden attack last night, I ended up interpreting it, so I still haven’t properly grasped the list of characters written here.
Given the seriousness of the situation, it seemed that the code analysis should be finished within today.
“Chief Treasurer, coffee.”
“Ah. Thank you.”
While transfusing coffee, which is no different from the blood of office workers, I looked around the empty financial control room today.
The second day of the special appreciation period.
The tax collected yesterday alone was 300 million gold, so the government general’s financial situation improved again, but we were still hungry.
I don’t know if it’s because it’s a job to kill the idiot customers who looked after me even if I didn’t pay taxes until now, but everyone was working more excitedly than ever.
After making a rubbing of the plate cabinet, I put it in a secret compartment in the second drawer of the desk.
It is a backup to be prepared for any unforeseen circumstances.
If this trinket is revealed, it is clear that blood will blow in Oz, so even if it is not a beautiful girl mask, many figures of the Royal Party will be frantically looking for the whereabouts.
All I had to do was take full advantage of the situation.
“Agnès, I’m not going on a business trip today. I have something I need to do.”
“Ah yes.”
“Dorotea will be hanging out in the employee break room, so take her there and buy anything she asks for. I’ll take care of everything later.”
When I said that and asked her to leave, Agnes bowed her head and left the treasury room.
In the office, where I was now completely alone, after turning my aching shoulders around, I continued to decipher the ciphers of the trinket from yesterday.
Today’s goal was to crack the code before work.
***
“Finished!”
It was more than 8 hours later that I succeeded in cracking the cipher of the trinket.
As expected, it was a cipher text inverted from sacred characters to hieroglyphs, but it took a lot of time to replace it with characters because it omitted spacing and placement rules.
After supplementing the lack of sugar with honey water for my overworked brain for 8 hours, I copied all the names of the nobles written on the trinket to other places according to the decoded letter arrangement.
The trinket, which was successfully deciphered, contained the names of more people than expected.
Should it be called the Marquis of Cologne?
It seems that there were many people who lined up as much as it was the most influential force among the figures of the royal party.
Thanks to this, it became possible to treat them by tying them together with candy.
After memorizing the list of 40 tax thieves written on the tribunal, I waved at Agnes, who had just returned from a business trip.
Then Agnes took off her coat and tilted her head.
“What are you doing?”
“No, to help my subordinates work, I figured this out.”
As I said that, I showed the list I was holding in my hand.
“…This?”
“This is a list of royalists supporting the Oz Independent Association.”
And as long as there is this, it’s been said that half of the key figures of the Royalists imprisoned are game out.
Supporting the Independent Association in present-day Oz amounts to treason.
A completely separate crime was added to the crime of contempt of the governor general, which is difficult to prove.
And by interrogating them, he was able to wipe out the members of the Resistance and the Oz Independent Association hiding in the shadows.
Two birds with one stone.
After accepting the data I handed over, Agnes looked at me with a bewildered expression, then nodded and said:
“I’ll take action by tomorrow.”
“Yes. Good job.”
I immediately got up with my bag.
I was tired from using my hair after a long time, so I thought of leaving work today.
***
Next day.
The whole of Oz was turned upside down.
As the evidence that royalist aristocrats were supporting the Independence Association in the dark was revealed, it was literally bloody winds.
Those who rebelled were forcibly arrested, long-historic families were shattered for treason, and most of the figures of the Marquis of Cologne, who had been imprisoned for contempt of the Governor-General, went to trial with treason added.
Some newspapers criticized the government-general’s behavior, calling it ‘Bloody Wednesday’, but as a result of the search and seizure by the police, the circumstances of receiving bribes from aristocrats were captured and became a hot topic again.
Ordinary citizens shut their mouths at the heinous atmosphere, while swearing at the aristocrats for plotting a rebellion to become king.
No matter how much the prestige of this country has fallen to the ground, despite the fact that the rightful heir to the throne, Prince Tippetarius, is alive and well, the dominant evaluation was that they got hurt while trying to take advantage of each other.
Of course, most of the intellectuals who commented in that way were pro-mafa people who were friendly to the Ozma Government-General, but wouldn’t it be better to cover up such an uncomfortable truth?
Anyway, when the Marquis of Cologne and his followers, one of the king’s leaders, were wiped out, intelligence came in that the Duke of Munich, who had the greatest power outside of him, began to move in earnest.
The Duke of Munich was the cousin of Prince Tippetarius, and he was the closest man to a ‘king’ in the country, except for him, who had given up the right to succeed to the throne.
So, naturally, he had no choice but to become the next target of the Government General.
Of course, before that, I had to catch the beautiful girl mask, which was presumed to be a newly born hero.
***
I asked right away while playing chess.
“Do you know how to hunt foxes, Dorothea?”
Widely!
“What? That suddenly sounds like something stupid.”
“Foxes are timid and cunning animals, so even if they hear the sound of normal human footsteps, they will quickly hide in their own burrows. Then there is no way for humans to catch them. Fox dens are just the size that only foxes can enter.”
While saying that, I grabbed Dorothea’s bishop with Nitro.
“So hunters hunt foxes in a slightly different way.”
“Aren’t you saying something different because you feel like you’re going to lose?”
This time, the queen of Dorothea eats the protruding knight.
I just moved the look forward.
“Usually, when a fox digs a burrow, it makes two entrances. If one collapses, the other one can escape.”
Check.
“What was it?”
Dorothea interrupted her look by moving her knight.
“So when hunters hunt foxes, they light a fire at one entrance to let the smoke go into the den, and spread a net at the other end.”
While saying that, Dorothea moved the bishop to an open space by moving the knight.
“If you do, the fox, startled by the smoke, will run away in a hurry, and will be trapped as soon as it gets out of the den.”
“…”
Dorothea tried to catch the bishop by moving the queen, but she realized something.
At this point, he seems to have realized that no matter what piece he moves, the king will be eaten after 6 turns.
“Again.”
Dorothea looked at me with a pouty expression, probably because she was upset.
At first, I was a one-sided hit on her, but now I was proud of her almost equal win rate.
In the first place, training through her parallel thinking was not only possible for her.
“Sorry, but I have work from now on.”
After saying that with a shrug, I cleaned up the messy chess board.
It’s not that I keep losing and running away because I won a game, it’s because I really had work to do today.
Perhaps because Dorothea knew it, she shuddered to herself, then said “I’ll definitely win tomorrow!” And ran away with her chessboard to her common room.
No matter how old he was, he still had a childish quality to him.
Well, that part is the charm point.
