Ch.107NPCs Who Work Hard Even Without NPCs (4)

The original plan was like this.

We would wait here from the beginning. Have Gore emit a strong spirit aura to lure the Chancellor from the academy, where she was protecting the children, to this laboratory.

Then Jack would ambush and physically subdue her (or was it talk her down?). Ah, it’s the opposite?

After talking to the Chancellor through physical means, I would summarize and explain the current situation. Then open negotiations (threats) to extract every possible benefit.

It might seem like a rough plan, but Jack had assigned positions for everyone.

Well, I was originally supposed to just talk while showcasing Rei and Gore’s power to the Chancellor, ensuring my and Ira’s safety while he was away.

For Jack, this must have been a plan he put a lot of thought into.

*BANG!!!*

“Ugh?!!”

“But because of your nonsense at dawn, everything’s ruined.”

“W-what the hell are you talking about?! If you, if that man Jack hadn’t broken the barrier…!!”

“Still saying that? Our Jack has been incredibly busy today. He’s collapsed from exhaustion after cleaning up the mess you made and ignored until it was crawling with maggots!!!”

*CRASH!!!*

“What are you talking about?!!”

The Chancellor couldn’t understand a word. And somehow, she was being cornered by Ragni, who had begun to see through all spirits and magic.

Though she was blocking everything with barriers after the first attack, why did this woman carry a gun? Her fists were abnormally powerful. No, stronger than a gun. Like a golem’s strength—no, even stronger. It was becoming impossible to hide my astonishment.

Moreover.

*THWACK!!*

“Guh?!”

Ragni’s fist accurately struck the Chancellor’s abdomen again. Clearly, she had perfectly seen the timing and direction of the incoming punch and defended ‘invisibly.’

Her movements, as if she now knew all our cards, seemed to pierce through not just magic but my entire being.

“Huff! I’ll stop here, or we won’t be able to talk.”

“Y-you crazy woman. You don’t know who you’re messing with…”

“I just told you, didn’t I? Who you are. How inadequate a person you are. We know everything.”

Moreover, Ragni didn’t miss the opening when the Chancellor retreated to recover from the blow. She turned around and returned to Gore and Rei’s side without taking any damage.

“Good job.”

[You overdid it.]

“…Haa. Haa. Yeah, ah. Thanks.”

Ragni tried to appear composed in front of the Chancellor, but after seeing the source of the Chancellor’s magic, she felt even more pressure.

Her first real combat was against weak opponents, feeling like an experiment rather than a fight. The second was against someone stronger than herself. No, almost on par with Jack.

Honestly, Ragni was drenched in cold sweat, and her body couldn’t handle any more punching.

As if to hide her condition, Gore stepped forward, and Rei also faced the coughing Chancellor with sword in hand.

“Cough. Damn it. I was holding back because we’re in the middle of the city, and you dare to rise up!!”

“Sigh. Did someone threaten you with a sword to go easy on us?”

“You’re out of your minds. I don’t know what grudge you have against me to be so hostile. But I’m not in a good mood right now. One more nasty word, and I’ll bury you all, city be damned…”

“Fine. Then let’s have a more civilized conversation this time.”

Replacing the exhausted Ragni, Rei quietly moved to knock on the iron door beside them. The door opened quickly with a scraping sound.

*THUD.*

“…Huh?”

“You know this person, right? Ro Jack. I heard he’s a department head at your academy.”

*STOMP!!*

“……”

A man thrown from inside the door. Rei immediately stepped on the bald man’s head and turned his face toward the Chancellor, whose eyes widened more than ever before.

“Y-you. You dare…!! You dare to touch someone from the academy!!!”

“Oh my. Were academy people precious to you?”

*THWACK!!*

“Cough!!”

“You!!!”

As Rei kicked the department head’s stomach hard, the Chancellor’s eyes began to glow blue, and her magical energy became incomparably darker than before.

With her red hair faintly glowing, she looked more like a witch than a mage.

As the world seemed to turn blue with her magic, Rei flinched slightly, but.

[Skill: Mimicry, Spirit Aura.]

Gore, who was right beside her, emitted magic similar to the Chancellor’s and countered it.

Seeing Gore, the Chancellor’s eyes widened even more, and the deep blue magic that was about to pressure Rei and Ragni was completely cut off by Gore.

“I just said it, but this is a conversation. Now, why don’t you ask why this man was dragged here and ended up like this?”

“…What?”

Rei kicked the bald Ro Jack toward the Chancellor.

Save him if you want, free him if you want. If you want to hear what happened, hear it directly. With that meaning in her actions, the Chancellor became increasingly bewildered, and after immediately freeing him, she began to ask about the situation.

And then.

“Under Deputy Chancellor Rotolks’ orders, Department Head Gibson, myself, and several professors and assistants were kidnapping elementary and middle school children for ‘Universal Spirit Master’ research, conducting experiments in seven secret laboratories.”

“W-what… did you say?”

With his face and body covered in bruises, red and blue, Ro Jack began to spill everything without omission or lies.

The research period, when it started, how the children were selected, and the process. And the fact that they had put illegal [Collars of Subjugation], imported from the Empire, around the children’s necks.

He even revealed that all the children who had died so far were fed to monsters raised in the academy’s training grounds. The Chancellor was too shocked to be angry.

“…What have you done? Hypnosis? Or some kind of mental manipulation? No criminal would confess everything like this!!!”

“Right? Amazing, isn’t it? The master of the [Collar of Subjugation] he’s wearing is our husband Jack, whom you’re looking for. Hard to believe, right? That’s why we prepared more. Want to see?”

The iron door she knocked on earlier. When Rei knocked on it again, academy assistants were thrown out one after another. Among them were assistants and Department Head Gibson who weren’t wearing collars.

And all of them.

“We did it.”

“Everything Department Head Ro Jack said is true.”

“The children’s meals were kept to the minimum necessary, sleep was limited to two days a week, four hours a day. Research showed that was enough to maintain magic production…”

“Based on research showing children below a certain age have higher spirit affinity…”

“Citing a paper on the possibility of higher-ranked spirits appearing when a child is desperate…”

“……”

The Chancellor’s complexion turned from pale to blue, and her pupils trembled at the unbelievable testimony and reality before her.

People wearing the [Collar of Subjugation] might be controlled by the other side, but several people without collars were clearly speaking of their own will.

“Still not enough, right? We prepared more, but you shouldn’t be so shocked yet.”

“W-what? What else did you prepare…”

Her overwhelming magic had completely disappeared.

The anger directed at Ragni, Rei, and Gore who had attacked her was completely erased by astonishment, fear, and the horrific reality thrown at her.

“I noticed earlier that you seem to care about academy people.”

And as if to drive the point home, Rei knocked on the door once more.

“Do you remember these children’s faces?”

Unlike before, the iron door didn’t throw people out but quietly let them pass through one by one.

All were children about waist-high. They all directed resentful gazes at Ro Jack and the assistants, and some children recognized the Chancellor and frowned.

“……”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know any of their faces? Are you saying that as the Chancellor, you don’t know who these many children are?”

Almost 30 children. The Chancellor doesn’t know all their faces. But.

“T-these children… they, they dropped out…”

“I never dropped out.”

“…I’m Callini from the elementary Spirit Department.”

“I was told to transfer from the Element Department to the Spirit Department by the profess… professor, and I was taken while transferring.”

She remembers the faces of some children she had approved for withdrawal.

Children who weren’t exceptionally talented but could have become spirit masters or mages with effort, yet left the academy by her own hand. She had briefly questioned it at the time.

Even then, she had dismissed them as foolish and weak children who simply didn’t try hard enough, who felt deprived seeing others’ talents and ran away on their own, unfit for the next generation. But now those memories resurfaced as they appeared before her.

As the Chancellor trembled like she’d seen a ghost while looking at the children.

“Let me ask again. You said our Jack broke some barrier? Can you honestly say that he, who was working himself to exhaustion saving these children and cleaning up the maggots that were festering because you turned a blind eye, would do such a thing?”

As Ragni, who had somewhat recovered her strength, stepped forward again and looked down at the Chancellor with cold red eyes, the Chancellor’s will was completely broken.

*

The resolution and cleanup of the situation was swift.

“Clean up all these vermin yourself. Whether you publicly execute them or secretly erase them all, handle it.”

Ragni, stepping forward with the protection of the two, looked down at the kneeling Chancellor who was staring at the ground, and gave instructions one by one.

First, completely conceal the identities of everyone involved in resolving this incident, including Jack and our party, as well as the hired gold-rank adventurers.

Second, prioritize finding all surviving and deceased children and either returning them to their families or allowing them to attend the academy again, with appropriate compensation.

Third, ensure this never happens again by dealing with anyone in the academy connected to these people as a top priority, and if it’s not resolved within a month, all details of the incident will be made public.

“And. Stop judging people and threatening them during interviews. I’ll receive compensation and an apology for the threatening behavior you showed Ira and me that day. Understood?”

“…Yes, I understand.”

“And finally.”

*SLAP!!*

“……”

Ragni’s hand sharply struck the Chancellor’s cheek, but her eyes remained dead.

The sight of her, unable to believe what had happened in the academy she managed, yet unable to look away, was even pitiful, but Ragni showed no sympathy as she spoke.

“If you’re the Chancellor of these children, an educator who receives children from parents to protect and educate them, and the person responsible for this city, then at least work with a sense of responsibility. This is the result of you being the Chancellor, entrusting everything to the Deputy Chancellor without looking back, and just trusting him. You say this happened because you were busy threatening people during interviews and making a fuss? Do you understand?”

If Jack hadn’t noticed this incident, or if we hadn’t been caught eavesdropping that day, perhaps children would still be dying at this moment.

And if we hadn’t intervened in this incident, this Chancellor would probably still be boasting about her magic to children like Ira.

[Ragni Bluemoon Ottoman] was a princess of the Empire.

Now she’s just a woman following Jack, but by simple calculation, she had been above others for nearly 20 years, and was supposed to be a member of the Ottoman Empire’s royal family.

That’s why the insult toward Ira, and then learning from Jack that the Chancellor had been boasting in the academy office without knowing anything, had filled her with a different kind of anger.

Yes, anger toward “one who cannot properly fulfill the duties of a ruler who leads a nation.”

“And until you resolve all internal matters, I, Rei, and the golem Gore here will attend the academy with Ira as her guardians. If you can’t accept that, we’ll spread all the details of this incident to other countries and neutral cities. Decide which is better for you.”

“…Alright. I’ll confirm everything at my level, but manipulating that child’s test scores…”

“I didn’t even mention that. Don’t underestimate our sister-in… Ira. She’ll easily pass your test and enter the academy.”

“…Fine.”

After saying that, Ragni exhaled strongly through her nose, turned her back on the Chancellor, and smiled at Rei and Gore.

“Ragni, you were amazing. If Jack had seen it, he might have fallen for you. How did you do it? Making people without [Collars of Subjugation] tell the truth.”

Rei whispered in Ragni’s ear.

She was also waving goodbye to the children who would be returning home under the Chancellor’s protection, while sheathing her sword.

“Trade secret. And you were impressive too. Bringing out the children one by one in front of the Chancellor was improvised, right? You’re smarter than I thought.”

“Hehe. Maybe being around smart people has made me smarter too?”

There’s no need to tell Rei yet about her skill to subjugate others and give orders to those who have submitted.

While Rei was buying time, she had physically subjugated them, stealing their physical abilities and giving them orders.

The two women, complimenting each other, looked at the sky that was beginning to brighten. Now they need to go home and take the collapsed Jack to the hospital.

Though today will be long since they didn’t get proper sleep, Jack will surely be happy when they tell him that the three of them resolved everything.

[…As for the barrier talk, well. He’s someone who still calls the Heavenly Demon’s death a suicide. He’ll probably say we handled it well.]

And Gore, standing behind the two women who still believed Jack couldn’t have broken the barrier, decided to bury the one truth in his heart.