Ch.143143. Bribery

Misunderstandings breed misunderstandings.

I’m not sure how Belmont interpreted this situation where someone who had been consistently pretending to know nothing suddenly demanded food.

One thing was certain though. He was making a huge misunderstanding right now.

“Then I’ll wait outside. Please call me when you finish your meal.”

The lavishly prepared food was far more elaborate and thoughtfully prepared than what I had paid for yesterday.

Just looking at it made the word “bribe” come to mind… and my mouth watered.

“Shall we eat?”

It feels a bit like we’ve become a four-person scam team by getting this through deception, but we decided to eat first and talk later.

Mmm~ Delicious~ When free food is this tasty, this must be paradise on earth.

“Ludion. Please have some of mine too.”

“Mine too.”

“Do you guys really do this every time you eat? Ludion’s going to get fat.”

“Don’t try to sneakily pass your food to him. Lilith, you still don’t meet the requirements, you know?”

“What are those requirements anyway?!”

The meal finished in a luxurious but somewhat boisterous atmosphere.

Afterward, I honestly told the truth to Belmont, who was cleaning up with a disgruntled expression.

“Mr. Belmont.”

“Yes. Please speak.”

“I really don’t know anything.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m not pretending not to know—I genuinely don’t know. Do you understand?”

I don’t know what misunderstanding you have, but you’ve been duped. The free food was delicious though.

Even after I said all that, Belmont continued to doubt us for quite some time… but eventually realized he had been making a strange misunderstanding.

“How embarrassing. To make such a mistake.”

So, he requested our cooperation to correct his misinformation and understand the true situation.

In other words, he asked us what had happened.

“If you really didn’t know… then what on earth happened today…?”

“It’s a long story to explain everything, but basically it started with…”

To explain things to Belmont’s satisfaction, I needed to carefully explain why we came all this way looking for someone and caused this commotion.

I’m not an information broker, and we might need Belmont’s help to get through this situation more easily, so I decided to explain without asking for anything in return.

Lilith was kidnapped, I explained the reason for the kidnapping, how we came to stop it, and how we ended up defeating everyone when we got there.

That summary led to the most important point of the story—the pillar of light.

“I think the technique she used at the end leaked outside.”

There wasn’t much more to explain since it was just a technique that happened to manifest that way.

Belmont, having fully understood the situation, nodded and expressed his admiration.

“To think the Holy Maiden’s power has already reached such a level? And you’re still academy students.”

“Well, technically we’re all still students.”

“…Huh?”

Maybe he was too focused on understanding the situation and expressing admiration. The supposed information broker ended up saying something strange.

Belmont is competent and stays calm in most situations. That’s why he doesn’t handle it well when he’s genuinely surprised.

In the original story, he would often make verbal slips when he didn’t buy information and just made blunders.

Realizing he’d forgotten something, he bowed his head.

“I apologize. I’ve misspoken again…”

“Well, it happens.”

To be fair, the aura these people give off is clearly not that of first-year students.

And compared to Lilith, who still has a weak position, Celia and Alkine have much more prominent titles like Imperial Princess and Northern Duchess.

As for me… does he even have information about me? I doubt it.

“About Ludion? If I didn’t know about you, I might as well quit and go plow fields. That you’re from a village on the western outskirts of Sertil Kingdom, that you’ve committed numerous acts suspected to be misinformation since entering Rubetia Academy… Would you like to hear more details?”

“No, that’s enough. But why would an information broker collect information on a commoner?”

“You’ve been designated as a person of interest by the Imperial Palace… You’re surprisingly famous.”

“Oh my.”

I’ve underestimated the information broker.

Come to think of it, it was foolish to think he wouldn’t know about me when I haven’t been careful about my actions.

I thought it would be fine since I hadn’t done anything too obvious in front of people…

By the way, Sertil Kingdom… I unintentionally learned my hometown’s location. I wonder why it’s there of all places.

I don’t particularly want to visit, but gaining new information is always welcome.

Back to the main topic. This time, we decided to ask questions.

When we asked about the exact circumstances of the incident caused by the pillar of light, Belmont pulled out a map showing Ritten with a specific area marked on it. Wait, is this…?

“The pillar of light covered this much area.”

Seriously? It was this wide?

I thought people were overreacting with all that “divine judgment” talk, but this actually justifies it.

The range was surprising, but what came next was even more important.

The pillar of light that rose over such a wide area only momentarily obstructed people’s vision without causing much trouble, but there were some who screamed and suffered in agony.

“A pillar of light. Everyone fine except for some in agony. Anyone would find that suspicious.”

It was indeed a suspicious set of circumstances.

So they captured those people for investigation… and it turned out they were all members of the Elnos Association.

Let me summarize.

Celia’s magic blocked us from noticing, but Lilith’s area attack was actually a friend-or-foe identification system that only affected bad guys. Thanks to that, the attack that leaked outside struck down Elnos Association members causing trouble in Ritten, and they all fainted and were captured.

They could appoint me as Ritten’s security administrator right now without any opposition.

With that thought, I casually asked Belmont:

“So, I understand all that, but what’s the purpose of telling me this?”

His expression changed slightly at my question.

As if the conversation he’d been waiting for had finally arrived.

“I’ll be direct since beating around the bush would only offend you. Ludion, would you contract with me?”

The request wasn’t particularly surprising.

Belmont is an information broker, not some security officer for Ritten.

Whether the Elnos Association members were captured or not didn’t really matter to him.

But he keeps bringing this up? Not even hiding his intentions. It was easy to see he wanted something.

I guess he wants to establish some kind of connection through this opportunity.

It wasn’t strange. If I were an information broker and met someone who had such powerful connections, I’d be interested too.

He even resolved any doubts about whether it was okay to get close to me by witnessing us do something good. How tempting must that be for him?

He probably wants to secure me before someone else does. If we hadn’t come here and had just fled, would he have searched for us?

I don’t know, but the thought occurred to me.

So my conclusion was:

“Let’s hear the contract terms.”

I decided to accept his proposal.

There’s nothing wrong with befriending an information broker. Especially if that broker is Belmont.

He’s one of the more competent information brokers, and if we’re talking about good versus evil, he leans toward good.

Above all, I didn’t want to experience another incident like Lilith’s kidnapping where we were caught completely unaware.

At the very least, if I contract with Belmont, I could receive warnings about suspicious movements before something happens.

“Here it is.”

Belmont unfolded a paper filled with contract details as if he had prepared it long ago.

Hmm. It’s not extremely lengthy, but this isn’t my area of expertise… Maybe I should leave it to Celia.

“Celia, please.”

“I’m not your secretary… but it looks fine if we just modify clause 4 a bit.”

Belmont had presented quite a detailed contract, yet Celia had already read and analyzed it all.

We were used to this so we just went along with it, but Belmont seemed somewhat shocked.

“If the Imperial Princess says so, of course I must comply.”

Ah, so that’s it.

I suppose it does look strange to others when a commoner delegates work to an imperial princess.

I don’t know what clause 4 originally said, but the final modified version basically stated that “we have priority rights to information obtained through us, and any profits gained from sharing that information will be transparently disclosed and distributed by mutual agreement.”

Oh… how shrewd…

Actually, even without that clause, the contract was already heavily in my favor, with Belmont essentially just borrowing my name to facilitate his business.

But what we call “my name” is really the influence of these three women beside me… so it was fair for Celia, who holds the most significant position among them, to exercise her authority.

“I’m surprised though. I thought Ludion wouldn’t agree to this kind of trust contract.”

More than that, it’s impressive how she can talk about “trust” contracts after doing something like that. Is this what it means to be at the top?

Celia. You’re a frightening woman.

“People feel more grateful when things are done properly and profits are fairly distributed. Didn’t I teach you that once?”

“Don’t know. I’m not really interested in learning how to manage people like this.”

“You should learn. You know why, don’t you?”

Truly. She was a frightening woman.