Ch.199Revelation (13)

Even the White Blood Knights couldn’t continue training when an imperial envoy was arriving.

An envoy represents the Emperor’s eyes, mouth, and ears. Unless the purpose was to observe training, conducting combat exercises in front of an envoy would be little different from declaring rebellion.

For this reason, all training was suspended, and while entry to the fortress wasn’t completely prohibited for security reasons, it was strictly controlled.

Knights below senior rank were given rest, but senior knights and above had to prepare the fortress and make arrangements to receive the envoy.

The genealogists were also busy checking ceremonial protocols, which meant Kain and Maria had no choice but to rest in their respective huts.

During this time, someone knocked on Kain’s quarters door, and when he answered, Boehm was standing there.

Kain invited Boehm inside and brought out food and beer that the knights had provided.

“How did you get here?”

“Came early this morning. Tagged along with the envoy’s party.”

“And your brother?”

“Bom is probably in the great hall or somewhere like that. Old man Verneith sent both of us.”

This was strange. Verneith sending both of them meant they were to perform a “mission.”

Having identical people appear in different places simultaneously was convenient for creating alibis.

The twin brothers of the Fourth Division were skilled at such operations.

Bom was likely pretending to be a secretary to some nobleman or high official, sitting in the meeting hall. Meanwhile, Boehm was freely moving around outside the fortress, probably disguised as a laborer or servant.

There was no reason for a Security Bureau agent to accompany an imperial envoy to a knightly order within the Empire. Kain was curious about their scheme, but Boehm changed the subject.

“How could you both just disappear without saying anything? Do you know how upset Bom and I were? We cried so much when both our superior and subordinate vanished overnight.

We kept asking old man Verneith what happened to half of the Fourth Division, and after a long while, he finally snapped, ‘Lily returned to the White Blood for succession issues. Now stop asking!’

When I asked, ‘Then where did the boss go?’ he said, ‘How should I know? Maybe he fell into a cesspit in the orchard!’

We were so heartbroken, thinking you’d left without even saying goodbye.”

Kain didn’t want to imagine the two burly twins crying together to console each other, so he brushed it off.

“No, I just agreed to do one more job. Sorry I couldn’t say goodbye. The old man told me to leave ‘immediately.'”

When Verneith said “leave immediately,” it meant exactly that. It was an urgent assignment that didn’t even allow time to say goodbye to colleagues.

Boehm understood this and didn’t seem upset anymore. He actually looked relieved.

“That makes sense! I knew you wouldn’t leave without saying anything. So, what was your mission? Setting up a love nest here with the whetstone girl?”

“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not like that.”

Kain waved his bandaged right hand.

“I was somewhere else and only came here a few days ago. There are documents I need to review at the White Blood.”

“Did you happen to visit Venelucia?”

Kain’s heart sank at Boehm’s question.

On his way from Venelucia to here, Kain had stopped at the Royal Guard Bureau branch to submit a report to Anna.

Since he had submitted it directly, there was no reason for it to leak to the Security Bureau or elsewhere, unless Anna had disclosed it.

“No. Why would I go there again? What happened?”

“Oh, really? The capital is in chaos. The Security Bureau and the Guard are completely wrecked. Venelucian operatives pulled some stunt right in the middle of the capital.

When I heard about it, I immediately thought of you. Things like this didn’t happen when you were around.”

“A stunt? What kind?”

“Well, it’s already common gossip, so there’s no need to keep it confidential,” Boehm muttered.

“You know that Security Bureau warehouse near the carp pond intersection? A large, fancy carriage pulled up there, and someone heard moaning coming from inside.

A passerby wondered what was going on and opened it. Do you know what they found?

Four completely naked people—one man and three women—with their ankles tied together with rope, all of them acting delirious as if they’d taken something.”

Kain thought he knew who it was: Priest Prollo, the Papal secretary assigned to Venelucia.

The Duce and the Stonemason Guild Master had kept their promise. But Kain hadn’t imagined the Venelucian spies would send them so quickly, and “packaged” in such a manner.

“That’s bizarre. Then what?”

“The women were from the capital’s back alleys, and they only knew that a handsome man had hired them the night before. They thought it was just some fun game. They were all released after questioning.

The man was the problem—he clamped up like a dead clam. The coachman was nowhere to be found.

So they searched the carriage to see if there was anything hidden, and when they tore out the seats, they found a stiletto with a departing ship engraved on it.

That’s cause for alarm, right? It’s the symbol of the Eastern United Kingdoms’ intelligence service, specifically Venelucia.”

Of course, countries sending spies and operatives to each other was commonplace. Kain himself had spent quite some time in Venelucia.

But they don’t usually reveal their presence so blatantly like this. It’s essentially taunting, “Catch me if you can.”

Above all, the fact that the Security Bureau and the Guard were caught completely unaware by a foreign operative’s antics was unacceptable. Especially for the Security Bureau, which was responsible for counterintelligence, and the Guard, which handled border security.

“So what happened?”

“All hell broke loose. The old man flipped his desk, shouting that everyone would get a pay cut, then went to the Treasury saying he had no face to show the Emperor and needed to return half his salary—he came back holding his neck in pain after less than four minutes.

What’s even more ridiculous were the reports from our agents embedded in Venelucia. They must be on drugs or something.

Their reports were a complete mess. Their excuse was that Venelucia was in chaos, so they were disoriented too.

They claimed mercenaries staged a mass rebellion, ships grew spider-like legs and walked into the harbor, and fleets of monsters floated in the sky, dropping bat-pig hybrid creatures.

Aren’t these people insane? They were asked to submit reports, not write down their dreams.

The funnier part is that they insist they actually saw all this.”

“That’s… quite outlandish.”

Kain silently apologized to his Security Bureau colleagues or juniors stationed in Venelucia. Sadly, what they reported was probably true.

“The Empire is already in turmoil, and then something even more absurd happened. The Royal Guard Bureau took that naked man away.”

“The Royal Guard? Why?”

Kain asked, but he already knew the answer. The Royal Guard had decided to interrogate Priest Prollo directly.

Prollo was a key figure who knew where asas came from, where it went, and how the heroes of the past were involved.

Additionally, he appeared to be deeply involved in the manufacturing process alongside Leonardo of the Charity. If he hadn’t exposed Giuseppe Conrone, the quarantine officer, and set up the asas refinery on the Ship of Fools, none of that would have happened.

“Who knows? The Security Bureau was busy looking for the coachman who seemed to have vanished like steam.

Anyway, the old man calmed down after that, but headquarters staff had to walk on tiptoes for a while.

Then suddenly, he called us both in. The Emperor decided to send an envoy to the White Blood, and he wanted us to go along.

‘The envoy will handle the details, you two just deliver a message to the youngest,’ he said. I thought, here it comes.”

“Here what comes?”

Kain didn’t understand what Boehm meant. Boehm sighed deeply and gripped Kain’s left hand tightly.

“Look. The whetstone girl is here for succession issues, right? Although returning home is permitted in unavoidable circumstances, too much time has passed.

We thought it was some kind of ultimatum: ‘If you’re not coming back to the Security Bureau, just quit.’ Something like that.”

“Ah.”

Kain understood.

As Boehm said, Verneith had told them that Kain and Lily weren’t working together—Kain was doing his own work, while Lily had returned to the White Blood to resolve succession issues.

Because of this, Boehm and Bom thought Lily had returned home heartbroken after Kain disappeared.

So in the twins’ eyes, how worried they must have been about Lily, who had stayed in Valhalla at the White Blood for three months without doing Security Bureau work.

“…So. What was it?”

“Fortunately, it wasn’t about quitting, but instead he told us something incomprehensible. He said to tell you, ‘The golden goose is causing a commotion, and its feathers are fluttering to the northeast’?”

“‘The golden goose is causing a commotion, and its feathers are fluttering to the northeast.’ Is that right?”

Boehm nodded at Kain’s question.

“Yes, exactly those words.”

Boehm seemed to want to know what it meant, and Kain returned a blank expression—not because he didn’t understand, but because the content was so absurd.

Boehm and Bom probably knew this was code. But the reason they didn’t understand was simple.

It was an outdated code phrase. It was already nearly obsolete when Kain was first trained directly by Verneith as a new Security Bureau agent.

So while this message was supposedly for “the youngest” Lily, it was actually intended only for Kain himself.

If it had been information that the entire Fourth Division needed to know, Verneith would have used current code phrases.

The “golden goose” alone was telling. It was code for the Pope. If he had said “pig with a gold necklace,” Boehm, Bom, and Lily would have understood immediately.

“Feathers fluttering” meant troops moving.

So the true meaning of that sentence was:

“The Pope is moving his army toward the northeastern wasteland.”