Ch.398Travel Plans Should Be Made in Advance.

Leopold’s exclusive international news report didn’t end there.

As expected of the Empire’s emperor, I suppose.

It was incredibly informative how all the world’s external intelligence flowed so freely while just sitting there.

“The Dragonic Kingdom is currently experiencing an intensification of ideological conflict. The traditional faction, which seeks to reach true dragonhood by controlling violent tendencies through mental discipline, is clashing everywhere with emerging factions that claim the essence of dragons lies in destruction, and that truly reaching dragonhood requires not suppressing one’s violent nature but liberating it more powerfully. They’re calling it the precursor to the Orthodox-Heretical War…”

The Orthodox-Heretical War.

It’s an episode in the Dragonic Kingdom where orthodox dragonborn resembling Buddhists or Taoists engage in a slaughter against heretical dragonborn who are essentially criminal cartels, ignoring even national security.

Young players loved it as a fresh development, while older players fumed that this wasn’t proper martial arts storytelling.

It seemed that like all other episodes, the Orthodox-Heretical War would progress faster than expected.

Whether I should intervene was something to think about.

I would need to participate if I wanted to get Kalix Terban, the special admission student from the Dragonic Kingdom, as a party character…

But honestly, I don’t have time to worry about the Dragonic Kingdom’s internal divisions right now.

If the heretical faction wins, the Dragonic Kingdom will become somewhat more aggressive, but they won’t attack the Empire specifically—they’ll just use the opportunity to invade Alvheim to kill those fairy bastards.

Leopold also said he planned to just observe how things unfold without intervening.

—-

To summarize the international situation I heard from Leopold in one word, it was literally a mess.

In the east, they’re busy hunting down hidden sorcerers, while the Kingdom of Dane is mass-producing mages as if they’ve established a magic school.

On top of that, a game of thrones is about to unfold in Panam, Himmel and Alvheim are filming “Don’t Underestimate Science, Fantasy!”, and the Dragonic Kingdom is on the verge of the Orthodox-Heretical War.

Even the Holy State seems to be in a situation where senile old men and Dark Mana puppets are contemplating a Thirty Years’ War.

The world was already in chaos even before the real upheaval had begun. Except for the north.

Well, in Baryachrus in the north, Oleg would be busy trying to recover from the defeat of the great invasion and ascend to the throne, so there shouldn’t be any trouble for a while.

‘Where should I even start with all this…’

[What are you worrying about? There’s no reason to intervene. Conflicts in other countries are favorable for the Empire. At least, it’s a hundred or thousand times better than them using that power against the Empire.]

…That’s true.

It’s not wrong. It’s not wrong, but…

The problem is that if they lose all their defense forces in the process, they might collapse like dominoes later.

…But there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.

They won’t stop fighting just because I tell them to. They’ll probably only feel a sense of crisis and stop when the monster threat is right in front of them.

—-

After asking Leopold to take care of the Panam people we rescued, I headed to the cathedral where Lacy was waiting.

I told Lacy about the Holy State’s triangular alliance scheme, and as expected, she was furious.

“How can they commit such blasphemy! To secretly instigate conflicts between people—can they still call themselves priests who serve God…!”

Lacy slammed her fist on the reception room table, her expression a mix of shock and anger.

She must have known that the Holy State wasn’t as clean as it appeared, but she probably never expected them to instigate conflicts on a national scale rather than just assassinations.

To be honest, I felt a bit guilty too.

Although Leopold promised to minimize casualties, I had also contributed to Panam’s conflict by assassinating King Danon.

“Certainly, the current Holy State has some issues—”

“Human power should rightfully be used to exterminate monsters, heretics, and non-humans!”

So that was her reason for being angry.

It was a statement very characteristic of her.

She’s probably secretly happy about the war between fairies and dwarves, or the civil war among dragonborn, isn’t she?

Thinking the enemies are reducing their numbers by fighting among themselves.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I really need to visit the Holy State now… but as you can see, if I just go there like I’m on a picnic, I’ll probably go through all kinds of hardships and come back with nothing but trouble.”

I crossed my legs and sat down across from Lacy, lighting a cigarette.

Going to the Holy State was fine, but I couldn’t just leave without a plan.

If I set foot on Holy State territory without thinking and ended up just fighting dozens or hundreds of secret church assassination units or whatever with nothing to show for it, I’d just be wasting time.

“……”

Lacy glanced at the cigarette between my lips but sipped her cup of holy water without any particular complaint.

A calm reaction. Does that mean she doesn’t care whether I smoke or not?

“…So I think we need to come up with some kind of plan before we move. We can’t just charge in recklessly like when we captured the Archbishop of Trier. Don’t you agree?”

Back then it was fine because we just needed to raid the cathedral and capture him, but if we tried that now, we might end up facing the entire Holy State.

That would be insane.

“I suppose so. At that time, we had concrete evidence and only one enemy, so we could take a radical approach… but this time, we haven’t even discovered the shadow of our enemy yet.”

“Didn’t you get anything out of the Archbishop of Trier?”

Surely they didn’t just burn him alive without extracting any information.

If he was connected to the Holy State’s shadowy figure and Isabella, they should have been able to secure some clues through him.

However, unfortunately, Lacy shook her head.

“Ah, you didn’t know. The interrogation of the Archbishop of Trier failed. We planned to take him down from the cross after roasting him sufficiently to begin the interrogation—”

This woman, did she just use the word “roast” for a person…?

Well, that archbishop wasn’t exactly worthy of being treated as a human, but still… isn’t that expression a bit too brutal?

“—but just as we were about to begin the proper interrogation, his head burst. It turned to complete mush without a trace, so we couldn’t restore him even with healing miracles.”

“Looks like they took some measures to prevent information leakage.”

Like placing a curse that makes your head explode the moment you think of the mastermind’s name. Something like that.

Even outside this world, planting remote self-destruct devices in the heads of important figures is quite a common concept.

“We were careless. Thinking about it, since they know the Holy State’s interrogation methods well, it would have been natural for them to prepare countermeasures.”

“Yeah. Careless indeed.”

Lacy stopped sipping her holy water and stared at me.

What? You admitted yourself that it was careless. Why are you looking at me with such an aggrieved expression?

“…Anyway, because of that, we couldn’t figure out who in the Holy State was cooperating with the witch. We thoroughly examined all the items he left behind for any clues, but there was nothing. He must have destroyed everything in advance. I should say he was meticulous…”

Reflecting on it seemed to make Lacy sigh deeply, perhaps feeling newly overwhelmed.

So in the end, we have to start from scratch.

I feel like sighing too.

“So there’s no choice. We’ll have to stay in the Holy State for a while and use Special Crusader members to gather information by any means necessary. Until we can get clear suspicions about who is involved in this matter, which of the eleven cardinals is the disgusting and revolting traitor. It will be a long and dangerous task.”

“This is going to be more complicated than I thought…”

I exhale cigarette smoke toward the ceiling, trying to organize my increasingly complex thoughts.

So, in a country filled with danger where assassins could appear at any time, we need to figure out which of the highest officials is a traitor without any clues.

And with only a few people at that.

This seems impossible.

—-

At least, in my memory, one of the cardinals was definitely the second apostle of the “Forgotten Church.” I don’t know their identity since they never showed their face… but at least they were a man of average build, so maybe we can narrow down the suspects based on that.

We can exclude women, or obese individuals, or people like that.

Of course, it would be great if that person was the shadowy figure communicating with Isabella, but if not, things will get even more complicated.

It would mean we’d have to find not just the second apostle but also the evil god worshipper separately.

“This is a bit of a different question, but I think I should know this: what kind of people are the Holy State’s cardinals? I know they’re quite old, but are there any female cardinals?”

“Female…? No, there aren’t any. They’re all men.”

Lacy shook her head with an expression that seemed to ask what I was suddenly talking about.

Damn it.

If even half of them had been women, we could have drastically narrowed down the suspicious suspects.

For a Holy State, why don’t they practice gender equality in employment?