Chapter 74
#74 Phantom Thief Dauphin (18) - Ignoring Order for the Sake of Order
Although they had taken a bit of humiliation at Dauphin’s hands, the Sarnos Knight Order was, in essence, the strongest among the strong and the most powerful among the powerful.
Whether it was the family’s power, their personal strength, or their reputation as a group, few in the Kingdom of Virka could compare, so unless it was the special case of the 'lord’s son,' they rarely dropped their haughty attitude.
Even the guard company commander got beaten up and replaced whenever they wanted to vent their anger, so how they would treat ordinary commoners was as plain as day.
But at this very moment, the extremely ominous atmosphere hanging over all of Lebruk was enough to make even them instinctively mind those around them.
“Sure, people can put on a show. Sure, they can make mistakes. But... they screw up themselves and then, because they don’t want to take responsibility, they pin the blame on some random target and dump it on them? And the target was someone who had been doing fine until they showed up? Is that really something a human being would think of?”
“You call yourselves knights, the pride of Sarnos—since when did trash that smears the family’s honor become something to brag about!!”
“You goddamn thugs!! Don’t you bastards have any shame!!”
The knight order’s reputation had never exactly been good to begin with, but this time it was on a completely different level.
In the past, at most people would mutter behind their backs; now they were openly cursing them to their faces.
And what was more, even the other nobles were not friendly toward the knight order this time.
“Th-this... you idiots! If you were going to do it, you should have made sure you weren’t found out!”
“Ah! Those stupid sword-wielding idiots tried to get clever for once and ended up dragging our own dignity down with them!”
“Big brother! Big brother!! How did you end up in that state! What the hell were those knight order bastards doing after taking someone away under escort!!”
Whether they had plotted such an immoral scheme or not? That sort of thing didn’t matter.
No, if anything, from their point of view, they had even tried to do everything they could.
But the incompetence of having their headquarters looted in just one night, and even letting the nobles’ 'private conversations' leak outside, was absolutely unforgivable.
Because of that, hadn’t the entire nobility of Lebruk been branded as bastards who deserved to die!!
At first, the knight order tried to keep making excuses along the lines of 'they’re all fake, forged with magic,' but no citizen believed it.
If there had only been a handful of cards lying around, people might have suspected something, but when the targets were displayed right beside them, wasn’t it strange to say only the voices were fake?
'A failure so complete that there’s not even an excuse for it.'
Inside the grand manor.
The knight order commander, who always looked down on everyone around him with utter confidence, was now trembling violently.
They hadn’t even realized that all of the escort targets had been kidnapped.
Their scheme to turn the situation around had been turned back on them.
It would have been embarrassing enough to report either one of those things to the count, but both had exploded at the same time.
And in a state that was impossible to clean up.
He still couldn’t understand it.
“How... how in the world?”
Dauphin had used tunnels to carry out the crime.
And tunnels, by their very nature, took an enormous amount of time and effort to prepare.
Using magic could shorten that time somewhat, but even so, if he had been digging a tunnel like that underground, there was no way the knight commander himself wouldn’t have noticed the mana and vibrations.
There was only one conclusion.
“He had prepared it long ago. He had predicted that if the situation turned against us, we’d gather the escort targets in that grand manor!!”
Realizing that he had been made to dance in the palm of a mere thief’s hand, the knight commander felt murderous rage surging up in him and a chill running down his spine at the same time.
Seeing the knight commander more confused than ever before, the vice commander cautiously spoke up.
“Whatever tricks Dauphin pulled don’t matter. What matters is what we do from here, isn’t it?”
“From here? Everything is already over, so what exactly are you telling me to do?”
“Have you forgotten? The count’s order was 'catch Dauphin and bring back his head.' We only used the VIPs as bait to lure him out; that wasn’t the essence of the order, was it?”
That was sophistry.
It was true that the count had directly demanded Dauphin’s head, but it was all too obvious that he meant for them to clean up the city situation as well and bring the head back with them.
“And do you think the count would forgive us for that?”
“If this ends with the knight order looking as though it 'lost' to Dauphin, that will be the truly unforgivable outcome. You know that!”
The Sarnos Knight Order was the pride of House Sarnos.
The knight order’s military strength was not the whole of the count family’s power, but there was no doubt it was their most symbolic group.
And that symbol was being toyed with and beaten one-sidedly by a mere thief?
Would people really fear the knight order after this? Would they show them respect?
And would the count forgive those who turned the family’s pride into a laughingstock?
The knight commander’s gaze sank cold.
“...Is there a way?”
“Dauphin is a man who is extremely concerned about commoners’ well-being. There have been several nobles who, after being dealt with by him, tried to take revenge on commoners in their frustration, but every single one of them was thwarted by Dauphin’s intervention.”
In other words, by threatening commoners physically, they could draw Dauphin himself out.
“Target the slums. They don’t have anything to begin with, so it won’t make much of a dent in taxes, and the people shouting outside will shut up once they see blood in front of them.”
A knight order that should be protecting public order and fighting off foreign enemies, reduced to swinging its swords at the territory’s own people.
However, the knight commander knew.
That while a force feared by others could be useful, a force looked down on by others was worthless.
“Summon the entire knight order.”
Grinding his teeth, the knight commander clenched the sword hilt at his waist.
***
Guard prison.
“So right now, everyone’s outside cursing the knight order and the nobles, and it’s full of voices saying they miss the captain! Now that the false accusation has been cleared, it’s only a matter of time before you come out again!”
“...Yeah.”
At the sight of the female 8th Squad member excitedly explaining the situation outside, Dalia, behind the bars, gave a wry smile, looking a little troubled.
Having the false accusation cleared was, of course, a happy thing, and it was something to be grateful for that the citizens missed her.
She couldn’t deny feeling a bit exhilarated that the knight order had been dealt a blow, either.
Even so, Dalia couldn’t bring herself to smile brightly.
“In the end, it all ended with Dauphin’s victory.”
She had worked to stop him and swung her spear to catch him.
But the phantom thief she had been fighting had proudly seized victory while she was away.
From here on out, Dalia would still be a guard, and Dauphin would still be a phantom thief, but the two of them would never face each other again.
Given Dauphin’s actions so far, he would probably head off to another territory.
Only then did Dalia finally understand the identity of the bitterness that remained in her chest.
She wasn’t feeling defeated as a guard because Phantom Thief Dauphin had won.
What she regretted was simply that, as Dalia the person, she hadn’t been able to properly bring their match to a close.
“...At this rate, I won’t even have the standing to say anything to the other squad members who are cheering Dauphin on.”
Unaware of Dalia quietly sighing to herself, the squad member said, “Ah, right,” and fished something out before handing it to her.
At a glance it looked like a book, and Dalia tilted her head.
“What’s this?”
“They say it’s a gift for the squad captain? They were originally going to hand it over directly as soon as it was finished, but since only our squad members can visit you right now, they asked us to bring it instead. The, um, person was a man a little older than the captain, looked mostly ordinary, but with slightly mischievous eyes? Yes, that kind of vibe. Do you know him?”
Dalia’s pale green eyes went wide.
She took the book through the bars and began to look through its contents.
Dalia had never been much of a reader.
She had learned a little reading and writing from her father, but since her father wasn’t especially educated either, Dalia could handle simple sentences, yet once the text became more complex, she had difficulty reading it.
But as she read this book, Dalia felt no difficulty at all understanding it.
For one thing, much of the book was filled with pictures, and the explanatory text carefully avoided any difficult vocabulary a noble would use.
More than that, Dalia already 'knew' this content.
Not as knowledge, but as instinct.
“What’s wrong, Squad Captain? At a glance, it didn’t look like there was anything strange drawn in there...”
Taking Dalia’s dazed reaction as concern, the squad member asked worriedly.
But before Dalia could answer, a sound reached both of their ears.
《─To everyone living in Lebruk.》
A strange voice, as if echoes from a cave had been gathered together.
Realizing it was the voice amplified by a magical device, Dalia reflexively focused her hearing.
No, in fact, she didn’t even need to focus.
The voice was already echoing throughout the entire city.
《Right now, Dauphin and his gang are spreading crude false rumors to mislead the people.》
《Our Sarnos Knight Order originally sought to protect Lebruk according to the honor and pride of knights, but we have been unjustly framed by Dauphin’s filthy scheme, and we have judged that we can no longer continue using our previous methods.》
《Therefore, from this moment on, our knight order will sweep away the entirety of this city’s slums.》
For a moment, Dalia thought she must have misheard.
But the expression on the squad member beyond the prison bars was also filled with shock, so the words she had just heard didn’t seem to be an illusion.
《The residents of the slums are parasite-like beings who fail even to fulfill the duties of a subject while sucking the city’s lifeblood, and Dauphin satisfied his own vanity by tossing them wealth stolen through theft as if it were charity.》
《Furthermore, some residents who fell for such a petty trick willingly became Dauphin’s hands and feet, devoting themselves to milking as much benefit as they could, and every act of collaborating with a thief and profiting through him is, naturally, a crime.》
《Therefore, our Sarnos Knight Order will set this right through justice.》
Justice.
The moment that word reached her ears, Dalia felt a disgust as if insects were crawling across her skin.
Not because of the word itself, but because of the way they were using it as a pretext.
《This is an action for Lebruk, and moreover for House Sarnos as a whole.》
《If anyone blocks our path, no matter who they are, we will regard them as either Dauphin in disguise or an accomplice who profited from Dauphin’s theft, and cut them down.》
《So I ask all innocent citizens who have done nothing wrong to please refrain from causing trouble and continue with your livelihoods, so that you do not suffer needless harm from a misunderstanding.》
《That is all.》
Dalia could hold it in no longer.
Crack!
In one blow, she smashed the handcuffs specially made to restrain knights, then strode straight to the prison door and forced it open.
No, she simply tore the iron door itself off.
Krrrak!
“W-what are you d-doing, y-you...”
The jailer who had tried to intervene at Dalia’s sudden actions stammered, instinctively frightened by the utterly brutal sight.
The squad member was just as stunned.
“C-captain?”
“My armor—no, even just my spear is fine. Where is it?”
“Uh, well...”
“Hurry!”
“It was taken to the 8th Squad waiting room!”
Dalia kicked off the ground.
She knew that what she was doing now was a crime.
She also knew it was an act that completely negated the principle she’d been clinging to all this time—of 'maintaining order and discipline' even while swallowing anger, frustration, and injustice.
Knowing that, Dalia moved.
She couldn’t not move.
「No matter what anyone says, I believe that what I do is closer to good. Even if it’s not absolute, perfect good, at the very least it’s an action leaning toward the good side of the scale between good and evil. If that’s the case, then all I have to do is carry it out! Isn’t that remarkably simple!」
「You can’t simply dismiss something as useless just because it’s a game. It might be difficult to apply to reality right away, but at the very least, couldn’t it serve as a standard for judgment when you face something later on?」
Different.
Ignoring the feeling that the voices of two men who might not have been all that different were blending together, Dalia kept running and running, praying she wouldn’t be too late.
What she had argued over, debated, and built up together with 'him'.
For her own law and justice.