Tax Calculations are Always Difficult

Chapter 43

Humans, with their mouths, decry violence; with their eyes, they crave it.

Inside a clandestine arena, an entire massive building repurposed, warriors lunged at each other with their swords.

Their blades tore flesh, crushed bone, severed limbs.

Blood soaked the floor, viscera exploded and scattered through the air.

To call it a struggle felt inadequate.

This was carnage.

The people cheered for death.

Those who’d won money danced in frenzied celebration; those who’d lost spat upon the corpse of the fallen warrior.

Werner, the arena’s manager, watched with a satisfied gaze, until his subordinate rushed to him, bearing urgent news.

“Minister Barmut at the Fighters’ Headquarters?”

“Yes.”

Werner paused, lost in thought.

The arena hadn’t been established yesterday; surely the Minister of Intelligence wouldn’t come barging in just to shut them down.

‘Which means… it’s not the operation itself, but someone connected to it who has offended the Minister.’

A sudden headache bloomed.

Even the mere involvement of the Intelligence Agency was unwelcome; and the Minister himself held the title of Archduke.

If he were willing to risk bloodshed and storm the arena with knights and Imperial soldiers, they were all as good as dead.

‘The fact that the Minister is coming in person suggests he doesn’t have concrete evidence… or, does he? Did he come directly precisely because he does?’

After much deliberation, Werner hardened his resolve and spoke to his anxiously waiting subordinate.

“Hide the ledgers, first.”

Werner, deciding that evasion was the best course of action to survive, no matter the reason, was about to leave the arena when another subordinate came running.

“L-Lord Werner!”

“What is it?”

Sensing something ill-omened, Werner questioned, his subordinate answering with panting breaths.

“T-the Minister is coming! ”

“…Here?”

“Here, yes!”

A wave of stark terror washing over him, Werner instinctively whirled around to flee, only to land hard on his rear.

“Eep?!”

The Owl Mask was there.

—

‘Our Master, truly, an inscrutable one.’

John recalled the clash between the Minister and Ryan that had just transpired.

Ryan was, indeed, strong.

Undoubtedly top-tier among adventurers, and even seasoned intelligence operatives would find him a match one-on-one.

Of course, that wasn’t to say he compared to them.

Even Sergei, the weakest of the Owls, could defeat him with little trouble.

The Minister, however, was another matter entirely.

‘He’s certainly using a defensive artifact…but does such a thing exist? An artifact that can withstand the relentless assault of a top-tier adventurer without faltering?’

Even Aegis, the shield artifact retrieved from Lavore and cherished by the Imperial Knights, couldn’t perform such a feat.

He was deeply curious, but knew he’d never receive an answer.

And so, as the Owls, John included, resigned themselves, Ryan returned with tea.

“Forgive me for the delay. It seems none here are accustomed to teatime, so finding something suitable took longer than expected.”

Bowing deeply with impeccable manners, the Minister regarded him with a tone of apparent surprise.

“You don’t consider it cowardly?”

To the question laden with multiple meanings, Ryan offered a knowing smile.

“Fighters embrace all forms of strength that exist in this world. To deny the Minister’s strength is akin to calling a warrior cowardly for wielding a weapon.”

“Is that so.”

Nodding, the Minister took a token sip of the tea before turning his gaze to the Owls standing behind him.

Understanding the intent of that look, one of the Owls promptly vanished.

Lyon, still marveling at the owl’s form as it vanished at a speed his own eyes couldn’t track, was met with the Director’s continuing questions.

“What’s your impression of the Fighters, as they are now?”

“…The worst, I’d have to say.”

A flicker of interest sparked in the Director’s eyes.

He fixed Lyon with a gaze that urged him onward, and Lyon sighed.

“You know everything already, so I’ll speak plainly. The Fighters were originally a gathering of pure warriors, far removed from things like illegal gambling.”

The arena, too, was merely a place to test skills, not the death-wager gambling den it had become, he explained.

“Someone once said that where there’s fighting, there’s money. It’s true. Sometime ago, sparring became dueling, and dueling became slaughter. And in return, the warriors began to earn money.”

At first, it was just a few coins wagered for amusement.

But after immense capital entered the picture, the warriors tasted money and went mad because of it.

“Nobles, government officials, the underworld, merchants—in the arena, all sorts of people wager unimaginable sums and incite the warriors to fight.”

Feeling that things couldn’t continue like this, Lyon and some other warriors tried to restore the Fighters to their original state, but against those backed by massive funds, it was a futile resistance.

Having heard that those who remained at headquarters, including him, were mostly those who had lost back then, the Director checked the time and stood up.

“I’m going to the arena. Will you come with me?”

“Ah, yes. I’ll guide you.”

“I know where it is. I’m asking if you will come along.”

Lyon felt a pang of confusion at the statement that the director knew where the arena was.

“Then why did you ask about my account…?”

“There are two reasons. First, I needed to kill time while they noticed I had arrived here.”

“…And the second reason?”

“To see if this place was worth changing.”

Lyon blinked, dumbfounded.

Change.

Change the Fighters.

The Director had clearly said it.

“You mean to change…? This place…?”

The Director offered an answer not only to Lyon before him, but to all the warriors looking at him with hope.

“If it were just a trash heap, there’d be nothing to change. I’d simply burn the whole thing. But you haven’t abandoned your warrior’s pride, even amidst the garbage. It would be foolish to burn a box of jewels just because it’s a little dirty.”

Dirt can be washed away. That was what the Director was saying.

“So, I’ll ask again. Will you come with me?”

The warriors rose from their seats in unison.

—

Always makes me think, whether it’s a shadow auction or this, why does everyone have to do everything in the dark?

Well, a shadow auction – the name itself gives it away, so it’s not exactly baffling, but the arena?

There’s no reason to hold it in the gloom.

“So, from now on, let’s hold them in the light.”

“In the light…?”

Werner looked flustered at my words, at a complete loss.

Werner was the manager of this arena, a peculiar fellow who seemed more comfortable kneeling on the floor than sitting in a chair.

That aside, I understood his predicament perfectly well.

Of course, relocating an arena would require all sorts of preparations.

A new building, for one thing.

But there’s no need to fret.

The Empire will take care of everything.

“The Imperial government will take over the overall management, including the cost of building a new arena. Other than that, you can continue as you were.”

Oh, but from now on, bloodshed is forbidden.

Earning money by killing and being killed in this day and age… it’s just too barbaric.

“B-But, I’m fine with that, but the other patrons…”

“Patrons?”

I held out my hand, and the arena’s ledger was placed on my palm.

Patrons, patrons…

So many familiar names.

Oh, Dionysus is a patron here too.

I should act like I know him the next time I go seeking donations.

“Doesn’t seem like anyone here will be too problematic, does it?”

More importantly, is this man unwell?

Why is he sweating so profusely?

And his pupils are darting all over the place.

“Or is there perhaps someone here the Empire should be paying particular attention to?”

“N-No, of course not!”

“Then that settles it.”

I expected the arena manager to be a brutish sort, but thankfully he was a reasonable man.

Let’s see, what remains now?

Come to think of it, something worries me.

“Are the taxes being paid properly?”

“……Huh?”

He’s running a grand arena like this, after all.

I’ve never experienced it myself, but I do know that those in business struggle with all sorts of tax calculations.

“Taxes, I mean.”

“Ah, t-taxes you say! J-just a moment, please! H-hey! Go fetch the ‘taxes’ we have prepared!”

Soon, an enormous quantity of gold coins piled up like a mountain before me, but I could only tilt my head in puzzlement.

“This is the tax?”

“Y-yes, yes. It is…”

“Then what is that piled up in that room over there?”

Valdemar, who came here before, said there was a room full of gold coins, no?

“T-that is…”

“Is that also tax?”

“U-uh…”

“Tax?”

“………”

“Or not?”

“It…is…”

The gold coins before me tripled.

But something still feels off.

The ledger and the numbers still don’t match up.

Thinking that Werner might have overlooked something, I rose and slowly surveyed the room.

What is this scratch on the wall here?

I tapped it, and it sounded hollow inside.

At this, the owls tore down the wall, and gold coins cascaded out in a flood.

Now the numbers should roughly add up.

“Thank you for fulfilling your duty to pay taxes.”

The thought that he was a fine businessman, worthy of Dionysus himself, made me plan to get along with him, but alas, Werner died suddenly of an illness the next day.

A truly sad thing.

—

There’s an old saying that if you want to find something someone has hidden, set fire to their house.

The more precious the hidden object, the sooner they’ll rush out to retrieve it themselves.

For example, documents detailing the amount of money and drugs donated to a pseudo-religion.

That’s why the Minister intentionally visited Fighters’ Headquarters, so those in the arena would notice.

Those who sensed the danger would reach out and retrieve those documents with their own hands, either to hide them or destroy them.

“So, it was here.”

And in doing so, they had their tails grabbed by intelligence agents who were monitoring them.