TBAGM Vol. 2 Chapter 5 Part 1

Chapter 5 – Purge and Corruption

The day before the Guild Showdown. While the three members of Greenpeak were putting the finishing touches on their training, I, Lloyd, went to a certain place.

My destination was Orgus’s chairman’s office at the Adventurers’ Association.

When I slipped in without making a sound, Orgus was clutching his head like he was drowning in worries.

“Hey, Orgus. Looks like you’ve got it rough.”

“Ah, Mr. Lloyd. Did something happen? Is there anything you needed?”

Once he realized it was me, Orgus immediately put on his usual cheerful expression as he spoke, but it was only on the surface. If I used 【Appraisal】, I could tell just how drained he really was.

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[Name] Orgus (42)

[Status] Willpower 20/100 Stamina 10/50

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There was no way a single all-nighter could have brought him to this point. He hadn’t slept for two or three days.

“Today, I didn’t come because of my own business. I came to help with yours.”

“My business?”

“Yeah. It might end up helping me too, but I came to sort out the Adventurers’ Association staff and correct the wrongdoing of Incarnation of the Sun.”

“Wha…!”

At my words, Orgus’s eyes widened in shock. This had to be the reason he was sleep-deprived.

“There are people within the Adventurers’ Association who are under Kyros’s influence. They’ve been stirring up trouble inside, haven’t they? Am I right?”

“Ahaha… Mr. Lloyd, you really do see through everything. Yes. You’re exactly right.”

For Kyros, the most irritating existence of all was the Adventurers’ Association. As long as Orgus held power, Kyros’s opinions wouldn’t get through.

Even at the last guildmaster conference, Orgus had openly taken my side. Kyros’s frustration had to have been piling up ever since.

“Lately, factions have formed inside the Adventurers’ Association…”

“Kyros set that in motion, didn’t he?”

He was probably engineering things so Orgus would lose the chairman’s seat.

It was almost certainly Kyros’s doing, but even if he somehow wasn’t involved, factions still needed to be dismantled immediately.

“Recently, illicit funds have been leaking from somewhere. I’ve got a pretty good idea where, and because of that, the Adventurers’ Association’s income hasn’t been stable.”

“Illicit funds!? No, we have that investigated thoroughly every month…”

“Kyros is controlling the person doing the investigating, Orgus. Sorry to make you move when you’re exhausted, but gather the documents right away. I’ll go call Rena, too.”

Rena’s skill, 【Spatial Photography】, was extremely useful in situations like this.

Not long ago, she had been an employee of the Adventurers’ Association herself. Orgus had likely recognized her skill and had her review important paperwork.

“Understood. I’m truly sorry for troubling you during such a difficult period.”

“You’ve always helped me, Orgus. I’ve got to repay the favor sometimes.”

To get this far, Orgus’s support had been indispensable. Without him, I might not have even been able to establish a guild.

And so, the purge of corruption within the Adventurers’ Association began.

—

Orgus, me, and Rena, whom we’d called in as backup, spent the entire day gathering evidence and cleansing out the rot.

At first, collecting proof was a struggle, but once we found a single loose thread, everything unraveled in a chain reaction until it was laid bare.

Rena restored data that had been deleted in the past, and even data someone had manipulated to conceal the truth was identified through Orgus’s and my 【Appraisal】.

Then, as the sun began to sink, we gathered several dozen employees into one room.

Every employee assembled there was someone involved in wrongdoing. Some had been pushed into it through Kyros’s influence, while others had taken part of their own volition.

“What’s this about? It’s already closing time, so I’d like to go home.”

An older man who seemed to be the ringleader among the group complained in a sullen tone.

His name was Peter. Within the Adventurers’ Association, he held the most power after Orgus, occupying a position akin to a vice chairman.

He was obese, dressed in an expensive-looking outfit overloaded with ornamentation. Meals bought with other people’s money must have tasted wonderful.

Orgus spoke to the man as if soothing him.

“Could you endure it just for today? We’ll be done soon.”

“I suppose it can’t be helped. Just for today.”

When the chairman said it, he couldn’t exactly argue. Unaware that Orgus’s words were tinged with irony, Peter reluctantly acted as though he’d accepted it.

According to Orgus, Peter had once been an exceptionally capable asset. You could tell as much just by looking at his status.

“Today, I asked you all to gather because there’s something I want to hear.”

Orgus addressed the assembled employees with an air of authority.

None of them seemed to think their corruption had been exposed. No one in the room looked particularly panicked as they listened.

“What I want to hear is why you committed fraud.”

“““…Huh?”””

At Orgus’s words, the entire group let out stupid, slack-jawed sounds.

Peter dabbed at the greasy sweat beading on his face with a handkerchief, forcing a strained smile.

“O-Orgus, you’re quite the joker.”

“This isn’t a joke. I mean it.”

Orgus cut him off flatly.

With fury flickering in his demeanor, no one besides Peter could even bring themselves to speak.

“…Then I would like to ask what your basis is.”

“Everyone gathered here has dirtied their hands with fraud at least once. I wanted to hear why you betrayed my trust and did it.”

Orgus stated it in a calm, matter-of-fact tone.

The employees’ faces twisted with shock. But Peter, refusing to be swept along, pressed at the corners of his eyes and spoke as if grieving.

“Up until now, I’ve worked myself to the bone as your right-hand man. It’s truly regrettable to be suspected by the chairman when I haven’t committed any fraud.”

It was immediately obvious that not a milligram of sincerity existed in Peter’s words. The other employees followed his lead.

“Me too. I think it’s wrong to suspect your subordinates without any evidence.”

“I thought Orgus trusted his staff.”

“Tell us why you’re doubting us.”

They protested one after another.

Peter had likely handled the destruction of evidence personally. With authority like a vice chairman’s, he would have been able to erase things without difficulty.

That was why they continued to play innocent, insisting there was no proof.

Unfortunately for them, they’d picked the wrong opponent. Who would imagine every piece of evidence had been restored?

Orgus fluttered a stack of documents compiled into dozens of pages, displaying them like bait.

“Well, this is the evidence. And if you’re still going to say you didn’t do it, you understand what’s going to happen to you, don’t you?”

“And here I thought you might present something meaningful, but you went as far as preparing forged documents? You want us gone that badly?”

Peter looked exasperated, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Apparently, he himself had suppressed all the evidence. Otherwise, there was no way he could be this calm.

“Hah… Rena. Read it out.”

“Understood. First, I’ll read the documents concerning Kyros, guildmaster of Incarnation of the Sun.”

Holding copies in hand, Rena began reading the evidence one after another.

They had taken unjust money from Kyros of Incarnation of the Sun and leaked Adventurers’ Association information.

They had prioritized Incarnation of the Sun when accepting quest requests.

They had falsified the number of monsters defeated.

One wrongdoing after another surfaced in a chain.

As they listened to Rena, the employees’ expressions gradually darkened.

Having every underhanded act they’d committed read aloud for everyone to hear, if they had even a shred of conscience, it would have been unbearable.

“Next, regarding embezzlement. There are those who submitted fraudulent reports and embezzled funds.”

Every day, hundreds of adventurers came to the Adventurers’ Association.

They exchanged magic stones for money. They accepted quests. Some even bought armor and weapons.

If it was only a little, it wouldn’t be found out. That was the kind of thinking some employees fell into.

Normally, embezzlement would be discovered quickly.

The reason Orgus hadn’t noticed until I pointed it out wasn’t just because he trusted them. The biggest reason was likely that he’d gathered too many highly capable people.

Capability was a double-edged sword. The talented could become either allies or enemies. If you couldn’t manage everything perfectly, as in this case, betrayal was more than possible.

—

“This is everything.”

“That’s how it is. Anyone with objections, step forward.”

Rena finally finished reading through every last act of wrongdoing.

With each offense called out word for word, they no longer had the luxury of playing innocent. Even if Peter had truly wiped the evidence clean, getting pinned down this precisely made it only natural to assume the proof had been uncovered.

“I-I committed fraud. I got blinded by money, and I just…”

As if she could no longer endure it, one of the female employees confessed, looking apologetic. If I remembered correctly, she was the staffer whom Kyros had bribed to route a larger number of quests to Incarnation of the Sun.

Once one person confessed, their unity crumbled in an instant. Following her lead, the employees began admitting everything one after another.

“I heard that if I leaked information, they’d let me join Incarnation of the Sun in a few years…”

“There were adventurers who looked down on us staff, and I couldn’t stand it… so I reduced their rewards…”

People tried to unburden themselves by confessing, no matter what it was. This situation was no different.

Some of it even included corruption that had nothing to do with Incarnation of the Sun.

“So? What about you, Peter?”

“Ghk…”

Orgus turned a sharp gaze on Peter, the last one left.

With everyone else having spilled the truth, Peter alone still refused to talk.

“I… I didn’t do anything.”

“Peter! Do you even understand how ugly what you’re saying is!? The evidence has been restored, too!”

Orgus seized Peter by the collar and roared in his face.

The pressure was close to murderous intent. Peter had to be drowning in an overwhelming fear right now.

And yet, even as his face contorted, he shook his head from side to side.

“I didn’t do it! If I didn’t do it, then I didn’t do it!”

There was an unnervingly rigid conviction in his attitude.

No matter what Orgus said, he wouldn’t crack. And conviction that abnormally firm always had something behind it.

That pained expression. The blood that dripped from his clenched fist. I could more or less guess what was going on.

“Kyros… had you really fallen this far?”

I could only feel bitter disappointment at the actions of the man who was likely the cause: Kyros.

No matter how hard we pressed him after this, Peter wouldn’t open his mouth.

So I proposed one thing to them.

“For those of you whom Kyros asked to commit fraud, you’ll switch sides and keep doing it the way you have been. But everything you gather will be delivered to Orgus.”

“““Huh?”””

“Of course, your punishment will be a pay cut. From here on out, you’ll act so Kyros doesn’t realize you’ve switched sides. I’ll also place you under surveillance, so don’t even think about speaking out.”

After extracting that promise from the employees who had been involved with Kyros, I dismissed them.

Naturally, I made the employees who had been committing fraud purely for themselves stop as well, but I didn’t fire them either. If I created differences in how I treated them, that itself would become the seed of factionalism.

Peter and the others left the room, and only Orgus, Rena, and I remained.

Orgus bowed his head to me.

“It’s over. Thank you so much for helping us.”

“This was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m glad we exposed it early.”

The fraud would continue, so nothing was truly “solved.”

But there was a world of difference between knowing you were being robbed and not knowing. And on top of that, turning them made it possible to collect information on Kyros as well.

“Why go through something so roundabout? Wouldn’t it be better to confront Kyros with the evidence as soon as possible?”

Rena spoke as if she couldn’t accept it.

Just like her, the employees were probably wondering the same thing. From now on, every day, they would be tormented by the fear that they could be expelled at any moment.

“We can’t crush Incarnation of the Sun that easily. When you’re dealing with the strongest guild, their influence is enormous. Even if we managed to take them down, the blowback would slam into other places.”

At this stage, it was a fact that Incarnation of the Sun was the kingdom’s top guild. If a guild like that collapsed, chaos was inevitable. The nation’s power structure would shake as well.

“Eventually, we’ll bring Incarnation of the Sun down the proper way. Until then, we have to endure.”

Peter’s conviction had been that strong. That wasn’t something you could maintain unless someone had threatened you.

The culprit could only be Kyros. In fact, we had already confirmed that Peter and Kyros were connected.

“Kyros is completely rotten.”

“Yeah. The Kyros from back then is gone.”

Having seen Kyros’s depravity with our own eyes, Orgus and I could only feel disheartened by his actions.

Watching us, Rena tilted her head.

“The Kyros from back then? Was he a good person?”

She didn’t know the old Kyros.

All she knew was the trash Kyros he had been from the start.

“Back then, I owed him too,” Orgus said.

“If he’d been rotten from the beginning, I wouldn’t have ever thought about building a guild with him.”

Until Kyros founded a guild and it came to be hailed as the strongest, he had worked hard as a guildmaster.

The word “fraud” didn’t suit the Kyros from those days. That was how decent he seemed at his core.

But as much as I didn’t want to believe it, looking back now, maybe every word and action had been an act—nothing but lies.

There was only one goal in his head: “Build the strongest guild.” He had been imprisoned by that obsession for eight years.

Ellis had snapped me awake. I was able to move forward because I found real companions.

Kyros didn’t have anyone like that now. Even if he did, it would be a sham. At this rate, he would keep sinking, straight down to rock bottom.

I had a responsibility to stop him. Not for Kyros’s sake. For mine—and for her, who was gone now.

—Kyros. I’d free you from that shackle soon.

†