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Volume 5 Chapter 5.4

Translator: Reflet
Editor: Weasalopes

Up until now, hindering supply had usually decreased customers naturally in half a month, and anything more meant they just had to use bugs to fabricate complaints for bad rumors to sprout and keep people away from the shops, and then they just waited and bankruptcy occurred. There were cases where they used underhanded methods of mixing in rotten ingredients with the prior day’s stocks to cause food poisoning, but that was only once or twice.

In addition to these scandals and bad reputations that came in sets, sometimes these shops were forced into suspension by the administration, so you can see that even the people of Lorren who hated making decisions based on gossip still ended up believing some of it.

However, this time there were no hindrances in food supply, and any other harassment was blocked by the shop itself and impossible to achieve. As expected, there weren’t any people who would believe rumors, and it would be difficult to finish any of this within the month.

「For now, I leave this with you. Ask that man to handle it if you can.」

「Yes, I understand.」

Choosing their words slightly carefully at the end there, the chef and the secretary decided their next move. Loosening up because only the people they knew were in the vicinity, they never even realized they were under surveillance and recorded from beginning to end.

「They’ll probably make a move tomorrow.」

「So we can finally bring down these goons who’ve been making a mockery of business transaction……」

That very night in the trade guild, Rainy brought this report to the guildmaster.

「We can’t round them up immediately.」

「I know. Not only has this country taken on all the bad characteristics of Farlane’s judicial system, but for these last ten years or so, these judges have been especially fundamentalist in their fastidiousness. However……」

Nodding at Rainy, who had given a warning, the guildmaster spat out his words with a fierce smile as he glared with his sharp, glowing eyes at empty space.

「Still, we have enough evidence here to make sure they don’t get off without penalty. This is a matter that is involved with the trade guild’s dignity, so I’ll chase them down to the ends of hell to make them pay for their crimes.」

It would appear that the guildmaster had been enduring a lot, and he had the kind of bloodlust that almost made you want to sympathize with the ones who did this. Rainy gave him the next piece of information in an unconcerned manner.

「The thief guild is already on the move.」

「Oh？ If they’re acting as well, then these people must have done something seriously bad.」

「They’re making quite the blunder without permission and without registration. They’ve even caused several incidents in the guild’s territory.」

「Wow, I see.」

The guildmaster had a truly cheerful expression on his face at the report about the thief guild. Generally these guilds hardly ever moved other than to let off steam, but this guild in particular was already on the move. If they knew the meaning of this information, the victim’s side wouldn’t have a reason not to be delighted.

This was true for any country, but whenever you conducted a large scale business in certain large cities, you would always need to associate with that city’s thieving guild to a certain extent. As a result, even in Rufeus, the thief guilds and trade guilds united under non-aggression pacts, leaving enough distance between each other to neither be classified as being on good or bad terms.

The more people there are, the more quarrels and crimes there are. You can’t resolve all of these via law-abiding methods. Conversely, the other party might sometimes plot resolutions that give them an advantage via unlawful methods. In order to protect yourself from these sorts of predicaments, it was always important to never fully sever ties with the thief guilds.

Therefore, even in Lorren, where there were numerous people who could not condone illicit activities like these, everyone tolerated the existence of thief guilds and every organization forming non-aggression pacts with said guilds. Getting full of yourself and doing something unpardonable would sometimes cause boycotting, but without this, the organizations managing and keeping hoodlums in check would be gone, and even in this country that boasted its status of knowledge, there would be more people inconvenienced than not.

And it was precisely their understanding of this that kept thief guilds from making too many moves.

「I’m actually impressed that we’ve been safe doing all this despite not being affiliated with the thief guild.」

「You aren’t? Wow, that takes some guts.」

「So apparently the thief guild had to wait a bit longer to try anything risky.」

「Yet another strange thing going on there……」

「They apparently only become notable as of recent, but up till then they were simply ill-natured, regular citizens.」

Hearing the reason that Rainy said, the guildmaster began to grasp the situation a bit better. It was true that it would have been quite difficult for this country to do anything in that set of circumstances. The reason the thief guilds were allowed to exist was because people in respectable occupations wouldn’t do anything about it.

「With this incident, these people will no longer be called respectable and they can move openly.」

「Is that so. In that case, how about we leave the perpetrators to the thief guild and on our side we thoroughly take care of the academy’s secretariat and head chef who are working injustice?」

「I thought it was difficult to convict someone in this country based off pure evidence.」

「Yeah, that’s because the problem is how many. The last few years, the number of discontinuations has become a bit unpardonable, so when I carried forward my own search, well, I saw lots of things, lots of them. Once this incident is over, I plan to go right ahead and clean up the interior.」

「So this was a good opportunity for you？」

「Pfft, no way. Originally, I should have done something before the first establishment got forced into closing down. And even if that wasn’t going to be possible, I still had to hasten finishing the interior search and eliminate those fools. Checking the flow of events of closure on the surface while neglecting the investigation has yielded this result. The casualties spreading this far and the fact that this trade guild of all places was partially responsible for that means that I cannot justify myself in any possible way to these victims who were just doing honest business.」

With a severe expression on his face, the guildmaster mentioned the several restaurants that had been victimized. While it was true that thanks to Hiroshi and friends, the internal injustice and corruption would be swept out, before it even got to this point, several restaurants had been chased into discontinuation, forced to spend their lives in bankruptcy. It was true that the guild hadn’t been able to do anything due to insufficient evidence, but it didn’t change the fact that these victims had nothing to do with the drama, and that these victims were practically on the verge of committing suicide.

While only in some regions, Rufeus’s trade guilds’ reputation had sharply dropped in the last few years, losing a large amount of trust. And this lost trust was fully justified, since the trade guilds not only stood idly by as the greedy businesses grew fatter, giving the honest workers a bad reputation to make them lose it all, but a portion of them had actually participated in this.

The guild should probably brace itself for ten years or so before it regained the trust of the people. The people within were the ones who stomped on the trust, so it made sense. Their bad rep was deserved and they just had to accept that and try their best to regain it.