"That's payback for all the trouble you caused me. Consider yourself lucky it ended with just one punch."
In front of a wide table that could easily seat twelve people. Leonardo, sitting in an ornate wooden chair, propped his chin with his left hand and glared at Andrew. Tergio placed a cold orange juice in front of him, saying to calm down. Even while gripping the cup and gulping it down, Leonardo's eyes didn't leave his target.
Andrew, who had been rubbing an ice pack against his bluish face, let out an awkward laugh at his fierce gaze.
"Right. I made you suffer, so I should accept this much."
"Don't talk for a moment."
Judy took off her gloves and applied some strange cream to Andrew's face. After attaching a bandage that covered half his face, she patted his cheek and returned to her seat.
Leonardo frowned deeply at Andrew's response. That guy always spoke like that, making others feel like the bad guys.
Tergio, who had been staring at him from the side, pressed between his golden eyebrows as if telling him to relax his brow, and asked:
"So, what happened? Tell us. Why did Kazad suddenly appear in Frost territory, and how did someone who could escape whenever he wanted end up being taken away so quietly?"
Leonardo pushed away the hand lingering between his brows as if it were annoying. Then he brushed back his bangs and let out a deep sigh.
"Hah, where should I start with this?"
"Start with the Delberg Merchant Group master."
Mirail, who had put all the butterflies back in the breeding cage, answered while sitting in the chair opposite him. Leonardo, who had been rubbing his eyes, bit his lips firmly and nodded.
He drained the remaining juice in his cup and slowly began his story.
"So..."
To address the origin of the incident, Leonardo had to pull out memories from even before meeting Hugo in Frost territory. It was around the time when he had started gathering mana stones while slaughtering large numbers of Quamare in Perion in the central-eastern region, before infiltrating the Delberg Merchant Group as a low-ranking member.
During his interrogation at the Council, he had testified that the reason for collecting mana stones was to create water-attribute protective gear. Since it was established theory that fire mages were vulnerable to water, the Council's investigators didn't question that point further.
But that wasn't the core reason. The real reason Leonardo had gathered Quamare mana stones was because they maximized the expansion power of explosive etaide and completely erased all traces.
Also, while he had testified that he had infiltrated the Delberg Merchant Group after following up on the sudden disappearance of the mass-hunted Quamare, that wasn't true either. Rather, it would be more accurate to say he had deliberately left monster corpses on the Perion coast to track the Delberg Merchant Group. It was a kind of strategy disguised as coincidence.
The people gathered here were partners who had met with a single purpose. To achieve that purpose, there was a prerequisite task of uncovering the inner workings of the Delberg Merchant Group.
Of course, they didn't necessarily have to do that role themselves. The Delberg Merchant Group, which had taken the bait, moved the stolen Quamare and buried them in Frost territory, their large-scale operation site. And Leonardo, as a hastily recruited low-ranking member of the merchant group, while understanding the situation, lured the Council's pursuit team that was chasing him toward Frost territory to take them all down at once.
But if life always went according to plan, living in this world wouldn't be so difficult. Three unexpected incidents had occurred for him.
The appearance of an impersonator, Brianna Dixie's origin, and Hugo Agrizendro's pursuit, which had never happened before.
"An impersonator using my name? Right, let's say I could accept that giving them the benefit of the doubt. But because of the rumors that guy spread, the pursuit caught up much faster than I expected, and it was the Commander of the Council. On top of that, the merchant group master who had hired the impersonator was Brianna Dixie, someone this bastard Andrew knew."
Leonardo rubbed his eyebrows as he recalled the situation when everything had seemed dark.
While identifying the members of the temporarily settled merchant group, he had passed the list to his partners requesting analysis. Later, through Andrew's information network, who was in charge of target analysis, he was able to hear some information about the merchant group master. And that's when things started to go wrong.
That she was from Bermuda, and was Brianna Dixie who had stayed at the same care facility as Andrew in the past. And that she was destined to be abandoned after taking on dangerous work voluntarily to catch the eye of Filione Delberg, the chief grand master.
Andrew, while relaying the facts, had earnestly requested Leonardo despite knowing it was an unreasonable ask. To quietly extract her so she wouldn't be involved in this incident.
However, Leonardo, who knew that Kazad had entered the nearby village and was inquiring about him, had no time to look after someone else. How could he move secretly with a central figure in the case, someone he wasn't even sure would cooperate? Not alone, but with someone else.
Moreover, the merchant group master was not someone easily approachable as she was always surrounded by executives, and she had stepped into this incident knowing she was participating in illegal activities, due to her own greed.
Leonardo, who wasn't soft enough to help her while risking his own safety, had planned to just drop a hint about the monster storage to Flynn and escape outside to watch the situation.
But as time passed, Andrew's words troubled a corner of his mind. That if she was caught by the Council along with the merchant group members, she would surely be silenced and found dead one day.
That as someone from Bermuda, didn't he know how desperate her situation must have been to take on illegal work voluntarily in this harsh society?
If he left someone to their predicted death while knowing about it, that would tear apart Leonardo's beliefs, who always struggled with guilt over those he couldn't protect. Moreover, he had often heard from Andrew reminiscing about his childhood that she had pain as someone from Bermuda.
Finally, Leonardo, struggling with his inner conflict, couldn't ignore her. Though he knew it would be dangerous afterward, he moved more boldly.
"I snuck into her quarters at night to warn her, and even leaked information to the executives to help her escape. Meanwhile, I made connections with two people from the Council and gave them clues related to the case, creating room for me to control the situation and buying time. But later, I found out that while the executives had fled, that woman remained. Said she couldn't and wouldn't leave without her merchant group members."
Leonardo chuckled as he recalled the stubbornly determined merchant group master. Apparently she had helped Andrew when he was being bullied by peers as a child. She was an incredibly bold woman, just as he had heard.
After that, hiding the merchant group master and showing Flynn the storage, then taking her to the sea, the only escape route in the closed territory. Leonardo recounted the situation like a story while recalling each dangerous moment one by one.
"Wait, so you succeeded in helping the merchant group master escape, and only you were trapped inside? Couldn't you have escaped easily by yourself?"
"Were you caught during the merchant group member identity verification right after the gate closure? If the Council came to investigate directly, they might have quickly caught the fake ID."
Judy and Andrew asked in turn. Leonardo shook his head.
"I'm not stupid enough to use a fake ID there. We have two of Terju's IDs. I have one of them."
Leonardo took out an ID from his artifact and placed it on the table. It had the name 'Tergio Ruano' written on it. Being an old-style ID without a photo inserted was perhaps a stroke of luck.
This was one of the real IDs that Tergio had 'owned.' And this name had passed away about 15 years ago. Though it was the same person as Tergio Dungrey present here, any documentary connection was completely severed now.
Tergio had followed his adoptive mother's surname in childhood, but after his mother passed away, he registered himself with another family and came to have two separate identities distinguished as completely different people. This was a case of deliberately exploiting an error that occurred in the process of Bermuda natives being registered as imperial citizens without roots.
Unless all records held by the empire's administrative agencies were examined in one place, it wasn't easy to catch this error under the current system. Since Bermuda natives flowing in from outside didn't know their exact place and date of birth, they were a significant difficulty and exceptional element in the process of identity registration and population census.
The reason Leonardo had been able to escape the investigation tent with a deceased Bermuda native's ID was because he had targeted this loophole.
Later, when he was transferred to the Central Branch, having someone else's ID almost became an issue, but it seemed to have been settled at the level of the Commander who had kept quiet about the forbidden magic without digging deeper.
However, it wouldn't have mattered even if they had dug deeper. They couldn't contact a dead person to ask why someone was carrying their ID anyway, and for him, it would just add one more line of "using another person's ID" to the many charges he had before his release.
"Anyway, I judged it would be better to use the name of someone who actually existed, anticipating the worst-case scenario then. So I used Terju's ID, and Andrew's hairstyle..."
Leonardo said while tapping Judy's nose bridge who sat to his left:
"And borrowed your freckles too."
The magic to change faces was a type of elaborate illusion magic, and it was difficult to consistently maintain the same appearance through imagination alone. Therefore, by combining elements from several people Leonardo had seen in his life, the ordinary yet extraordinary fictional character of low-ranking merchant group member Tergio was created.
Since Judy considered her freckles a complex, she blushed and swatted away Leonardo's hand. Tergio stared blankly at the two of them. Then Mirail, who had been listening attentively, opened her mouth:
"Why were you caught after going to such lengths? Even if your identity was discovered, from what I know of your skills, Kazad is no match. I know he's strong, but compared to your background, he's nothing more than a flower in a greenhouse."
"...I thought so too, but that person is much stronger than we expected. If it were me now, I might even be slightly outmatched–"
"Don't be ridiculous."
The gazes of four people, including Leonardo, focused on one person. The one who had uttered those last words was Tergio.
He crossed his arms and leaned his upper body on the table, staring intently at Leonardo's face. Soon he tilted his head loosely while hiding his sharp gaze with a smile.
"I'm not interested in how you got caught after deceiving them well. I just want to know why you didn't escape when you had the chance."
Leonardo, who had been maintaining a calm expression, raised his chin and looked down at him, asking:
"What do you mean?"
"My prince, be honest. You could have run away then. I even created an opening by throwing the glass bottle."