Hugo watched his subordinates lined up in a row with an emotionless gaze. However, his cold, settled eyes looked ready to dissect the faces before him down to every muscle.
The three pairs of eyes enduring the scrutiny drifted in different directions, deliberately avoiding the Commander's gaze. But as if unwilling to give them any leeway, a cold voice brushed past their ears.
"Attention."
No sooner had the order been given than the arms of the three snapped behind their backs.
They spread their legs shoulder-width apart and lowered their heads toward the floor. Though half a beat late, even Meterion was no exception.
His twisted lips clearly showed reluctance, but he seemed to have judged it wouldn’t be wise to fall out of favor right now.
"Raise your heads."
As the soft yet intimidating instruction came down, the necks that had been angled toward the floor all rose at once. However, their gazes still refused to leave the Commander's feet. They were desperately avoiding eye contact, as if something terrible would happen if they met his eyes.
Seeing them move like controlled mannequins, the rest of the battalion commanders also politely folded their hands in front of them. As the temperature dropped sharply, their fingertips began to sting. It felt as if the cold had turned into needles, pricking their skin.
Although Commander Agrizendro was more lenient than he looked, the moment one stepped out of line, he transformed into the grim reaper notorious to the world. As proof, frost flowers slowly bloomed on the darkened windows, and the light filling the conference room seemed unusually pale today.
Given the circumstances—old-style handcuffs that should have been completely disposed of found within the Council, worn by a big shot named Leonardo Blaine, and his control instability affecting the peninsula subjugation—it was an undeniable responsibility for whoever had been in charge.
Since it was serious enough to lead to dismissal, everyone stared at the three who had stepped forward with anxious eyes. Just then, Hugo, who had been carefully examining them, spoke in a stern voice.
"The person in charge first."
The two in the middle and on the right didn’t move, but the lips of the 11th Battalion Commander Noel on the left curled inward.
"It's me."
Blue eyes shifted in that direction.
"You shouldn't have had any external schedules for two months before the expedition. What were you doing, staying at headquarters the whole time and still not inspecting properly? Did the person in charge, who received reports almost weekly, really not know that old-style handcuffs were mixed in among the S-grade mage handcuffs, which aren't even that many?"
"...I'm sorry."
"Don't just say you're sorry. I'm asking whether you didn't know."
"I failed to check properly. I'm sorry."
Noel bowed his head lower and lower, not knowing what to do with himself. Whether from the cold constricting his breath or fear, his shoulders trembled slightly.
Just as Venum, watching from the corner of his eye, sneered inwardly at how detestable it was, Hugo's gaze fell on the other two beside him.
"You two—why did you visit the manufacturing facility?"
Venum straightened his shoulders as if he’d been waiting for this and answered as if to prove his innocence.
"The 10th Battalion Commander, who was on an external schedule, asked me to send one hundred boxes of live ammunition for monster capture. When I checked with the equipment management room at the time, I was told the quantity was insufficient, so I personally went to the manufacturing facility to place an order and secure it, then delivered it."
"The equipment management room didn’t have just one hundred boxes of ammunition? You call that an explanation? It should be standard to keep at least twenty times that amount stocked."
"Well... I did think it was strange, but I really was told there wasn’t any."
"Who was in charge at that time?"
Venum's gaze flicked briefly to Noel beside him. Noel squeezed his eyes shut and bowed at a ninety-degree angle.
"I'm sorry."
Hugo rubbed his furrowed brow and muttered coldly.
"Explain what happened."
Noel said that because of a sudden increase in workload at the time, he’d been in a situation where he couldn’t pay attention to the armory and equipment management at all. So he’d arbitrarily assigned the task to the company commanders of the 11th Battalion, and in that process, proper inspection wasn’t carried out, and there seemed to have been a recording error during the full inventory.
He added that he’d intended to report it to the Commander as soon as the subjugation team returned, but missed the timing because he was so busy. As he spoke, Noel looked as if he were about to plant his head on the floor. Hugo stared at him coldly, then cut him off, as if to say that was enough for now.
"Thesaurus. Why did you visit the handcuff production manager?"
"Pardon?"
When Hugo asked Venum next, Venum—who’d been standing with his chest out, relieved—looked back with a startled expression.
Hugo threw the ledger he’d brought onto a nearby table. The cover read, Management Register and Visitor Log.
He had already secured all the visit records and details from the manufacturing facility and was questioning everyone in front of everyone else so no one could slip away.
Venum's Adam's apple bobbed busily. The spirit of the nasty seven-year-old was nowhere to be seen as he stammered:
"Ah, likewise, at the request of Battalion Commander Magnus..."
"You wouldn't mind if I summoned Magnus tomorrow to verify that, would you?"
Venum hesitated for a moment at Hugo's words, then nodded.
"Of course not."
Three seconds of silence followed. Hugo stared intently ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ at Noel and Venum, then finally turned his eyes to Meterion on the right. The other battalion commanders’ gazes followed, focusing on him.
Hugo felt like his head was about to split with the throbbing, seeing that this guy—who always got tangled up in incidents—was mixed up in this one too. Judging from his past behavior, if there was a mastermind who would intentionally manipulate the situation, it would undoubtedly be Meterion.
But Hugo set aside his suspicions for a moment with a deep breath. A biased view tends to cloud the truth by turning into confirmation bias.
Just as he was about to ask for the reason, as he had with the other two, Meterion stepped forward, as if this whole situation disgusted him.
"I only stopped by about three months ago to secure additional weapons and protective gear. Other than that, I haven't visited or contacted the manufacturing facility, so I have nothing to do with this incident."
He began defending himself without being asked.
"I might look highly suspicious, since I'm the only one among us who went on the expedition to the peninsula with Leonardo Blaine. But when I visited the manufacturing facility, we couldn’t even predict that the Central Branch would be dispatched to the peninsula. The reason I went on the expedition was simply because I volunteered when everyone else was reluctant to go."
Meterion, seemingly aware of how suspicious he looked in Hugo’s eyes, set aside his usual insolence and laid it out with a bit of logic.
"If I had intentionally put old-style handcuffs on Leonardo Blaine and volunteered for the peninsula expedition to accompany him, wouldn’t I have stopped by the manufacturing facility to divert the handcuffs when the expedition was nearly confirmed, not at such an ambiguous time? Don’t you think?"
Indeed, the time when he and members of the 3rd Battalion were recorded as visiting the manufacturing facility was a period when nothing had been decided about the Central Branch’s expedition to the peninsula. In other words, it was before it was even certain that Leonardo Blaine would be arrested by the Council and included in the subjugation team.
However, by then, Hugo had already personally set out to find Leonardo, and although the expedition hadn’t been confirmed, it was a time when the peninsula issue was being actively discussed, so it was possible to predict the schedule.
But aside from that, Hugo felt a strange irritation at Meterion’s nuance just now.
"Meterion. I assumed this started from 'intention or mistake' because I want to trust my subordinates, at least. But now you're talking as if you're certain someone intentionally created this. Do you have any guesses?"
"...Agrizendro."
A vein stood out slightly on Meterion's forehead.
"I really don't know where that trust shows in what you're doing right now. Stop pretending. Isn’t gathering all the battalion commanders at this hour to pin down the facts basically proof that you also believe there was intent behind this?"
"..."
"Leonardo Blaine wore old-style handcuffs that were thought to be disposed of, then went on an expedition to the peninsula where danger lurks? Isn’t it too exquisite to be a mistake? When coincidences stack up like this, it's no longer coincidence. And the fact that I, who can point that out more boldly than anyone, am saying it is clear evidence that I have nothing to do with this incident."
Meterion's statement sounded self-destructive at first, but it was enough to stir confusion among those who had been quietly suspecting him. Not only did he conclude that the incident—which was still unclear whether it was intent or a mistake—was intentional, he was also unnecessarily bold about it.
However, that didn’t mean suspicion toward him disappeared. The battalion commanders present had often seen suspects desperately trying to win investigators over by playing that kind of psychology.
"Looking at the timing and the authority needed to plan this, I think it was the 11th Battalion Commander, so I don't understand why you're barking up the wrong tree."
As Meterion suddenly shifted the blame, Noel snapped back with an unpleasant expression.
"Hey, Clinder. If we're going to argue like that, I’m the most likely to be suspected as the manager at the time, so why would I do something like that?"
"You might have aimed for that very psychology. Besides, the most likely scenario in the current situation is—"
"Enough—"
Clang!
As the two kept going, Hugo, unable to take it any longer, raised his voice and cut in. But there may have been a slip in his control, because the mana he released all at once shattered every light bulb and lamp in the conference room.
Glass fragments, turned to powder in an instant, fell with a hiss, and darkness—along with silence—descended on the noisy conference room.
Loren clicked her tongue and shook her head as if she had a headache, then quickly floated light balls to illuminate the room. But the expression on Hugo’s face under the light made them think that maybe the darkness had been better.
