Chapter 143: Volunteering for the Golden Week (1)
The ten-day-long holiday has begun.
A weekend, the school's anniversary, and the Rune Church's Easter celebration. Combine that with the class schedule, and it was a golden holiday that could last for more than a week straight.
From the beginning of the semester, everyone was happy to have such a long holiday.
First-year students enjoy traveling around the Imperial City to get to know their classmates better and invite them to their homes.
Sophomores and seniors traveled to secluded places to catch up on assignments, study for exams, or just to rest their tired bodies.
Fourth-year students study hard on weekdays and holidays, as they are close to graduation and employment.
...And here, despite being a freshman, there was one person who was forced to work hard.
Vikir. He was the hound of the Ironbloods.
Clap-clap- Clap-clap-
Day one of community service. Vikir was washing a mop.
At Indulgentia, a large orphanage on the outskirts of the Imperial City, with a large number of children, there is a never-ending stream of tasks.
Cleaning, laundry, cooking, feeding, washing dishes, carrying equipment, repairing facilities, playing with children, etc. ....
While on-campus volunteering can be supported by professional staff, off-campus volunteering has no such support.
You have to do everything yourself.
During the holidays, when the students at the academy are resting or playing, Vikir finds herself living here, doing all the dirty work.
And of course.
"Hey, Vikir, you should be grateful, we're here for the holidays too!"
"Well, I have to fulfill my volunteer hours anyway due to the Academy's noblesse oblige policy, so I might as well do it now."
"Me, I'm fine with it, I always liked to do community service!"
Tudor, Sancho, and Piggy. These loyal friends followed Vikir.
Vikir nodded silently.
"Thank you."
Everyone was surprised to hear a thank you from the usually reserved and blunt Vikir.
"Uhhhhhhh."
"Hmmmmmmmm."
"Hehehehe."
Tudor, Sancho, and Piggy giggled and started sucking on the mop together.
Vikir looked at them and smiled weakly.
No matter how much they tried to act grown-up, they were still kids who had just turned 18, cheerful kids who could make a friend's day with a simple thank you.
But not so with Vikir himself.
His tattered soul, the weight of life he carries, doesn't allow him to smile easily.
As Vikir mopped the corridor where the orphanage children played, he kept thinking, thinking, thinking.
'Yesterday, I ended up in the newspaper.'
Vikir recalled the newspaper that had been created at the Academy, and then the articles that had begun to appear in newspapers across the Imperium.
[The Night Hound, the villain who terrorized the Imperial Capital, who is he?]
-Last night, on the 0th day of the month, at dawn. A mysterious assailant appeared and ransacked a orphanage in 00...
Unusually, the attacker did not touch the riches in the vault...
[Faithful Saint in Peril Is everything okay as it is!?]
-The orphanage, monastery, and hospital managed by the Faithful Saint Quovadis family are in a series of crises...
Meanwhile, within the Quovadis family, the Old Order and New Order factions are currently at odds...
Meanwhile, some have criticized the government for being slow to respond to the terrorist attacks due to the family's internal politics...
[Old Order vs New Order, Quovadis family quarrel brings terrorists!?]
-The civil war within the Quovadis family is intensifying. This long-running confrontation began with the controversy between Cardinal Humbert of the Old Order and Cardinal Martin Luther of the New Order...
The conflict between the Old Order faction and the New Order faction is truly old, and these two factions are concerned about whether or not it is legitimate for the denomination to sell 'indulgences' and 'indulgences.' ...
As a result, citizens are becoming increasingly concerned about the delay in the investigation to catch the terrorists...
[Is the 'Night's Hound' a real villain?]
-Citizens of the city are on edge over the appearance of a monster that has been stalking the streets of the Imperial City...
However, some have continued to question whether this villain really exists...
Why is it that only welfare organizations under the jurisdiction of the Quovadis family are being attacked? Could this be the result of a power struggle within the Quovadis family...
It's no secret that there is a long-standing feud between the Old Order and New Order factions within the Quovadis family...
It remains to be seen if this is the result of a conflict between the Old and New Order, or whether a truly rare demon has appeared... ...
.
.
Vikir pored over the newspaper articles.
Thanks to Piggy, it was easy to gather newspapers from all over the Imperial City.
Vikir pieced together the information he'd gathered from Piggy and the information Sindiwendi had sent him.
The conclusion.
The places Vikir had raided in disguise as the Night Hound had all coincidentally been linked to the Faithful Quovadis.
"If we're just following the scent of the demon, and only certain groups get caught, then we have a problem.
Vikir remembers the commonalities of the men he's killed so far.
Unidentified money, the bodies of young boys and girls, and beasts whose faces melted after they died.
They wore the masks of religious organizations, but it was clear that the demons lurked underneath.
Like in Set Les Baskervilles.
'...And the most suspicious one is in this orphanage.'
Vikir glanced up from his mopping.
A portrait of the director hung at the top of the hallway wall.
A gentle, middle-aged face.
A sculpted, handsome man who, in his younger days, must have struck a chord with the ladies. He even bore a striking resemblance to a famous theater actor who had recently retired.
House Indulgentia, a branch of House Quovadis and a clerical family of the same rune religion.
In addition to being the patriarch of House Indulgentia, Guilty is also the director of the Indulgentia Orphanage .
It's probably the largest orphanage in the Imperial Capital.
But what's the point in all that?
'...Only one thing matters.'
He's the target of Vikir's assassination.
It's the Golden Week, so the window is wide open.
Now that he's managed to sneak into his target's lair, all that's left is to get to work.
Vikir used the excuse of cleaning to move from room to room, carefully studying the layout of the building.
'For an orphanage, this building is incredibly strong.'
Vikir mopped, estimating the number of rebars in the stone columns.
The orphanage was sturdy enough to be used as a military facility.
The orphanage's recruitment process was also a bit unusual: instead of taking in children from small local orphanages, the orphanage put out notices so that children would come to them from far away.
Because the facilities were so good and the welfare was so good, many children came to the center voluntarily, so it was difficult to keep track of how many children came and how many left.
At the end of the day, no one could tell if the numbers on the books were off by a zero or two.
'The more orphans you have, the more money you get, so no one would think you'd under-report the number of kids.'
A typical orphanage would exaggerate the number of children they have in order to inflate their funding.
So most audits are focused on whether there are fewer children than there are on paper.
The demons are the opposite.
It's in their interest to falsely claim to have fewer orphans and receive more.
That way, they can drain the blood without turning around.
Vikir notes the number of children in the Indulgentia orphanage, which appears to be much higher than the paperwork indicates.
While some praise Guilty for lending a helping hand to as many children as possible without seeking funding..., Vikir has a different opinion.
'Boys and girls under the age of 13, runaways, unrelated, unregistered births... all of whom are difficult to trace.'
In just one day, Vikir had noticed a number of suspicious things about the place.
And the intense smell of the demon wafting through the entire orphanage only solidified his conviction.
'I'm going to start seeing blood tonight.'
As Vikir was formulating his murderous plan in his mind.
"Hey, hey, hey...."
A voice interrupted Vikir's reverie.
"?"
Vikir turned his head to see an unexpected figure standing there.
A short, gray-haired woman, her hair fluffy like a puppy's.
A female student, neatly dressed in the academy's uniform despite it being a holiday, was looking at him.
Vikir knew her name.
No, no first-year student at the Academy could possibly not know her.
Sinclair. Head of the Hot Class.
For some reason, she is here doing volunteer work.
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