While Rei was reading the Monster Encyclopedia, a heavy silence filled the room where the Holy Four Assembly was taking place.
The cause of that silence was the sheaf of documents Orban had produced on the table.
One glance was enough to understand exactly what Dailas had been doing all along.
Seeing those documents, Dwanda and Lusitania would find it no easy matter to take Dailas's side now.
Originally, they had been told that Dailas's demand was to address the fact that his mansion had been raided the previous night by Fusetsu, led by Orban—Robel's ally.
More precisely, they had intended to use that as a pretext to seize Robel's authority for themselves.
As the four people who ran Egginis, the authority each of them held was considerable. If they could seize even a fraction of it, that would translate to significant gains for themselves.
At the same time, they likely planned to curry favor with Dailas—or perhaps to broker an arrangement with him and create a debt owed to them by Robel.
But despite having convened the Holy Four Assembly with such intentions, the documents prepared before them made it painfully clear that their current position of cooperating with Dailas was extremely precarious.
If Robel were so inclined, they would without a doubt suffer massive damage. They could even see Dailas never seeing the light of day again.
"Dailas... is this true?"
Eventually, perhaps deciding that remaining silent would accomplish nothing, Dwanda spoke up.
A stout man in his fifties. The look he currently directed at Dailas contained something akin to the bewilderment of one regarding an incomprehensible creature.
Naturally. Among the documents were numerous items that Dwanda could not possibly overlook.
Of course, Dwanda—and Lusitania, who had yet to speak but was directing a stern gaze at Dailas—were each one of the four who ran the autonomous city of Egginis, and as such, they had engaged in their share of underhanded dealings. Slush funds, intimidation through force, and the like.
But even so, they observed the minimum rules as merchants of Egginis. They would never do anything to harm the autonomous city itself.
Against that backdrop, what Dailas had done in collusion with the Dolan Workshop was fatal.
There were other inexcusable matters as well, but that was undoubtedly the gravest.
Deliberately gathering bandits—the natural enemies of merchants—around Egginis would, if discovered, certainly reduce the number of merchants willing to come to the city.
And then there was the matter of preparing a large number of illegal slaves who had been forcibly enslaved, stripping their souls through necromancy rituals, and using them as material for golem cores.
This was undeniably even more damning than the bandit matter.
If this became public, at worst they could have their autonomous city status revoked by the Mireana Kingdom.
Should that happen, it went without saying that the four who currently ran Egginis would also face punishment.
Robel might receive leniency for having exposed the whole affair. But what about the other three—no, setting aside Dailas as the perpetrator, what would become of Dwanda and Lusitania?
It required no deliberation.
Having sided with Dailas in this matter also carried tremendous weight.
At best, they would be forced to shoulder some responsibility and the trading companies they operated would be crushed.
At worst—no metaphor or exaggeration—they could literally lose their heads.
What do we do?
That was why Dwanda turned his gaze to Lusitania and asked without words.
In this context, "what to do" naturally referred to what they would do to protect their own vested interests.
The people who worked at their trading companies, and their families. Those who did business with their trading companies, their employees, and their families.
The four people here each led trading companies counted among the largest in Egginis.
A trading company being crushed was therefore not merely a personal problem; it would affect the lives of countless others.
Given that, it was only natural for them to think of protecting their own companies with almost greedy fervor.
Yet even with Dwanda's gaze upon him, Lusitania could not respond.
After all, they were not the only ones present—Orban was there as well.
Lusitania... and Dwanda and Dailas, for that matter, naturally understood exactly what kind of man Orban was.
That was precisely why they did not believe they could do anything about the evidence on the table, even if they tried.
"I'll make this clear—only I am in this room, but Rei is downstairs. Crimson Rei. I'm sure you know the name: an alias holder, an A-Rank Adventurer. If any of us try to start something here, Rei will naturally become our enemy as well. You understand that, right?"
Orban spoke, his words restraining both Dwanda and Lusitania.
That restraint carried enough persuasive force to make them instantly abandon any dubious notions.
They were men who wielded enough influence to run Egginis. Naturally, they were diligent in gathering intelligence, and they understood more than well enough just how much power Rei possessed.
What would happen if they made an enemy of a man like that?
It certainly would not end with something as mild as Dailas's mansion being raided the night before.
"Dailas! What in the world were you thinking, doing something like this!? Do you have any idea what will happen to Egginis if this becomes public!?"
Dwanda vented his frustration at Dailas.
"Indeed. Had we known things would come to this, we would never have cooperated with the Holy Four Assembly—"
Lusitania's nervous voice followed, but Dailas, receiving their words, showed no sign of being bothered in the slightest.
If anything, he had not uttered a single word since Robel and Orban's group had entered the room, maintaining his silence throughout.
What is this? Why does he look so composed? Bringing the other two to challenge the Holy Four Assembly—I was certain he must have had some kind of trump card up his sleeve.
Orban found Dailas's unbroken silence eerie.
In the current situation, there was no need for Dailas to stay quiet. No—if he said nothing here, it would amount to admitting his own guilt.
Having committed this many crimes, exposure would undoubtedly mean execution.
Dailas too would want to avoid that outcome, which was surely why he had convened the Holy Four Assembly together with the other two.
"D-Dailas. D-Do you have nothing to say?"
Orban was not the only one who found Dailas's demeanor unsettling. Robel also sensed something incomprehensible in Dailas's manner.
No—perhaps precisely because Robel had known Dailas as a person far longer than Orban had, it was only natural for him to feel even greater doubt.
"You could say that."
Dailas, who had been silent until now, opened his mouth for the first time since the Holy Four Assembly began.
Yet his voice contained not the slightest trace of panic.
That only deepened the strong doubts felt by everyone in the room.
"What do you mean, 'you could say that'? Are you acknowledging that this evidence is factual?"
"Yes. I will not deny it. What is written there is what I have done. ...Still, it must have been quite an effort to obtain these documents, no? That safe golem should have been quite formidable."
His words, utterly devoid of any sense of crisis, only deepened Orban's suspicion. He was being confronted with evidence of his own misdeeds, yet he was more concerned with the safe golem that had been defeated.
Keeping Dailas's demeanor in mind, Orban nonetheless pressed on.
"Have you forgotten? As I said earlier, we have Crimson Rei. For Rei, defeating something like a safe golem is no difficult task."
"Is that so. ...Truly, a single man has thrown the plan into significant disarray. Originally, I had intended to lay low until I gathered more of the intelligence we needed, but..."
"Gather intelligence? ...Are you referring to the golem cores produced using necromancy techniques at the Dolan Workshop?"
"That as well."
That as well. By uttering those words, he was effectively admitting that he had been plotting something else entirely.
"W-What in the world were you thinking, doing such a thing?"
Though his tone was as timid as ever, the look in Robel's eyes as he regarded Dailas was severe.
Why Dailas would say such a thing in this situation was utterly beyond his comprehension, and that eeriness only made the gazes directed at Dailas grow harsher.
"Well, if you ask why I did such a thing, I suppose I should say it was because it was necessary. Until recently—until the Dolan Workshop's golems emerged—golem performance had hardly improved at all. You remember that, don't you?"
Though surprised by the sudden shift in topic, no one in the room could deny those words.
In truth, what Dailas was saying was by no means incorrect.
Since Egginis was the only place conducting the golem industry, there had never been a decline in demand for golems.
But if asked whether that was acceptable... especially since everyone here other than Orban was one of the people who ran Egginis, it was not something they could readily agree with.
In fact, before the Dolan Workshop's golems appeared, the lack of development in golem technology had been discussed as a serious problem at the Holy Four Assembly on many occasions.
"It seems you understand. I recognize that I may rightly be blamed for this incident. However, it is a fact that it was absolutely necessary in order to maintain and further develop the autonomous city of Egginis going forward."
"P-Please wait. If you sought to develop Egginis, there should have been other methods. D-Did it really have to be... magic like necromancy?"
The first to react to Dailas's words was Robel.
In truth, those words were by no means wrong. If Dailas's claims were true and the method he had chosen had been something other than necromancy—something more acceptable—then Robel too would have likely cooperated for the sake of Egginis's development.
But with that method being necromancy, there was no way he could possibly condone it.
"Indeed. Even if it was for developing Egginis, why deliberately choose a magic so steeped in revulsion as necromancy? That is highly questionable."
Dwanda spoke, as if in agreement with Robel's words.
Lusitania felt the same.
Dailas may have claimed it was for Egginis's development, but choosing necromancy for that purpose was something they could not possibly accept.
"Moreover, you prepared illegal slaves and used them for the necromancy rituals. You expect us to accept that? I'd say that's the unreasonable part."
At Orban's words, Robel nodded with a grave expression.
"Besides, if it was to develop Egginis, why would you deliberately do something like bringing bandits to the surrounding area? With bandits present, there will be people who get attacked. And those attacked would, naturally, be the people who have business in Egginis."
If he had orchestrated this whole affair for Egginis's development, wasn't bringing in bandits a contradiction?
As Orban pointed this out, Dailas spoke without showing the slightest urgency.
"Bandits were necessary for use in the necromancy rituals. Besides, thanks to the bandits being around, when conducting golem deployment trials, we were able to have the golems directly kill bandits rather than having them fight each other—and that ultimately enhanced the golems' performance."
"According to the documents found in the safe, bandit souls were of low quality as material for golem cores, which is why you gathered illegal slaves. Was it not?"
"Even souls of low quality can be made serviceable to a certain extent if you gather enough of them."
Dailas stated this matter-of-factly, as if he saw no value whatsoever in letting bandits live.
That said, the others present felt much the same way. As long as they ran trading companies, bandits were nothing but a nuisance.
Even so—regardless of whether they saw any value in letting their opponents live, using those opponents as material for golem cores was something everyone felt was beyond the pale.
Sensing that Dailas operated on a set of ethics entirely alien from their own, everyone in the room other than Dailas felt something deeply unsettling about him.