"Search every inch of this place!"
Led by Beort and Drek, the members began tearing through Count Palatine Heinlein’s mansion, combing it from top to bottom. The place was filled with the screams of servants and the sound of things breaking, but nobody paid any of it any mind.
"You barbarians! How could you do this?! The Lord will punish you!"
I grabbed the butler by the collar as he shamelessly played innocent and tried to paint us as savages. His frail old body was dragged forward helplessly, and under my murderous glare, he started choking like he was about to breathe his last.
"Listen carefully, butler. Smuggling and kidnapping are capital crimes, and since you’re the one who gave the orders, you’ll hang too. So stop running your mouth and stay put like a good boy."
"Hrrk, hrrk!"
"What? What’s wrong with this guy?"
The butler went limp, and a horrible stench followed. Startled, I flung him aside. The members pinched their noses as they examined him, then turned to me with awkward expressions.
"It seems he died from your killing intent, Baron."
"Can you actually kill someone just by glaring at them?"
"W-we’ve never seen it happen either."
"But when the Baron really glares at you, it’s terrifying, isn’t it?"
"I heard the last man who met the Baron’s eyes while he was angry pissed himself."
"Shh, quiet! I don’t think the Baron knows!"
I could hear the members whispering among themselves.
I can hear all of you, you idiots.
Was my murderous glare really that frightening? I hadn’t meant to kill him, but I’d gone and killed an important witness. And the witnesses to it weren’t just my members. There were nobles watching too.
Please don’t tell me I’m going to become known as the baron who kills people with his eyes.
But that wasn’t what mattered right now. Finding the evidence hidden in this mansion came first. Honestly, the odds were slim. With the noose tightening around Heinlein’s neck by the hour, he wouldn’t have fled and left evidence behind.
The members searched diligently, but they found nothing that could really be called evidence. Either he’d destroyed it before fleeing, or he’d hidden it somewhere it could never be found.
Personally, I was hoping for the latter.
Because the Searcher Scouter had an excellent function for finding hidden spaces. The moment I activated the Scouter, a hidden space inside the storehouse lit up, marking its location.
The small, artificially made rectangular space was the perfect shape for hiding something. I headed straight into the storehouse connected to the servants’ quarters, where the floor was covered in straw.
"Clear away all the straw."
"Pardon? Th-this smelly stuff?"
"Should I do it myself, then?"
"We’ll clear it right away!"
In the end, the members swarmed in and started hauling out the straw. Then they discovered a groove in the floor in one corner. Truthfully, I could have gone straight to that spot, but I’d told them to clear all the straw to make the discovery look natural.
The underground space was finally revealed, and we found two chests tucked neatly inside. The servants, who clearly had no idea these chests existed, looked genuinely shocked. Only the dead butler must have known.
I had a hammer and crowbar brought over and ripped the lids right off the chests. Inside the first were rolled-up letters and assorted ledgers bound into books. The other was filled to the brim with silver coins.
Beort and Drek swallowed hard at the sight of the silver. As nobles who had lived in poverty for so long, they seemed mesmerized by the pile of coins. I’ve been poor myself, so I understand, but greed is forbidden.
"I’ll divide it up fairly later, so don’t get any ideas."
"Our apologies, Baron. That’s not it, I was just—"
Beort and Drek trailed off, red-faced. What mattered was that they knew to be ashamed of that momentary flash of greed. That shame was their conscience, and proof that they could be trusted.
"Don’t worry. Our Baron isn’t a stingy man when it comes to rewards."
"The rewards the Baron hands out are better than your actual pay."
The members’ attempts at consolation only left the two impoverished nobles looking like they wanted to crawl into a hole. I knew how desperate they were for money; they were responsible for feeding the retainers who had stuck by them through every hardship.
Still, now that they’d come under my command, their share of the rewards would grow accordingly. My veterans had earned spoils and rewards across countless battlefields at my side.
Thanks to that, their families were living comfortably as landowners.
I did share generously, wanting to see my men live better than everyone else.
My principle was to keep the expensive spoils and horses for myself and distribute everything else among my men and everyone who had taken part in the battle.
Since we always won our battles, the combat pay and reward money we collected afterward were considerable too. It would honestly be easier to count the members of the Gale Knights who weren’t rich.
On top of that, anyone who fell in battle was guaranteed burial at a holy church, and sending condolence money and personal effects to their heirs earned high praise as well. So it was only natural that their loyalty to me was exceptional.
"Let’s see, what do we have here?"
Count Heinlein was apparently a more meticulous man than I’d expected. The ledger fraud incident from seven years ago was merely the tip of the iceberg. If these documents were accurate, this greedy bastard was a thief among thieves.
He had used ingenious methods no one would ever think of to siphon off unclaimed money and amass a fortune. For a full ten years, no less. There was also a list of the bureaucrats and court nobles who had shared in the illicit profits.
"The Military Department is going to be very busy arresting all of these people."
There were letters exchanged with the administrator of Grefeling, and even transaction records and inventories sent by the Counts of Ulm and Dellingen—exactly the sort of thing the grand duke would love. All of it recorded in meticulous detail.
They’d had a hand in Count Heinlein’s business ventures too. Together with the Duke of Radensdorf’s written agreement, it all amounted to proof that these bastards had been reaping every kind of illicit profit in this city.
And it was proof that the duchy’s coffers had been leaking like a sieve. If this had been my territory, I would have been absolutely livid, and the grand duke, the master of Radensdorf, would surely feel the same.
"Huh?! Baron! Look at this!"
"What’s got you so worked up? Huh?"
They’d found one more small chest.
It was packed full of pouches of pepper, of all things. Round peppercorns in fine silk pouches were a symbol of wealth and a luxury for nobles obsessed with spicy flavors.
I could buy pepper with points and sprinkle it on my food whenever I wanted, so it didn’t do much for me, but on the open market pepper was worth its weight in gold. Its value had risen even higher after the Ottomans blockaded the eastern trade routes.
That was what drove Portugal and others to push into Africa searching for a trade route to India, or to sail west and discover the New World. This pepper was what triggered the Age of Exploration.
Hmm, I should keep all of this for myself.
There are fifteen pouches, so I can hand some of them out as gifts.
For someone from the modern world like me, being told to eat food drowned in pepper would be torture. Pepper was nothing more than a way to mask the gaminess of meat, but to the nobles, its value was immense.
I’d once considered buying spices with points and reselling them, but the rotten System warned me it would count as an illegal act, so there was no easy money to be made there. Anyway, all of this is confiscated. It’s all mine.
As for the documents, I sent them to the grand duke.
That scheming grand duke will undoubtedly blackmail everyone named in those documents and bend them to his own ends. Ulm and Dellingen in particular have all but handed him their throats. As if being ruined by the civil war wasn’t enough, now their secrets are laid bare as well.
Such is the fate of men who spent years reaping illicit profits. The grand duke is truly merciless about this sort of thing. He’ll probably make them cough up far more than they ever gained.
Now all that remained was catching the fugitive Count Heinlein.
He was the mastermind and chief culprit behind this entire affair, and I would capture him with my own hands. I sent a messenger to the Hungarian mercenary company that had been waiting on standby at the duchy army’s outer encampment.
Szolnok Barosi, who currently led the Hungarian cavalry, and Debrecen Herto, leader of the Kuschak faction that had fought against us before defecting to our side, responded to the summons immediately.
They were Christians as well, but as foreigners they seemed uncomfortable attending Mass. So 100 Hungarian cavalry and 50 horse archers joined us. It was a formidable force, and a reassuring one.
"Is Ivan teaching you German well?"
"Haah, learning another language is truly difficult."
After the slums fell, I’d sent Ivan to the Hungarian encampment to start teaching them German. Barosi had apparently been working hard to fulfill one of the conditions of their settlement, but it wasn’t easy.
It’s like trying to grow a beard through sheer determination.
I understood the feeling all too well, but it was unavoidable if we wanted to communicate smoothly.