Book 5: Volume 4 Chapter 2, Countermeasures

Translator: Kazumi

Editor: Silavin

 

King Assar received reports in his private chambers.

 

This had always been his preference. Not the formal receiving rooms, not the throne hall, but here, behind a closed door, in a space that belonged to him rather than to the crown. The choice was deliberate and understood by those who came to him this way: what passed between them was personal, unofficial, outside the record.

 

The man, or rather, the woman, who stood before him now was named Machie. She was approaching middle age, composed in the way of someone who had spent a lifetime learning to carry things without showing the weight. She belonged to the Succubus Racce, who for generations had managed the kingdom’s covert work. Their name appeared in no official history of the Smith Kingdom. It had never needed to.

 

The relationship was old. It had begun when the kingdom did, and it had held through everything since. There was a kind of trust in it that did not require words to describe. It was the kind that had simply become structural, like load-bearing stone.

 

That structure was under pressure now.

 

Not from within. The trust between King Assar and Machie’s Family remained intact. What was pressing in from outside was something else: a dark guild, which had spent the past few years quietly absorbing the smaller guilds scattered through the kingdom’s towns. Dark guilds had always existed. Typically one per town, more or less, handling the work that could not be done in the light. That was ordinary. What was not ordinary was the force now unifying them.

 

It had moved faster than anyone had anticipated. Before Machie’s family could properly assess it, the guild had grown into something vast, and by the time its shape became clear, fighting it alone was no longer a realistic prospect.

 

“…I see,” King Assar said, when Machie had finished. “It’s a difficult situation.”

 

“Yes.”

 

He sighed. Machie made no attempt to soften the assessment. Her role, as it had always been, was to convey the truth clearly. The relationship did not require anything else.

 

“Furthermore, regarding the suspicion Your Majesty expressed previously…” Machie paused, just slightly. “We’ve confirmed it is almost certainly accurate.”

 

A change crossed the King’s face.

 

“The Huns are involved with the dark guild. Has it been confirmed?”

 

“Yes. Someone managed to escape from the guild recently and brought information back with them.”

 

King Assar nodded once, slowly. The Kingdom of Huns was a neighbor. They were also not an easy neighbor. When the dark guild’s expansion first began accelerating, he had allowed himself to wonder, quietly, whether there was a hand behind it that didn’t belong to this country. He had not said it with certainty since there had been a lack of evidence.

 

Now there was.

 

The Smith Kingdom could not entrust its covert work to an organization controlled elsewhere. That had always been the premise. But if the dark guild swallowed Machie’s Family, the premise would cease to matter. There would be nothing left to protect.

 

“Have you considered countermeasures?”

 

“Several. They all carry time constraints, so I would ask you to decide quickly.” Machie said this plainly, as a fact rather than a pressure. Then she outlined them.

 

The first option: direct action, accepting the risk of significant losses. This could involve the army, though deploying it openly against a dark guild was difficult to justify. The very nature of such organizations made formal military engagement awkward at best. Machie’s Family could move alone, but the numbers were unfavorable. The guild had absorbed too many other groups. At present, the balance of power was fragile, and it would only continue to tip in the wrong direction.

 

The second option: Appeasement. In short, opening negotiations to seek coexistence.

 

King Assar’s expression made his feelings clear before Machie needed to name the problem. Any arrangement with the guild would mean transparency, every movement of Machie’s Family visible to an organization ultimately answering to the Huns. The King’s own thoughts, his strategies, his vulnerabilities, flowing quietly to a foreign power through the very people he relied on to keep them hidden.

 

It was not an option.

 

“If the first is unrealistic, and the second is unacceptable. Is there a third option?”

 

“Yes.” Machie’s tone didn’t change, but something in her posture settled slightly. “We approach other organizations. Cooperate to eliminate the problem together.”

 

King Assar considered this for a moment. “Guess that is the most straightforward path.”

 

“It is.” A brief pause. “If our own strength is not enough, we can work alongside others. That is a natural response. Even for organizations that operate as we do.”

 

She did not say more than that. She did not need to. The reasoning was sound and the King could see it; she simply offered it and let him arrive at his own conclusion. There was the matter of building trust with those one partnered with. Temporary trust was still trust, and it required care. However, that was a manageable difficulty compared to the alternatives.

 

Within the Family, a quiet consensus had already formed around this option. But the decision, in the end, belonged to the King. A misjudgment here would cost more than the immediate mission. It would cost something that had taken generations to build.

 

Whether the King noticed the quiet guidance in how the options had been presented, she couldn’t say for certain. King Assar was not a man who missed things easily.

 

“Hmm. You’ve already thought through who might be approached?”

 

“Yes.” She extended a folded piece of paper toward him. “Here is the list.”

 

He took it. Some of the organizations named were domestic. Smaller groups not yet absorbed into the dark guild’s growing body. Others were foreign. If the Smith Kingdom fell entirely to the dark guild, the ripples would reach underworld organizations in other countries as well. That shared vulnerability created openings.

 

King Assar read through the list at his own pace. He reached a name partway down, and went still.

 

“…Hmm.”

 

He looked at it for a moment longer than he had looked at anything else. Then, very slowly, something that might have been the beginning of a smile crossed his face.

 

He would tell his Son, later, that it was seeing that name that made him feel, for the first time since the meeting began, that something might actually be possible.

 

The name listed there was the Succubus Family responsible for intelligence under Razequa Amamiya.