[Unknown POV] ◆ “I’ve heard that the crime rate in the Empire has been drastically decreasing recently. It is not petty fights between ordinary people or low-level crimes, but only organized crime groups, which are somehow decreasing. The most obvious example of this is the disappearance of the Empire’s Dark Guild.” While inside the royal castle, I spoke about the information I had gathered from my recent expedition. The one who was listening intently to me was the King and his men. In recent years, the Empire’s national power has been declining, and the Kingdom sent us, spies, to the Empire to find the right moment to wage war on them. That’s why we’ve noticed a dramatic decrease in the number of criminal organizations in the Empire in recent months. As a result, their cities’ atmosphere appeared to be getting brighter, although it is hard to see it from the outside. “This means it will take a long time before we can attack the Empire. I was going to rule the Empire instead of that incompetent old man, but it would be great if I beat him off cheaply. However, if I get greedy and heavily wounded, it would take time to rebuild the economy, and it would become harder to defend more land. Meanwhile, my Kingdom might get invaded by neighbouring countries. That hardly works out very well, so have you been able to get any information from the former member of the Imperial Dark Guild who fled the Empire?”
After His Majesty let out a deep sigh and complained a little about my explanation, he changed his mind and changed the subject to the former Dark Guild member he had caught last month.
”Well, the only new things that came to light were that he was the master of the Dark Guild and that he wasn’t lying when he said he saw three dragons flying towards the Imperial Capital, but no other new information came to light.” “I see. There’s no more use for him, then. Let him choose between being killed as he has no more use or being kept as a slave in the Kingdom.” “Understood.” I am impressed by the King, who not only kills enemies after extracting all of their information but has ways of effectively using them as slaves otherwise. To show warmth to the Kingdom’s citizens and not to the imperialists, our enemies, shows the magnitude of His Majesty the King’s capacity. “Well, I’m not going to make the same mistake as those who were dazzled by immediate profits and perished. We have no choice but to wait for the Empire’s national power to decline again. With that said, I need you and the rest of the dark division to keep an eye on the Empire for longer.” “Ah~ Once again, we will be the perfect spies to disseminate information about the Empire.” “Oh, that will no longer be possible, will it? After all, we, the Secret Society Black Rose, already know about everyone. It is beyond my comprehension why people would think they were the only ones that haven’t gotten exposed when so many other underworld organizations, large and small, throughout the Empire disappearing.”