Their group had only been able to gather information for the first few hours or so after arriving. They had made zero progress since then, as someone from the town had been constantly keeping watch on them after that point. A few people from their organization couldn’t deal with being followed around and had snapped at their pursuers, but guards had immediately appeared for some reason and taken them into custody. Normally, such a light infraction would have been dismissed after a stern warning, but not one of them had been released since their arrest.
Finding this odd, one of them had gone near the guards’ headquarters, and reported that he had heard screaming from inside the building, as if someone was getting tortured. This was impossible—it would have been one thing if they were dealing with criminals that had committed the most heinous of crimes, but there was no way the guards would torture someone just for getting into an argument and shoving someone’s shoulder. Normally, both sides would be lightly reprimanded and shooed away. Perhaps there would be some favoritism for the locals, but one side being imprisoned and tortured while the other got off scot-free was unheard of.
Besides, the whole point of torture was to force information out of someone. What kind of information would the guards want out of someone who’d gotten into a minor argument with some strangers? Yet the faint sounds leaking from the guards’ headquarters were unmistakably screams.
“It doesn’t make any sense!” the hunter continued. “We were just supposed to find and kidnap some commoner girl. That’s what you said! So why’s the whole town turning against us?! Something’s going on! What are you hiding? Misrepresenting the risk and withholding critical information about a mission is a serious breach of contract! We’re entitled to the full commission plus a penalty fee and an immediate cancellation of the job. Those are the rules in our business!”
“Hell if I know! The job is just as I said: We capture the stray priestess our boss is after. She’s not affiliated with the Temple, so they won’t be getting in our way, and we won’t have to worry about the local lord because she’s just a twelve- or thirteen-year-old commoner who wandered in from another territory!” the commanding officer, who was there from another territory to lead the operation, said.
“Then how do you explain everything that’s going on, huh?!”
The hired hunters and thugs joined in on the clamor, shouting complaints at the foreign commander and his soldiers. The freelancers were riled up about losing the opportunity to get their payment plus a penalty fee without doing the work.
“We have no choice... Let’s reach out to someone from the criminal underworld. We won’t be able to do anything without intel,” the officer said.
The hired hands would only get their payment once their target was secured. The soldiers couldn’t have brought such a large sum of money with them; if they had, there was a chance the hunters and thugs would simply run off with it without fulfilling their end of the bargain. Therefore, they didn’t have a lot of funds on hand, though they had brought a bit extra just in case. Their request wouldn’t be particularly dangerous, so they should have had enough to cover the commission.
“Well, they say you should set a thief to catch a thief. I’m appointing you to reach out to someone from the underworld,” the commander said to one of the thugs. “Here’s some money for drinks for when you meet with them. I’ll also talk to the higher-ups for you to get a bonus, so make sure you do a good job!”
He handed a gold coin to the thug, who grinned and accepted the job.
“No good... I bought drinks for some guys there and gave ’em a little money, made small talk...but as soon as I mentioned the priestess, their expressions changed and they wouldn’t say another word. They probably didn’t know much, but they must have orders from their higher-ups. One minute, they were feeling good with free booze, and the next, they completely sobered up. The orders must’ve been strict ones, coming from the very top,” the man who’d been appointed by the officer said with a shrug.
“What? Why would both the public and underground society of this town protect this commoner who has only been here for a few days?! It doesn’t make any sense!” roared the officer.
“Don’t ask me! That’s what I wanna know!” the thug said, frustrated that the bonus he’d been looking forward to wouldn’t be coming to fruition.
“Probably because she’s a saint?” said a hunter who had been listening to the conversation.
The officer frowned. “Nonsense. That’s just a story made up by the local lord to prop her up and use her for his own benefit. Besides, if she really was blessed and loved by the Goddess, why would she be traveling around by herself helping the poor? She would be set for life if she got hired at the royal palace or by the higher nobles, or if she went to the Temple to get pampered there.”
“But anyone who thinks like that wouldn’t get the Goddess’s love or blessing in the first place,” the hunter pointed out.
The officer had no response to that. The retort was so convincing that there was nothing to be said.
“A-Anyway, she’s no saint. That’s just some made-up story, so forget about it and focus on finding and securing the girl!” the officer barked.
“Well, it’s not as if our efforts so far have been in vain,” another hunter whispered as if to appease the agitated officer.
“Hm? What do you mean?”
“Since the townsfolk are trying so desperately to hide her, that means she’s still somewhere here. And we now know the whole town’s working together to protect her for some reason. This is a key piece of information we needed to plan our operation. You could call it a huge win for us that we figured that out before we made our move.”
There was a look of realization on the officer’s face. “I see... Now that you mention it, this isn’t a bad first step in terms of our covert operation in unfamiliar territory. We split up into smaller groups before entering town, so they won’t know we’re all part of one larger force, and so the girl has no idea we’re here, or why. In other words, we have a much bigger advantage both in terms of intel and manpower. We’re not in a bad spot if you think about it that way. Not bad at all...” He looked at his men with a satisfied expression and said, “All right, we’re done for now. You’re all free to do what you want for the rest of the day. Go out into town and drink if you want! I’ll allow it. But if any of you drink so much that it affects your work tomorrow or causes trouble, you’ll be banned from drinking until this mission’s over! Here’s a little something for drinks, on me. Pay for the rest yourselves!” With that, he handed one of his soldiers a gold coin.
“Yeeeaaah!!!” the men cheered in unison.
Although the man was an officer, he was working undercover and leading a troop of hunters and thugs. If his identity ended up being revealed to the authorities of this territory and the lord who had hired him was questioned about it, he would most likely answer, “I have no idea who those men are. It’s just nonsense from some lowlife thugs. Off with their heads!” And to make the story even more believable, the team was a mixed group of not just soldiers, but hunters and thugs who had no issues with committing crimes. If a fight did break out and a few lower-class corpses were left on the scene as a result, that would be the perfect scenario. So, the commander that had been assigned to this mission was nothing but a commoner who had just been promoted to a junior officer—as far as his boss was concerned, he was expendable.