Aureatia's Industrial Ministry. Its departments and agencies had been under former Fourth Minister Kaete's jurisdiction, but now a different bureaucrat was commanding the withdrawal of weapons from their storerooms.
"All right, all right, careful how you handle these things!"
A woman with her grizzled hair tied behind her head. Aureatia's Twenty- First General, Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam.
"There's a chance that any movable part could be a trigger, so no touching! With weapons from the Beyond, their power isn't proportional to their size, okay? Even for the small items, carry them one at a time and leave yourselves lotsa space! Sloooow and steady now."
The castle garden theater bombing wasn't the only reason why Kaete the Round Table had gone from part of Aureatia's government to wanted criminal.
For the forces taking advantage of Kaete and Kiyazuna's disappearance after the end of the sixth match, the suspicions around the garden theater bombing were a windfall excuse to forcibly execute a search for the weapons belonging to his camp.
On top of the many suspicions surrounding the events of the sixth match, there were a large number of golems and weapons from the Beyond that Aureatia wasn't aware of. Kaete the Round Table's scheming to revolt against the kingdom had already become indisputable fact.
As for which power would eventually impound these weapons, which were set to become evidence, there had, of course, been a dispute among Aureatia's main factions, but…
"Hey there, Tuturi. How's the extraction going?"
"Smoothly. I've already picked out for myself a few of the more interesting- looking ones, mind you."
Calling out to Tuturi was an elderly general with dry white hair and a long scar on his right cheek.
Twenty-Seventh General, Haade the Flashpoint.
"Not only that, but that crone Kiyazuna must've made up a whole fleet of
those Chariot Golems… Ha! Makes me really glad I joined up with you, General Haade, that's for sure. If I had gone along with Rosclay and friends, I definitely wouldn't've gotten to experience anything this interesting."
"Ah, well, I could've gone ahead and let Rosclay have the win here, but…"
The secret struggle surrounding Kaete's left-behind property had ended in victory for Haade's camp with almost-disappointing ease.
A savage smile came to Haade's face as he watched the unknown weapons carried off right before his eyes.
"No matter how old I get, I still love to get my hands on new toys, see."
"Hee-hee! When I was a young lass, I was also scolded that a young girl shouldn't play war. This would've been a golden chance for Rosclay's reformation faction to prepare for what lies ahead, so why didn't they make any serious attempt to jump on this?"
"Even if they obtained these new and functionally complex weapons, it's still up in the air if they'll have enough leeway to get use out of them until a war actually breaks out. The reformation faction's winning out against us in the numbers game. Either they determined that the Beyond's weapons don't have the power to overturn that superiority…or it might mean they've gotten stuff that powerful elsewhere."
"…What do you mean?"
"Aureatia's already secured some enchanted swords and magic items, right? Of course, those items've all been divided up among the Twenty-Nine Officials to keep a watch on, but the reformation faction's got a lot of the Twenty-Nine on their side to begin with. Basically, when the time comes, their group's got plenty of trump cards already up their sleeve."
"Yikes… So then we might have to battle against the Cold Star and stuff at some point? That'll be trouble…"
"Of course. Too late to gripe about it now… Though, even without that, there's the biggest reason those guys couldn't do anything about it—the head of their faction was seriously wounded in the fourth match. On top of that, with the whole almshouse raid and the chaos around the sixth match, their other leader Jelky's probably dealing with more work than he can keep up with, too, see. The bickering over seizing Kaete's weapons was probably a bit too much of a burden for those guys right now."
Rosclay's camp was the largest faction within Aureatia's political struggle, but it had a very big weakness.
The first was that Rosclay, inevitably due to becoming a symbol as a hero
candidate, needed to participate in the matches himself, and their camp could never avoid the effects from his match results.
Additionally, since they were the largest faction of all, there was a wide range of matters that they needed to control. In particular, Jel the Swift Ink essentially bore full responsibility for all of Aureatia's economic activity, and the other facet of wielding enormous power and authority was the need for him to deal with problems whenever they came about.
"The reformation party lost old man Nophtok, too, didn't they? Did you see him, General Haade? That poor guy—he must've gone completely nutty. Rumors say he slipped outta the hospital and rubbed his head hard enough in prayer to draw blood in some church ruins. Isn't that terrifying? It sounds like something ripped from a ghost story."
"Once someone's gotten that bad, it actually gets more annoying to keep 'em alive. It'd be best to just kill the poor guy and erase Kuze's slot in the tournament, but… If Kuze's side is taking precautions against it, that'll make it real hard to do."
Immediately after the end of the fifth match, there was an incident involving an Order almshouse. It was obvious that Nophtok the Crepuscle Bell was dealt some sort of reprisal, whether by Kuze or a collaborator.
According to the physician's diagnoses, he wasn't said to have any physical wounds at all.
"Old man Iriolde disappeared, Taren left—then there's Elea, Kaete, probably Nofelt, too, and Harghent is pretty much finished already, so guess that'd make seven."
Tuturi smiled as she used her fingers to count the Twenty-Nine Officials who had vanished.
She was always cheerful and heartless.
"All that's left is Rosclay, depending on the condition he's in, but the Twenty-Nine Officials may just keep dropping left and right at this rate! I better be careful myself, huh."
"Bweh-heh-heh-heh-heh, you and I aren't going be dying anytime soon." "Pfft. We better not. Else, there was no point in even hitching my wagon to
your side."
Even now, with Kaete's camp wiped out, the fire of the interfactional political struggle remained burning.
More than that, they were incorporating leftover embers and beginning to strengthen their flames even further.
Aureatia's second faction, Haade's camp.