Reincarnated into a Game As the Hero’s Friend

While Welner and his army were in battle against the bandits, about 10 people gathered in a secluded room of the church’s medical center for a secret meeting.

The church’s medical center was originally a facility built to treat the poor. Each town had one of these medical centers built and those in the middle of their journey, the poor, the elderly, and people without relatives would receive treatment in the medical center while resting and supporting each other. The money for the medical center’s daily necessities came from donations, so it was not uncommon for a town’s influential people and their subordinates to visit the medical center.

But on this occasion, the people gathered here for a completely different matter.

“He’s ignoring us too much.”

“I agree. We let him move freely for a while because he is young. Yet, he is so arrogant.”

Several people voiced their dissatisfaction. Many of these people were those who were treated coldly by the new governor, Welner. Some of them were Pledgers, some were the town’s influential people or the town’s lower-ranking officials. The people whose daughter had gotten a criminal record because of Welner were also here and there were also the people of the Forestry Guild.

Welner was planning to do something that needed a lot of wood as such he had used the people of the Woodworking Guild, Carpenter Guild, and Metalworker Guild. However, Welner bought most of the woods that he needed from outside, so the people of the Forestry Guild didn’t benefit.

For the people of the Forestry Guild, they might be dissatisfied with what Welner had done, but the fact that the reputation of the Forestry Guild’s leader was bad was also true. After all, the brother of the leader of the Forestry Guild was one of the cronies of the person who was killed on Welner’s order for assaulting a refugee woman.

The lieutenant of the town guards was also present here. The captain of the guards himself had completely surrendered because of the man named Kesten that the new governor, Welner, brought with him, but that didn’t mean all guards had also become docile. Specifically, the lieutenant of the guards didn’t like Welner because Welner was too strict… or at least that was what the lieutenant claimed.

The truth of the matter was that this lieutenant recklessly challenged Kesten because he thought Kesten was a weak old man and got completely beaten. Ever since then, the lieutenant had been complaining about Welner behind everyone’s back.

“Above all, I don’t like how he went ahead with the trial on his own.”

That kind of complaint was not completely unreasonable. Most criminals of this town ended up receiving ‘paying fine’ as a punishment. One of the reasons was that there was no prison good enough for long-term imprisonment, but another more important reason was that the fine punishment was really advantageous for the governor.

For example, if there was a criminal who had to give a fine of 100 silver coins as a punishment, the victim of that crime would receive 10-20% of that fine as compensation, and the people who were in charge of the trial would receive 1 silver coin, and the rest of the money would go to the governor’s pocket.

As a result, many governors would be eager to indict criminals. The trial committee would also receive money every time they brought a criminal to a trial, so for them, ‘trial’ was quite a lucrative business. In addition, if the criminal couldn’t pay the fine, they would be sentenced to forced labor, meaning they would all get another very cheap laborer either way, putting someone on a trial would not cause any loss for both the government and the trial committee.

There was another reason for their dissatisfaction with Welner. Back when Anheim was still a part of Marquisate Knap, the Knap house would pay the people who participated in the trial.

This was because, as a region that directly bordered Triot, a lot of smuggling happened. Thus, a lot of trials each day. The money was given by the Knap house as compensation for the time and effort of the trial committee because they had to work on many cases. Even after Triot fell, this law remained alive because of the many unforeseen circumstances, including the death of the Marquis Knap.

However, when Welner became the governor, he reduced this ‘special pay’ on the grounds that Anheim was no longer the Marquis’s land. Welner also judged most of the trials swiftly by himself. In addition, Wiener didn’t even bother to hold any trials for minor crimes and directly punished the criminals.

Welner’s action made the members of the trial committee lose quite a bit of money. Of course, the governor did have the authority to do what Welner did, but most governors would not do that. After all, what Welner did was the same as ignoring the local authority. Welner had his own reasons for doing that, though.

“How about we trouble him a bit?”

“Let’s do that. We need the bandits to be exterminated, but giving the governor some trouble over the bandits’ extermination will be fine.”

“I mean, things like ‘the supplies arrived late’ is a common occurrence.”

“Will we be fine doing that?”

Some people were concerned, but an elderly man laughed.

“There is no need to be worried. Although he isn’t here, the church head agrees with us. That is why he let us use this place. Even if he is a governor, he won’t be able to touch the church easily.”

“I have to say, you are quite mistaken.”

Hearing a sudden voice, everyone turned their gazes to the door with startled expressions. There stood a flabby merchant-like man with a group of armed men behind him.

“Wh…Who are you!?”

“Ah, pardon my late introduction. I am Rafed. I have been given the honor of working for the governor.”

Although Rafed bowed as if he was showing respect to everyone in the room, Rafed’s expression was full of sarcasm.

“I have heard all your conversations. Of course, with the permission of the church head-sama.”

The room fell into silence. Some kept their calm expression, while the others’ expressions turned red and then blue. Finally, after a while, a person barely managed to speak up.

“W..Wait! We have done nothing wrong! Judging by our conversation, you might think that we are dissatisfied with the governor, but…”

“Well, I did not come here for that, though.”

Rafed shrugged his shoulders lightly before speaking again.

“Among the documents Viscount Welner has received before he arrived in Anheim, there is a document about monetary assistance to Mangold. There were many names in that document, including names of some esteemed sirs here.”

The expressions of guild leaders, who were also the members of Pledgers Council, changed immediately. It was true that they had given monetary assistance to Mangold before. One of the guild leaders raised his voice.

“Even if you came here because of that, we are not at fault! After all, Sir Mangold was still the Knap house’s heir at that time!”

“You’re certainly right, but the problem is Mangold gathered soldiers without the King’s permission and attacked Veritza Fortress. This action of Mangold is a huge crime. Where did he get the money to gather that many soldiers is still under investigation. Certainly, the monetary assistance you have given is quite suspicious.”

Even though Mangold’s reputation in the capital was pretty bad, in Anheim, many people would still think that despite his reputation, Mangold would be the next Marquis since his father died. As such, some people would try to curry favor with Mangold. It was true that Mangold was violent and arrogant, but that sort of personality wasn’t rare among nobles.

Therefore, it would be hard to charge the town’s influential people for a crime just based on their monetary assistance to Mangold. Keeping them in custody for a few days for investigation was possible though, and when they were in custody, they wouldn’t be able to move freely.

In short, Welner aimed to keep these people quiet for a few days with monetary assistance as an excuse. Here, the people in the room finally realized that they had been fooled.

Rafed bowed his head again, this time lower. His gesture looked more like an actor who bowed to their audience on the stage rather than a sign of respect. Unfortunately, Rafed didn’t have a handsome enough face to be an actor.

“Oh, some of you esteemed sirs would receive questioning about other matters, like using the confusion of the former Marquis’s death to falsify the tax report by turning in a false guild’s sales report.”

“H..How did you…”

“I have a keen eye for spotting dissatisfied people, you see. The guild is also not a united organization.”

Some of the guild’s leader’s faces turned pale. Rafed’s words were the same as telling them that their subordinates had betrayed them. Unfortunately, none of them could escape since several soldiers came in with Rafed’s signal. They were all taken away. Then the church head entered the room.

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

“No need to be that courteous. After all, the Saintess, Laura-sama, has handwritten me a letter to ask me to help Viscount-sama.”

The church head replied to Rafed with a smile. Handing the letter from Laura to the church head was one of the reasons the Iron Hammer came to Anheim. Later, one of the members of Iron Hammer said, “I thought since it’s only transporting a letter and luggage from the capital, it’s going to be an easy job” Technically, if not for Welner asking them to bring a beehive of all things, their job would be easy.

After exchanging a brief conversation with Rafed, the church head left and Kesten, who was leading the support troop, turned his gaze to Rafed with a cynical expression and said, “You’re working quite hard, it seems.”

“Well, I value my life very much. In addition…”

“In addition to what?”

“My relationship with Viscount Welner is already bad because of the recent incident, so I do not want to worsen it. After all, who would want to make an enemy of the Hero-sama’s friend who also has the Saintess-sama on his side?”

“…Making him my enemy would be like turning the church of the entire continent into my enemy,” Rafed added in a strange tone. It was hard to judge whether Rafed was impressed or regretting. Hearing Rafed’s words, Kesten let out a bitter smile.

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