Chapter 09

“I wasn’t careful enough.”

Rebecca berated herself inwardly.

The riders burst into laughter, snickering as they looked at her.

“Hey, isn’t that a bit much? You even drew your sword?”

“I thought you were serious, but this is kind of hilarious.”

Rebecca’s face flushed with embarrassment.

Avoiding the riders’ gazes, she shot a glance at Ethan, who was wearing a sly smile.

Ethan merely shrugged nonchalantly and replied,

“Well, it’s not like it’s that surprising.”

Nicholas sighed and asked,

“Ethan, why didn’t you subdue her?”

“She was only threatening me. She wasn’t trying to kill me.”

Ethan answered leisurely, looking around at the others.

“More importantly, shouldn’t we be focusing on finding our crest?”

“…”

The riders wore dejected expressions, at a loss for words.

In the end, not a single one of them had completed the third course. And that fact meant only one thing to them.

They had to start all over again.

The despairing riders let out deep sighs.

Dawn.

“I’m going to die. I’m working myself to death just to avoid dying.”

Ethan, who had once again forced himself out of bed to go running, opened his door and was startled to find Rebecca standing right outside.

“…What is it?”

Her hair was tousled and hastily tied into a ponytail.

Strangely enough, though, the look suited her. Her loosely braided hair accentuated her sharp jawline, and even her disheveled appearance somehow gave her a neat, composed air.

“What are you doing here?”

Instead of answering, Rebecca held out a small glass bottle.

“That wound.”

Her gaze shifted to the cut on Ethan’s cheek.

“It’s an ointment from one of the products my family’s trading company deals in. It works pretty well.”

Ethan blinked and accepted the bottle.

“Thanks.”

Rebecca gave a brief nod and turned to leave.

But a thought suddenly occurred to Ethan, and he voiced it aloud.

“Come to think of it, from what you’ve told me, your family seems to be in the merchant business. Is there a particular reason you have to become a tax collector? It doesn’t seem like you’re short on money.”

Rebecca stopped walking and hesitated for a moment. Then, gazing into the distance, she spoke quietly.

“There’s something I need to find.”

Having said that, she offered no further explanation and walked away.

“What a cryptic girl.”

Amused by her vague answer, which had only made him more curious, Ethan chuckled, opened the bottle, and applied the ointment to his wound.

Shhhh.

A cool, tingling sensation seeped into the cut, and the wound gradually began to fade.

Sensing the change through touch alone, Ethan muttered with genuine surprise,

“…This stuff really works.”

On her way back to the dormitory, Rebecca slowly drew in a breath.

There was a sharp, acrid smell.

Not one that actually existed in the air.

It was merely a scent she remembered from fragments of the past.

A smell preserved in her memories.

Paint melting in the flames. A shadow visible through a window. The sensation of rough hands grabbing her.

—You have no right to own anything.

An old voice echoed in her ears.

She fiddled with a small scrap of cloth in her pocket. It was stained with old paint.

“I’ll get it back. No matter what.”

Steadying her wavering gaze, Rebecca opened the door to her dormitory.

The third course.

A test designed to develop insight.

They had even removed their respirators, so Ethan had assumed this course would be relatively easy, without the physical strain of the previous ones.

My head feels like it’s going to split open.

Instead, he was plagued by a throbbing headache.

The countless crests scattered everywhere were so overwhelming that simply looking at them made him feel as though his mind might unravel.

He had always considered himself to have a good memory, but that had turned out to be a gross misjudgment.

More than two months had passed, yet they had made absolutely no progress.

Ethan wasn’t the only one struggling.

Crunch.

Nicholas was also having a hard time with the mental effort. He kept biting down on sugar cubes just to endure it.

Rebecca, who had maintained her immaculate appearance even during the most grueling physical training, had finally abandoned her usual neat attire. With her hair disheveled and a pair of glasses on her face, she was now concentrating intently on finding the crest.

Why can’t we find it? It’s just a game of hidden pictures.

Fundamentally, Ethan had always possessed an exceptional ability to remember things.

Even so, this test was so difficult that it was exposing the limits of his talent.

While everyone was struggling, Walter casually glanced around before speaking.

“Isn’t this just a bunch of crooks trying to get something for nothing?”

Walter tossed the remark at the riders as if it were nothing more than an offhand comment.

But Ethan picked up on something hidden within those words.

Get something for nothing?

…I haven’t studied enough.

Ethan realized how foolish he had been to assume that analyzing the patterns was the only way to find the answer.

At first, he had relied solely on visual observation, trying to identify patterns. But as time went on, he had come to understand just how absurdly arrogant that approach had been.

This was why Lowfang chose me, but I failed to realize it.

Until now, he had relied entirely on his previous memories. This test, however, demanded an entirely different way of thinking.

But what if he were in a place that even his existing knowledge could not help him understand?

Of course he would be lost.

When tax collectors searched for hidden assets belonging to delinquent taxpayers, they did not rely solely on information that was immediately visible. They analyzed scattered pieces of evidence, added their own deductions, and gradually arrived at a single insight.

If that was the case, then there was only one thing he needed to do now.

Ethan headed toward Walter.

“What is it, Ethan?”

“Instructor, could you tell me a little about Count Lloyd?”

Walter furrowed his brows.

“Why all of a sudden?”

“We’re still candidates, but if we assume that our assigned role is that of tax collectors, shouldn’t we have at least some basic information?”

The other riders seemed to agree with Ethan.

Walter looked reluctant, but when he saw that everyone around him was interested, he finally opened his mouth.

“Fine, Ethan. You have a point. I’ll tell you one thing. Count Lloyd was the wealthiest man since the founding of the Unified Empire. But he didn’t amass his fortune through ordinary trade.”

Walter recounted how Count Lloyd had lent enormous sums of money to nobles who harbored resentment toward the emperor, then expanded his political influence by manipulating interest rates for both the imperial court and the nobility.

He had even used forged documents to siphon away the nobles’ assets. On one occasion, he had circulated counterfeit gold coins and thrown the imperial economy into turmoil.

“In the end, His Majesty the Emperor caught on and tried to bring him to trial. But Lloyd had already transferred his assets overseas and disappeared. Even now, I doubt anyone knows where he is.”

“So even tax collectors can fail.”

At Ethan’s remark, Walter reluctantly nodded.

“We got about half of it right, so you could say we won half the battle and lost the other half.”

If the tax collectors had not acted quickly, Lloyd’s enormous fortune would have vanished entirely, potentially destabilizing the empire.

Walter gave a bitter smile before adding,

“That man had more tricks up his sleeve than you could count. So be careful.”

Ethan nodded, his eyes gleaming.

…He was the kind of person who could disguise his schemes by creating problems on an enormous scale. There’s no way someone like that would have placed the crests honestly in a place like this.

Ethan raised his hand and began examining the crests, tracing them one by one.

Rather than revisiting only the ones he had already seen once or twice, or focusing on those that had become familiar, he began searching again for the details he had casually overlooked until now.

Rebecca and Nicholas watched him closely.

They had noticed the change in his attitude.

“Ethan, what are you thinking?”

Rebecca asked.

“I think the way we’ve been searching all this time was wrong.”

Ethan spoke with a confident look in his eyes.

He quickly scanned his surroundings before suddenly approaching one section of the wall.

The wall was densely covered with engraved crests.

Ethan carefully ran his fingertips over the patterns, inspecting the surface.

At first, they looked like ordinary engravings. But as he slowly moved his fingers across them, he noticed a subtle difference.

A tiny area, no larger than a fingernail on his little finger, felt rougher than the surrounding surface.

It had not simply been engraved. It bore the marks of someone having deliberately dug into the stone with considerable force.

Visually, the altered section blended seamlessly into the existing pattern, which was why the other riders had overlooked it.

But Ethan had detected the subtle difference through touch alone.

His eyes glinted.

This wasn’t an accidental scratch. It’s more like a mark someone made while trying to conceal something.

He brushed his fingertips across the surface of the crest.

He could feel the rough texture.

And he was certain.

“This is it.”

Ethan pressed firmly against the spot.

A faint vibration ran through the wall, and a small stone popped out.

Rumble…

At the same time, the crests engraved across the wall began to glow and rearrange themselves like blocks in a puzzle.

“W-What is that?!”

The riders watched in astonishment.

For a moment, the entire room seemed to sway gently. Then, within the newly revealed space, they found an enormous quantity of gold and several rare weapons on display.

Nicholas muttered in amazement,

“…Ethan. I think you might actually be insane.”

Rebecca frowned.

“So this is how it was concealed…”

The riders voiced their various reactions, while Ethan flashed a wide grin and looked toward Walter.

Gasp!

Walter was standing there with his mouth hanging wide open in utter shock.

Huh?

Taken aback by this unexpected reaction, Ethan was the one who became confused.

Had this not been the answer they were looking for?

But every item bearing a crest inside the secret vault was genuine this time, without exception.

“…Instructor. There isn’t just one item bearing a crest in here. There are several.”

“…”

There was no answer.

That was because the secret vault Ethan had discovered was a place that countless tax collectors had tried and failed to find over the years.

The tension within the training grounds dissipated in an instant.

Thanks to Ethan’s unexpectedly impressive results in the third course, the training was temporarily suspended.

At the same time, a commotion erupted throughout the training grounds.

The commandant, the vanguard, and the tax collectors were all bustling about, assessing the value of the gold coins, jewels, and weapons discovered inside the secret vault.

As a result, the long-neglected matter of Count Lloyd’s tax delinquency was resolved in one fell swoop.

This is the first time in my life I’ve had to worry about what a trainee might think of me.

Walter, the training instructor, quietly watched the vanguard, trying to gauge their reaction.

A tax collector candidate had accomplished something that no one had managed to resolve until now. He had no idea how he was supposed to handle the situation.

Wherever he looked, the tax collectors were also whispering among themselves, deeply troubled.

The problem was simple.

Walter had promised to reward whoever completed the third course with one item from the room.

The trouble was that the items in the secret vault were worth far more than anyone could have imagined.

From legendary swords passed down through generations to spears and shields forged from rare metals, every item could easily be considered a national treasure.

No one had expected the vault to contain such valuable artifacts.

The tax collectors struggled to reach a decision, exchanging opinions with one another.

“Even so… isn’t this a bit too much?”

“It was a promise, sure, but this puts us in a difficult position, too.”

However, after a long silence, the vanguard finally reached a decision. His gaze was resolute.

“We’ve seen enough of Ethan’s potential. But he is not a tax collector yet.”

The vanguard looked around at the tax collectors, each of whom had fallen silent, and continued.

“Nevertheless, we must ensure that he receives the reward promised for this test. Breaking a promise is unbecoming of a tax collector.”

And so, the decision was made to grant a reward of unprecedented value.