Chapter 80. The Fabricated Field Trip
"Was it you? Did you tell him?"
Pirenzo ground his teeth at Armandy.
No matter how much he thought about it, it was unfair.
He had been so careful not to get caught!
There was no way his identity would have been revealed if that pathetic magician colleague of his hadn't told him.
Otherwise, why would the 8th Prince suddenly attack him in the middle of the night?
However, Armandy had a dumbfounded expression.
"Me? You hid your identity from me too. Didn't you?"
Not only did he hide it, but he also modulated his voice.
Armandy recalled Pirenzo, who had always worn a mask whenever they met as agents of the Ability Management Bureau to exchange information.
Thinking about it now, it was the height of hypocrisy. To go so far as to modulate his voice and wear a mask, what was he trying to hide from a fellow agent?
Even in the Ability Management Bureau, a guy who went that far would be rare.
"...That's true."
Even to Pirenzo's ears, it was a valid point.
This time it was Armandy's turn to attack.
"You're the one who told the 8th Prince how to use the Ability Management Bureau's notebook, aren't you?"
Pirenzo flinched for a moment.
Normally, he would have shown a calm expression with his well-trained facial muscles, but he was so guilty that he couldn't help but be agitated.
However, he couldn't just admit it here.
The moment he admitted it, he would have to keep losing to Armandy.
In times like these, one had to be confident.
Pirenzo held his head high.
"Me? No."
"What do you mean, no?"
Armandy's eyes narrowed with suspicion.
No matter how he looked at it, Pirenzo's appearance, as if he were being threatened by the 8th Prince, had a strong scent of a kindred spirit.
And the way he had suddenly encouraged him when he heard the news that he might be going on an academy infiltration mission.
There must have been some kind of deal between the 8th Prince and that damn assassin.
Otherwise, how could the 8th Prince know the secrets that only agents of the Ability Management Bureau knew?
But there was only circumstantial evidence, no physical evidence.
As Armandy was trembling with unfairness, Pirenzo suddenly struck.
"This time it's my turn to ask. Why does the prince have the notebook?"
"...What are you talking about?"
"The Ability Management Bureau's notebook. The prince had it."
Armandy maintained a blank expression as much as possible.
He couldn't lose in a place like this.
When both sides had suspicious points, momentum was important.
That guy wouldn't be able to go to the 8th Prince and ask to see the notebook anyway.
Armandy opened his mouth nonchalantly.
"Is that so? What a strange thing."
"Ugh..."
Pirenzo could only bite his lip at Armandy's brazenness.
He was a truly annoying guy.
As the two of them were engaged in a back-and-forth battle without a single concession, Radel suddenly intervened.
"I've been watching you for a while, and you two seem quite close."
Then the two of them jumped and denied it.
"Absolutely not!"
"I think there's some misunderstanding."
At the almost simultaneous remarks, Pirenzo and Armandy glared at each other and felt displeased.
"Why should you and I be lumped together?"
"You should be careful what you say. At the academy, I'm a professor and you're a student."
"Don't be petty. I can be petty too."
Although both of them denied it, at least in Radel's eyes, the two of them seemed quite close.
Radel smiled and joined Gusto, Inette, and Tunia, who were following behind.
"What's with those two? Are they originally close?"
At Inette's question, who didn't know that Armandy and Pirenzo were fellow agents of the Ability Management Bureau, Radel answered.
"Yeah, I think they're from the same neighborhood."
"No wonder they looked so close. They must have decided not to acknowledge each other at school."
Inette let it go, thinking that it could be possible.
When it came to things that were incomprehensible, there was no one who could compare to Radel.
It was just amazing how he could have brought a professor who was a former assassin all the way here.
Radel asked Gusto.
"You just submitted the documents at the gate stone, right?"
"Yes, Your Highness."
They had just passed the gate stone.
What Gusto had submitted at the gate stone was the Imperial Magic Academy's field trip plan.
It was stated that five 1st-year students from the academy, including Radel, and one supervising professor had come out for an external field trip over the weekend.
"How long do you think it will take for your guild to figure out that we're here?"
When Radel asked Tunia, she answered calmly as if to reassure him.
"Maybe a day? They won't be that fast."
"That's good enough."
Even if they knew in advance, they wouldn't be able to move rashly.
Besides, they would never imagine that Radel's side would strike the guild first.
Radel smiled slightly.
* * *
The field trip plan submitted to Professor Lilian was fabricated to state that they would be catching monsters in the mountains near Marcellent.
'I'll go as your guardian, I'm telling you!'
Professor Lilian had looked at the plan and sent a burning gaze to Radel, but he had managed to get out of it.
Since the Marcellent mountain range was so large and the monsters that appeared were so diverse, it didn't seem to have aroused much suspicion.
Radel's group got a room at an inn near the mountain range, as stated in the field trip plan.
Of course, they had no intention of just catching monsters here.
The city they had arrived in was where the Black Fang's base was located.
In the first place, the field trip was just an excuse to leave the academy to attack the guild.
Radel's plan was to go and make the first move rather than sit and wait for the assassins.
"Let's have a brief meeting."
Pirenzo gathered everyone.
Radel and Armandy entered the inn first, and the rest of the group followed and sat down.
Even in Pirenzo's eyes, it was a decent composition.
Although a bit annoying, Armandy's magic skills were among the best in the Ability Management Bureau, the 7th Princess with her powerful ability, the first-class assassin Tunia, the apprentice holy knight Gusto with his great divine power, and Radel, the 1st-year representative and the fixer of the Black Falcon Dormitory.
They were members who each had outstanding abilities.
"Our military strength is not bad. To be honest, it's quite good. And the guild we're up against is a small group, so the burden is less. But it won't be easy because all the members are assassins who have received professional training."
Tunia nodded beside him.
Pirenzo handed the information about the Black Fang that he had received from Tunia to the group.
"The current number of members of the Black Fang is about twenty, including the guild master. If we exclude the members who have no military power, we should assume that the number of people we will actually face is even smaller."
The difficulty of the mission was not the only problem.
Most assassin's guilds tattooed their guild members, and the Black Fang had placed a curse magic on the tattoo to prevent the members from betraying them.
If the guild master activated the curse magic, the person with the tattoo would feel immense pain until they died.
A pain that was so bad that it would be better to take one's own life.
Their lives were in the hands of the guild master.
That was one of the biggest variables in this operation, whose goal was the liberation of the guild members.
"Once you join the Black Fang, you can't escape the curse unless you kill the guild master."
Inette's expression hardened upon hearing Pirenzo's explanation.
They were more vicious than she thought.
She looked at Tunia without realizing it.
Does that assassin also have a tattoo?
...Don't tell me she could die if this operation is discovered.
Inette could tell that Tunia was sincerely risking her life.
"Then is our goal to kill the guild master?"
Inette raised her hand and asked.
At that question, Tunia's pupils shook slightly.
Taking the life of the guild master she had called father and followed was not an easy thing for Tunia.
Tunia's primary goal was to lift the curse magic on the guild members through the attack.
However, even if the attack succeeded, it was not certain if the curse magic could be lifted. It was because the guild master was a very ruthless person.
Tunia recalled the colleagues who had lost their lives at the hands of the guild master.
When she was young, she had unconditionally believed her father's words that they had betrayed the guild, but thinking about it now, they might have been people who, like her, just wanted to quit being assassins.
However, her father was a person who did not tolerate such weak thoughts.
Pirenzo nodded at Inette's question.
"If the situation is not favorable, that's what will happen."
It was the method he had chosen to escape from the guild over a decade ago.
Since it was the fastest and surest method, Pirenzo was prioritizing getting rid of the guild master.
"The lives of all the guild members are in the hands of the guild master. There is no stronger motivation than death. If the guild master gives an order, we will have to fight against assassins who will rush at us risking their lives."
Pirenzo looked around at everyone.
"I am determined to end it before that happens."
At Pirenzo's words, everyone's expression became grim.
Especially, Tunia's face was even more serious.
The only one who was not grim here was one person.
'He's that determined?'
Although the 8th Prince had asked for his help, he hadn't intended to go this far.
The matter had gotten bigger than he thought.
'Why on earth did I follow him...'
Armandy muttered emptily to himself.
* * *
Pirenzo was sitting far away, lost in thought.
The meeting had dragged on, so everyone was taking a break.
"Professor."
Radel found him and approached.
Pirenzo greeted Radel, erasing the expression from his face.
"What is it, Your Highness."
"I was wondering if we could talk for a moment."
Radel approached nonchalantly and stood next to Pirenzo.
"To be honest, I thought you might not come, Professor."
"Your Highness? You must be joking. You had already decided on the answer, didn't you?"
Pirenzo chuckled.
Then he answered nonchalantly.
"After Your Highness left, I kept having dreams. It was a dream of killing people against my will."
A dream from his teenage years when he had struggled desperately.
It was a nightmare that had disappeared after Pirenzo entered the Ability Management Bureau.
Radel shrugged at Pirenzo's words.
"You've been living as an agent of the Ability Management Bureau for over a decade. The professor you are now is different from the old days."
Pirenzo chuckled again.
"That's right, I was just a teenage kid back then. Oh, that doesn't mean that you're a kid, Your Highness."
Although Radel felt a pang of conscience to be called a pure teenager, he was listening to Pirenzo's words silently.
It was because he could feel that Pirenzo was becoming more and more sincere.
Pirenzo's face suddenly became serious.
"That friend, Tunia, doesn't fit in with the Black Fang."
Tunia had the will to not want to live killing people anymore.
Pirenzo, who had had the same thought in the past, knew that better than anyone.
"No matter how I think about it, that place shouldn't exist. That's all I could think."
Then Radel nodded as if it were a matter of course.
"Then it's okay for it to disappear one more time. Let's do our best for the students this time, Professor."
For the students this time.
Strangely, those words remained in Pirenzo's heart.
Tiring.
[The target's affinity has surpassed 10.]
Through the alert ringing in his ear, Radel could clearly understand his feelings.