SCWED 09

Chapter 9

‘I wasn’t being careful enough.’

Rebecca berated herself inwardly.

The trainees snickered and burst out laughing at her.

“Hey, wasn’t that a little excessive? You even drew your sword.”

“I thought you were being serious. This is actually kind of funny.”

Rebecca’s face flushed with embarrassment.

Avoiding the trainees’ gazes, she glanced at Ethan, who was grinning slyly.

Ethan casually shrugged his shoulders and replied,

“Well, it’s not like it was 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 as he looked around.

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

“…”

The trainees looked dejected and were left speechless.

In the end, no one managed to complete the third course.

And that fact meant only one thing to them.

They had to start all over again.

The despairing trainees let out deep sighs.

Dawn.

“I’m dying. I’m working myself to death just so I don’t die.”

Ethan struggled to get up as usual to go running.

But when he opened his door, he was startled to see Rebecca standing outside.

“…What are you doing here?”

Her hair was disheveled and loosely tied back into a ponytail.

Yet, somehow, the look suited her naturally. Her lightly braided hair accentuated her sharp jawline, and even her disheveled appearance gave her a neat, composed air.

“What are you doing here?”

Instead of answering, Rebecca held out the small glass bottle in her hand.

“That wound.”

Her gaze pointed toward the cut across Ethan’s cheek.

“It’s a fairly effective ointment among the goods our merchant house deals in.”

Ethan blinked as he 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, judging by what you’ve told me, you seem to come from a merchant family. Is there some reason you have to become a tax collector? You don’t exactly seem desperate for money.”

Rebecca stopped walking and hesitated for a moment.

Then, staring somewhere into empty space, she spoke quietly.

“There’s something I need to find.”

After saying that, she offered no further explanation and simply walked away.

“What a tease.”

Her evasive attitude only stirred up his curiosity further.

Ethan chuckled, opened the cap of the glass bottle, and applied the ointment to his wound.

Hiss—

A cool, almost chilly sensation seeped into the wound, and the injury gradually began to fade.

Feeling the effect through his senses 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 pungent smell.

Not one that actually existed.

It was merely a scent she had caught in fragments of memory.

So this was a smell that lingered within her memories.

Paint melting in the flames.

A shadow visible beyond a window.

The sensation of rough hands grabbing her.

—There’s nothing for you to have.

An old voice echoed in her ears.

Rebecca fidgeted with the small piece of cloth in her pocket.

It was stained with old paint.

“I’ll get it back. No matter what.”

Rebecca calmed her trembling gaze and opened the door to her dormitory.

The third course.

Training designed to develop insight.

They had even removed their breathing apparatuses, so there was no physical strain.

It should have been relatively easy.

But—

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

Instead, Ethan had developed a throbbing headache.

The countless crests scattered everywhere were enough to make his mind feel like it was going haywire just from looking at them.

He had always considered himself to have a fairly good memory.

But that had been a serious misconception.

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

And Ethan wasn’t the only one struggling.

Crack.

Nicholas was apparently having just as much trouble thinking, and was barely hanging on while biting down on a sugar cube.

Rebecca had even abandoned the neat outfit she had maintained despite the intense physical training.

Her hair was disheveled, and she was wearing glasses as she desperately searched for the crest.

‘Why can’t I find it? It’s just a spot-the-difference puzzle.’

Ethan’s natural aptitude for remembering things was exceptional.

Even so, this test was difficult enough to make the limits of that talent painfully clear.

While everyone was struggling—

Walter quietly looked around before finally speaking.

“Isn’t this just a bunch of freeloading bandits trying to make something for nothing?”

The words Walter casually tossed at the trainees sounded almost meaningless.

But—

‘Make something for nothing?’

Ethan realized there was a hint hidden within them.

‘…I haven’t studied enough.’

Ethan realized how foolish he had been to think that analyzing the crests alone was the answer.

At first, he had simply observed them with his eyes and tried to find patterns.

But as time passed, he increasingly realized just how arrogant that approach had been.

‘This was why Lowfang chose me in the first place. I just never realized it.’

Until now, Ethan had relied solely on his previous memories.

But this test demanded an entirely different way of thinking.

And what if he was in a place he couldn’t understand even with all the knowledge he possessed?

Naturally, he would have no choice but to wander around aimlessly.

Tax collectors didn’t uncover a delinquent’s hidden assets simply by relying on information that was visible on the surface.

They had to analyze fragments of accumulated information, draw further inferences, and arrive at a single insight.

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

Ethan walked toward Walter.

“What is it, Ethan?”

“Instructor, could you tell us some information about Count Lloyd?”

Walter frowned.

“Why all of a sudden?”

“We’re still only candidates, but assuming that our assigned role is that of tax collectors, shouldn’t we have at least some information about him?”

The other trainees also seemed to agree with Ethan.

Walter looked reluctant, but with everyone around him showing interest, he eventually opened his mouth.

“All right. Ethan. It makes enough sense, so I’ll tell you one thing. Count Lloyd was the richest man in the empire after the Unification. But he didn’t amass his wealth through ordinary trade.”

Walter told them how Count Lloyd had lent enormous sums of money to nobles who harbored resentment toward the Emperor, while adjusting the interest rates charged to the Imperial family and nobles to expand his political influence.

He had even used forged documents to siphon away the assets of nobles, and on one occasion, he had destabilized the Imperial economy by circulating counterfeit gold coins.

“In the end, His Majesty the Emperor caught on and tried to bring him to trial. But Lloyd had already moved his assets overseas and disappeared. As for his whereabouts… Well, I doubt anyone knows where he is even now.”

“So even tax collectors fail sometimes.”

Walter didn’t particularly like admitting it, but he nodded.

“Exactly half. So you could say we won half and lost half.”

If the tax collectors hadn’t acted quickly, his enormous fortune would have vanished completely, throwing the entire Empire into turmoil.

Walter gave a bitter smile and added,

“That man had more tricks than you could count. So you’d better be careful.”

Ethan’s eyes gleamed as he nodded.

‘…He’s the kind of person who causes a massive incident to disguise what he’s really doing. There’s no way someone like that would have simply placed the crests honestly in a place like this.’

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

He wasn’t simply looking again at the ones he had already seen once, twice, or the ones that were familiar to him.

Instead, he began searching through the things he had unconsciously overlooked until now.

Rebecca and Nicholas also watched him.

They had noticed that Ethan’s attitude had changed.

“Ethan, what are you thinking?”

Rebecca asked.

“I think the way we’ve been searching until now was wrong.”

Ethan spoke with conviction in his eyes.

Then he quickly scanned the surroundings before suddenly approaching one of the walls.

A wall densely engraved with crests.

Ethan traced the patterns with his fingertips, carefully examining the surface.

At first, it seemed like nothing more than ordinary engraving.

But as he slowly moved his finger across it, he felt a subtle difference.

A tiny section, roughly the size of a fingernail, felt rougher than the surrounding area.

It wasn’t simply engraved.

It looked as though someone had deliberately gouged it with force.

Visually, it connected naturally with the existing pattern, which was why the trainees had overlooked it.

But Ethan detected the subtle difference purely through the sensation at his fingertips.

His eyes glinted.

‘It wasn’t accidentally gouged. It looks more like someone tried to hide something.’

He ran his fingertips across the surface of the crest.

He felt the rough texture.

And he became certain.

“This is it.”

Ethan pressed down hard on the spot.

A small vibration ran through the wall, and a stone suddenly popped loose.

Rumble—

At the same time, the crests engraved across the wall began glowing and rearranging themselves like blocks.

“W-What?!”

The trainees watched in astonishment.

For a moment, the entire room gently trembled.

Then, hidden within it, they found an enormous quantity of gold and several rare weapons.

Nicholas muttered in awe,

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

Rebecca frowned.

“To think it was concealed like this…”

The trainees each voiced their own reactions.

Ethan grinned and looked toward Walter.

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

‘Huh?’

Ethan was actually flustered by the unexpected reaction.

Had this not been the answer they were looking for?

But this time, every item engraved with a crest inside the secret vault was genuine.

“…Instructor. There’s more than one item engraved with a crest.”

“…”

There was no answer.

Because the secret vault Ethan had discovered was a place that countless tax collectors had tried—and failed—to find.

The tension within the training camp disappeared in an instant.

Thanks to Ethan producing an unexpectedly remarkable result on the third course, the training was temporarily suspended.

At the same time, the training camp erupted into commotion.

The warden, the vanguard, and the tax collectors were all scrambling to assess the value of the gold coins, jewels, and weapons discovered inside the secret vault.

Thanks to that, the long-delayed 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 how I look in front of a trainee.’

Walter, the training instructor, quietly glanced at the vanguard.

A tax collector candidate had accomplished a task that no one had been able to complete until now.

Walter had no idea how he was supposed to take this situation.

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

The problem was simple.

Walter had promised that whoever passed the third course would receive one item from the room as a reward.

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

From legendary swords that had been preserved for generations to spears and shields forged from rare metals, every single item was worthy of being called a national treasure.

No one had expected such precious treasures to be hidden here in the first place.

The tax collectors couldn’t easily make a decision and exchanged their opinions among themselves.

“Even so… isn’t this a little too much?”

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

However, after a long silence, the vanguard finally reached a conclusion.

His eyes were resolute.

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

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

“However, the reward for this test must be honored. Breaking a promise is not the way of a tax collector.”

And so, the decision was made.

Ethan would receive an unprecedented reward.