"I understand. Then one more question, i already know you people are part of the Revolutionary Army. But someone like Laims is a neutral noble. He doesn't work for the Minister, and he doesn't hold much real power. So what's the point of targeting him?"
At this point, Altai had nothing left worth hiding.
She answered honestly.
"For money."
"The organization needs the enormous wealth of House Leiden. If necessary, we'll use that girl to kill the members of the Leiden household. But before that, we'd definitely torture the location of all their assets out of them."
"I see."
The Revolutionary Army did not just need weapons.
It also needed food enough to support a large population.
When numbers were small, the economic burden could be eased through hunting and similar means.
But once their numbers grew beyond a certain point, the daily expenditure would become an enormous sum.
The Leiden family had no industry of its own, but it possessed the rewards granted by the former king, as well as the wealth earned from selling the ancestral lands it once held.
There was no way to know the exact amount.
It had not reached the level of rivaling a nation's treasury, but it should have been more than enough to equip an army.
"Laims is really more of a gentleman than an aristocrat," Noah muttered, leaving Altai bewildered.
Seeing her confusion, Noah sighed.
"So in the end, the so-called Revolutionary Army is nothing but a bunch of thieves."
For the sake of funds, good or evil did not matter.
As long as the target was an Imperial noble, they could simply be killed.
But a nation was not such a simple system.
The Revolutionary Army was nothing more than a gathering of ignorant fools.
Even if a group like that managed to overthrow the weakening Empire, it was not hard to imagine what sort of state they would govern this country into afterward.
If the Emperor could mature in time, and awaken to reality, then perhaps this country was not beyond saving.
But as long as the Emperor remained the Minister's puppet, the Empire could not be changed from within.
And the Revolutionary Army was unreliable as well.
Whether it could succeed or not was one thing.
Even if it did succeed, all it would do was continue the Empire's system under a new batch of rulers.
And most of those rulers were people who came from rough origins and knew nothing about governing a nation.
If only the officials currently serving in the court had the courage to join the movement to overthrow the Empire, things might be better.
Unfortunately, no such people had yet appeared.
And without them, the Revolutionary Army could never grow strong.
Still, quite a few people had already begun to waver.
Gozuki had seen that, which was why he established the assassination unit.
It was not only to kill members of the Revolutionary Army and enemy intelligence agents, but also to monitor the officials serving in court.
The moment anyone was found colluding with the enemy, they would be dealt with immediately.
"How many people know that you came here?"
Silence again.
"I really didn't want to do this."
Noah finally lost his patience and pressed a hand against Altai's forehead.
A pale blue light shimmered across his pupils.
The woman's eyes lost focus and turned blank, as though she were staring into space.
A few seconds later, Noah's expression changed, and he pulled his hand back.
Almost at the same moment, Altai's face twisted into horror, and she let out a shrill, crazed scream.
Because Noah had rushed, he had made a mistake.
He had accidentally trapped both himself and her inside a soundproof barrier.
In that instant, the piercing scream slammed into Noah's eardrums with unbearable force—and he reflexively blew Altai's head apart!
Bang!
Without any warning, the woman's head exploded like a watermelon.
And the world returned to silence.
"So it failed..."
The collapse of the Soul Corridor had caused Altai's personality to split into dozens of fragments in an instant, and those fragments had begun attacking one another.
A better outcome would have been for one of those personalities to survive, leaving her a raving lunatic.
A worse outcome would have been the destruction of her conscious soul, reducing her to a mindless shell until her body withered and died.
By the halfway point of her explanation, Noah had already decided to kill her anyway.
The process had changed a little, but the result was the same.
Using Weaver, Noah split the earth, dropped Altai's corpse inside, then restored the ground to normal.
The blood and every other trace were buried as well.
Even the smell was erased.
"According to the memories, there should've been three of them. But I only managed to get information on two."
So now he could only hope those two would lead him to the last one.
If he did not kill all of them, then Maki would probably be dragged back into this again.
And because of Altai's death, there was a good chance Maki would be caught up in trouble.
At the same time, this was also a chance to repay Laims.
If Noah helped him get rid of the people coveting the Leiden family's wealth, then at the very least he would no longer owe him.
In truth, if he reported the matter to the Empire's assassination unit, they might uproot the whole group in one go.
But if that happened, House Leiden itself might end up in an ugly situation.
So Noah decided he would handle it himself.
...
That night, he dyed all the temporary equipment he had made black, then put on a mask that covered his entire face and jaw.
At the same time, he gave the mask a sound-dampening vibration enchantment.
Everything was ready.
Just as Noah was about to leave, however, he heard a set of light footsteps approaching his room.
He glanced at what he was wearing and sighed.
Then came a gentle knock at the door.
A girl's voice sounded from outside.
"L-Lord Noah... are you there? It's... Maki."