085, The Truth Society

"After the chaos in New York, setting aside the economic losses, the protests from the various states alone nearly tore this country apart. Fortunately, even if the states became independent, the forces controlling them were mostly families with close ties to supernatural factions."

Emily sneered. She did not seem to be in a good mood, but even so, she elegantly raised her coffee and explained, "As for Mors... he's an especially gloomy old man from the conservative faction."

"Though he's a conservative, he's surprisingly adept at all kinds of schemes. Calling him an old fox would not be an exaggeration."

"Sending someone like that to New York to oversee the Iron Throne at a time like this? Just think about it, and you'll know what those people are plotting."

"What do you mean?" Rimuru walked over to Emily, sat down, and let Dixi leap onto the bar counter as he asked with a light laugh.

He had already understood seventy or eighty percent of what Emily meant, but he still wanted confirmation.

"Conservatives can only preserve what already exists." Dennis, who had been silently wiping glasses, walked over and smiled. "But with New York in its current state, there's no point in preserving anything. Sending an old man like that here has only one purpose: to turn the entire Iron Throne into a centralized instrument."

So-called centralized instrumentalization meant gathering an organization's originally scattered forces—for instance, a department managing an entire city—and concentrating all of its strength toward a single goal or direction. Every plan and every resource would serve that one objective.

To put it bluntly, the higher-ups believed the Iron Throne's New York branch was useless, so they might as well make use of it. After all, the Iron Throne was originally this kind of intelligence agency.

"So