Dancing Skirt knew exactly what Little Deer meant.
--The Hawkeye Organization had basically split apart completely by now.
Rather than split apart, it would be more accurate to say it had become corrupted.
They were all Honey Badger's disciples, fanatical pro-Theocracy supporters. Yet this new faction now made up less than a tenth of the Hawkeye Organization.
Just a few months ago, at least a third of the assassins had been willing to follow them. Back then, Iver was still the Pope... The weight of a human Pope's status could only be described as something everyone who understood, understood. Iver's reputation in Iris had largely been built up by these assassins.
But Iver had stepped down soon afterward.
Although he still possessed his own glory as the first human Pope, that glory could no longer bring them much influence—he had stepped down far too quickly. Although the Theocracy's method of election was completely different from Iris's, most commoners could only understand what they understood... If the Iris Flower Kingdom Prime Minister had stepped down so quickly, it could only mean some scandal had occurred that could not be covered up. Many people viewed Iver the same way.
Honey Badger was working hard to secure authorization from the Theocracy, but after Iver left office, the matter progressed very slowly... Of course, Honey Badger's faction all knew that this was because elves were simply slow at getting things done. But this only deepened the Iris People's impression that "Iver had lost the Theocracy's protection," making them even more convinced that he had done something wrong.
Whether this was true did not matter.
What mattered was whether people believed it was true—that directly determined whether the assassins could use Iver's reputation to clear their names and gain legitimacy in the eyes of the