These past few days, everything had been peaceful in the capital of the Re-Estize Kingdom.
Under normal circumstances, if a Kingdom security official—the fat巡回使 responsible for keeping the Royal Capital safe—was thrown out of a commoner's house like a piece of garbage in full view of the public, then left severely injured and paralyzed from head to toe, such a shocking crime would surely have rocked the capital. It would only be reasonable for the perpetrators to be arrested immediately, wouldn't it?
Or at the very least, the relevant Kingdom authorities should have investigated and sealed off the scene, right?
But...
What was bizarre was that, in the days since the security official had been paralyzed, not a single Royal Capital official or soldier had gone to investigate or even pay attention to the mansion where a little girl was staying. It was as if the fat official who had been thrown out of the house—not killed, but left in a state scarcely different from death—wasn't even part of the Re-Estize Kingdom's bureaucracy.
Still, though it was baffling that the Re-Estize Kingdom had yet to make any reasonable response, the members of an underground organization called "Eight Fingers" hadn't simply sat by and done nothing. In fact, on the very first night after the incident, they had already begun secretly deploying men and carrying out various acts of retaliation.
Unfortunately, not a single person they sent to break into the mansion ever made it back out on their feet, no matter how strong they were or how many there were... More accurately, those who sneaked in with sinister intentions or tried to storm the place under cover of night never appeared again after going inside!!
All told, more than a hundred skilled men had "vanished" without a trace. Some were