At a gathering of important Aurora Order members, Mr. C was about to assign a mission.
As he spoke, he looked at Raphael. "You're our newest member, so you can take care of this mission."
Raphael nodded. "No problem."
Mr. C then began explaining the details. "Some time ago, an outer member was betrayed by a cloth merchant while preaching. That member subsequently died fighting the Mandated Punishers.
"But we had more important matters to attend to at the time, so we didn't retaliate immediately.
"Now, because of the 'werewolf tales,' the Mandated Punishers are short-handed. They've left only two members to protect that cloth merchant. It's time to act."
When he mentioned the "werewolf tales," Mr. C glanced at Raphael. He had probably guessed something.
Raphael pretended not to understand the look in Mr. C's eyes. "What level of Beyonders are those two Mandated Punishers?"
He also largely agreed with the Aurora Order's approach. When the incident first happened, the Mandated Punishers, who knew perfectly well what sort of people the Aurora Order members were, had most likely assigned a Sequence 6 to protect the cloth merchant.
If Mr. C had acted, he could have killed that Sequence 6 fairly easily. But the Sequence 6 would actually have been there to buy time for the Mandated Punishers. Before Mr. C could withdraw, more Mandated Punishers would surely have arrived as reinforcements.
Eventually, one or two Sequence 5s wielding Sealed Artifacts would have arrived and killed Mr. C.
So now that the Mandated Punishers no longer had the manpower to spare for this matter, it was the best time to retaliate.
That was the difference between the Aurora Order and the Rose School: the former had brains.
After hearing Raphael's question, Mr. C answered, "One Sequence 8 and one Sequence