TERNLF Vol. 1 Chapter 3 Part 3

Full title: The Exiled Reincarnated Noble Lives Freely

Note: If you found any typos/mistakes, pls write them in the comment. Thanks.

Translator: Canon

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“People can change, for better or for worse.”

For a girl of only fifteen or sixteen, accepting the fact that someone she had trusted had betrayed her must have been unbearably difficult.

That was precisely why I could never forgive Lakkra. He had not only ruined countless victims in the past, but had also betrayed the heart of a girl who had looked up to him almost like a father.

I turned back to Zaigo with another question.

“By the way, when Lakkra gave you jobs, did he ever keep some kind of ledger?”

“A ledger?”

“Yeah. Even if it’s shady work, he still has to pay you properly. And since you weren’t the only ones he used, he’d need a way to keep track of everything. There should be something like a secret ledger for that.”

Zaigo looked thoughtful for a moment, then muttered, “Maybe…”

“If you know something, then spit it out. Otherwise—”

I jabbed a finger toward one of his eyes. “I might just have to gouge one of these out.”

Of course, I had no intention of actually doing it.

Not with Grassa behind me.

If she saw something that gruesome, I might scar her for life, and in any case, I had no taste for torture.

If anything, I was the sort who preferred to avoid bloodshed whenever possible.

“Stop! I never said I wouldn’t talk!”

Zaigo shrieked in terror and blurted his answer in a rush.

“Every time we went to collect our payment, Lakkra would check the amount in some kind of notebook. I swear it.”

“A notebook… that could be the ledger. What else?”

“What else?”

“I’m asking if there’s anything besides that notebook.”

Zaigo’s eyes darted around as if scouring his own memories.

But in the end he broke down crying. “No, nothing else. You have to believe me!”

“So that’s enough, right? You’ll let me go now? My hands and feet are killing me—heal me already!”

The wounds I’d inflicted with earth magic must have been agonizing throughout the entire interrogation.

Zaigo bawled pathetically, snot and tears running down his brutish face.

Seeing a hulking thug beg for mercy like that was nothing short of pitiful.

“Yeah, I hear you. I keep my promises. I won’t take your life.”

“…Toa. You don’t mean—”

Grassa’s voice trembled with worry.

Perhaps she thought I was actually going to let Zaigo and his comrades walk free.

But that was impossible.

“Don’t worry. Leave it to me.”

I reassured her, then used Heal to mend only the wounds of the still-pinned Zaigo.

“Now then, Zaigo. There’s a job I want you and your friends to do.”

“A… a job?”

Relieved as the pain vanished, Zaigo’s face immediately tensed again.

“Nothing too difficult. If you pull it off properly, I’ll spare your comrades’ lives as well.”

“…You swear it?”

“I told you, I don’t lie.”

“Fine… what’s the job?”

Zaigo nodded, his face still a mess of tears and mucus.

Watching him, I revealed the plan: a way to obtain the Blackra Trading Company’s secret ledger.

—

“So? Did it go smoothly?”

“Yes. They resisted harder than expected, so we ended up with some injuries on our side.”

Two doors down from the Blackra Trading Company’s main office.

Inside one of the rooms of that building, Lakkra and Zaigo were meeting.

The building itself looked old but unremarkable; just another three-story structure common enough in the capital.

According to Zaigo, a hidden underground passage connected the Company’s main office to this building, and all underworld dealings were handled here.

For Zaigo’s group, who still had the pretense of being adventurers, it was one thing. But there were others who couldn’t risk being seen walking in and out of the Company’s front doors. This place served that purpose.

And how was I, who wasn’t even in the room, aware of this meeting?

Because on the way here, I had caught a spider and cast 【Possession Spirits】 on it, linking my consciousness to the creature and having it cling to Zaigo’s trousers.

I myself waited outside the building. Grassa, meanwhile, I had sent to a safe location.

With my current strength, 【Possession Spirits】 could only control small creatures like insects or tiny animals, but for gathering intelligence like this, it was more than useful.

The downside was that almost all of my focus was drawn into the linked creature, making it dangerous to use in combat zones.

Even as I concentrated on maneuvering the spider, Lakkra’s voice reached my ears.

“Very well. I’ll cover the medical expenses.”

“Thank you.”

“And Grassa wasn’t harmed, was she?”

“Of course not. We separated her from that brat Toa first, then captured her. She’s completely unscathed.”

The two of them grinned at each other with vulgar satisfaction, and I almost clicked my tongue.

They were entirely different from how they had acted with me.

Zaigo bowed and scraped with obsequious politeness, while Lakkra spoke with a hollow, pompous air.

“So, he’s trained them well enough to heel like dogs… but it’s about time I moved.”

I pushed my focus fully into the spider.

Alright, climb the wall now.

The spider I controlled slipped away from Zaigo without drawing notice, scuttled around into Lakkra’s blind spot, and climbed up onto his back.

From there, I continued to observe, waiting for him to make his move.

“I would have liked to get my hands on that Nikka girl as well, but oh well.”

“A country bumpkin like her? There’ll be others. What matters is you pay us quickly, and cover those medical bills.”

“Don’t rush me. Have I ever once delayed payment?”

“No, but if we don’t bring the money soon, that quack doctor might cut corners.”

“True enough. He’d do it.”

This “quack doctor” was apparently a black-market physician who catered to the underworld.

People who couldn’t risk going to a proper healer—or whose wounds couldn’t be made public—paid through the nose for his services.

“Wait here. I’ll fetch the money now.”

With that, Lakkra opened a door and stepped into the adjoining room.

Naturally, the spider linked to me, clinging to his back, went with him.

Once inside, Lakkra locked the door behind him, then passed through to yet another chamber and locked that one as well.

Excessively cautious, but hardly surprising.

The final room he entered was unusual: four doors, each flanked by bookshelves.

I wondered which one he would choose—

“Hee, hoo, one, two…”

Lakkra approached one of the shelves, counting the tightly packed books aloud.

“This one… and this one…”

He shifted the fourth and seventh books from the right on the second row, and the eighth book on the fourth row.

At once, a faint grinding echoed—gigi gigi gigi—as the bookshelf slid a meter aside, revealing a stairway leading down.

A hidden staircase. Straight out of a comic book.

If anyone had asked me whether boys liked that kind of thing, I could have nodded without hesitation. I was thrilled despite myself.

If I ever build a house, I’m putting in a hidden room too.

As I mused, Lakkra descended the stairs.

He lit the magic lamps mounted along the way, and the hatch above closed slowly behind him.

Anyone entering that room later would be misled by the four doors, unlikely to discover the hidden staircase.

“Well then.”

At the bottom, a modest underground chamber awaited.

It contained two filing cabinets, a desk, and—tucked into the shadows behind it—the magical vault I was after, the one that likely held the secret ledger.

If I don’t move soon, I’ll miss my chance.

I shifted the spider to a better vantage point of the vault.
Then, leaving one eye’s vision still linked, I pulled most of my consciousness back to my body.

“Alright. I need to reach that room before he puts the ledger back.”

Muttering to myself, I slipped around to the building’s rear entrance.

Breaking in was easy: none of the doors had magic traps, and with a spare key fashioned from 【Blessing Earth】, I could open any of them.

The vault, however, was another matter.

I hurried inside, heading toward the room where Zaigo and Lakkra had met.

So it’s full biometric lock, after all.

Through the spider’s eyes, I saw Lakkra pressing his left hand against the vault’s side while entering a code with his right.

It looked like a simple number lock, but it wasn’t.

His left hand was also a key; without it, the vault would trigger some sort of defense.

Obviously, it wouldn’t accept just any hand; it had to be Lakkra’s own.

And if anyone else tried to force it open, there was no telling what traps would be triggered.

Coercing him into opening it was also pointless. If the ledger contained what I suspected, Lakkra would likely choose to destroy it along with himself rather than let it fall into my hands.

It was safe to assume the vault had an auto-destruct enchantment, one that would erase the contents if tampered with. I had seen something similar before at a frontier fortress.

That was why I had to wait for Lakkra to retrieve the ledger himself.

Slipping through the building, guided by the spider’s vision, I reached the room where Zaigo waited, and made sure to drive the point home.

“Zaigo. You understand what happens if you betray me, don’t you? I hate it when ‘promises’ are broken.”

“Y-Yes, of course!”

I had threatened him thoroughly, and his companions were in my hands.

The other members of Deadly had been healed to some extent, then bound, with Windfang’s Opos and Az keeping watch over them.

I had made it clear that if Zaigo attempted betrayal, every one of them—including him—would lose their lives.

Leaving him frozen stiff, I unlocked the adjoining room and moved toward the underground chamber where Lakkra was.

In the next room, I relied on memory to trigger the bookshelf’s mechanism.

Had the device been designed to make loud noises, my cover might have been blown. But from what I confirmed through the spider’s eyes, Lakkra hadn’t noticed a thing.

I hurried down the stairs and reached the underground door.

If I recalled correctly, Lakkra had not locked this one.

To confirm, I shifted my awareness into the spider’s vision.

Lakkra had yet to withdraw anything from the vault.

Inside the open vault were numerous burlap sacks, and the sight made me mutter under my breath.

He’s hoarded quite a bit.

The contents were likely gold coins, or perhaps even platinum.

In modern terms, a single gold coin was worth about two hundred thousand yen, and a platinum coin about one million.

If the sacks were all filled with platinum, then what lay inside amounted to an astronomical fortune.

“Heave-ho.”

Lakkra pulled out two sacks and placed them heavily upon the desk.

Thud.

Thud.

The weight was obvious from sound alone.

Each sack was about the size of a human head, packed with coins heavy enough that lifting even one would be a strain.

And he had hauled out two: one dark brown, the other light brown.

The color difference likely meant the coins were sorted by type.

“It’s time I moved about half of these to another place.”

He tapped his waist as he muttered.

So, there was another stash elsewhere.

Tempting as that was, what I needed now wasn’t coins.

“Now then… the ledger, the ledger.”

Leaving the two sacks on the desk, he crouched once more before the vault.

Beyond five more sacks, there was no sign of a ledger—

“Hup.”

He thrust his hand deep inside, and I heard a faint click, like something unfastening.

Apparently, there was a hidden compartment.

Another secret space in the vault. Thorough bastard.

When he drew back his hand, it clutched what looked very much like a ledger, roughly the size of a hardcover book.

If intruders ever came, their eyes would go straight to the money.

Documents left visible could be stolen, but hidden away like this, the thieves would likely be satisfied with the gold and never dig deeper.

“Let’s see… where’s Deadly’s section?”

Lakkra seated himself at the lone desk in the room and opened the ledger.

I maneuvered the spider onto his shoulder and peered down at the contents.

…This is even worse than I imagined.

Within its pages was a meticulous record of what ‘goods’ and ‘funds’ Lakkra had exchanged with clients.

Slaves were listed, of course.

So too were poisons, stimulants akin to narcotics, bribes, even forged works of art.

The range of his dealings was staggering.

As expected, most of his main clients are nobles. A few foreign magnates and other races’ names too; those must be import partners.

Satisfied, I pulled my consciousness fully back from the spider.

This ledger was the one I sought.

There might be others, but given the list of names, the main players were clearly all here. That was enough.

Carefully, I turned the door handle, then burst it open with a kick.

“What the—who are you!?”

Caught off guard, Lakkra flung the ledger toward the vault.

Perhaps if it entered improperly, the vault’s safeguards would trigger and destroy it.

I reacted instantly.

“【Blessing Ice Wall】!”

A wall of ice formed between him and the vault.

The ledger struck it and fell to the floor.

I lunged, snatched the ledger before Lakkra’s reaching hand, and smashed it into his face.

“Gah!”

He slammed against the wall with a crash. I followed up immediately.

“【Blessing Earth】.”

Just as I had done to Zaigo in the third warehouse, I bound Lakkra’s entire body in solidified earth.

That settled it.

He wasn’t a spellcaster, so he was powerless now. Still, I could not allow myself to relax.

I shoved the ledger into storage, safely beyond his reach.

“Toa, was it? How about we make a deal?”

He must have realized he couldn’t take it back by force.

Putting on the same friendly smile as when we first met, Lakkra tried to bargain.

“I hear you were exiled from the Kashit house. But with me, I could have you reinstated, not just that, I could make you head of the family. I have the connections, the wealth, the influence.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle.

Returning to nobility? I had abandoned that path long ago.

Yet seeing my reaction, Lakkra seemed to think he still had a chance.

“If you ally with me, I can elevate you beyond family head. To the highest ranks of the nobility… no, even higher than that.”

With only his head poking out of the earthen bindings, he prattled on endlessly about the benefits he could bestow.

“Family head, huh.”

“That’s right. You must loathe the brother who cast you out, don’t you? With me, toppling that arrogant Grasse would be simple.”

“Toppling him, you say. So you’ve got dirt on Glaas? Don’t tell me the Kashit house is one of your clients?”

From what I had glimpsed earlier, neither the Kashit name nor Glaas’ appeared in the ledger.

That was a relief, admittedly.

Even if I had severed ties and left, it was still the house of my birth. My memories of it weren’t all bitter; a few were good.

But if their name had been there, I wouldn’t have hesitated to cut them down too.

“No, they’re not among my clients. Bardin was too much of a purist, never gave me an opening.”

Bardin.

That was the former head of the Kashit family, my father in this world.

Indeed, he had always lectured about noble honor and railed against the corruption of the Senate.

As Lakkra said, a man like him would never have dealt with a merchant like this.

“When I heard his son had taken over and even sent assassins after you, I thought I finally had someone reasonable to deal with…”

“So Glaas refused you too?”

“Exactly. That’s why our interests align perfectly, you want revenge on the Kashit family, and I want them as allies. Don’t you agree?”

He smiled slyly. But no, our interests were nothing alike.

At the frontier fortress, I had never learned noble etiquette or ceremony.

Becoming a noble now was impossible for me.

Even the lowest houses obsessed over etiquette, and high nobility would be unbearable.

Besides, I had already cast off nobility and family.

I had chosen the path of the adventurer, where the knowledge I had gained at the fortress could be put to use.

I believed there was no other way for me to live in this world.

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