Chapter 120: The Audition Begin
The day has come for the interview. I have arrived at the venue which is the audience hall in the palace.
As for other people who lives here like the maids and servants, they were given a vacation just like the day Alan and Lana were born. No wonder the palace seems empty that day.
As for the maids and servants, Albert has asked some of them questions. Some of them are given vacation, and some others will be interviewed today.
There were also n.o.bles who were given priority for their interview. Albert summoned them under the pretext of asking them what future they would like for the kingdom. Which direction shall they take?
The n.o.bles are asked to come in the afternoon after lunch, so for the morning, it was scheduled for the secret agents and the maids and servants.
"And it will take at least until midnight to interview everyone. Don"t you have a better job to do as the king?" I asked Albert who"s preparing himself in his seat.
The arrangement for the interview is Albert sitting on his throne, and behind him diagonally is Mustache as his bodyguard.
There is only one door as the only way to get to the audience hall. At the entrance is me whose job is to kill the traitors once they entered.
To not get found out that our purpose is to eliminate traitors, we made sure that the hallway before entering the audience to be empty so we can take care of the corpses without being found out. It will be fine because the corpse will be taken to a secret room using hidden pa.s.sage.
As for those who are haven"t been found out if they are traitors or not, they will be taken to different place from where they entered from. So no one will be suspicious if none of the interviewee returned to their waiting place.
As for the n.o.bles who will come later, their arrangement will be different. They will be taken to a waiting for n.o.bles. Of course they might encounter other n.o.bles there, but that doesn"t matter.
We"re looking for allies and enemies today. Doesn"t matter how prideful these n.o.bles are, if we"re looking for allies, we need people who can get along with the others. So even if those n.o.bles are not traitors but can"t get along with other n.o.bles, we won"t count on them.
"Roy. This is my job. Determining if these people will give hope to the kingdom or bring ruin instead is the duty of the king." Albert answered my question.
"Whatever. Let"s start the audition already." I asked for the interview to get started already.
"Audition? Now that you mention it, it does seems like some kind of audition. Call the first contestant!" Albert played along with me. Behind him, Mustache just gave up and not saying anything at all.
How we called the "contestant" is by having Sonia to tell Ian who"s waiting with the other contestants in the waiting room.
She didn"t appear in front of him because she might startle the contestants, but she could make the ring on Ian"s finger to vibrate slightly. That"s the cue for Ian to call the next people. Of course they have been given numbers so they will enter according to their numbers.
As soon as the first person enters, I shouted, "The first contestant is here!"
At the same time, I also gave a signal to Albert and tell him that the first person is a traitor.
"Welcome! What is your talent?!" Albert continued played along with me.
"Umm… what?" the first man who entered was confused.
"Having his head separated from his neck!"
I said as I swung my spear and decapitate his head.
I have seen inside his mouth that the first guy has an explosive device inside. Without hesitation, I just cut his neck and let the blood dirtied the floor.
"Too fast! And you"re dirtying the floor! What should we do with this?" Albert asked.
"There"s no floor that"s gotten dirty. Just Blobby transforming into a carpet. This way, it"s easier to clean the body and the blood. As for the smell of the blood… let"s say that Mustache is menstruating right now."
"Hey! What the h.e.l.l, man?!" Mustache protested.
"Let"s just say that he"s being disrespectful to me and the two of you who are extremely loyal to me, killed the first person." Albert suggested calmly.
Well, that"s better than Mustache is menstruating. Let"s do that.
The next contestant arrived. He doesn"t have any explosive device in his mouth so we proceed normally.
"What"s your name and your job?" Albert asked normally.
"My name is Jo. I"m an agent of the kingdom."
Jo? I think I killed someone with that name before. I guess since it"s such a common name, I"ll encounter more Jo and Bob… and Roy. I hope I won"t meet any Roy I have to kill.
Sensing that Jo didn"t speak any lies, Roy continued.
"What did you do before coming here?"
"I was tasked to scout young talent to be agents in the future. My magic is weak so I can"t have other important jobs like espionage."
"Scouting is important too. Is there any other kingdom or maybe organizations that tried to make contact with you?"
"…excuse me?" Jo was confused by Albert"s question. It was a question we prepared yesterday during our relaxing meeting.
"Just answer it. Your boss, Tim, involved in some strange organization. That"s why I want to see if there are other among the agents who enter that organization as well."
Hearing what Albert said, Jo clenched his fist in anger.
"I"m not part of any organization other than this kingdom"s agency. And I have no plan to betray the kingdom I love! There were some who tried to contact me, but I refuse them all!"
I looked at Albert and seeing he nodded slightly, I know that Jo didn"t speak lies. Well, if he speak any lies, I"ll kill him.
"Good. Please continue to work for me… for the kingdom from now on. Once you leave this hall, Candy will inform you about Tim and the organization he belong to. I look forward to work with you in the future."
"Thank you! I will always put my loyalty to this kingdom!" After saying that, Jo left.
"Nice! That"s one. Let"s hope that most of the contestant will pa.s.s." Albert started calling them as contestants as well. I"m a bad influence for the king.
"That"s impossible. There are about a hundred other people in the waiting room. At least 15 of them have explosives device in their mouth. And who knows if the other 85% has as much loyalty as Jo has?"
"You"re right. If we have at least 50% of them as our allies, that would be helpful. Oh, right. From now, I will also ask if they are under someone else"s order or not. There are some n.o.bles who has… terrible reputation." Albert said.
Seems like it"s common for n.o.bles to send spies. I think some of the servants should be spies sent by some n.o.bles. That"s how the story goes in a novel I read in the past.
"Honestly, that"s your problem. I"m here because of the cult. Not for the cold war between royalty and n.o.bility." I said.
"Fair enough. Let"s get the next contestant."
For the rest of the contestants, most of them are neutral. Not loyal to the kingdom nor the king, but doesn"t involved in any organization. We just let them go home and return to their previous job. Even those who are the maid in the palace can return to being a maid. But their contact with Albert and Marie will lessened.
Candy told those who pa.s.sed the audition to never leak today"s event to anyone. Even with other contestants who pa.s.sed. Those are Albert"s job.
As for the traitors, there are in total 17 of them including the first person I killed.
After the first traitor, we decided to interrogate the next person. But even after we torture them, they won"t speak anything about Evil G.o.d Cult. Some of them even slit their own throat.
What is it that makes them so loyal to the cult? Money? Power? Or maybe because of those two. Celestine and Veronica.
But I don"t think that"s the case. If they choose to enter the cult just because of their idols were there, there"s no way the war will continue for thirty years. I mean in thirty years, those things will get… saggy.
But still… we got 40 allies. Which is good.
Twenty eight are from the agency, and the other twelve are maids and servants. Of course we told them to not leak anything even to their family.
Albert promised to protect their family and even bowed to his own servant to keep today"s matter as secret.
Finally, the batch from the agents and servants are over. We"re having our lunch in the audience hall. Which is something unprecedented.
I transformed Blobby into table and chairs as we eat in a room filled with the smell of blood.
"Is it over?" I asked Albert.
"Only for the agents and servants. Next is from n.o.bility. Be extremely cautious. They are very tricky." Albert said.
"How many of them?"
"Only ten or so. But they will give me more headache than the previous batch."
"Don"t worry. I"m a doctor."
"…you"re not thinking of helping me?"
"I"m helping you by killing the traitor. Just tell me if I should kill them or not."
Our busy day is not over. In fact it might get harder. At least for Albert.