The next morning, Rhodes handed the training session off to Makarov and headed to the Council himself. His main purpose was to check on how things were progressing.
The moment Mest spotted him, he grabbed Rhodes by the arm and activated his teleportation magic. They reappeared in an inconspicuous corner outside the Council building.
Before Rhodes could get a word in, Mest dropped his voice to a low, conspiratorial tone. "We've arrested over a thousand dark cult members in recent weeks, and yesterday we brought in an officer named Abel. Short, wears a headscarf, clown makeup.
His magic involves Curse Dolls. Our operations have already put the cult on alert, so to stop them from doing something drastic, we're planning a full offensive soon.
The Council has also made some progress on the western continent investigation, though I haven't had access to the latest documents yet."
Rhodes looked at him.
Mest scratched the back of his head. "Sorry, that's all I've got right now. Next time I'll—"
Rhodes put a hand on his shoulder. "I appreciate the effort. But there's no need for us to duck into a secluded corner and whisper."
Mest went still.
The realization settled over him slowly. He was not working undercover anymore. He could simply say things out loud. And if Rhodes had just walked to his own office, he would have learned everything Mest had just shared without any of this.
His face went red.
With a sharp sound, he vanished.
Rhodes opened his mouth, considered offering something consoling, and found he had nothing. He sighed instead. "Drags me all the way out here and doesn't even send me back. Truly a member of our guild."
He reflected on the general state of public manners as he walked back to the building.
Along the way he observed the staff. Everyone seemed in reasonable spirits, which suggested there had been no widely circulating bad news of late.
Back in his office, Rhodes went through the recent work logs. Setting aside the routine matters, the significant development was largely what Mest had described: one of the cult's officers had been taken into custody, and the locations of other senior members were gradually becoming clearer.
Beyond that, new intelligence on the western continent had come in. The Council had identified three more members of the Shields of Spriggan.
Brandish, the Country Demolisher. Invel, the Winter General. Dimaria, the Valkyrie.
According to what had been gathered, Brandish could expand to enormous size and reduce enemies to specks beneath her. Invel could transform an entire battlefield into a frozen wasteland, locking an army in place as ice sculptures in a single moment.
Dimaria fought as an armored knight, but none of the intelligence sources had been able to track her movements in combat. The working theory was extreme speed-type magic.
Rhodes worked through the mental matchups. Brandish seemed like she had been designed as a counter to Makarov. Invel was almost certainly Gray's fight to have. Dimaria, armored knight, high speed, Erza was the natural answer there, assuming speed-type magic was the right read.
On paper, based on this information alone, none of them sounded impossible. The unknowns were their raw magical power and how far they had developed their abilities.
He set the documents down when a knock came at the door.
"Come in."
Lahar opened the door and stepped inside. "Mr. Rhodes."
"Take a seat." Rhodes gestured to the chair across the desk. "The report from a few days ago flagged some unusual movement within the cult. Have you found anything concrete?"
"Yes," Lahar said. "Our large-scale arrest operations prompted a fast response from the cult. Initially they went quiet, intending to lie low for a while. But as we kept dismantling their branches one after another and eventually took an officer into custody, their strategy shifted. They seem to have abandoned any pretense of discretion entirely.
They've begun recruiting on a large scale, throwing out their usual screening process completely. Our assessment is that this reckless expansion means they're planning to move their Purification plan forward ahead of schedule."
Rhodes nodded. "That's a reasonable read. What's your approach?"
"We're stepping up the interrogation of the captured officer and notifying all Council branches to intensify their searches. Our goal is to completely dismantle the Black Magic Cult within two weeks."
Lahar's expression shifted into something difficult to pin down. "Doranbolt also made a suggestion. Given how the cult has dropped its screening standards, he proposed sending someone in undercover to infiltrate them."
Rhodes worked very hard at keeping his face neutral. "The person he had in mind for that role wouldn't happen to be himself?"
"It was," Lahar said, with the tone of someone who had lived through a great deal. "I turned it down."
"Right call."
The image of Mest erasing his own memory to infiltrate the dark cult, then subsequently infiltrating the Council on the cult's behalf in order to demonstrate his commitment, was not difficult to picture. Rhodes preferred not to let it get that far.
Lahar exhaled. Good, his judgment had been sound. He couldn't let that man operate without supervision.
"Here's a thought," Rhodes said. "Let me bring Lucy over shortly and have her assist with the interrogation. It should be considerably more efficient."
Lahar blinked. "Miss Lucy? Not Miss Evergreen?"
Rhodes gave him a measured look. "Do you have some particular impression of Evergreen?"
Lahar laughed, slightly awkwardly.
The instructor with the extremely pronounced queen energy had left a lasting mark on the Council's newer recruits. Strange stories reached him periodically. Some of the more questionable individuals had apparently expressed an interest in being on the receiving end of her less approving attention.
How anyone said such things aloud, Lahar genuinely didn't know. He felt secondhand embarrassment on their behalf.
A few minutes later, Lucy, who had just finished the morning training session and was slumped over a table waiting for breakfast, was collected from the guild and personally walked into the detention block by Rhodes.
As a consultant, not a prisoner.
"I haven't eaten yet," Lucy said flatly.
"It's fine. Summon Gemini, and you'll be back in time for breakfast. It won't even cut into your meditation session."
"This is exploitation."
Rhodes glanced at the Magic Sealing Stone cuffs on the nearest prisoner and landed on a new idea. "Actually, that just reminded me. If I had everyone wear Magic Sealing Stones during training, it would do a great deal more for physical conditioning and willpower than the current setup."
Lucy stared at him. "You're a demon."
Lahar, standing nearby, quietly revised his assessment of Mr. Rhodes upward into territory he hadn't expected to reach. Was he genuinely this relentless with his own guild members?
Even Wolfheim hadn't gone that far with the Enforcement Unit's training.