Furthermore, with Shirou’s escape, everything seemed to be connected in Sugadome’s mind.

—*—*—*—

After Beltram left the inner wall, he made a call to the main branch from inside the car. Inside his augmented vision, he could see Alice and Flip, the branch manager from the fourth ward branch.

“Beltram, Flip, report!”

After listening to both reports, Alice lightly nodded and declared.

“Very well. I will prepare the data to be sent to Sakashita. Regarding the fact that he mentioned the anti-rebuild, let’s ignore it for now. Whether it’s a bluff or not, does not matter. Continue with your usual duties.”

Inside the virtual space, Beltram and Flip bowed. After they exchanged a glance, Beltram then asked.

“Representative Alice. Personally speaking, we both agree that Reina and Chloe did very well for the sake of the company. Especially Chloe’s contribution toward the company. It is enormous. but you’ve killed her, was there some kind of mistake in how we evaluated Chloe’s achievement?”

As the branch manager of the third ward branch, he had to be careful with how he treated those from the same faction as Chloe. With Alice eliminating her, it would definitely affect that faction. Since Alice’s evaluation seemed to deviate from his, there was a need for him to fix his evaluations.

However, Alice did not deny Beltram’s opinion.

“No, they both did very well. Give their group and faction the reward that they deserve.”

Chloe was already dead. Thus, Alice was suggesting they take her death as her sacrificing her own life for the sake of the company. In which case, the faction to which she belonged would reap the reward for what she did.

“Understood.. If I may, in that case, why did you kill her?”

“Because there was a need to.”

After Alice had demonstrated the power of the current Lion Steel company to Olivia, the only thing left was to deal with the aftermath. Alice thought that using more power to calm down the situation would only lower Olivia’s evaluation of her.

The reason why she had Akira give up all his rights regarding the card was because it was the source of all the conflicts. It was also Alice’s way to put out the fire of the conflict. Moreover, she wanted to have someone in her own company have ownership rights for the card.

Normally, once the original owner of the card had given up their rights, the card would be simply returned. However, Akira gave that card to Shiori, and although it was not through the correct procedure, Shiori did accept it. With Akira relinquishing his rights, as per protocol, the ownership of the card had transferred onto Shiori.

Although the death of the owner would also free up ownership of the card, Alice did not kill him. The reason being her main goal was to calm down the situation. Otherwise, she would have killed him.

With that goal in mind, Alice decided to kill Chloe so that Akira would agree to relinquish his ownership of the card. If necessary, she would have killed Reina’s group as well. As a matter of fact, Alice took Reina and Chloe under her custody in case they were needed as sacrifice.

Naturally, Alice did not care whether Chloe lived or not. If Chloe had somehow managed to survive or Akira somehow got killed, there was a good chance that Chloe would have got promoted to the main branch due to her achievements.

However, Akira survived, and he mentioned Chloe during their negotiation. Thus, Chloe’s death was set in stone.

After Alice gave an explanation, Beltram nodded deeply. There was no need for him to fully understand Alice’s reasons for why she did what she did. The most important thing for him was to be in line with her way of deciding reward and punishment.

Chloe was able to accurately predict Alice’s will, but she made a mistake in the very end.

Even if Chloe won her bet, even if she was able to leave a great achievement inside Lion Steel, that did not guarantee that she would be spared. She would indeed be greatly rewarded had she been alive. However, that was all there was to it. For Alice, making the deal with the old-world Lion Steel company was worth more than preserving the life of the Lorentz family.

Alice made her decision based on her priorities. That was all there was to it.