Actually, even without asking Lance you could more or less guess it: they obviously had some expert coaching them from behind the scenes, otherwise, with just those few pieces of trash, there’s no way they’d have found loopholes in the rules.

After all, they can’t even read, because what Lance had just raised up and shown them was the file of another case entirely, yet that guy agreed on the spot.

Those people had studied Hamlet’s rules and knew the sheriffs all handled things strictly by the book, so they decided to try courting death.

They were testing Hamlet’s rules: if breaking the rules turned out to be no big deal, then more people would imitate them, and with enough of these gutter punks they could drag law and order down.

If the police enforced the law hard, or didn’t follow the rules, they’d become targets of attack.

They wanted to turn the rules Hamlet insisted on into a joke, so they could use that to dismantle Hamlet’s booming order and bring chaos back.

Looks like Hamlet’s order is making a lot of people very uncomfortable~

But Lance never particularly cared.

Want to exploit loopholes? How many lives do you think you’ve got?

"Look, when you come across abnormal cases you need to consider more layers. The crimes these people committed are no longer those petty offenses, but deliberate acts endangering Hamlet’s security. Shooting them on the spot would be justified."

Lance used this case to explain the ins and outs to them, and ended up scaring the ringleader half to death.

"My Lord, I told you! I told you!" The ringleader kept repeating with a funeral face, blood blurring the lower half of his face, making him look miserable.

"Since you’ve said this much, I won’t hang you up. Send him to the sanatorium."

"Thank you, My Lord!" The ringleader suddenly seemed to forget his pain and was moved to tears.

Outsiders have no damn clue what the sanatorium really is, but it sounded like the Lord wasn’t going to hang him, and would even help treat him; now he was convinced the Lord was truly a good man.

"But when we handle a case, we care about evidence. If we don’t catch the person you’re talking about, it’ll be hard for us to help you."

"He was the one who came to me, I don’t even know..."

"That’s simple. I’ll let you out; he’ll definitely come looking for you. You help me find them, and the ones hanging up there will be them. If you can’t find them, you’ll be the ones hanging back up."

"Yes yes yes!" The ringleader had no choice; to make sure the ones hanging weren’t his own people, he could only make life tough for the other side.

"Take them down and release them."

Lance waved his hand, and soon someone came and took them all away.

"Did you see that? To deal with scoundrels you have to be more of a scoundrel than they are. This is the third time already—did none of you notice anything off? Once you sense their intent, you should slap the most serious charges on them."

"My Lord, isn’t this approach a bit... inappropriate?" William still felt something was off. Doing things this way could easily spin out of control; people might shove anything and everything into a case just to close it fast.

"If this were a stable era, I’d agree with you. Unfortunately, right now there are plenty of people trying to challenge Hamlet’s rules, so I can only let them experience what the power of order really means."

Lance didn’t fall into William’s debate trap. The important thing now was to catch those enemies trying to mess up Hamlet.

"Find two sharp brothers, have them disguise themselves and slip in. Get Instructor Laura over here to keep an eye on things in case something happens. Prepare plainclothes. The arrest operation has to be kept within..."

Lance took over command and began arranging the next steps.

In fact, as long as they caught the contact, Lance could make him spill his accomplices and take down the whole network in one sweep.

But Lance didn’t do that; instead, he taught them how to complete it through undercover work, tailing, investigation, and arrest techniques.

After all, he couldn’t do everything himself. He needed this newly built police system to grow up fast, and the current chaotic situation was the best field exercise they could ask for.

"This is the first major case since the police reform. We’re going to treat it as a model case. We must wipe out these criminals in one go and crush their arrogance!"

"Yes!"

The machine that was Hamlet started running, and anything standing in its way would be crushed.

It would take time and investigation to catch all of them, and in the meantime Lance kept handling cases rapidly alongside the others.

Those who should be sentenced were sentenced, those who should be released were released, and the detention cells that had been stuffed full were cleared out.

At the same time, they adjusted the laws according to what these cases reflected back, though this left some people feeling uneasy. After all, so many big changes in such a short time were hard for many to accept.

"Our laws aren’t the Church’s Holy Canon. What’s there to be afraid of changing?" Lance turned his head and tossed out the line, though he also took their feelings into account and followed up by explaining why the changes were correct.

"Nothing is born perfect. Everything in this world is in flux. We need to learn to change with reality; only then can we avoid drifting away from it and truly maintain Hamlet’s order."

Lance was using this kind of high-intensity practice to quickly pull out a group of people—ability wasn’t enough, they also needed methods. If you’re too young, you get eaten alive.

"I have high expectations of you. I hope you won’t let me down."

Lance suddenly sighed. The past few days he’d mostly been dealing with outsiders’ cases, but the remaining ones were all locals, and they involved...

Corruption, and degeneration!

Even so, Lance remained calm and picked one case out of the collected evidence as an example.

"Come on, let’s continue. We’ll start with him."

At Lance’s signal, someone was quickly brought in. Judging by his look, he didn’t even know what was going on. No one was holding him, he wasn’t in chains, and as soon as he came in he addressed Lance.

"My Lord, what are your orders?"

"Sit." Lance motioned for him to sit, then gestured to the evidence they’d collected. "Explain these."

Before he even sat down, his eyes landed on those documents, and his expression instantly froze.

Seeing that, Lance understood and could only shake his head helplessly.

"You’ve let Hamlet down..."

"My Lord!"

"Don’t call me Lord. You’ve also betrayed the trust I placed in you."

The moment he heard that, the man collapsed, as if all his energy had been sucked out. His face went deathly pale and he slumped into the chair.

These people weren’t afraid of death, but losing the Lord’s trust was like a believer losing the favor of their god; their lives lost all meaning.

The policemen watching this scene all wore serious expressions; some didn’t even bother to hide the hatred and disgust in their eyes.

"Confess. What else do you have to say?"

"I’ve failed everyone, I’ve failed the Lord, I’ve failed..." The man lowered his head; it was hard to say whether it was guilt or something else.

Lance had really hoped there’d be some flaw in the evidence William had collected, that Hamlet wasn’t actually this rotten.

But in reality, it was even less than the truth. Once a few people were caught and confessed in front of Lance, a whole string of others quickly got dragged out.

Most of them were just petty tricks, but Lance couldn’t care less. The big development push needed more people—go build roads for me.

But in the process they unexpectedly uncovered some situations that made Lance’s rage boil over.

Betrayal is even more terrifying than corruption!

The forces with designs on Hamlet would of course try to plant spies to gather information about the territory, even to get access to internal affairs.

They’d use all sorts of methods to screen target candidates and approach them; at first it was just casual meetings, making friends, but once that first step was taken, they’d slowly sink in.

Some were even more straightforward: they set traps—money, women—grabbing someone’s weak spot and blackmailing them. At first it was all trivial matters, but little by little it became impossible to break free.

Just as Lance could plant undercover agents in Bastia, others could do the same.

This was always a makeshift troupe thrown together; most were ordinary folk, and few could resist all kinds of temptation, let alone see through the hidden schemes, while the enemy were experts at this.

Of course, it wasn’t that no one could resist—William only got wind of it because someone keenly sensed something was wrong and reported it.

Most people were still loyal, which gave Lance a bit of comfort.

But that only made these traitors look all the more ugly.