The Golden City was a place where sunlight shone every day of the year, both due to its location and the abundance of precious stones it housed. With its streets adorned with identically cut stones, glass display cases showing even the tiniest speck on your face when you looked, and merchants whose eyes blazed with fervor, it was a place truly fitting to serve as the capital of the Mercenaries' Lodge.
The headquarters of the major merchant guilds, scattered across the four sides of the tower right in its center, screamed that "we rule here." Establishments that reflected the colors of the gems defining them on their signs were everywhere; minor merchants could only fly safely and comfortably under their wings.
These days, visitors were never lacking from the headquarters of the four major merchant guilds; the Golden Leaf was hosting the Empire of Machines, while the Diamond and Turquoise Leaf Guilds were hosting visitors belonging to the Lands of Light.
The headquarters of the Emerald Leaf Merchant Guild, which ruled the Central Region of the continent, was quiet compared to the others, but only someone who knew the cellars inside the structure resembling a long rectangle might be harboring different thoughts.
The screams rising from the cells lined up on both sides of the corridor ending with a ruby door bounced off the green color and returned, while new ones set off right behind them. While the grandeur on the part of the structure remaining above ground only sustained its life over the door, the people in the cells struggled to keep up with it.
"Speak! What is the Heart of the Sand planning?"
"I don't know, I swear on my dead wife that I don't know!"
"Speak, or your children will join your wife on the other side!"
"Don't, I don't know, I don't know anything!"
While the ropes extending from his two arms clung to a hook on the ceiling, the flesh of the man whose back was left exposed was being torn apart by a whip strike accompanying every sentence.
"How did you acquire so much property when you were dirt poor just a few months ago? Tell me, who is financing you?"
"Alright, I will tell you! Please, don't sever any more of my fingers!"
Not everyone was as tight-lipped as the whipped person; when a few fingers were lost from their hands that allowed them to enjoy the world's pleasures, their tongues loosened.
"Tell me, who did you get the money from to do black market trading?"
"He had a silver mask on his face, he said I would be very rich if I did what he said. I had just gone bankrupt, I was drowning in debt, he gave me thousands of gold coins and told me to buy up every egg on the market."
"Give me a name, dog!"
"I don't know his name! We met every week, every week they gave me hundreds of thousands of gold coins and told me the products I was going to buy!"
The moment his words were completed, his right hand, missing three fingers, was separated from the rest of his body with a clean cut at the wrist. A few seconds later, his head bearing wide-open eyes would follow it; unfortunately, the information he gave wasn't enough for the interrogator.
"Bastards, neither their faces nor their names are known. Who are they?"
The Emerald Leaf Merchant Guild couldn't hold the administration of a massive region solely by engaging in commercial activities. It was a fact that they intimidated merchants who weren't subjected to them first with their population, and if not, with their military power, but trying to make someone talk by torturing them in the cellars of the headquarters was new even for them.
It wasn't possible for them to have encountered a situation like the one experienced in their region before; let alone small towns, even those living in medium-sized cities had abandoned their residences and set out towards the Emerald City. Dona Gracia had set up such a meticulous plan that neither his trace nor his name could be found, but the Leader of the Emerald Leaf had an idea.
"For a long time, I've thought there was something weird in the messages sent by our spy in the Desolate Realm, but in the end, I decided to send a military team to investigate this."
Even though the facial expression under his mask adorned with a goatee made of emerald stone couldn't be seen, his tone of voice said the Leader of the Emerald Leaf Guild was angry. It wasn't clear whether this attitude was out of the concern he felt for the fate of the spy whose name he didn't say, or out of being left uninformed about a point within his lands.
"Sir, we will have learned the latest situation of the Desolate Realm and the Heart of the Sand in a few days at most, but why are we questioning our spy's reliability now after all this time?"
When one of his advisors wanted to learn the reason for this sudden change, first a grunt was heard, then the emerald green table cracked right down the middle from the sheer force of the fist coming down on it. Izumrud was enraged, he didn't shy away from showing this physically; his advisors' faces turned a shade paler; this man wasn't just a merchant, but a warrior at the same time.
"While the whole continent is reeling from the orc threat; with the Balsici Family up north, and the invasion of the borderland down south, how could it be that no problems arise in a place where all sorts of bandits gather?"
Even though he responded to the question with a question, his advisors were smart enough people to understand what he meant. While even the region they ruled had entered an unexpected economic bottleneck, they should have thought about the weirdness of no reaction coming from the place they needed to pay the most attention to.
The Emerald Leaf was waiting for the news to come, their uneasiness would be resolved in a good or bad way, but this situation wasn't valid for the other major merchant guilds. They knew their enemies as well as the allies they applied to get support from, and it wasn't as if there were no problems regarding both fronts.
The man who was the leader of the support forces sent by the Empire of Machines drew the rising smoke into his lungs before sipping the tea served to him along with the Golden Leaf Guild Leader Zlato. A second later his lower lip drooped; fixing his gaze on a distant point, he started speaking.
"What a bland smell, I assume its taste will be just as far from satisfying my palate as its smell!"
Zlato's eyebrows, adorned with gold flakes, rose into the air; it was obvious he didn't much like the words of the man sitting opposite him with golden blonde hair gracing his shoulders. Still, a second later he forced a wide smile, and gesturing with his hand to the servant waiting behind him, he requested the offering be changed.
"Great Architect Hubertus Strughold, unfortunately, it is impossible to reach the quality of the tea grown in your civilization. If only you would lift the ban you placed on its sale outside so we too could meet that magnificent flavor!"
Zlato knew two different races lived inside the Empire of Machines; among them, while the white-skinned, blonde-haired ones communicated with the outside world, the slant-eyed ones lived only within the borders of their civilization.
The job of growing tea wasn't the skill of the group the great architect was included in, but of the others, and the Golden Leaf Guild Leader, emphasizing the ban on selling outside, had covertly said what he wanted to say.
"Some things must remain exclusive to only some. My society might allow others to use many of its inventions and products, but as I said, it is impossible to access the privileges of those superior to everyone else!"
With his face having few wrinkles for someone over sixty, his large blue eyes, his grey eyebrows, and his large bowtie, the great architect was like the embodiment of arrogance. Taking a deep breath, Zlato had to swallow the spoken words; after waiting until the new teas arrived, he stepped in to change the subject.
"The Balsici Family Army has completed its final preparations. According to our estimations, they are ready to advance at any time within this week. What kind of a response do you think would be more appropriate for us to give?"
The Golden Leaf Guild Leader wasn't a warrior like the Emerald Leaf Guild Leader. Even though he had an army numbering thirty thousand at his command, General Class soldiers undertook the job of managing it instead of him. The man opposite him had come to support them; he thought it would be right to get his opinions first.
"If the subject is the army of a measly ten thousand or so people formed by the traitors you call the Balsici Family, that's an easy job, we'll have destroyed them all before they are even halfway through the road. There is no need for you to even get involved, but if we detect that they are advancing towards the facilities belonging to our civilization, then we will descend upon them like dark clouds with all our might!"