After listening to the brief reports, which had taken no less than thirty minutes to complete, Karl finally had a clearer picture of what the family had accomplished during the past month. The reports covered their activities, the encounters they had experienced, and their interactions with the representatives of the different Trade Families stationed alongside them. Although the deployment had not been entirely uneventful, it had certainly been less exciting than he had initially expected. Considering that Gaia had been responsible for the arrangements, however, perhaps he should not have been surprised by how smoothly everything had proceeded.
Now, how am I going to deal with Arin? Karl wondered with a sigh, already anticipating the headache his missing grandson would cause. He would have welcomed the extra hands Arin could contribute to the family, especially given the strain the deployment had put on their operational resources. Unfortunately, the boy had apparently decided that disappearing into the forest was preferable to returning home and explaining himself. Karl could hardly blame him for being unhappy about the assignment, but that did not make the situation any less inconvenient.
The family had needed approximately three thousand people to establish a proper rotation around their secret realm, whose portal had also begun emptying itself of corrupted creatures. During the first part of the deployment, the creatures had been manageable enough that the Sonnenbergs could maintain their positions without exhausting their personnel. However, the final hours had become considerably more intense as the secret realm released increasing numbers of stage-one creatures, which were significantly harder to defeat than their weaker counterparts. Although the family had managed to handle the situation, maintaining the necessary rotations had required a substantial commitment of manpower.
That commitment had left the family with only two thousand people available for their other responsibilities, and even that number had to be divided carefully. The city itself might technically belong to the government, but the Sonnenbergs owned most of the surrounding land and consequently had a considerable stake in its security. If something went wrong, they would be among the first people expected to respond, regardless of which institution officially held responsibility for the area. The family therefore could not simply abandon the city and concentrate all its remaining personnel on the forest.
The local police force was useful for its intended purpose of investigating crimes and maintaining public order, but it was not equipped to deal with every threat that might emerge in the new world. If a serious external threat attacked the city, the nearest military force capable of providing substantial assistance would be the navy. For the time being, the navy had taken responsibility for patrolling the waterways, filling a gap that would eventually be addressed by the establishment of a proper coast guard. Unfortunately, none of these arrangements meant that the Sonnenbergs could afford to leave their own territory inadequately protected.
The navy was currently confiscating every newly launched ship capable of being used in warfare, which meant that assembling the necessary naval forces could take several days. Even if the coast guard eventually became capable of responding to every emergency, there would still be a dangerous period during which the city might have to defend itself. Karl therefore considered it necessary to maintain at least a thousand people for the city's immediate protection. Once those personnel had been assigned, another thousand were needed to guard the forest, leaving the family with almost no manpower to spare for its other activities.
Consequently, several ordinary operations had effectively come to a standstill, including the production of bows and other equipment that the family normally sold for profit. Without enough people to continue manufacturing their goods, even a profitable business could suffer if the interruption lasted too long. Fortunately, Karl had always insisted on keeping a portion of their production in reserve for unforeseen circumstances, a precaution that now appeared considerably more valuable than it had when he first introduced it. He was genuinely grateful that he had made that decision, although it did little to solve the family's immediate shortage of personnel.
Still, I cannot afford to lose every extra pair of hands I could possibly spare, Karl thought, returning to the problem of his missing grandson. Arin's absence was especially troublesome because Karl knew from experience that finding the boy would not necessarily be difficult; persuading him to come home was another matter entirely. If Arin was determined to remain hidden, it could easily take two weeks before he felt comfortable enough to emerge from the woods. That estimate might prove optimistic if he believed that someone in the family was still angry with him, since a perceived threat of punishment would only encourage him to remain in hiding longer.
Karl had seen this particular behaviour before, and the memory brought back an incident from when Arin was fifteen years old. At the time, Arin's mother had demanded that he greet the guests arriving at her house for a gathering she was hosting. The boy had absolutely refused, arguing that he did not know any of those people and saw no reason to stand at the entrance welcoming strangers. From his perspective, being ordered to greet every arriving guest felt embarrassing, as though he were a servant assigned to stand at the door rather than a member of the household.
It had also been an especially difficult age for him, when he had become increasingly self-conscious about how other people perceived him. Rather than endure what he considered a humiliating obligation, Arin had chosen the simplest solution available to him: he ran away into the forest on the evening the party began. His mother had expected him to return before long, perhaps after he had calmed down or realised the consequences of disobeying her. Instead, the boy disappeared so thoroughly that the family was unable to find him, despite knowing the surrounding forest far better than most people ever would.
Arin remained hidden for two entire months before finally deciding that it was safe to come home. The circumstances had made the situation even more ridiculous, since his disappearance had taken place in the middle of winter, when the weather was particularly unpleasant. For approximately half of that period, snow and freezing temperatures had made life outdoors difficult for anyone without adequate preparation. Nevertheless, Arin had managed to survive in the forest without any apparent trouble, demonstrating once again that his knowledge of the woodland was considerably more practical than his mother's patience.
What had made the incident even more amusing was that Arin had continued attending school throughout his disappearance. He simply arranged his movements so that his mother could not find him, even when he was somewhere she might reasonably have expected to encounter him. His mother had eventually given up trying to catch him and punish him, partly because the situation had become exhausting and partly because she was too embarrassed to explain it to other people. She feared that admitting she could not find her own son would make them believe she had failed to raise him properly.
Karl, on the other hand, had found the entire affair hilarious. While Arin's mother considered the incident evidence of her failure as a parent, Karl had interpreted it as proof that the family had raised the boy correctly. After all, Arin had survived alone in the forest during winter, continued attending school, and avoided capture for two months without allowing the situation to interfere with his daily life. To Karl, those accomplishments demonstrated exactly the sort of resourcefulness and independence that a member of the Sonnenberg family ought to possess.
Unfortunately, what had once seemed like an amusing demonstration of Arin's abilities had become a rather inconvenient family tradition. Now that his grandson had disappeared again, Karl could not help wondering how long it would take before the boy decided to return. The circumstances were different, but the underlying problem remained the same: Arin knew how to survive in the forest, and he had little reason to come out until he was ready. Karl rubbed his forehead as he accepted the unpleasant conclusion that he was unlikely to catch his grandson anytime soon.
Right, let me get to Bennie. He should be finished with the accounting by now, and this ought to have been a profitable month, Karl thought, finally turning his attention toward a matter that promised to improve his mood. The secret realm had consumed a considerable amount of the family's resources, but it had also provided opportunities to earn money. If Bennie's calculations confirmed that the operation had been profitable, Karl would at least have one piece of good news to balance out the inconvenience caused by Arin's disappearance. With that thought in mind, he rubbed his hands together in anticipation and headed toward the family's villa.
It took Karl approximately five minutes of jogging to reach the villa, where Bennie had been handling the financial records and calculating the proceeds from the deployment. When Karl entered his office, he immediately noticed the expression on the treasurer's face. Bennie was grinning like a child who had just been presented with an entire shop full of sweets, and his excitement suggested that the final figures were worth celebrating. Seeing that expression, Karl felt his own interest rise as he approached the desk.
"So, tell me, how did we do?" Karl asked, looking at Bennie with an intrigued expression. He was already hopeful that the numbers would be favourable, but he preferred to hear the explanation before drawing any conclusions. Bennie, who knew perfectly well what his patriarch wanted to hear, did not make him wait unnecessarily. He straightened up, prepared to explain the results, and began with the most important point.
"Well, as you would expect, we made a lot of money from this secret realm," Bennie replied with a satisfied smile. "And, once again, we suffered no casualties, which is fortunate for us." He was well aware that the Sonnenbergs had been lucky in that respect, especially after hearing reports from other factions that had continued stationing their own personnel around their secret realms. Their success was not something that could be taken for granted, even if their methods had helped them avoid the worst outcomes.
Bennie had also heard reports concerning the secret realm near Brussels, which the Great Houses rented out to other parties. According to the information reaching him, approximately a thousand people had died in incidents involving poor orders and inadequate formations. Those losses demonstrated how easily an operation that appeared manageable could become disastrous when the people in charge failed to organise their forces properly. For the Sonnenbergs, the absence of casualties meant they would not have to pay death benefits to the families of fallen personnel, allowing a larger portion of their earnings to remain available for other expenses.
"That means we only need to calculate our profits," Bennie continued, moving directly to the figures. "Let's begin with our own secret realm, since that is where we have the clearest information." He explained that the family had approximately a thousand people engaged in fighting the creatures emerging from the portal. Their rotations allowed them to maintain a steady defensive effort, and, under the current conditions, the group faced roughly a thousand creatures every fifteen minutes.
Of those thousand creatures, approximately ten percent were stage-one creatures, each worth ten silver coins. The remaining ninety percent were stage-zero creatures, each worth one silver coin. This meant that every group of a thousand creatures contained roughly one hundred stage-one creatures and nine hundred stage-zero creatures. When their respective values were added together, the total reward for defeating that group came to nineteen hundred silver coins.
The family did not receive the entire amount generated by the creatures, since the rewards were subject to the System's automatic distribution and the obligations imposed on those participating in the operation. According to Bennie's calculations, twenty-five percent of the total money earned from the creatures belonged to the family through the automatic taxation system. Another twenty-five percent had to be handed over under the additional arrangement governing their share of the proceeds. Together, those two portions amounted to fifty percent of the total reward generated by the creatures they defeated.
"So, half of the total amount earned from those creatures belongs to the family," Bennie concluded, his smile widening as he presented the figures. "That is the portion we can count as our own income." He looked at Karl with the satisfaction of a treasurer whose calculations had confirmed that a costly deployment had also been a financially successful one. For the moment, at least, the numbers offered Karl a welcome distraction from the problem of finding his missing grandson.