The Martial Unity

"This is unacceptable!" A man banged his arm on the table as he skimmed through a few documents.

The noise drew the brief attention of many others, who glared at him for the disturbance.

"Order, Chairman Deacon," a calm deep voice suppressed the murmurs in the large hall, drawing everybody's attention to the source of the command.

The man stood at the center of the podium that overlooked the semi-circular array of chairs and tables, occupied by many people.

"The best we can do is look into the matter more extensively with our intelligence and Martial law enforcement agencies," The man replied with measured words.

His every word seemed to stick to all those who heard him. He had an aged appearance, yet it wasn't enough to hide the spark in his sharp eyes. The man's demeanor, grace, and grooming conveyed a magnetic gravitas that nearly lulled all those who beheld him into complying.

with a frustrated expression. "I'm afraid those measures are clearly insufficient! The progress reports and forensic and psych analyses are clear, there is no trail of evidence that can be used to make meaningful progress in finding out who the tax-evading culprit, who annihilated all the bloodfury

number of agents on the case? Dump even more resources? Do we continue chasing after this mysterious 'Voider' even if the expenses exceed what

sharpened. "Is that a befitting suggestion from a member of the Shionel Merchant

stern expression, reigning in his anger. In reality, they both knew perfectly well why the Guildmaster seemed to treat the issue as trivial, and why

instance of tax evasion. Yes, it was a violation of the adventurer contract that every Martial Squire signed to become an adventurer, and yes, the Shionel merchant Guild was being stolen from. However, the losses were trivial to the capital that the Shionel

rival, had plenty of

but also evade detection and could smuggle huge amounts of esoteric resource harvests without being detected was very troubling to him, who was in the esoteric mineral and organic supply industry. Based on the capabilities that the culprit had already revealed, it was entirely possible that a new force could take the supplier market of the esoteric organic and mineral ores, thereby reducing the growth that even someone like himself would experience, killing his greatest hope at becoming the guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant

such an outcome, regardless of who monopolized or dominated the supplier market of raw esoteric ores, the distribution and communication service sector would be almost entirely unaffected. Thus, he had no issue in letting a new variable that could

on the other hand, needed to ensure that this did not happen, and that necessarily began by identifying the threat. That was why he was most invested in the outcomes of the investigation by the intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The second that they identified the culprit, he would deploy the entirety of the closest local branch and have the culprit

the investigation as aggressively as possible. The value of a merchant was measured by their ability to

Bradt Patrick was implicitly levying against