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.

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

Bradt Patrick looked at him with casual boredom. "Would you rather we dispatch an even greater number of agents on the case? Dump even more resources? Do we continue chasing

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

In reality, they both knew perfectly well why the Guildmaster seemed to treat the issue as trivial, and why Chairman Deacon was taking it

being stolen from. However, the losses were trivial to the capital that the Shionel Merchant Guild had. In a vacuum, both of them would certainly be on the same when it came to catching the culprit who evaded the tax, however, nothing ever

Deacon, Guildmaster Bradt's biggest rival, had plenty of reason to be concerned by this particular instance of tax evasion, and the fact that

this individual could clear the second floor by themself 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

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 potentially harm his

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 imprisoned regardless of the international pressure that he

to pursue the investigation as aggressively as possible. The value of a merchant was measured by their ability to make money, after all, any merchant that could not make money was not even a merchant in their eyes, and

that Guildmaster Bradt