Chapter 306 – Unable to Fulfill Duty

It made sense if thinking from their point of view. An informant would be assigned to track all my movements, only to then lose my tracks all the time. Plus, they were certainly asked to discover the route I was using to import the selnic items, but no matter how hard they monitored the store, they couldn’t see where the goods were coming from. I had no doubt this was making the agents and their superiors crazy.

The normal reaction to such a failure of duty would be to increase the number of spies in the hope of filling any possible hole. However, what if the conclusion stayed the same, whatever they did? The result was what I was feeling right now. In the worst moments, I could easily feel more than ten gazes on me. I was suddenly one of the most popular people in town.

At the same time, problems started to pop up one after the other. It wasn’t much, at first. A kid trying to steal some food from the first floor. Someone throwing a rock at one of the shop’s windows and breaking it. Pickpockets swarming the front gate to try to rob my clients.

Most of these issues were managed skillfully by my rank 6 guards. It wasn’t easy to try anything in front of some of the most powerful mercenaries in the region. There was a reason they were so expensive. They even managed to track and catch the one who threw a stone before they managed to disappear in the streets.

By questioning those vandals, it became clear someone was paying them to do those things. That person was covered and masked, making it impossible to know who they were. The money they gave for the tasks was simply too large to refuse.

They also knew what they were doing. My store was a high-class one, and my customers disliked these sorts of disturbances. At best, they scowled when it happened. At worst, they were never seen coming to the store again. The strategy was indeed working well, even though it didn’t make that much of a difference overall.

It was annoying, but there wasn’t much I could do. Of course, we signaled the problem to the city patrols, but even they couldn’t monitor every single person on the streets. Plus, with three rank 6 guards inside my shop, they considered it one of the safest places in the neighborhood, and preferred paying more attention to “hotter” zones.

Then, a larger problem occurred, even though it was difficult to say if it was related or not. A high-grade military official from Taifau visited our store with an oven he claimed was defective. Unfortunately, I wasn’t present when it happened and only heard it after the fact. It seemed he had acted extremely rudely to the point of insulting the staff and the manager, all the while asking for a refund.

My employees had tried to check what was wrong with the oven, but this was also one of our weak points. No one knew enough to understand a potential issue, let alone attempt to fix it. Since that was the case, and intimidated by the high position the person had, the manager chose to refund the full price.

Again, this happened in front of many other potential clients, making us lose some trust in our products’ reliability. When I arrived and heard about it, I reassured my employees, telling them they had made the right choice. I took the broken oven with me and gave it to Minsto later that night.

It only took her a minute to give her verdict. It wasn’t a malfunction, but deliberate sabotage. They had broken the oven before asking for a refund. And this was the weird part. Why would someone in such a high position do such a thing? Were my enemies truly that powerful that they could have a person like him do that?

In a way, this was frightening. Taifau was far from being a fair country, despite being a militaristic state. Military officials in Taifau, especially those high in the ranks, were known to receive extremely decent salaries. To get someone like that to move, they either had to have close ties with him or bribe him a large amount. Doing all of this just to lower the trust in my products a little was no different from a show of strength.

Finally, a few days after that event, something much more critical happened. In the middle of the night in my house in the bunnies’ village, the alarm suddenly resonated. I woke up with a start and immediately went to the window. My window overlooked the village, and there was nothing there. I left my room, with the children and Kuini doing the same at the same time. I could see fear in their eyes as they trembled due to the unexpected event. We had to act fast now.

“All of you, stay in Kuini’s room! Quickly! Stay together and don’t move from there!”

I didn’t have time to verify if they followed my instructions. I turned a corner and teleported high in the sky. There, I could finally see the intruder, illuminated by both starlight and her fire shield. A woman goat, rank 5 fire mage. Judging by her attitude, she had been approaching the house discreetly from outside the village and was now startled by the alarm.

Two thoughts crossed my mind at this instant. I first wondered why whoever gave her the order only sent her, a single rank 5 fighter. Could they have underestimated me because I was rank 0? I looked around once more, just in case, but couldn’t see anyone else. My second thought was that I had to hurry. She was getting her bearings back, ready to attack the house occupants now.

The rules about fighting opponents in the Trading Union were clear. Avoid fighting and escape whenever possible. The only exception was when protecting something immovable, like right now. Another condition was that the opponent had to be of the same rank or lower. If not, escape and take the loss.

I disliked fighting. I disliked fighting, but that didn’t mean I was bad at it. In the whole Trading Union, I was one of the very few who had managed to get the right to fight opponents one rank higher than themselves. Considering the hope that was placed on me, that right had been given extremely reluctantly, but the results had spoken for themselves.

There was a good reason the Trading Union had dominated my world. It was time for this woman to discover the absolute terror of fighting a spatial mage.

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