Doreen was walking around in the city of Sofia. According to the prince's intel Duke Mihalh had a personal warehouse somewhere in the eastern part of the city. She was trying to find it to get some useful info that could be used.
She eventually found the warehouse far away from the tower of Sofia. The warehouse was heavily guarded by soldiers and large crates were being moved there from the direction of the tower. Doreen started to be more suspicious and started to think of a way to sneak in.
She snuck in through the window. The warehouse was full of wooden boxes and almost all of them had the imperial seal of the Heian empire burnt on them.
The Heian empire occupied the entire southern continent of the Aesis world and was by far the largest nation in the Aesis world by landmass and population. During the past 150 years under the rule of Emperor Ala, they had risen from a puny kingdom to a large empire.
Heian empire was rich with a strong economy and with a proud populace. They had rich deposits of gravity stone and they mined it in the Black Rock Mountains and sold it all over the universe.
The armies and soldiers of the army were vast and most importantly professional. The nobility had been reduced to be at the mercy and beck and call of the imperial household and had little to no say in the politics and governance of the country.
The empire is considered extremely aggressive by all nations in the Aesis world.
Doreen opened one of the boxes. Inside was a large iron cannon packed among some hay to cushion it inside the cramped box. Not just any cannon, but the highest quality cannon, that could not be produced or manufactured in the Aesis world, not even by the Heian empire. She opened another box and found ammunition inside the crate. Large iron shells that would explode on impact. Doreen was shocked when she realized all the crates consisted of these cannons and there were at least thirty of these boxes in the warehouse.
"Why would the duke acquire these cannons," Doreen thought.
At that moment a large creature tried to attack Doreen from behind, but her shield let her react to it fast and summon it from her ring to protect her on time.
The creature was a berserk. It was the same berserk that had met the three others at the tower. Doreen had no idea why there was a berserk at the warehouse. Soon another berserk came in and started to attack her and soon the third one came also to the fight.
"BLOOD FEAST FOR THE GREAT BEAST!" the berserks roared in their tongue when they attacked Doreen.
Even though they didn't possess any divine powers unlike Doreen who was able to control the shield and spear, the berserks were so much stronger than the average man. One average berserk was two meters tall and carried large weapons with ease.
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"Aaaaa….seems like it was a good idea to hire you guys." said a young man who came into the warehouse.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You proved your point already Reiner." said a young woman who walked next to the young man.
He wore a t-shirt and had a golden earring on her ear. The young woman on the other hand had cut her hair short from the sides leaving a long ponytail from the tip of her head and had a golden nose ring.
"Now. I hope you know what happens to rats that have wandered into the wrong place," the young man said and licked his upper lips.
~ ~
At the same time, the other gang members took the three back to the river harbor. They had been asking merchants and traders in the city about their problems and why the goods were not anymore getting to the capital.
The largest reason for the problem was the river harbor maintenance had become lacking, making exporting goods to the capital pricey. It used to be the duke's and other noble's job to take care of it, but they had neglected their responsibilities.
Haley was inspecting the docks and came up with a solution to start buying goods here and trafficking them back to the capital and selling them for profits. Creating their own wholesale company in the river harbor. Luckily they had brought enough money to buy more than one additional riverboat to start their business.
The other gang members found an unused factory that could be used as a base for this operation. Rufus was happy that it wasn't anything criminal at least and Haley was happy when she was doing the estimation for the profits. Large dollar signs again shined from her eyes while she was doing the math.
Haley also had a brilliant idea to steal from the rich trading companies what she then told Rufus and Edward not letting Kassim hear about her plan.
"Weren't all the merchants and trading companies rich, right?" asked Haley.
"I guess so. Many of the trading companies are privately owned by a noble family," said Edward.
"And aren't we a gang?" Haley asked with a menacing smile.
Edward and Haley smiled and rubbed their hands together like an evil person planning his evil plan.
Rufus was not happy where this was going.
"We anyways are in the business of taking from the rich and giving it to the poor with us taking a cut for ourselves. So why shouldn't we do it here also? The warehouses in this city where they stock all the imported goods would be easy picking for our boys. Would also mean cutting costs since we wouldn't have to purchase any goods," Haley explained with a glare of greed coming from her eyes while rubbing her hands together.
"Isn't it dangerous to start doing criminal activity here also? What if our operations would be compromised?" Rufus tried to reason with Haley since he didn't want to be involved in any more criminal activity.
"No worries. We will hide all our activities with our completely legal company that then will import the bought and stolen goods to the capital to be sold in the markets. We will call this company the golden rat trading company," Haley proclaimed.
"And you wouldn't have any problems with this.....RUFUS?" Haley asked and stared right into her brother's eyes.
"No.....," Rufus, the pushover, said.
Rufus's heart was broken since he had finally thought their organization would turn legit only to be shattered when Haley smelled a larger profit margin.
The starting of the business operation was given a green light and the gang members were given a job to start organizing more workforce to run the business. Kassim was very impressed with how well-versed in business Haley was.
Doreen then came flying through the air. When she landed she was all bruised up. She was still breathing but barely was alive.