POV Michael Frederick Dukenhime

I just finished inspecting one of the containers meant for the GreenWave village. Giving a nod to the workers, they secured the container for transport and moved it to the waiting platform. I was a bit nervous about this trade as the queen didn’t much like us trading with nations that she had not signed any deals with. But her opinions didn't matter much as we had too much power for her to do anything to stop us.

Looking around at the new Thorn Rose Company headquarters a smile came to my face. We had achieved so much, and we were the only official traders left in this corner of the world. Currently, I should be ending my caravan run for the winter, but I never expected the new rulers to be as they are. Who would have guessed that I would miss the old nobility? At least they operated under predictable wants.

Now the new rulers calling themselves kings are so much worse than the nobles who came before them. It seems that power really goes to someone’s head especially when he has never tasted it before. That reminded me that there were a few rulers who were actually rulers but unfortunately, they were exceptions.

The wars were even now still going on and from what I have heard some idiots are even attempting to march and fight in winter. Hopefully, we will get to a more stable state of affairs quickly as it's affecting business quite a lot.

A new container was brought to me and I quickly started to look over it as we wouldn't have a second chance to fix our mistakes with this deal. The United Freehold will absorb a lot of the cost of opening this Druid portal but if we make a mistake, we will have to fix it and that would cost a lot. Although if they get their portal station built the connection would be a lot cheaper.

A lot of the management didn't like this deal as basically 90% of it is being paid by bows that we had not been able to inspect. What made this possible was Rich Dirt’s reputation. I saw Bert walking towards me, and I soon heard his low voice.

“Good afternoon, Michael are we ready at your end?” He asked. “A bit more of the cargo needs to be inspected but overall, yes, we are ready. But are we ready to hold the portal open until we get all the cargo transported to the other side and then bring all the merchandise back from the other side?” I asked, genuinely curious.

Bert didn't answer me immediately but looked over all the cargo that we needed to transport. Eventually, he said. “It will be tough, but the high-end ingredients will help and a large portion of the energy we need will be supplied by Rich on the other side. Without him, we wouldn't be able to transfer even half of this to the other side before the portal closes. You see it's quite interesting but the longer you keep the portal open the higher the cost will become.” I stopped listening at that point.

I inspected the cargo while occasionally nodding towards Bert who was still explaining portals to me. The entire theory just went over my head but I understood what he meant. You could never keep a portal open forever and even what we were doing was quite wasteful but without safe roads to make it so far north there was nothing we could do.

Then again, we were going to make quite a lot of profit. Yes, we were asking quite a lot for this portal connection and most wanted to ask a lot more, but we had a contract for at least one caravan visit to the United Freeholds. No one wanted to break it.

Luckily this will count, but we will need to be a lot more careful about making future contracts as the world is a lot more volatile than it used to be. Finally, I saw ten of our guards joining us as we continued to wait in this courtyard.

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It took another hour before everything was ready. I broke a message stick to notify United Freeholds that we were ready on our side, and just under a minute later the reply stick broke, meaning that they were also ready at their side.

“Everyone prepare. Start the incantation.” I announced and quickly everyone started to act. I could feel energy being used at a massive scale. Still, it was nothing compared to when Rich used his energy to stop whatever the priest had done. We all waited until the portal snapped open and I heard new commands for the workers to start moving.

We waited at the side of the portal and then finally the last worker went by. We quickly followed after her. On the other side, there was no time for greetings or pleasantries. I was quickly shown by a person that I didn’t recognize, to the containers that were already opened for our inspection. If the quality of the bows were not to our standard, we were going to go straight back through the portal with the cargo we brought.

The first container had the hunting variety of bows and with a quick use of my inspection ability, I could confirm they were first-rank strength bows. The craftsmanship was at an incredibly high level and for a moment I was sucked into just admiring the weapons. I quickly shook my head and moved on to the next box giving a thumbs up to the person marking down mine and the rest of the inspector’s feedback.

The next container held longbows as Rich called them. They were not as useful for hunting for food. They were meant for war and to battle big monsters. The quality and strength were what we were expecting and perhaps even better. I gave another thumbs up and continued to the next container.

In my mind, there was no doubt that we were going to get what was promised. I could now wipe some smiles off my competition's faces who were against this deal.

The first container I inspected was already being sealed up even before I finished with my last. I looked around to see that the other inspectors seemed to have the same results and our workers were moving to pick up our new merchandise.

They moved fast and soon the first container was back at our compound. With a smile on my face, I finally relaxed and looked as more people disappeared into the portal. Eventually, only me, Bert, four other negotiators and five of our guards were left when the portal finally shut down.

I let out a big breath of air. The madness was finally over. I went ahead and gave a proper handshake to Rich and a few other important figures who I was going to need to start memorizing. After the greeting, I almost did a double take.

What on Earth's name has happened to Rich? How was he so tall and why was he wearing just leather armour that seemed to be badly fitting? My training as a merchant kept me from open mouth staring at him but I never expected him to look even more fit and dangerous than the last I saw him.

I did notice that our guards were a bit fidgety, so I started to look around, and quickly figured out why. We had known that Rich was at first rank and probably a lot stronger than our fighters, but we never expected them to have more first-ranked fighters than we brought.

Once again, I controlled my reaction, but my momentary surprise was replaced by annoyance. We should have expected this. While, back in the day, having so many new first-rank fighters in such a small time frame would be weird, nowadays it is quite a common sight. Even small villages could have multiple first-rank fighters out of nowhere.

“It’s good to see you again Rich. You have gotten a lot taller. Soon, you will be as tall as me.” I heard Bert boast loudly and with a smiling face. That relaxed the tension around us. I was glad that I was able to get permission for Bert to come.

After a bit more of polite greetings, we were led from behind the village hall to the front so we could enter it for further negotiations. It was at this point that I figured out the noise that I was hearing was wrong.

I was expecting a small village which was quite quiet but, when I looked towards the market square that used to only have a few stalls, now it was a place filled with people and stalls to the bursting like in a town, not a village.

I also saw professional-looking guards patrolling around and on the walls. Then another sight shook me. Beyond the walls, I could see the roofs of large buildings and quite a few of them. Why were they outside the walls but I quickly answered my own question. They couldn’t fit inside.

There was only one explanation, and that was that they had a lot more people here than we were expecting. At least now, we have a better idea of how they defeated the slave king. I shared a look with my fellow negotiators. We knew that this was going to be a lot tougher than we expected but possibly a lot more profitable.