***Maximus P.O.V.***

Forty-three years. That’s how much time passed since I became a merchant.

I began as nothing more than a small peddler. My only assets were a few silvers, a sturdy physique fit to walk long distances, a charismatic smile, and grand ambition — an enormous ambition. I didn’t want to be a king or a general, but I dreamed of being at the top, and to do so, I wished to create the greatest company in the world that traded on both human continents.

An incredibly grand dream for a poor young lad, maybe slightly childish too, but one that kept the fire going within me.

I traveled throughout the Senez Kingdom for years, slowly growing my stock. From lone peddler to caravan head, to company owner. The journey had been long, but I never felt tired. Few were the things I wouldn’t have done to achieve my objectives. I didn’t think about anything else in life, only my ambition mattered, and I expected that to continue until I either reached my goal or died.

One should never underestimate the twists of life, though.

I was already in my forties when I met her. She was just a slave, one of the many I had seen and traded. It was love at first sight.

Not that I realized it at the time. I never believed in it, after all.

To me, love was like a dragon. People talked about it and swore it was real, but I had never seen one, and I doubted I ever would.

Why did my heart beat so fast? Why did her face continuously appear in my mind? I felt her to be special so, instead of selling her, she became my maid.

As blind as I was, there was no denying the attraction, though, so it didn’t take long for me to realize, and as soon as I did I acted.

I freed her and asked if she wanted to marry me. I also gave her the option to refuse and leave with a substantial sum of money.

Never would I have thought of doing something like this before. I never offered options leading to my loss, after all.

It would have been devastating for me if she left, but I did it anyway. It would have had no meaning otherwise.

Love is a strange, terrible, and beautiful thing, I found out.

To my great joy, she chose to stay, and we married.

I became a different man.

I stopped with the slave trade, gradually closed the worst sides of my business, and started a family with her. I still worked for my company, but it wasn’t the same anymore; it wasn’t the driving force of my life.

Those years were the happiest of my life.

They were also short. Fifteen years — that’s how long we’ve been together. Her life as a slave left her body weak, and there was no Healer able to remedy that. Not within my means, at least. Even her Class couldn’t improve her body enough.

I was devastated when she died, but I had to keep going. I still had my children to take care of.

From our union, three sons and two daughters were born. They were my treasure, and I swore to her I’d protect them.

When my wife died, we were in the middle of the war with the Duchy. They had just lost their ruler, and the heir was still too young to lead. The last few years were also bad for produce due to the lack of rain, and they suffered great losses because of an evil god cult's attempt to sacrifice a city. Their territory was also just around half of the Kingdom.

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It was the perfect time.

When the nobles launched the attack, they probably thought of finding a weak, disorganized resistance. They were proven wrong, though. The Kingdom gained some land, sure, but the price was enormous, and always more men were required.

My oldest son was about to become of the right age for being enlisted, and the end of the war was nowhere in sight.

Some lingering laws, from ages ago, could make one think that the nobles had our best interests at heart. They were just that, though; remnants. I didn’t know how rulers behaved in the past, but the ones today didn’t care one whit about the death of commoners. To them, we were a resource that grew with time, and that they could exhaust whenever they wished.

If I let my son go, what was the chance he’d survive? What horrors would he go through? And what about my other children? Would the war end before they were all taken from me?

No. I had to do something. They wouldn’t take them from me.

I had no intention of having my children die meaninglessly for them, and the only way to do that — the only way to have your opinion valued and respected, in this world — was to have power.

I didn’t resume the slave trade, nor did I engage in evil businesses, but gray areas were almost a necessity if one wanted to grow past a certain point.

Trade of weapons was especially lucrative, and it allowed me to understand better the unfolding conflict, so it was something I had to be involved in. It also allowed me to be in contact with powerful and influential people.

It was hard to be a good father, with five kids to tend to, and a successful business owner at the same time, but I tackled it with the same drive I had toward my dream when I was younger. In the end, I successfully kept my family safe and united.

The insight and connections I built also made me swiftly move my headquarters away from Ening at the end of the war, thus avoiding one of the worst battlefields in the following civil war.

The place settled in was Rivergate. I judged it to be one of the safest cities to weather through the next period, and I had been right. While it wasn’t of the same size and importance as Ening, it was also one of the major commercial cities in the kingdom, so it was the perfect place for the headquarters.

It was also a city I visited many times, and where I had a few acquaintances that could help me. Moving a company isn’t something simple. Other than the logistics, I had to know who benefited and who didn’t, who to befriend or to offend, so having a helpful local hand was an immense help.

One of the people that helped me the most was Markus, the bartender of the Explorer Guild.

I liked to go around to bars, inns, and taverns when I visited new places since they were usually where I could gather the most recent local news. After comparing what I heard, I made a list of the better ones, for the next time.

I met him in one of my outings, while he was working in his father’s bar.

My first judgment of him was that he was a naive, kind, and helpful guy; and that remains my opinion to this day. He’s grown wiser with age, as many do, but he’s still mostly the same.

I often visited the place, since it was one of the most popular in the city. I was surprised when he started working at the Explorer Guild; the place was full of people living a rough life, and he didn’t seem a good fit for it.

“I like the atmosphere,” he said when I asked the reason.

I shrugged and didn’t bother to say anything, thinking he’d leave soon, anyway.

Now both of us were old men, and he was still there. I prided myself on having a good feel for people, but some I just couldn’t understand.

People of the bar also became somewhat friendlier when he was in the vicinity. It was like he had a no-fight zone all around him. It was all the more marvelous since I knew it wasn’t a Skill — I checked. Skills to resist the tampering of the emotions and mind were almost a must for a Merchant.

Still, the guy was just that. Nice to everyone, and able to maintain the pace all around him.

I first approached him because of his usefulness, but we ended up becoming good friends. Having a guy like him close — who wasn’t trying to exploit you, and was generally nice to be around — was truly a boon. I enjoyed going to drink with him to take my mind off things.

I’ve always been worried about his naive personality, though. Fearing he’d get scammed, I even helped him buy the bars for his sons and negotiate with the Explorer Guild for equity.

I did it free of charge.

Was he really not using Skills? Sometimes I doubted. He’d have to be quite high-level for me not to notice, though.

Anyway, even after all the years I lived here, he was still more informed than me in most day-to-day happenings of the city, so I usually relied on him when I had some specific requests.

In this case, I needed to find a good fighter for an event in the underground arena. Of course, I didn’t tell him directly, since I knew he wouldn’t approve, and just told him I lacked qualified warriors to join my guard. Knowing him, he’d tell me or try to introduce me if someone came by and, as I expected, he did.