"Well, it looks like we'll have to face the music, boys," Arin said, pulling up his hood before entering the town. He adjusted the fabric to cover his mouth and nose, partly to protect himself from the unpleasant smell and partly because he had no desire to appear more approachable than necessary. He was already irritated by the possibility that someone had ignored the Sonnenbergs' advice concerning the forest and its road. If the people responsible had deliberately changed something without understanding the consequences, Arin was in no mood to make their meeting comfortable.
Inside what appeared to be the town hall, two men sat surrounded by piles of paperwork, both displaying expressions of steadily increasing displeasure. Documents covered the table before them, while additional files had been stacked across nearby surfaces in an apparent attempt to organise the enormous quantity of information they had been forced to examine. Neither man looked particularly pleased with his current assignment, and the longer they continued reading, the more obvious their frustration became. They had arrived expecting to investigate a badly managed operation, but what they had discovered so far suggested that the situation was far worse than anyone had initially anticipated.
"What are they doing here? This is pathetic," Alex Krähling muttered, his disgust unmistakable as he examined the accounting books. He had been reviewing the financial records for the town and the mine, hoping to establish a clear picture of how the operation had been managed. Instead, he had found a collection of accounts so poorly organised that he was beginning to suspect the entire system had been designed to prevent anyone from understanding it. Even identifying one concrete figure required consulting numerous other accounting books, and the results remained questionable because the information recorded in those documents did not consistently match.
Alex turned another page, only to discover yet another set of figures that contradicted the information he had already reviewed. The problem was not merely that mistakes had been made, since ordinary administrative errors could be identified and corrected with enough time and patience. Rather, the records were arranged in such a deliberately complicated fashion that tracing a single transaction could require hours of work, while the reliability of the final result remained uncertain. In his opinion, the entire collection of books could be thrown into a fire, because reconstructing the truth from such a mess would be an enormous undertaking.
"I trust it's just as bad over there as it is here," Luckes Lockhart remarked, his expression reflecting the same disgust as he examined the personnel files. He had been assigned to investigate the people employed by the operation, but the documents before him were scarcely more useful than the accounting records Alex was reviewing. Important information was missing, other details had been recorded inconsistently, and the overall organisation made it difficult to determine who had been responsible for particular decisions. Luckes had only recently been working in Brussels, where he had helped develop policies that influenced the entire continent, so being sent to clean up this administrative disaster felt like an insult.
Just a week earlier, he had been in Brussels, surrounded by the institutions and personnel responsible for shaping European policy. Now, he found himself sitting in a filthy little town, trying to untangle the mess left behind by an incompetent official who had apparently believed that nobody would ever examine his work closely. The former overseer was currently locked inside a cage in the corner of the room, looking badly bruised after his capture. Luckes had not been particularly gentle when apprehending him, especially after hearing the accusations the man had attempted to make against him, and he had little sympathy for the discomfort his prisoner was now experiencing.
"No, it's a complete mess," Alex answered, pushing the latest accounting book aside. "It'll take a year just to figure out what happened, and even then, we might still be no closer to understanding the whole operation." He rubbed his forehead, clearly frustrated by the amount of work that awaited them. The investigation was supposed to identify the failures within the mine's administration and establish how the operation could be brought under proper control. Yet the quality of the records meant that even determining what had gone wrong would require a tremendous amount of effort before they could begin implementing any solutions.
"The only good thing that waste of space accomplished was getting the road straightened," Alex added, tossing another book onto the pile. He had to admit that the road itself had been improved in one narrow sense, since its revised route was more direct than the original proposal. However, that achievement was difficult to appreciate when the decision had apparently been made without properly considering the Sonnenbergs' advice. A shorter road might reduce the distance travelled by carts and other transport, but the surrounding forest was not an ordinary stretch of land that could be altered without consequences.
"Who did what?" a voice asked from the entrance.
The words were accompanied by a sudden wave of bloodlust that rolled through the room, immediately changing the atmosphere. Arin stood in the doorway, his expression cold as he looked towards the two men and the prisoner locked inside the cage. His anger had become difficult to contain after hearing that someone had deliberately gone against the Sonnenbergs' recommendations concerning the forest. Whatever patience he might otherwise have brought to the meeting had been exhausted before he even entered the building, and the pressure radiating from him made that fact unmistakably clear.
"Oh, what do we have here?" Luckes said, forcing a relaxed smile onto his face as he recognised the newcomers. "The Sonnenbergs! I'm glad you finally came out of your forest to join the rest of civilised society." His words were delivered with a light, almost teasing tone, as though he were welcoming acquaintances to an ordinary meeting rather than addressing someone whose bloodlust had filled the room. He then gestured towards the cage in the corner, indicating the bruised and unconscious prisoner. "If you're looking for the idiot who interfered with your recommendations, he's right there. Just please don't hurt him any further, because we need him in Brussels to stand trial."
Despite his relaxed expression, Luckes was gripping his own leg rather more tightly than necessary. Arin's bloodlust was affecting him, and ignoring that pressure required considerably more effort than he wanted to admit. However, Luckes belonged to a Great House, and he had no intention of displaying fear simply because someone had entered the room in an intimidating state of mind. He maintained his casual manner while watching Arin carefully, hoping that the situation would remain under control long enough for them to discuss the matter properly.
"You'd better hope you haven't upset the forest," Arin warned, his gaze shifting towards the cage. "Otherwise, I'm going to sacrifice you." The threat was delivered with such seriousness that it was difficult to determine whether he was speaking metaphorically or describing something he genuinely believed might become necessary. The prisoner remained unconscious, sprawled in the corner while a pool of liquid spread across the floor beneath him. Arin looked at the scene with open contempt, seemingly unconcerned with the man's present condition compared with the possibility that his actions had endangered the forest.
"What exactly do you mean by upsetting the forest?" Alex asked, his curiosity overcoming some of his initial surprise. He had spent the past week investigating the mine's administration, but he was also interested in understanding the unusual properties of the world after the arrival of mana. The Sonnenbergs had extensive experience with the forest, and their knowledge could prove valuable in understanding phenomena that conventional researchers had barely begun to investigate. If Arin was suggesting that a forest could somehow react to human interference, Alex wanted to know what evidence supported that conclusion.
"It's quite simple," Arin replied, his expression remaining dead serious. "If someone disturbs the natural cycle of a forest, it can become upset. A better way of describing it is that the living entities within it become upset because you're taking away their living space." He explained that a forest was not merely a collection of trees that could be cut down, rearranged, or cleared without affecting anything else. Every part of the environment was connected to the others, from the plants and animals to the countless interactions that allowed the entire ecosystem to function.
However, Arin was careful not to pretend that the family had already uncovered every detail of the phenomenon. "The whole concept is still quite new, and we haven't had enough time to research it properly," he admitted. "I don't even know for certain whether this forest can become upset in the way I'm describing, but if it can, things could get nasty very quickly." His warning was based on the Sonnenbergs' growing understanding of their connection to nature, rather than a fully established scientific theory. Even so, he considered the possibility serious enough that anyone responsible for disturbing the forest should think very carefully about what they had done before assuming that the consequences could be easily repaired.