Taking a deep breath to calm himself down, a sweaty man wiped the sweat off his brows before entering a dimly lit room. Taking half a second for his eyesight to adjust the man recognized the dimly glowing eyes of his boss and immediately took a knee as he gave a report.

"Boss, we've found him."

"Great, bring that fool in here."

"Right away."

As her subordinate left once more, the boss put down the gold coin she had been carefully inspecting as she took off her gla.s.ses and cracked her knuckles.

"About time."

Waiting a few minutes as she impatiently tapped her finger on the table, the boss eventually picked up sounds of someone tras.h.i.+ng to escape from capture. A moment later her door was violently kicked open as a chained man was thrown to the floor in front of her.

"How nice to see you again. Where is my money?"

Speaking in an extremely cold tone of voice, the boss made the chained man s.h.i.+ver. He knew what he had done, he had taken her money thinking that the conditions that came with the loan didn't extend to someone of his stature.

Oh, how wrong he had been.

"Please, just give me a few days and I'll have your money, all of them too!"

Knowing exactly what kind of situation he now found himself in, the man desperately pleaded for his life even though he knew how futile it was. Getting up from her chair as she breathed a deep sigh, the boss' hands started heating up, reaching such heat that they glowed intensely in the dimly lit room by the time she crouched down next to the bound man.

"And why exactly would I do that? You signed the contract, you knew the risks."

"I can!-"

"Do you think I'm stupid?"

"N-no! I would never!"

"... Haaa. This is the issue with you foreigners, you lack honour."

Dragging her nail down the floor right next to the man's face, the boss easily scratched trough the solid stone floor in a demonstration of her abilities as she kept talking.

"This place might be part of the Empire on paper, but here the rules are a bit different. If you sign something and don't follow through on it, no amount of connections or family status can save you."

Caressing the bound man's cheek with her glowing hot hand, the boss didn't even flinch when he screamed out in pain as the smell of burned flesh spread throughout her office. Branding the man's face with burns until he had almost pa.s.sed out because of the pain, the boss pressed her hand to his chest and dug into his chest until she reached his heart, then she crushed it.

"Put this piece of trash up somewhere all the other idiots can see it."

""Yes, boss.""

As the corpse was being dragged away the boss wiped her hands of his blood with a handkerchief before she noticed that one of her subordinates still remained.

"What is it?"

"It's about productio-"

"Then it's my brother you need to take that up with, I don't care."

"Yes, boss. I'm sorry."

Leaving with those words the boss once more found herself alone in her office. Returning to her desk she once more put on her gla.s.ses which made her able to see the faintest traces of mana and started examining the gold coin once more. As an underground banker (or loan shark if one was being crude about it) the boss' dealt in currency, and as such she made sure that her product was perfect. Being partly funded by black market trade, drug production and underground gambling, dirty money often found itself in her collection. In her line of business, lending out counterfeited money was a sin which would destroy the trust she had numerous spend years building and would without a doubt destroy her business overnight. Even if she was a loan shark, the boss had countless respectable and long time customers which she depended on.

(... What the h.e.l.l is this!?)

Having looked over the last sample of coins which were newly inserted into circulation, the boss noticed something strange in what was supposed to be a sample of freshly minted currency which had recently hit the market. Normally there was a unique mana signature which would faintly emit from the coins, which worked together with other security measures to make counterfeiting impossible. While these coins had that signature, as well as the other security measures, something was off. 

(It's like they're too perfect…. s.h.i.+t.)

Normally people wouldn't spot something like that, but as the boss had spent countless years getting to know all the imperfections and kinks in Empire coins as well as counterfeits, the boss realized she was most likely the first person who noticed that they were fake. Running through her collection of sample currency of different ages and from different sources, the boss quickly realized that the influx of counterfeit currency was recent and somehow directly targeting her revenue streams.

"Who the h.e.l.l is undermining my operation!?"

---

(Any second now…)

Walking around the oasis city of As'li Dax had been living in for the past few months, he quickly noticed that certain elements were way more active than normal. Located in the middle of a vast desert, the As'li oasis was the only permanent settlement within a 200 kilometre radius. With a surprisingly large export economy, the As'li desert provided about 75% of the Empire's demand for rare spices which were grown with the help of a surprisingly advanced mana powered irrigation system. What Dax found even more surprising about the As'li desert was the fact that they were surprisingly independent of the Empire even though they were an integral part of its economy, the reason for which revealed itself to be the extremely high standard of the territories standing conscript army which included every single citizen over the age of 15 years.

(Due to their vast culture placing strength and unity against foreigners at the apex this land really is unconquerable… It's like taking the home field advantage and combining it with scorched earth tactics before taking it to an entirely new level.)

Anyone stupid enough to try and invade the As'li territories would immediately face a number of different problems, first of all, the desert made the oasis city a natural fortress which required a significant amount of supplies just to reach, and then there are the people themselves.

(Occupying a city where every single citizen is a hostile combatant is just a straight up bad idea, plain and simple. Extremely hard to even reach, harder still to occupy for any significant amount of time and if you try to just raze it, the entire population will make you bleed for every single inch and then what's even the point? Yeah, at that point you would have captured the golden goose, but it won't lay any eggs for you, as the natives are the only ones who know how to farm all the spices.)

Even the very idea of taking the city was enough to give Dax a headache, which he figured to be the reason that it remained the last independent territory of the Empire. In the end, it simply wasn't economically or politically worth it or even viable for that matter.

(CONTACT REAR, 5 METERS.)

(Yeah I see them.)

With ICI snapping him out of brainlessly checking out the market, Dax trained his attention on the people who had been following him for the past half hour.

(5 people… Seems like it's them alright.)

Stopping in place after he had confirmed the ident.i.ties of the people following him, Dax turned around and walked straight up to them.

"Can I help you guys with anything?"

"Yeah, come with us without causing a fuss."

After overcoming their brief surprise, one of the people took the lead of the others as they surrounded him before the leader presented a pair of metal handcuffs.

(All natives… Yeah, there's no way I could just outright kill them here and go on with my day.)

If Dax was to describe the As'li natives in a single word it would be tough. Born into a land of sand and a burning sun with nights of freezing cold made the particular kind of beastkin highly resistant to both extremes while granting their bodies awesome efficiency and endurance. Being a collection of two different beastkin races, the As'li people were uniformly characterized by their solid frames with the As'i having a pair of large and wide animal like ears on top of their heads together with a robust tail which allowed them to make incredible high speed manoeuvres. The slightly less common beastkin race native to the oasis city was the As'lim, with scaled limbs and claws together with an unmatched affinity for fire they were very similar to the dragonkin, just without the ability to fly.

(Oh, this is new…)

Being led away from the markets Dax was searched for weapons he was escorted down into a network of sandstone tunnels, an area of the city normally not open to outsiders as it housed the spring which was the very lifeblood of the city. With outright hostile looks form all around, Dax was eventually escorted deep down into the sandstone caves before they reached a large building which was carved out of the rockface. With no time to admire the detailed craftsmans.h.i.+p Dax was shoved into the building by his guides and through a maze of hallways before he was brought to his knees before a tattoed and scarred As'lim woman with raven black hair wearing black pants and a white silk s.h.i.+rt under a coat filled with different markings which she wore without putting her arms through the sleeves.

"Boss, we brought the outsider. Here's the wallet he was carrying around."

"Yeah, sure, just go ahead and take that… So, can I go now?"

Instead of answering him, the so called boss started inspecting the coins she had retrieved from Dax's wallet with great interest, this lasted about 10 minutes before she took off the gla.s.ses she had used to see the fine details of the mana signature and finally addressed Dax.

"Where did you get these coins?"

"I made them myself, ain't they neat?"

(Stand by for go order.)

(ICI CONFIRMES, ALL a.s.sETS STANDING BY FOR DEPLOYMENT.)

While showing a friendly smile to the boss, Dax prepared for the eventuality that things were about to go south really fast.

"... Yeah, they are perfect counterfeits that look exactly like freshly minted currency, which is why I found out they were fake."

"So the quality was too good? Oh, well, that can be fixed."

Not at all hiding that he had been intentionally undermining the boss' business, Dax still wore a smile on his face. In response the boss narrowed her faintly glowing eyes as she looked at Dax for a few second, breathing a deep sigh as she came to some understanding.

"Okay, you got my attention. Come work for me."

With the added meaning that he would die if he refused, Dax's full out smile turned into happy laughter.

"What's so funny?"

"Hahaha, no I mean no offence. It's just that you're exactly the kind of person I thought you would be. Why don't you and your brother come work for me?"