Charlie’s POV

“We need to come up with a better answer on how to handle their attack,” I say leaning back on my chair and looking at the others in the command room.

“Well, you heard the lawyers. They took care to attack while there was no one else in the vicinity, and now so long as they don’t vacate the mine we can’t do anything.” Richard says.

“Yeah, otherwise we will be considered the aggressors by the system. I just wish I didn’t have to deal with so much crap on top of this and the Beast’s attacks from the HLZ.”

Greg then volunteers:

“What we already suspected, but the lawyers confirmed is that Nash can still act. He can act even more ‘aggressively’ and collapse any tunnel they try to build in a few seconds, a minute at most. If he keeps that up every day or so they wouldn’t even manage to extract a single gram of silver.”

There is a commotion on the corner with the outside and I wait for a messenger to enter and speak. A few moments later my hunch is proven correct.

“Another silver mine was attacked.” The messenger says straightforwardly.

“Ohh, shit.” Says Greg.

“That is it?” I ask hoping that is all the bad news we can hope for.

“Umm, no, the others are looking through it, and it seems another group is marching on the third mine.”

“Is there anyone close by that can get there in time?”

“No, not even at maximum speed.”

“Goddammit.” Curses Merlin taking his eyes from a book he was reading while he didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation. “We need that silver. Are they actually on the side of the HLZ beasts?”

“We can rain on their parade. Following Greg’s idea, they won’t get a single gram of silver. The only problem is if they identify our last mine. It seems they found the location of three of them, but if they find the fourth we won’t have any other choice but to ration our limited stockpile of silver.”

“What the hell are they thinking?” Asks Richard.

“Let’s find out.” Says Richard.

“How?” Asks Charlie.

“We had a comm line most of the way to their village already, so I send a pair of scouts to complete the work. They should have finished already.”

“Why didn’t you say so before?” Complains Greg.

Richard shakes his head and I just take in the scene.

“Before you call them I think you are going to want confirmation on something.” The messenger says as he turns away from the copper runic communicator he was holding against his ear until a moment ago.

“Come on, go ahead.”

“Ahh, sorry, how do I… Well, it’s not confirmed but it seems Walter’s economic alliance is in this scheme to steal our mines.” He says.

“How did we find out?” Asks Richard.

“We just saw a couple of their soldiers in the group heading for the third mine.”

“Ohh, shit,” Richard says and I stare at him. As everyone turns in his direction he continues. “We caught some hints that Max had allied with someone, but we didn’t have any confirmation until now. Walter’s group is one of the worse possible choices from our point of view, especially considering they can make effective use of the silver to make with runic constructs.”

“Come on,” says Greg. “It can’t be all that bad.”

“It can and it’s probably worse than you realize. With what the lawyers told us, him giving Walter his ‘allegiance’ can get around a few more of the restrictions of the contract. Nothing that will let him take the initiative to attack us or anything, but as long as they keep someone on each of the mines we can’t attack him.”

“So our only choice is to rely on Nash to handle this, which we already suspected.”

“Well, let’s call them already.” Says Richard.

I wait for a few minutes until Max is on the other side of the line, probably a little luck given he may not even have been on the village.

“Charlie, It’s has been a while.” The grating voice and his infuriating smile come over the comm but I keep my calm.

“We both know we are not friends no use in trying to give the impression that we are otherwise,” I say simply.

“No, need to be discourteous.” He continues the charade.

“You are one to talk about being discourteous. You steal our mine and… ” Greg says.

“Not just one, but two and maybe three if they manage to get ahead of schedule. Why, are you looking to trade for the output of the mines? For someone such as yourselves, I would give a good discount, I know how much you love to engrave and silver is such a good material.”

“Stop that bullshit. You are going to try and starve us out of any silver and give it all to Walter.” I say paying close attention to his face. He doesn't visibly twitch, but his reaction is well in line with what I expected.

After a moment of looking intently at me he starts:

“Well, I had hoped that our alliance wouldn’t be revealed so soon.”

“What alliance? You are his lapdog, that is the only way you would have gotten around someone of the restrictions.” I say trying to get a rise out of him and see if he reveals anything.

“Semantics. Eighter way, I really don’t have anything to say to you, bye.”

He turns off the call and we all stare at the disconnected line for a few seconds until Greg tentatively breaks the silence.

“Shit, he is too confident. We didn’t learn anything and we just confirmed for him that we know of their alliance…. “

“We were never gonna learn anything if my suspicions are even partially correct. At least now I’m confident we are on the right track about his alliance with Walter’s coalition.”

“I still want to punch his face.” Says Greg.

“Do you think we should call Walter? We have a comm terminal just a kilometer away from their village.” Asks Richard.

I stop and look at him pensively.

“Not like we have much to lose.”

After another few minutes, they are finally connected, though Walter doesn't move outside and uses his own small network to transmit his voice to us.

“Walter speaking over here.”

After having gotten used to the perfect sound reproduction of the comm rune and sound runes, the slight distortion from the incompatibility in the networks is annoying, but nothing that gets in the way. Getting straight to the point, I ask him:

“Why did you steal our silver mine?”

“The mines aren’t yours, they are from the instance and if you greedy people wanted to control them, you should have stationed a few guards to protect. It would have avoid all this.”

“We aren’t risking people’s lives for access to a few resources if there is any other choice. You are stationing them just meters away from the HLZ on a permanent basis.”

“That’s your opinion. We see things differently. Now if that is all...”

After waiting for only a moment he shuts down the connection and leaves us all fuming at the pithiness they showed.

“Damn, they aren’t up to conversation. People left and right hanging up on us.” Says Greg with a small chuckle.

“If they won’t capitulate, then let's settle on how we are going to respond. A more detailed plan to present to Nash.”

Everyone around me nods and I settle in place ready for the discussion. They could have handled this differently, but if they were really intent on following this course of action, they would have to pay the price and I would make sure it was a steep price.

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Walter’s POV

As the call disconnects, I look at the tribute that the pig brained moron that put this scheme together brought me, 12 kilograms of silver.

“Under different circumstances, your life would be forfeit, but I can’t exactly say to them, ‘Ohh, I’m sorry, my subordinates are incompetent, let me return all your silver to you’. Especially not after you let the others see how much you brought back.”

The sniveling fool dry swallows, but underneath he knows that I’m also backed into a corner. The Engraver’s guild is chomping at the bit to get their hands on this much silver. With this and the future shipments, our products are going to be superior to even what Charlie’s village produces if lacking in variety.

They would cause a lot of problems if they saw all this silver just slip away from their grasp. No, there is no turning back.

“I’m sorry sir, but I saw an opportunity and I took it. My intentions…”

“Stuff it with your intentions. At least you didn’t bungle and you did get a decent amount of silver.”

He cringes hearing that.

“WHAT? Spit it out.” I yell.

“Well, this amount of silver was actually the load they already had prepared… after giving Max his portion. We only managed to mine a little more before they began collapsing the tunnels so we can’t get what we mine with the golems back.”

Blood rushes to my face and I can almost feel the waves of heat wafting off me. After letting myself indulge for a minute, I pull back and let my cold and calculating nature assume control so I can make a proper decision.

“That is a problem, but nothing insurmountable. Our mages figured out how to keep Nash’s plants from getting underneath our village. I’m sure we can figure something with the tunnels.”

He nods enthusiastically and dread hits me.

He is TOO enthusiastic and that means he is not hopeful. Getting the silver of the mines might be even harder than I thought.

No matter… I will deal with things as they came. Even if our position antagonizing Charlie’s village is dangerous, the gains we could make if we played things right are not to be underestimated.

It's unlikely they would overtly attack us, especially as they only had a single village to pull soldiers from. Stationing a few of Max’s soldiers in all the garrisons meant they couldn’t attack us without a ‘legitimate reason’. The contract they ‘forced’ Max to sign did restrict his actions, but it was also a giant stone around Charlie’s neck. They had few recurses.

Still, I wasn't informed of any contract violation, so they had found some type of loophole and managed to damage infrastructure belonging to Lord Max without incurring any penalties. How the hell were they doing that?

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Nash’s POV.

“Can you that?” Charlie asks me.

“I can do you one better. I can even let a few golems get through occasionally, and them ‘steal’ all of the silver they mine. With the remote control ability of the miners, I can even make a few operate on the mine and dig tunnels further away to hide all the mined ore. It’s not like they can enter the place and directly combat my roots and magic. As long as I keep an eye on it occasionally, they likely won’t even be able to get a single mote of silver ore.” I say.

“At least they weren’t able to steal the output from the mines.”

“Do your best not to let them find out the location of the fourth mine,” I say.

“I already took the necessary precautions. The village that is getting a share of the revenue knows to keep their mouth shut, twenty percent of nothing is nothing.” He says assuaging my concerns. Right after his mind goes back to the problem at hand. “They didn’t even let me get a proposal of sharing the mine. They just hang up on me.”

“You are too nice,” I say.

“I just don’t want to be fighting half the instance every day. Adding Max and them, we are talking about at least 30 villages relatively nearby.”

I make a pained face. Although it was unlikely they would attack us directly, especially after seeing the result of Max’s actions, they could still cause a lot of problems.

We say our goodbyes and part ways.

Before I go back to working on improving my skills, I send my awareness to the three mines now under their control.

A little Earth mana, here, collapse the tunnel, there, pull a rock large rock right in the tunnel’s path and harden the soil. Make a disruption rune and pulse it so the golems stop moving and then use my Earth magic to break them into tiny pieces.

In general terms, just make myself as large of a nuisance as possible balancing with the most efficient and satisfying way possible.

If you think you can cheat in our game, I will take the ball and go home.