Duke spoke with Lucas for quite some time, then met Matthew of the Giant Rock Merchant Guild. Matthew was still stationed in the Wood Elf Plane.
"Mr. Duke, I'm so glad you made it back safely. It's good that you're all right." Matthew looked noticeably thinner. He had clearly been quite busy lately.
As Duke and Matthew walked and talked, Duke learned that the Giant Rock Merchant Guild had not had an easy time recently.
More precisely, most merchant guilds in the Wood Elf Plane had been having a hard time.
Black Sail had lost Firefly City. After suffering such a massive loss, they naturally needed to make up for it elsewhere.
Forces like the Giant Rock Merchant Guild became Black Sail's targets. They had never been clean, having developed vast tracts of land beyond what their contracts allowed.
Black Sail did not demand that they return those lands. They merely required them to pay the land rental fees, and that was no small sum.
The Giant Rock Merchant Guild had gone to great lengths to scrape together the money lately. Since Black Sail was not targeting any single merchant guild, they could only accept their bad luck.
As one of the managers of the medicinal gardens here, Matthew was naturally under immense pressure. Such a vast stretch of medicinal gardens required all kinds of data to be compiled.
No one had expected something like this to happen. On top of that, they were in the wrong to begin with, so they could only obediently pay up.
After all, in the long run, they only needed some time to earn back what they had paid. Overall, they would still make a profit.
Duke did not remain in the Wood Elf Plane for long. He returned to the Wizard Plane that