After leaving the Rune Workshop, Lincon visited the Energy Research Base. Then he made the rounds of every major department in Longwind City, leaving no one out.
His inspection turned up quite a few problems.
The Energy Research Base was a relative newcomer in Longwind City. The Rune Workshop had long overshadowed it, but after experts retired from the Great Wall Defense Line joined, it had surged ahead and looked poised to surpass the workshop.
Behind that promising appearance, however, people had begun jockeying for power and suppressing others.
The base's purpose was to research and develop various Dark Age energy technologies, while also seeing whether anything useful from the Old Era could be restored.
It therefore housed more than a dozen development teams of varying sizes.
The teams competed with one another, throwing themselves into research.
Normally, that would have been a good thing.
Instead, veterans at the base were holding newcomers down, while newcomers secretly sabotaged other people's research.
After investigating, Lincon dismissed the base's administrator and fired several researchers who had sabotaged others' work. He then compared the remaining candidates and selected a new administrator.
The incident at the Energy Research Base was a warning to Lincon.
People were complicated creatures. After surviving the devastation of the Dark Age and arriving in the comfort of Longwind City, the selfish desires and tendency toward infighting buried deep within them had quickly found room to grow.
Before, the old class structure had collapsed, and everyone had been focused on surviving in the dark. No one had energy to spare for power struggles.
Now Longwind City was secure. It had gone an entire year without an attack, and that stability had stirred other ambitions in some people.
The other departments had problems of their own, though nothing as serious. Most