King Eric pressed hard against his forehead, feeling as though his entire head was about to burst with pain.
There were two reasons for this: he had not enjoyed a good, peaceful night's sleep in several months, and a huge pile of documents lay before him.
Although there were many documents, they all concerned the same matter: a bloody clash that had recently broken out in Bunta City.
Under ordinary circumstances, this bloody clash would have been nothing more than an accident, hardly worthy of much attention, let alone something that could give His Majesty the King a headache.
The problem, however, was that the implications behind it were far too complex and significant. It had provoked responses, and even a backlash, from a great many people throughout the Lampari Kingdom, turning it into a serious affair.
On the surface, the incident was very simple. The Bunta City Guard had merely killed a civilian by accident while carrying out its duties.
Such incidents had occurred quite a few times in the Lampari Kingdom's history. In the past, silencing the common people had been enough, with a little money paid out at most to settle things.
This time, however, the incident had been exposed as soon as it happened, and in a very short time, it had attracted the attention and reactions of almost everyone in the kingdom.
The underlying cause of the bloody clash was that the guards had been enforcing a regulation issued by Bunta City's City Lord's Manor, stopping a merchant guild in the city from harvesting with farmland magic machinery that the regulation did not permit.
After the incident, almost every newspaper in the Lampari Kingdom had reported on it in detail. Many had even published follow-up reports, clearly describing both sides of the clash and the