After Korn withdrew, the room returned to its rightful silence.
Caroline had already turned her attention to a new file: an international iron ore procurement agreement. Its intricate tariff clauses and transport routes were the game truly worth her time. The flow of Gold Suns, the interplay of power, the pulse of the duchy-these were the foundations of her world.
As for that knight named Veylin... once he exhausted his pitiful savings, he would come crawling to her with his "Stone-Skinned Soft Vine," begging for a handout.
She enjoyed having everything under control.
Just then, a flurry of knocks, so urgent they bordered on rude, shattered the fifth floor's silence.
Caroline Channing did not pause.
She continued reviewing the next file, her quill descending to sign her name at the bottom of the "Redleaf Baron Family Asset Liquidation Report."
A noble family with a century of history became nothing more than a cold line of figures in the Golden Sail Merchant Guild's ledger.
"Come in."
The door burst open, and a middle-aged man in the robes of a senior guild steward rushed inside. His hair was disheveled, his usually immaculate collar hung askew, and sweat covered his face.
"Vice President!" He did not even have time to catch his breath. His voice trembled. "Something's happened! The fisheries in Stonebridge City... they're finished!"
The expensive quill in Caroline's hand stopped in midair.
"Barris." Her gaze left the file and settled on the distraught steward. "You have three seconds to put your panic-stricken thoughts into coherent words."
The steward named Barris shuddered under her gaze, but the gravity of the situation left him no room for fear.
He forced himself to calm down, took a heavy glass jar with an alchemical seal from inside his coat, and raised it above his head with both hands.
"An unprecedented plague. We've named it 'blackscale dissolution disease.'"
Caroline did not rise. She merely gestured for him to put it on the desk.
Inside the glass jar was a palm-sized sea bass, normally one of the most popular dishes on tables in Wrong Anchor Harbor and throughout Sea Land.
Now, however, the sight of it was enough to ruin anyone's appetite.
Its scales were not their usual silvery white, but an eerie shade of black. Many had already fallen off, exposing festering flesh beneath. Its eyes were clouded, but the most horrifying part was its fins and tail: they had dissolved completely into a sticky, gelatinous mass.
Even through the thick glass, the mingled stench of rot and fish seemed palpable.
Caroline's gaze left the jar and shifted to Barris's face.
"Extent of the outbreak?"
"Fisheries seven through twelve in Stonebridge City. All at once."
"Rate of spread?"
"Impossible to estimate. Infected fish develop symptoms within a week and dissolve completely within twenty-four hours."
"Countermeasures?"
"Ineffective! The temple priests' divine magic can only briefly delay the dissolution. It can't eliminate the source. Every anti-plague potion the chief alchemist has tried has been as useless as casting spells on a rock!"
"Losses."
Caroline asked her final question.
Barris's lips trembled as he uttered a figure that filled even him with despair.
"In one week, we've lost three hundred thousand pounds of market-ready fish, amounting to a direct financial loss of five thousand Gold Suns. And that's only the beginning. If we don't contain it, within a month, all our fishery assets in Stonebridge City... will be completely wiped out!"
Five thousand Gold Suns.
Enough to bankrupt a barony ten times over.
At last, Caroline fell silent.
Her long, pale fingers tightened unconsciously.
Crack.
The quill, set with diamond chips and worth twenty Gold Suns, snapped in half.
Ink splashed out, leaving a stain on the file before her.
Her expression did not change, but the temperature in the office plunged ten degrees.
This was no longer a minor inconvenience. It was a major loss, enough to shake the guild's quarterly financial statements. The Stonebridge City fisheries were one of the Golden Sail Merchant Guild's key food supply bases, supplying dozens of upscale restaurants and markets across the duchy's eastern region. They were one of the most reliable sources of cash flow in the guild's holdings.
She rose abruptly, her tea dress sweeping an elegant arc through the air.
"Have you identified the cause?"
"Not yet." Barris lowered his head further. "The source of the disease seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Water quality, feed, environmental monitoring-none of the records show any abnormalities."
Caroline fell silent.
Her fingers brushed the stud in her earlobe unconsciously as her mind raced.
Out of nowhere? Impossible. Every phenomenon had a cause.
Water quality, feed, the environment... if none of those were the problem, then the cause lay somewhere deeper, in a realm they had yet to understand.
An unknown disease that even divine magic, spells, and alchemy could not treat...
She turned around. All languor had vanished from her emerald eyes, replaced by the cold gleam of resolve.
"Barris."
"Yes!"
"Order the fleet to prepare. I'm going to Stonebridge City myself. Suppress all information about the Stonebridge City fisheries. Anyone who tries to spread panic is to be thrown into the sea."
"Yes!"
"Summon every chief alchemist, high-ranking priest, and high-ranking mage in the duchy whose services we can secure. Spare no expense. Have them leave for Stonebridge City immediately."
"At once!"
"Also..." Caroline returned to her desk, picked up the iron ore agreement, and casually set it aside. Her priorities had changed. "Find Korn. Tell him to bring all the information on Newborn Town and that Weilin Klein, and accompany me."
Her tone did not change at all when she mentioned the Pioneer Knight's name. She might have been arranging some trivial errand.
But a plan had already taken shape in her mind.
By water, Stonebridge City was less than five days from the pioneer territory called Newborn Town.
Since she was going to deal with the crisis at the fisheries, it was perfectly reasonable to pay that presumptuous knight a "visit" along the way.
She wanted to see for herself what this "land of miracles," which Korn had praised to the skies, truly looked like.
As for that "Stone-Skinned Soft Vine" technology...
Caroline's fingertip glided lightly over the cold surface of the glass jar, her gaze resting on the deformed dead fish.
Three thousand Gold Suns was an absurd price indeed.
Perhaps a hundred Gold Suns was all that country knight deserved.
That would not be a purchase, but a reward.
A reward for his trifling bloodline gift, and a minor punishment for daring to demand an outrageous price from the Golden Sail Merchant Guild.
"Let him wait."
That was what she had ordered Korn a few hours earlier.
Now she had changed her mind.
She had decided to meet that piece of "rootless duckweed" herself, then show him what color the ocean truly was.