The Martial Unity

The lower echelons of society generally lacked the information that the highest echelons of society possessed. This was a result of lacking authority to access classified information or lacking means to access information that only came with being rich and powerful. Thus, they were far more lacking in knowledge that was common and basic knowledge amongst the upper echelons.

In the halls of the Shionel Merchant Guild, the situation was mostly clear to all of the Cabinet Merchants. Chairman Deacon was Guildmaster Bradt's greatest rival and had been undergoing massive amounts of growth that allowed him to shake the otherwise rock-solid political stronghold that Guildmaster Bradt had created by securing the interests and benefits of a majority of the voters.

They had absolutely no misconceptions about why the Guildmaster had passed the bill, in hindsight. It was obvious that the passing of the bill had something to do with the anonymous creation and registration of Esosale Suppliers. It was no coincidence that this empty company that he aggressively promoted somehow magically seemed to gain access to huge amounts of resource yields that were then sold to the consumer market and was formed immediately after the bill he passed regarding the changes in protocols for identity registration and verification. There was simply none of them who bought this highly mysterious company that Guildmaster Bradt was aggressively promoting came right after he made it easier for everyone to be connected.

It was clear to the Cabinet Merchants of the Shionel Merchant Guild that Esosale Suppliers was the reason that Guildmaster Bradt had passed that bill. Esosale Suppliers was Guildmaster Bradt's solution to hampering the growth of Chairman Deacon.

The only thing that was unclear to the Cabinet Merchants was the relationship between Guildmaster Bradt and Esosale Suppliers.

Some thought that Esosale Suppliers was created by Guildmaster Bradt who had employed the mysterious force that was able to harvest huge amounts of esoteric yield from the Shionel Dungeon. Others thought that it was created by an entity that had developed an incredibly revolutionary way of extracting resources from the Shionel Dungeon, but did not want to be targeted.

Regardless, even this was completely unknown to the public. An overwhelming majority of people had not worked out the connection between Esosale Suppliers and the popularly-dubbed Voider that was suspected to be the reason for the disappearance of the esoteric yields on the twelfth floor.

"And so, I believe that this is most likely a move from Guildmaster Bradt who is eager to break Deacon Industries' dominance in the supplier market. It would explain why Chairman Deacon created the Voidhunters team that has been said to have been largely wiped out in the dungeon by some group of assassins targeting them," Professor Farlo continued, after explaining everything, absorbed in his own words. "Although we don't have proof that the Voider, the individual responsible for mysteriously clearing the second floor is actually responsible for the disappearance of esoteric resources on the twelfth floor if Chairman Deacon believes it, then that probably means that he has some information that we don't have."

"Incredible!" Jimmy exclaimed. "That almost sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but it makes a lot of sense."

"In this case, unless we truly are missing a lot of information or are operating on misinformation, I think probably is not too far from the truth. The truth about Esosale Suppliers is most likely deeper than we can all imagine. There are likely powerful forces conspiring and fighting for political power, right before our very eyes, disguised in plain sight, and we're simply unable to see the truth."

This was shocking to hear to the crowd that what they had simply treated as an exciting oddity and mystery was actually a deep political powerplay and conspiracy between the most powerful political leaders fighting for power through the Shionel market.

"That is truly fascinating and incredibly terrifying to hear," Jimmy laughed as he remarked. "Honestly, I don't even know if I'll be able to sleep at night. To think that the Voider has gone from being a relatively momentary gossip story to potentially being the key to victory in a political battle that will change the Shionel Confederation."

"It most certainly will. Whoever emerges as a victor at the end of this debacle will most likely remain unchallenged for a very long time. Thus neither side is willing to cede easily. Chairman Deacon may have suffered a bad setback with his preliminary Voidhunter operation. But realistically, that doesn't matter. The death of a dozen Martial Squires is barely a sting to such titans. That team was something put together on extremely short notice. The two of them can leverage their massive economic capital to pull in a much greater number of Martial Squires. I imagine you can expect a storm to occur in the Shionel Confederation and in the dungeon as well."

This raised waves of murmurs from the crowds. Many of them were excited to see the two political giants duke it out and to see which one of them comes out on top. The scale of this event was so large and beyond that it didn't have too much to do with ordinary citizens of the Shionel Confederation like themselves. Thus they could, to some, extent regard the situation with a certain level of detachment.

"Of course," The professor followed up. "That's just a theory. I don't have any proof that this is the case. It could be the case that I'm reading too deeply into certain things or not reading deep enough into other things. I want to be clear that none of this is fact."

It didn't matter what he followed up with. The crowd was too excited with the information that he had provided to let it go this early and judge it objectively. They weren't qualified to do such a thing in the first place, and would just simply put their trust in his thoughts given that he's an academic, and cheered on as they excited themselves on such a fascinating conspiracy theory.