"Not quite. Germat invited me to join them, but the one who forcefully bought the Forge was a local."" Andros told Remian. "They call him the Underground King."

"The Underground King?" Remian repeated.

That phrase sounded familiar. Wasn't that the guy the lynxmice said Tim was looking for? The so-called 'True King' of Fal'Herim?

"So… this Underground King… he's here? You've met him?" Remian pressed.

"Uh… no. I met one of his lieutenants, Steeljaw Sarlash." Andros s.h.i.+vered. "He's… not the kind of guy you want to meet. He's not the kind of guy anyone wants to meet."

They were starting to draw attention. Casting spells and raising energy barriers in public locations tended to do that. It wasn't hard to guess that Andros was being held against his will; airport security was already alerted, but for some reason, their response time today was dismally slow…

Given all the chaos going on around Fal'herim currently, that was hardly surprising.

But seeing the attention, Andros' eyes lit up. "HELP! Robbery! Bandits!"

In response Remian barked, "Pay back what you owe!"

People around hesitated, unsure whether or not to make a move.

Andros still didn't give up. "Help! Security!"

Remian frowned. "Police! Come over here immediately! I demand justice!"

At this point people were staring at both of them blankly.

Seeing Remian call for the police, Andros faltered. "What are you even doing here in the first place? You wouldn't come all this way just to collect… you couldn't even know…"

"I was here on other business." Remian shrugged.

Andros' eyes widened. "The chaos and the fighting today… it's caused by you?!"

"You should know me a little, by now. I definitely didn't come alone." Remian folded his arms. "Also, just so you know… you're coming with me."

"No. No way! HELP! SECURITY!" Andros redoubled his efforts.

Airport security finally arrived, a pair of uniformed men who looked very fl.u.s.tered and very annoyed. "You two, come with us! You will be held for questioning!"

"Help! He's a bandit!" Andros pointed.

"He owes me money." Remian replied calmly.

"We don't care! You're making a fuss, and you're both coming with us, now!" Airport security demanded.

"But…" Andros spluttered.

"Coming." Remian nodded, turning to follow them.

Andros tried to run.

"Light!" Remian drew up another barrier with an outstretched hand. Andros ran into it and bounced off... and Remian clenched his open hand into a fist. "Cage!"

The light barrier likewise clenched around Andros, holding him in mid-air. Andros froze, unable to so much as set his feet on the ground, much less run.

"Like they said. You're coming with us." Remian told him, and dragged him along as he went off with Airport Security.

They made it as far as the interrogation room before Andros started to offer bribes. A thousand lir each was enough to make Airport Security hesitate, but then, Remian simply clenched his hand a little tighter and the barriers closed in a little harder…

The Airport Security guys, in their current chaotic, bedraggled condition, hesitated to help out a man literally in the choke-hold of a powerful mage. They knew nothing of these two men, and neither of them offered any information, identification, or even a hint as to how to find information on them.

"Ten thousand!" Andros gasped, raising his offer tenfold. "Each!"

"Try anything funny, and you die." Remian casually informed the men he was trying to bribe. "Anger me, and I will destroy the entire airport. Annoy me enough, and Fal'herim burns today."

At that, one of them stepped back, but the other one flared up. "How dare you-?"

"Freeze." Remian snapped the fingers of his left hand. Then, he closed his right hand harder.

One man in uniform fell over, frozen. The other one caught in a cage of light let out a scream and a few crackling sounds. Remian released them both, letting them collapse onto the floor in at the same time.

"I'm taking my half of the money. Since the Burning Steel is gone, I'm going to need it to buy or build my own forge and smelter." Remian took up Andros' suitcase, opening it to check, and found nothing inside but money. "You know, we could have parted much more amicably, but you just had to go and try to cheat me. Therefore, the other half… I'm taking it for the trouble you've caused me. I'll just leave you something for your hospital bills."

Andros didn't protest this time. He only groaned.

"Actually, I'm not sure we can trust the medical facilities around here." Remian added, considering. "Maybe I should take you back with me…"

Andros groaned even louder.

"No? Okay, then." Remian handed the remaining security guy ten thousand lir in cash, and said, "Set him up in a hospital, will you?"

He slipped another twenty thousand into Andros' pocket, then left him to his fate in the hands of the remaining security guard. Whether the guard actually helped him or robbed him further… that had nothing to do with Remian any more.

***

To be honest, Remian felt a bit disappointed in the amount of cash in the suitcase. There seemed to be only about five million lir in there, which looked like a lot at first glance, but considering that it was the price of a runic forge, it seemed rather little. Andros must have been in a hurry to sell.

Still, it was a lot more than he'd invested in the Forge to begin with. He'd actually only put in a few tens of thousands in lir, and untold tons in valuable materials like Fire Copper. Based on the sales prices back in those days, and considering a lot of it had been provided as raw ores while the Forge itself smelted and processed the metals, the total value of his initial investment in the Burning Steel Forge probably didn't amount to more than a million lir.

Yet even with this theoretical profit, Remian felt shortchanged. What he really wanted was the Forge, and heavy industrial capabilities near his territory. Fal'Herim was near enough that s.h.i.+pping raw ores here to be smelted and processed seemed feasible. Remian certainly preferred it to angering the Wilds back home with pollution.

"Forget it." Remian shook his head. "Maybe we'll just buy another forge, or set up a whole new one."

He didn't realize it at the time, but setting up a new forge or buying a normal one would actually turn out cheaper than the sales price of the Burning Forge. For one thing, they didn't actually need rune-forging capabilities, just smelting and plain old regular metal-working. At least, for now.

Also, the chaos in Fal'herim meant a lot of people were leaving, land value was low to begin with and bottoming out very quickly, so buying up a few factories and smelters in the industrial zone turned out to be a fast and easy feat. All told, a few million lir would be enough to buy out an entire industrial district, five factories, three smelters and a dozen miscellaneous facilities like water towers and warehouses and a corner coffee shop. But all that was going to take a few days to find out.

As for the Burning Steel Forge itself… oddly enough, it ceased all operations and didn't do anything in the mean time. Remian had a few lynxmice keep an eye on it, and it seemed that after the Underground King bought over the place, the Forge had completely shut down. n.o.body even went in any more.

Well, whatever. So long as they didn't cause any trouble, Remian was fine leaving them well enough alone. He just went about his business and called over a crew from KarGoth to come manage his new (old) industrial district.

Aren himself came by to take a look later that week.

"These are really, really old facilities." Aren sighed. "Back in the day, I'd be satisfied already, but now… I must be getting used to all the new stuff in KarGoth."

"Think we can manage?"

"For now. We can renovate later." Aren mused. "The thing is, we might have a labor problem. Almost everyone I know has left, and a lot of my friends were slaves that you've already s.h.i.+pped off to Itarim or KarGoth, and they're not wanting to come back here, so… finding workers will be tricky."

"Just… do what you can. There's got to be a lot of people out of work with so many things around town shutting down." Remian shook his head. "Also, we'll need security. Mercenaries, perhaps, or lynxmice… but I hear that the new Queen Asda is particularly squeamish about lynxmice. We might need to bring in wolfcats instead."

"That might cause even more chaos. Let's just stick to mercenaries. At least people won't go screaming and running away from them on sight."