The Smuggling Ring

In the suffocating darkness of the underground, hours flowed into each other. 

A vast, detailed map of caves, tunnels, and guard stations now filled Anna's notebook.

It was astounding how rich the mine was. 

The caves were illuminated in a sickly, endless dusk by the thick, throbbing veins of what we know as Glimmerstone, a crystalline mineral that absorbed the surrounding dark energy and re-emitted it as a cold, pale light.

“But that’s not a Glimmerstone, Anna.”

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

“That’s Ahlfderite… A sort of Glimmerstone, but very good for making weapon…”

So this is why Frola is so rich, Anna thought, watching a line of chained dark elf slaves haul a cart overflowing with the glowing stones. This is the kingdom’s true treasure.

She fixes her note on the book, “Not Glimmerstone…”

“But they’re mining it like it’s common rock,” Pietta murmured.

“The volume was wrong, too. Cart after cart was being moved from the deeper levels to a central collection point was far too much.”

Anna thought about it, “Let’s move forward.”

They found a shadowy overlook above a large depot where a human overseer was making notes on a heavy ledger as the carts arrived.

Maren, Anna sent telepathically to the sword hovering silently at her side. Get closer. I want to see what that guard is writing. Memorize the numbers on his ledger.

The sword zipped off and returned a moment later.

“Maren doesn’t understand! What should she look for?” The sword panicked, looking around.

Just look at what the cart in front of him is like and then what he’s writing.

“Okay! Maren will focus…”

After what it felt like 10 minutes, Maren finally understood.

“Anna, it’s weird!” She reported. “He’s only logging one out of every three carts that come up! The other two… they’re being sent down that unlit side tunnel.”

Anna’s eyes narrowed. Corruption, the REAL kind of Corruption? she thought.

No, this was too organized, too systematic for a few greedy guards skimming off the top.

Where was two-thirds of Minilon’s most valuable resource going?

As if to punctuate the strangeness, one of the automaton-like slaves, his eyes vacant from the magical compulsion, stumbled. A large, brilliant chunk of Glimmerstone, worth a small fortune on the surface, tumbled from his cart and clattered onto the floor.

“Is that Ahlfderite of Glimmerstone?” Anna asked.

“Looks like a normal Glimmerstone…”

A security in the area gave it a frustrated glare. Without hesitation, he approached and kicked the glowing, precious stone over the edge of the platform into what appeared to be an endless abyss below. He saw it as useless garbage.

The pieces clicked together in Anna’s mind, forming a new, deeply unsettling picture.

“I see.”

The apparent purpose of the mine—to excavate Glimmerstone for the kingdom—was a lie.

“So they don’t care about the Glimmerstone, only giving one cart back to the kingdom. But taking whole 2 cart of Ahlfderite which presumably cost 70 times more? Definitely corruption.” Anna explained.

Pietta nodded, “That kind of corruption… Not our type! This is why we wanted to be called Morvanium, not corruption warden! Even were not this evil!”

“Fair enough.”

Just as the full, horrifying weight of the mine's purpose settled on Anna, a black cat zipped back to their ledge, looking disheveled and confused. It was Uetum, back from her scouting mission.

“Anna-chan! That was so weird!” she reported, shaking her head to clear it. “The eastern tunnels go down so deep! But they’re not mining anything! It’s just stone and dirt, nyaa! There are no Glimmerstone or anything, and there are no human guards on the lower floors at all! And it’s so black down there, Uetum got lost for like ten minutes!”

Anna's gaze shifted from the fresh knowledge the anxious catgirl had given her to the sight below: the unending, useless work of the cursed slaves and the lucrative, tightly guarded Glimmerstone business on the top floors. 

The puzzle's last piece fit together perfectly.

“Anna-chan, what does it all mean?” Uetum pleaded. “Why make them dig nothing?”

Anna took a deep breath, her voice low and grim as she finally explained the full, monstrous truth of the machine they were in.

“Forget Ars Terran. Forget the Glimmerstone being mined for the kingdom,” she began, her voice cold and analytical.

Her gaze then drifted down, into the deeper, absolute darkness that Uetum had just explored. “But the true purpose of this mine… the reason it was built… is the lower levels. The goal is the digging itself.”

Uetum and Pietta stared at her, uncomprehending.

“They’re not mining,” Anna clarified, her voice a chilling whisper. “Looks like they’re forcing the prisoners to build a tomb for themselves, day after day, for fifteen hundred years.”

Pietta was the first to give voice to the grim reality, her tone a low, simmering hiss of pure hatred. “So,” she said, her half-corrupted eye glowing faintly.

“The guards on top take the profits, and the slaves are forced to dig themselves deeper and deeper into their own grave, making it even harder for them to escape?” She clenched her fists, her knuckles white.

“The humans who built this… the ones who run it now… they must all die. I want to kill them all.”

“No, Pietta!” Uetum cried out, her tail puffing up in alarm. “We can’t! Our job is to save everyone! If we just start killing people, the whole barracks will come down on us, and then no one gets out! Saving them must come first, nyaa!”

Anna ignored their developing disagreement. With her quill making three last, conclusive points on the expansive map she had drawn, she was gazing down at her notepad. With a grim satisfaction on her face, she folded it and tucked it away. For the time being, the task was finished here.

“Anna-chan, what are those little cross marks for?” Uetum asked, peering over her shoulder with innocent curiosity. “Is that where the treasure is?”

“It’s for my plan,” Anna said, her voice leaving no room for discussion. “You and Pietta don’t need to worry about it.”

Uetum, in her infinite faith, just beamed. “Okay!”

Pietta, however, did not brush it off. “I do need to worry about it,” she said, her voice quiet but unyielding.

“My mission from Lord Yarte was to analyze minerals. But my purpose here is to see justice for our kind. Your plan… your secrets… I need to know that they lead to freedom for them,” she gestured to the cavern below, “and not just a different kind of cage.”

Anna looked at the small, determined girl, her own gaze unreadable behind the mask. “You said there’s infinite darkness being flowed around, right? I’ve figured it out with Maren’s help. I mark every of that with a circle but…” She unfolded the map again then pointed at one of the Xs.

“This mark,” she said, her voice cold and absolute, “is a primary structural support pillar for this entire upper cavern. This one here is a geothermal vent connecting to the magma chambers below. And this one,” she tapped the final X, “is what I think is the central power conduit for the slave marks on every prisoner in this mine.”

She folded the map and looked Pietta dead in the eye. “Escape is a temporary solution for a few. My plan is about liberation. And liberation… requires leverage.”

Pietta stared, her mind reeling. The marks were pressure points. She finally understood. Anna was planning a revolution. And Pietta was, for the first time, truly afraid of the sheer, terrifying scale of Anna’s mind.

The weight of Anna’s last statement—”liberation requires leverage”—hung in the air, leaving Pietta to silently contemplate the terrifying scale of her new ally's mind. She looked down at the rock sample in her hand, her own mission from Yarte suddenly feeling small and insignificant.

Anna noticed her hesitation and let out a smile, “Honestly, you don’t have to worry about it. I think your hobby is cute.”

Pietta looked up, blushing. “What? This is not a hobby!”

“Really? Well, it’s cute nonetheless.”

“J-just continue with your explanation!”

“Hmm… from what I understand from the quartermaster. The people running this smuggling ring aren’t processing the Ahlfderite here,” Anna stated, “They can’t. Minilon lacks infrastructure. I think they’re shipping all of it, every last stolen piece, to Trievon.”

The name hit them like a physical blow. Uetum gasped, her tail puffing up. “Trievon?! The land over the seas?! But that’s like two thousand kilometers away, nyaa!!”

“I know,” Anna said, nodding. “And I know I’ve only been in Minilon for less than a week. But I’m not stupid. I’ve seen many thing from Trievon, I think we did a little trading.”

Pietta and Uetum scrambled to keep up, their own missions forgotten, now desperate to hear the rest of Anna's deduction.

“After the battle at the barracks, I was talking to some of the knights,” Anna explained, her voice echoing slightly in the vast tunnel.

“Mostly Jarce and Seware. They were complaining about how boring patrols have become since the corruption sealed the western roads. I asked him what they usually did that was so exciting.”

She glanced back at them. “He told me that, until a few weeks ago, one of their most common and highest-paid assignments was escorting heavily laden merchant caravans to the dock city, Port Viame. Extremely important, extremely wealthy merchants who paid the kingdom a fortune for the protection of their cargo.”

“But now, with the corruption in the forest, the main road is impassable,” she continued. “The caravans have stopped completely. As Jarce put it, ‘we’re all stuck here.’”

“So, the corrupt ones are the merchants?” Pietta asked.

“That’s the obvious conclusion,” Anna said. “But I asked him a final question. I asked what, exactly, they were transporting that was so valuable it required a full escort of the King’s own knights…”

“And he said, ‘We were never told. Our orders were just to make sure the carriages got to the port safely. We were forbidden from ever looking inside.’”

The full picture was now terrifyingly clear.

“The corrupt ones aren’t just some greedy merchants,” Anna concluded, her voice low and sharp. “It’s probably the king himself.”

“B-But! How can Anna be so sure, nya?”

“Destrian. The Head of the Knights. The sword that Urzmu shattered at the camp… he called it ‘Ars Nova’. He said he got it from Trievon. But I’ve just reviewed the complete history of the thirteen Ars Weapons. There is no ‘Ars Nova’.” She looked at her own sword, Maren, hovering beside her, and then back at her companions.

“It was a fake. A powerful one, yes, but a replica. And given the craftsmanship, I’d bet my life it was forged in Trievon. Just like this fake Ars Maren.”

“MNAAAAA, MAREN IS THE REAL DEAL!” the sword shrieked telepathically in Anna’s head, her light flaring indignantly. “ANNA SO MEAN, SAYING MAREN IS FAKE MAREN!!”

Anna completely ignored her. The lie was too useful to retract now.

For Pietta and Uetum, this was the final, damning piece of evidence. The picture was now complete.

“So that’s the deal,” Pietta said, her voice dripping with a cold, newfound contempt.

“The nobles of Minilon pay zero… they use our people as disposable slaves to dig up a resource they can’t even use themselves… and in return for that resource, Trievon gives them not just immense fortunes, but powerful replica weapons to maintain their control and hunt down even more of us.” She kicked a loose Glimmerstone shard, sending it skittering into the darkness. “They get rich, they get armed, and our people get a grave.”

She looked up, her half-corrupted eye glowing with a hatred that was pure and absolute. “I hate them. I hate humans so much.”

Anna let out a long, weary sigh and looked at the small, rage-filled girl. “You were human until a year ago,” she stated, “You look about fourteen. How can you hate humans that much?”

“You think because I was born with a human face, I am one of them?” Pietta whispered, her voice trembling with a rage that was deep and ancient. “I hate them because they are cowards. I hate them because their kindness is conditional, and their loyalty is worthless.” She looked at Anna, her expression breaking. “I stopped being human the day I watched my ‘humanity’ stand by and let everything I loved be destroyed.”

After a long, heavy silence, Anna turned away from the overlook, her mapping complete, her purpose here fulfilled. “I’m going back to the barracks,” she announced, her voice pulling them back to the present.

Pietta’s head snapped up, her eyes, now cold and hard as chips of ice, fixed on the oblivious overseers in the cavern below. “Anna,” she asked, her voice a low, venomous hiss. “Can I kill the people here? The guards.”

Anna didn't even pause. “Just do what you want to do,” she said over her shoulder, “I won’t take responsibility for it. But make sure if you did, don’t spare anyone.”