"Such a mess, isn't it?"
Oriana, as Michelle, blinked when she heard the voice next to her.
She had just been smiling as she watched the Marquise walk off happy, with his newfound love for comedic paintings of his hero, when Bethany had shown up next to her.
She had to quickly put her game face on.
She removed the smile and put on a worried expression.
"It's terrible. Do you know what happened?"
"No, no one does. It seems trade agreements and documents have been altered at some point in the process. No one knows when, but it looks like it is a mix of when the clerks process them, and when we in accounting do it."
"Oh no. Have any of them come from my documents? I tried very hard not to make any mistakes."
"Huh, oh, a few came from your pile. But that seemed to be the case for everyone else in the accounting team."
"How is that possible?" Michelle asked quizzically.
"Not sure. Well, I'm sure they will figure it out soon. I heard some more Peacekeepers and senior members of the Inter-Kingdom Peace Treatise Group will be turning up at some point to look into this."
"Really", she hadn't expected it to receive such a response so quickly.
"Yeah. Apparently, the Peacekeepers think this might be related to what happened at the Peace Festival for some reason."
A fair assumption.
"And the Peace Treaty person?"
"Oh, a few Trade agreements with the other kingdoms were messed up in some way as well. It sounds like it caused massive problems between them and us, so the Inter-Kingdom Peace Treatise Group are personally getting involved to resolve this issue as well."
Bethany just sighed.
"Anyway, none of the mistakes you made have anything to do with it. This is something else altogether."
"Wait. Did I actually make mistakes by accident?" Oriana wondered to herself. "I was sure I did it perfectly, for the ones I didn't mess with."
With that, Bethany headed towards the backrooms of the building before turning back to Michelle.
"Oh, just so you know, Phillip is off sick, so things may get a bit hectic. But, lucky for you, with your training program, you get to see the warehouse. Come, let's get you down there."
For a moment, Michelle scratched her head after hearing all of that.
"Phillip, who's that?"
Bethany just shook her head, "I guess he never told you his name. Seems about right. He sits on the table just to your left."
Oriana thought about it and realised who she was referring to. The very rude man.
It seems that her concoction from the apothecary that she introduced to his tea had the desired effect.
"I hope that teaches him a lesson," she mused in her head.
But while those were her thoughts on the matter, she had a very worried expression plastered on her face.
"Oh no. I hope he feels better soon."
"Hopefully. It's going to be very busy without him. Now let's go, you got work to do."
And so, without further ado, she followed after Bethany into the backrooms and then down a few flights of stairs, taking her to the basement of the Guild.
---
"So, this is the storage area. All of the items that have been sold through the Merchants Guild or brought through us are stored here."
Down in the warehouse, Bethany had left shortly after getting her there, her own work needing to be done, of course. This then left Michelle with the warehouse workers and the warehouse supervisor, who was explaining how things worked.
To some, it was probably very important, and explained just how the whole process would go. But Oriana didn't care about that one bit. What she cared about was the magical plate each worker had, which was used to sign off on crates showing where they needed to be sent.
Once she understood basically how it worked and the supervisor finished explaining, she headed into the warehouse, taking the tablet and other documents he provided with her.
This left her to her own devices, getting her work for the day done, while also finding a way to cause some problems in this area.
---
With the tablet in hand and documents detailing what was in the numbered crates, she got to work finding her lot. As it was described to her, she had to find the crate, check the contents, scan the document to then create a copy that could be applied to the crate like a label, and then store the original.
From this, she found that like the tablets the clerks used, when it scanned documents, it would create a copy which would show illusions. That being the case, she found several of them from her list, placed illusions over their addresses in the document, and after the scan, applied the incorrectly created label. She sent them to all sorts of places in the city, including the slums. Why not send a load of produce to the poorer areas?
As far as she could see, there shouldn't be any blowback from that. The original documents would still be what the buyer provided, so they couldn't use that to confirm the location where things were sent.
The only other document involved was the label on the crate. Once that got to the slums, everything inside and outside the crate was going to be cannibalised, so the Merchants Guild would have no clue.
---
While this was all well and good, she found something a little more fun on the list.
A crate filled with Whodell Burrowing Ants.
For whatever reason, it seems some noble had the great idea of using them to start off a tunnel system in a mine.
Oriana spoke to one of the workers, asking about the ants and for information about a few other crates. She didn't want to make it look obvious.
It turns out these ants can burrow through a wide range of surfaces. They especially prefer natural resources such as dirt, wood, even stone and marble, but they do not go after metals.
And for a mine, that is a pretty good creature to help set it up.
Funny thing, though, is that these materials that the ants go for are used quite heavily in the creation of the Merchants Guild building.
Marble flooring, wood and stone for the walls. There were also heaps of stone surrounding the warehouse, it being underground.
All she needed to do was wake the little ants up.
---
"Problem, we have a big problem!" one of the warehouse workers shouted as he reached his supervisor.
"What is it now? There are enough problems upstairs, we don't need any down here."
"Well, this problem might end up reaching upstairs as well."
"What, why?"
"…The Ants are awake."
"The Ants…you mean the Whodell Burrowing Ants. How? They were under stasis magic?" The panic on the supervisor's face spoke for itself.
"I don't know, no one does. It just failed. Now they are roaming around…and they have started burrowing."
"Oh no."
At that, the supervisor headed for the nearby door and ran upstairs.
Oriana, as Michelle, was standing nearby, a worried look on her face to show she was not part of the problem, but just as scared as they were.
Having broken the stasis spell on the crate, which wasn't too difficult, just requiring the magic circle to be altered slightly, she then just used her nature magic to give a little helping hand and coax the ants awake and out.
Once that was done, she watched as they started to eat away at the rock that lined the walls of the warehouse in glee.
But she had to keep up appearances, which is why she was with the workers.
"Didn't anyone see who was by the crate of ants? Who could have done this?"
All the workers just looked around with blank expressions. Of course they would. As none of them saw anyone by the ant crate, with Oriana's magic making her invisible.
And with the illusory version of Michelle that she made, wandering around looking at crates far from where the ants were, they would never think she was the one to free the ants.
"Damn."
"It's not all bad news, I've brought help."
The supervisor from before had just returned, and at his back were several Peacekeepers all decked out in gear.
Of course, these were the ones that were turning up because of the problems upstairs, so it made sense that they would be here.
"Okay, everyone, we are here to stop this mess. The sad thing, however, is that it is likely one of you who is the cause. Either through some misguided malice or just incompetence, so you all need to remain here while we get this under control."
At that, one of the Peacekeepers remained to keep the workers in check while the others headed off to deal with the ants.
Each of them had stun rods, which should knock the ants out; the issue was just finding and reaching them.
---
Several minutes later, while the workers were just milling around, talking about what was happening, they suddenly heard screaming from upstairs.
"What, what was that?"
"Is someone getting attacked?"
The warehouse workers voiced the questions out loud, hoping for an answer.
It wasn't until the peacekeepers returned that they learned what had happened.
"Quickly now, before they start eating the building."
It would seem that in all their burrowing, some of the ants had managed to breach the floor above, bringing them into the main atrium of the Merchants Guild.
And with a bit of illusion magic, Oriana replaced herself with a copy and headed upstairs, as she had to see this.
---
And what she saw was carnage.
Several ants were running around, eating parts of the building as they went. They were almost erratic, likely due to the number of people around.
Thankfully, these ants were not aggressive. Something that Oriana was also told beforehand.
As they mingled with the merchants and citizens, the peacekeepers tried to push through to reach them.
As a result, with all the pushing and shoving going on, several people ended up getting hit with the stun rods, knocking them out. Even one of the Peacekeepers was hit by his colleague, taking him down as well.
One of the ants ended up behind the counter. This, of course, freaked the clerks out even more, so they ran around bumping into each other as they tried to escape into the backrooms.
Something Oriana hadn't anticipated was the damage the ant would do behind the counter. Sure, eating the wooden desks and going for the flooring made sense, but the damage to the documents surprised her.
"Of course. Paper is made from wood," she realised.
To think of the amount of trade deals, invoices and other such documents that the ant had gorged itself on, Oriana wasn't sure how this place would recover.
"Ah, it will probably be fine. It's not like such a massive institution would fail from something like this. It might just…take a while."
---
After quite some time, the Peacekeepers managed to take down the ants.
The aftermath that was left behind was astonishing.
Holes in the floor and walls. One of the walls had even collapsed entirely.
Several people were lying on the ground having been hit with the stun rods, but otherwise they were okay.
Trade documents were strewn all over the place, either crumpled or half-eaten, covering the ground. Some had fallen into ant burrows and were sure to be lost, depending on how deep they were.
Then there were all the documents the ants had ingested, and they were not coming back.
Down in the warehouse, things were not as bad. If anything, the ants may have helped; the burrows in the walls possibly being used as extra storage in the future.
That might just be wishful thinking.
But there were also now several routes taking you from the warehouse up to the rest of the guild.
And through some testing by the odd delirious civilian, it was clear that they worked well in terms of getting from the atrium to the warehouse. Although the landing needed some work.
All in all, it was a good day.
But it was not over. Technically, she was still standing with the other workers, and she had to get back.
You could only stay standing in one place, swaying for so long before someone asks questions.
Maybe even to yourself. And not responding to them would not be a good look for the new worker.