When Jade and her men arrived, Gideon didn’t wait. The moment the vehicle came to a stop, he moved, cutting across the distance and reaching her before she even had the chance to step fully out.

She barely had one foot on the ground before she caught sight of him and grinned. "Oh? Someone’s eager. Miss me that much?"

"No," Gideon replied flatly. "We need a meeting. Something bad happened, and I don’t have time to entertain you."

Jade let out a soft laugh, completely unfazed. "That serious, huh?" She stretched slightly as both feet touched the ground, then glanced at him from the side.

"Too bad, I came here with good news for you, Elaine is also here with me, she keeps nagging me to arrive faster." Her smile widened just a little.

"And yes, I already know what the two of you pulled with the Skull Fangs, and what you dug up about the Eagle Union."

She took a slow breath, then casually gestured behind her. "But let’s start with something you’ll actually appreciate. I brought you cores. A lot of them. But it’s a shame I can’t sell half of them, not even a quarter of them. The mercenary guild needs more time with the buyers."

Her men immediately began unloading heavy sacks from the trucks.

Those trucks, of course, were his.

Gideon had lent them to the Freebound earlier, instructing Jade to sell at least half of the Verdant Devourer’s scales and fangs to the mercenary guild.

The rest would be processed into weapons, armor, and whatever else could be crafted from them. The cores, however, were to be sent back to him.

Now they were here, piled in thick sacks and handled with care.

Along with them came more workers.

Gideon glanced over the scene briefly, noting how efficiently everything was being unloaded despite the late hour. It still amazed him how Freebound managed to move this much material and manpower across distance and deliver it at night without falling apart.

"Thanks," he said, already turning away. "Just move everything to my house."

Then his tone shifted. "The workers you sent caused trouble. They pushed my people around."

Jade didn’t even look surprised. She just let out a quiet sigh, as if this was exactly what she expected.

"Oh," she said simply. "I see."

Gideon narrowed his eyes slightly. "You knew this would happen?"

"Sooner or later, yeah." She crossed her arms, her expression calm.

"Grant’s good at what he does. So are his men. But they’ve got an attitude, and they don’t adjust easily. That was always going to clash with your people, especially that rigid handsome man. They didn’t work with rules, afterall."

"That’s not an answer."

"It is," she replied. "You just don’t like it."

She tilted her head slightly, watching him. "If you kick Grant out, his men leave with him. And if they leave, good luck replacing them. Skilled construction crews aren’t exactly waiting around for you to hire, especially this far out. You’ll lose time, and winter isn’t going to wait for you."

Gideon ran a hand through his hair, irritation clear in the movement. That was exactly the problem.

Grant acted the way he did because he knew he could. In a world like this, people with specialized skills held leverage, especially in a territory as remote as this one.

Still, that didn’t mean Gideon was going to let it slide.

"I’m not letting him walk after what he pulled," Gideon said, his voice low. "At the very least, I need him out without dragging his entire crew with him."

Jade studied him for a moment, then stepped closer. She leaned in just enough to keep her voice between them, whispering something quickly.

Gideon’s expression shifted mid-sentence, his eyes widening slightly before narrowing again as he processed it. After a brief pause, he gave a small nod.

"...Alright."

"Good," Jade said, straightening as if nothing had happened.

"Are you two done?" Elaine’s voice cut in from behind them.

She had appeared without either of them noticing, standing just a step away with her usual composed expression.

"We still have more important things to talk about."

Jade let out a short breath and nodded. "Yeah. Let’s finish dealing with Grant first, then we move on to the real problem."

With that, the three of them turned and headed toward Gideon’s house, leaving the unloading and construction behind them.

***

The meeting started not long after. Inside the room were Gideon, Jade, William, and the man Gideon had dragged away earlier. His name was Max.

He looked completely out of place, sitting stiffly in the corner instead of joining them at the table, his shoulders tense and his eyes constantly shifting as if he expected something bad to happen at any moment.

A moment later, Grant entered.

The change in him was impossible to ignore. His face was bruised and swollen from Gideon’s punch, one side already turning dark blue, and a few of his teeth were gone.

But the moment his eyes landed on Max, something in his expression broke.

The faint smile he had when he noticed Jade vanished instantly, replaced by a flicker of panic he couldn’t hide.

"Grant, sit," Jade said, pointing at the single chair placed in front of them.

The room had been arranged deliberately. Gideon, Jade, and William sat on one side of the table, aligned and composed, while Grant’s chair was placed a short distance away, separated just enough to make the gap feel intentional.

It resembled an interview setup, but the atmosphere was heavier, closer to a courtroom than anything else.

Grant swallowed and sat down, his movements stiff.

"I heard what happened this afternoon," Jade began, her tone calm but firm. "Explain to us what happened with your men."

"Y-Yes," Grant stammered, forcing himself to speak.

"It’s just that... that glasses man is too rigid with the schedule. My workers aren’t machines. They need time to breathe before moving on to the next task."

He leaned forward slightly, trying to regain some ground. "We all know the timeline is tight, but you’re pushing to finish that apartment before winter even properly starts. That’s insane. Winter’s less than two weeks for Goddamn sake!"

William cleared his throat. "You are correct. I misjudged the human limit in this case."

"However," Gideon continued smoothly, not letting the momentum shift, "we’re paying you well. And we already told you that if the schedule becomes unrealistic, we won’t force it. This isn’t some massive project. It’s a simple apartment, twenty rooms, repeated structure."

He didn’t raise his voice, but his words pressed down just the same. "The materials are already here. There’s no delay in supply. The only real waiting time is for the concrete to set, and with the current weather, even that works in our favor."

Gideon leaned back slightly, crossing his arms as his gaze fixed on Grant. "But that’s not the real issue, is it?"

"What I want to know is why," Gideon said. "Why were you laughing instead of stopping your men?"

Grant let out an awkward laugh, the sound dry and forced. "Can you even stop them in that state? They were angry, exhausted, fed up with the way they were being treated. You even had to—"

"Yes," Gideon cut in cleanly, his voice sharper now, "I had to punch you in the face to get you to do your job."

"And honestly, I don’t think it’s because you couldn’t stop them. I think you didn’t want to. You looked pretty entertained back there," Gideon went on, his tone turning colder. "Like things were finally going your way. Like the mess was exactly what you’d been waiting for."

A crooked smile formed, faint but cutting. "Then again, it makes sense. You’ve been running your mouth about William and this place for a while now, haven’t you?"

Grant’s jaw tightened.

"I have to say," Gideon added, his voice dropping slightly, "I expected more from you. ’Best foreman,’ right? Turns out you’re just another guy stirring shit behind the scenes and hiding when it blows up. That’s just pathetic."

"What?!" Grant snapped, anger finally breaking through. "You’re just throwing accusations now? Do you have any proof?!"

"Oh, we do," Gideon replied without hesitation. "You can talk now, Max."

Max jolted upright the moment his name was called, nearly knocking his chair back in the process. His voice came out louder than he intended, shaky and uneven, the stutter getting worse the longer he spoke.

"I-I... I mean, we... We kept hearing Grant complain about the work. At first, we didn’t even agree with him, but he’s our boss, so we... we couldn’t just ignore it."

He swallowed, his hands tightening at his sides as he forced himself to continue under everyone’s gaze. "Then the complaints turned into insults. It got worse. We started joking about it, saying the same things, and after a while... it didn’t feel like a joke anymore. It started to feel true."

His breathing hitched slightly. "Every order felt heavier after that. We kept noticing flaws, in William... in the people here... in everything."

He lowered his head, his voice dropping. "By the end of each shift, talking shit about this place became normal. Like something we needed. And it just... built up. Turned into anger. And then..." His shoulders shook. "It got out of control."