When the elite heard that Ghosty's Lab fully joined the city, they became worried.
This essentially quadrupled the available number of loyal guards the city had.
Gemini and Kugelblitz realized that it would become much harder to influence the guards for their own means.
However, everyone had a price. That price would just increase by quite a bit.
It was annoying, but there wasn't much they could do about it.
The game dictated that the city guards were difficult to influence due to their loyalty.
The government hadn't gone against their interests directly.
They just made it harder to circumvent the law.
But then, the second announcement hit, and the feelings of Kugelblitz and Gemini were very mixed.
The policy of requiring 20% of Extractors working for a Manufacturer to be dedicated to the city was completely scrapped.
Now, the Manufacturers no longer needed to help the city's forces by dedicating their employees to them.
This was a very big change.
It was both good and bad for Kugelblitz and Gemini.
It was good in the sense that they could now theoretically produce 20% more Zephyx since they had 20% more employees available.
But, in practice, this only increased profits by about 5%.
Manufacturers had hired and trained their Extractors to keep the 20% loss of productivity in mind, which meant that the Manufacturers had more Extractors than they needed to operate on full efficiency.
Even more, the city had always paid the Manufacturers for the loss of productivity incurred by the policy.
Now, there was no more compensation, with only a minimal increase in productivity.
Because of that, the profits for the Manufacturers only increased slightly.
One had to note that this was supposed to be the good part of the deal for the Manufacturers.
After all, they now had 20% more employees.
Who wouldn't like that?
Now, the bad part was that circumventing the law became even more difficult.
It was easy to talk to a guard when one oneself was working with the guard.
But now, one actually had to meet the guards and talk to them.
There was a big difference between being active and being passive.
If a colleague of a guard did a shady thing, and the guard noticed, there was a good chance that the guard would only reprimand their colleague without making a report.
Or maybe they would be swayed to ignore this infraction.
They just had to act like they didn't see it.
But now, since said colleague no longer had the authority of a guard, the actual guard would need to become active to become corrupt.
Watching someone murdering someone else was easier than committing a murder oneself.
In order to get these sneaky benefits, the guards now needed to actively do the illegal act, and convincing them to do that was way harder and riskier now.
Of course, there were still corrupt guards, but they had to stay hidden from their colleagues.
One corrupt guard could only do so many illegal things without looking suspicious.
Naturally, since Kugelblitz had vastly more resources than Gemini, Kugelblitz almost monopolized the few corrupt guards.
Gemini suffered the most under this policy change.
Sky Dream only benefitted since neither Solace nor Dark Dream had tried to influence the guards in the past.
Dark Dream hadn't done so because of Nick, and Solace hadn't done so since they hadn't had enough powerful Extractors in the guards to get a foot in the door.
There had always been members from other manufacturers on the guard teams, and those wouldn't help Solace do anything shady.
Almost all of Gemini's illegal activities had to be put on pause.
They needed to find new corruptible guards, which was extremely risky.
If they tried to sway a very loyal guard, an investigation might occur.
They had to be very careful.
Kugelblitz had to pay much more money for the shady actions, but most of them could still be performed.
It was still profitable, although not as highly anymore.
But then, a couple of weeks later, something happened that made Kugelblitz grind their teeth.
Four of their Specialists left to join the city!
Sure, the city paid for the Specialists, but those were Specialists!
Every single one of them took decades to train!
The number of Specialists loyal to the city compared to the time Markus was still in charge had tripled!
Specialists had a terrifying level of perception, and doing illegal things became even more difficult!
But that wasn't the end.
Two weeks later, another bomb hit Kugelblitz.
Almost every single one of their trusted corrupted guards was let go!
The elites of Kugelblitz knew exactly how that happened.
Aria!
Aria knew all about their shady dealings!
She had established most of them!
Three Experts, twelve Veterans, and 18 Johns were let go!
At least they had not been punished.
They were just let go.
That was Aria's way of not going against Kugelblitz too directly.
Now, just like Gemini, Kugelblitz had to find new guards to corrupt, which was extremely risky.
Because of that, almost all of their shady dealings had to be put on ice.
They needed to find a new way in first.
The hidden profits of Kugelblitz were lowered significantly.
Even worse, they still had to pay the same amount of taxes since these profits had been under the table and were not in the books.
Of course, these actions also made it difficult for the elite, unrelated to Manufacturers, to do shady things.
They were not happy.
At all!
Those had been reliable sources of profit!
And now, the city had taken all of them!
Many of the elite were angry.
They wanted to do something, but it wasn't easy, specifically in this case.
In the upper layer, nobody talked about where their money came from.
Everyone had something to hide, and everyone was a shrewd businessman.
Nobody would expose themselves to an attack by admitting to corruption.
Otherwise, one food merchant might tell the city about another food merchant and then take over their food empire.
It was imperative to seem clean in front of everyone.
Of course, a couple of the elite still managed to join together in some shady groups.
They were already planning their counterattack.
But they needed an opportunity.
They needed a good moment to strike.
It was important to not strike too hastily.
Patience was one of the most important virtues.
Over the next weeks, Kugelblitz barely made any progress in corrupting new guards.
They got two new Johns under their umbrella, but the Johns didn't have enough authority or power to oversee truly important things.
Getting through this new barrier was not impossible, but it was very difficult.
In the end, Kugelblitz decided to create one of the shady groups themselves.
The two new owners of Kugelblitz, Vanessa Korint and Jornis Zealow, felt like they were incredibly unlucky.
They had finally gained full ownership of Kugelblitz, but as soon as they did, these brutal new policies took effect, lowering profits to levels only seen shortly after the Crimson Sea incident.
Of course, on the books, profits seemed unchanged, but that didn't reflect reality.
Jornis and Vanessa had worked for Kugelblitz for over a century, and they had done many shady things as well.
It was basically impossible to come this far in Kugelblitz without being willing to compromise one's morality for the profit of the company.
Naturally, they were used to this income stream, and having that income stream vanish felt like someone was stealing from them.
Kugelblitz was also planning on their counterattack, and their shady little group came into contact with other shady groups.
However, establishing an alliance between newly formed shady groups wasn't easy since no one in the groups wanted to expose their identities to the other group.
They were all allies, but they were also all enemies.
There was no trust between them.
There was barely any trust within the groups.
Progress was slow, but more and more people of the upper layer came into contact with each other.
Too many people had their hidden profits dry up, and they wanted them back!
The secret and unofficial leader of this alliance was Kugelblitz, but the people in the groups only knew the leader as Mr. Zero.
Nobody knew where Mr. Zero had come from or how he had made his money.
They didn't even know where he lived.
However, Mr. Zero had proven that he had terrifying resources by gathering information on his biggest rival in the group and forwarding that information to the guards.
The rival was taken into custody, and all their belongings were seized.
Some people guessed that Mr. Zero represented Kugelblitz, but asking for confirmation would see them in handcuffs next.
Under the dictatorship of Mr. Zero, the groups made quicker progress, and more plans started to form.
But before the group could decide on what plan to put into action, something happened.
The yearly meeting between the city and the Manufacturers took place.
And an unprecedented bomb of change was unveiled during it.
The world of Manufacturers was put on its head.