King Henry Fairmore sat upon his throne, a sneer on his lips. “What do you mean the seal is concerning?” he said, looking down at a bowing servant that was bringing the news.

  “My liege, I do not mean to offend, but I have been advised by those assigned to study and keep charge of the seal’s condition that it is deteriorating at an alarming rate. We have had our normal recharging from the majority of the lower level citizens of the kingdom as mandated, but it has been almost five years since we had some of the kingdom’s highest level contributors consistently charging it with their Mana…”

  The king took his goblet and hurled it at the servant, drenching him with the foul liquid. There was silence in the throne room for a good while until the king finally asked, “So what does this mean for Acacia?”

  “If I may be blunt my liege, it is the reason for the spike in monsters appearing throughout the kingdom and the attendants at the seal predict that the seal will continue to weaken and possibly break if nothing changes.” the nameless servant said, a slight icy tone to his voice.

  “I gave some of our greatest powerhouses to the Kingdom of Iron in their squabble with the Kingdom of Mountain and the Kingdom of Frost… This was supposed to be a short commitment.” The king trailed off as he was lost in his thoughts.

  The reality of the situation was that since King Henry had come into power about 300 years ago, The Kingdom of Acacia had been at peace, the seal had been strong and there was very little conflict around them. They were in the center, the heartland of the continent and it was the North that had the conflict and issues. Henry early on had the great plan to command the greatest assets of their kingdom to be mercenaries abroad to reap the rewards of wealth, connections and favor with their neighboring kingdom, the Kingdom of Iron, but it was now apparent that there were consequences of not caring for their own.

  The evidence of the thinning of Acacia’s powerful people had been clear for the last decade, but for those in the know, it had really been the last century. The amount of gain was just too great for King Henry and they still had the bare minimum to maintain the seals and take care of rogue monsters up until this point.

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  “Most of our Kingdom’s assets still have over three years on their contracts. If we were to pull them now… we would shatter any goodwill we have with the Iron Kingdom and have them at our doorstep to take advantage of our weakness.” King Henry thought outloud, perturbed and not very happy.

  “What do you think will happen?” He asked the servant again, already knowing the answer.

  “Looking at the last recorded time the seal was this weak, an aberrant monster over level 100 tore through the kingdom causing more than 100,000 citizens to lose their life.” They said in a matter-of-fact way.

  King Henry and all of the Kingdom of Acacia was sitting on a ticking timebomb. At any time and on any day, the kingdom could be ravaged again and he would be the one responsible.

  “Send out a decree: all level 50 and below must attend the Kingdom’s Seal at least four times this year and any more will be rewarded with 5 gold pieces. Anyone who ignores this will be sentenced to 5 years in military service to the kingdom.” King Henry said, a smug smile on his face.

  In reality, this still would not be enough to overcome the decades of lighter than needed maintenance of the seal. Although most of the kingdom’s citizens had been faithful in charging the seal with their Mana, the higher leveled citizens had still been sold off to the Kingdom of Iron as mercenaries and the lack of their Mana over these many decades had compounded to the point where there was no compensating for it by requiring the lower leveled citizens to contribute more. The higher your level, the amount of Mana you had compounded. Almost all of their citizens level 60 and above were abroad and had not been consistently contributing, leading things to this point.

  If the King had listened to his advisors and servants, the situation probably would not have gotten to this point, but the wealth and perks had been too much to stop. Once the Kingdom of Iron had shipped piles of gold, rare herbs and some of the finest runic enchanted things, King Henry simply could not say no.

  For the Kingdom of Acacia’s royal family and nobility were plagued with a need to have a certain level of living and started to care very little for the state of things outside of the capital city. It had become a generational priority to make sure this standard of living did not change, despite what was sacrificed to have it.

  Hunting monsters was becoming a secondary priority to the kingdom. While it was still a great focus, the large-scale failure of the seal was still not a reality due to willful ignorance and kingdom-wide suppression. The Monster Hunter Association had been able to supplement personnel when bigger monster breaches had been discovered, but the future of Acacia inevitably held a much greater threat than any of those making the decisions were willing to imagine.

  “That is all, you are dismissed.” King Henry said, all emotion gone from his voice.

  “Very well, my liege.” the servant said, standing up and still dripping from what the king had thrown at him.

  The king had been refusing to listen to counsel and finally summoned this servant after they had requested counsel with the king for over a year.

  This “servant” was Marcus Windsor, an old man and the Chief Seal Administrator, who had been appointed by the king before King Henry came into power.