Animal Whisperer: Take Back My Life and Love Chapter 338: The Collapse

Employees abandoned their meals, the sound of scraping chairs echoing through the ballroom. Gourmet dishes sat steaming on the tables, completely forgotten. What had been a raucous victory banquet seconds ago was now a high-stress command center, filled with the frantic noise of phone calls and heated arguments.

"Did you get the details? Why exactly are they closing the mountain, and how long is the supply chain dead?" Ginnie demanded, hovering over her assistant.

The assistant wiped sweat from his brow. "The forestry department is being incredibly tight-lipped. They’re calling it a maximum-level protective lockdown. They claim that if they don't stop all activity immediately, the endemic species like the freshwater jellyfish and the algae could face extinction within the quarter."

"How is that possible?" Ginnie asked, her voice rising in disbelief. "Extinction? Is there something wrong with the soil or the water?"

"I have no idea," the assistant stammered, looking completely lost. "Our team was just at the site last week. The samples they brought back tested perfectly normal."

Nancy, still sitting calmly at her place, allowed herself a small smile as she continued her meal. Ginnie’s team would never have found the problem with their routine checks. Nature’s smallest creatures are the first to sense a shift in the environment, and it was her network of animals that had given her the edge.

Initially, even the forestry department’s tests had turned up nothing. It wasn't until Nancy submitted samples of the unusual symptoms found in the local wildlife and pointed out the correlation to specific silt components that they took it seriously. Those samples were escalated to a national bio-research lab, which finally detected a deeply hidden, specialized pathogen. A commercial team like Ginnie’s didn't have the clearance or the tech to even look for it.

As the room spiraled into a frenzy, the hits kept coming.

"Warehouse inventory can only cover fifteen percent of our existing orders!"

"Every supplier on the list says they can't fulfill anything for next quarter. They're all citing the lockdown."

One update after another left Ginnie gasping for air. "Where is procurement?" she screamed. "I told you to sweep the market for existing stock! What’s the status?"

An employee from the procurement department ran into the room, panting. "It’s bad. We contacted every single algae supplier on the market. Their entire inventory... someone else already cleared them out. Every last pound."

Ginnie’s legs gave out, and she slumped into her chair. The last shred of hope she had been clinging to vanished. The sky was falling.

Summers Corp kept an emergency reserve of raw materials, but they never overstocked. Modern business relied on lean production. The more inventory you sit on, the more capital you tie up. Between the purchase price, storage fees, management costs, and the risk of the product spoiling, carrying excess stock was an expensive liability. No sane company would dump tens of millions in cash into a niche ingredient just to hoard it.

It would have been a suicidal gamble—betting against a risk that had a one-percent chance of ever happening. But that one-percent fluke had just become their reality. No one could have predicted that a niche, usually reliable ingredient would simply disappear overnight.

"That's impossible," Ginnie whispered, her voice trembling. "How can there be nothing left to buy?"

Who could have known? Who had the foresight or the malice to buy up the entire market in advance?

In the middle of the carnage and the panic, Nancy remained the picture of composure. She sat alone, meticulously working her way through a king crab, savoring the meal with focused intent. She had to hand it to Ginnie; the woman hadn't held back on the catering. The spread was top-tier.

The assistant handed Ginnie a glass of juice, his expression grim as he analyzed the situation. "First, Sanction Peaks gets locked down, cutting off our primary source. Then, the entire secondary market gets wiped clean of stock. These things happening back-to-back isn't a coincidence. This is a coordinated strike against our product line."

The others quickly agreed. "Exactly! Someone is behind this, pulling the strings to sabotage us."

Ginnie’s eyes darted around until they landed on Nancy, who looked like she was in a completely different world. Her gaze sharpened with sudden, violent realization. She stared at Nancy, who was currently enjoying another bite of crab, and hissed a sharp accusation.

"Nancy, did you do this? You had to have rigged this! How else does a mountain just happen to close the day after we launch?"

"If I had the power to shut down a mountain on a whim, do you really think I’d be working as a consultant?" Nancy let out a dry laugh, her eyes scanning the room. "I stay as far away from illegal schemes as possible. I suppose when your own family tree is full of career criminals, you start assuming everyone else plays by the same rules."

"You!" Ginnie’s finger shook with rage, the insult hitting its mark so accurately she was momentarily speechless.