Ah, yes, can't have the merchants just stockpile food to take advantage of the situation, they also have to be painted as villainous as possible by making them be involved in extortion and black markets. Which justifies taking their goods and distributing them as they see fit.
Yeah, you have to have some elements that are complete fantasy in a fantasy story.
Page 15 is top tier adorable. And also 21.
If you know you're doing magic that leaves your body unconscious, for the love of the cute maid, SIT DOWN FIRST. Although I don't think she would complain.
Its one thing to stock up for yourself, its another to intentionally force a shortage by depriving the market just so you can crank prices up. Working as a group to manipulate prices does deserve some punishment. Once there is a real shortage raising prices is fine, but as the current products would perish by then they can't really save them and sell them during the shortage, they are just keeping them off the market and throwing them away, what they do sell is priced high enough to outweigh the waste. That many will starve do to this they don't care. Its extortion and is regulated in most countries. And yes it alone would justify seizure of the horded goods and distributing them, what they put on the market was priced so to cover the horded goods, they would still have profit even after the seizure most likely.
Adding in the trafficking was a bit much, but there is connections between what they are doing, but forcing up the prices of necessities many can't survive without paying any price you list. So forcing them to take loans and extorting even more through that and in a world were they can often get away with slavery its not a surprise they could force people to sell family members to put food on the table.
As for the magic, yeah he should have laid down first, hard to tell if they were sitting, still she wasn't braced to catch him. Though he was over exited and rushing which led to that, as well as failure to notice her state upon getting back.