Chapter 71: Shipment
The morning sun poured through the massive stained-glass windows of the Lornfell Academy dining hall, bathing the long wooden tables in warm, golden light. The air was filled with the cheerful, chaotic chatter of students and the rich aroma of roasted coffee and fresh pastries.
It was a picture-perfect, pristine academy morning.
But sitting near the back of the hall, Chloe felt entirely disconnected from it.
She slowly stirred her tea, staring blankly at the swirling liquid. She was physically exhausted. There were faint, dark circles under her blue eyes, and her thighs ached with a dull, heavy soreness with every step she took.
"Did you even sleep last night?" Emily asked, frowning as she aggressively cut into a thick slice of ham. "You look like you fought a troll bare-handed."
Unlike the previous day, Chloe didn’t flinch. She didn’t choke on her drink or frantically invent a clumsy excuse. The suffocating anxiety of keeping her secret had been entirely burned away in the VIP room of The Leaping Stag.
She took a slow sip of her tea, her movements composed.
"Just a little," Chloe answered, her voice soft but steady. "I was... reading late. I lost track of time."
"Well, you need to rest," Felix grunted from across the table, not looking up from his meal. "We have combat drills with Professor Morwenna this afternoon. If you fall asleep during a shield rotation, she’s going to use you as a practice dummy."
"I’ll be ready, Felix," Chloe murmured.
Arthur sat at the head of the table, casually sipping his black coffee. He was wearing his pristine academy uniform, looking every bit the composed, high-ranking noble student.
He lowered his cup and let his dark eyes flick toward the blonde healer.
The moment his gaze landed on her, Chloe’s breath hitched. A visible shiver ran down her spine, and a deep, unmistakable flush crawled up her neck. She didn’t look away in shame. She met his eyes, her expression carrying a quiet, heavy devotion that entirely belonged to him.
Arthur offered a faint, approving smirk, highly amused by how perfectly her psychological conditioning had set in. He set his coffee cup down and stood up.
"I have some guild ledgers to review," Arthur announced smoothly. "I’ll see you all at the training grounds."
The freezing, smog-choked air of the industrial sector was a stark contrast to the academy’s bright halls.
Inside Warehouse 9, the Obsidian Hand was operating at peak efficiency. The massive forge was cold today, but the appraisal tables were covered in raw iron and alchemical roots being prepped for market.
Arthur walked past the busy rookies and headed straight up the wooden stairs to the management office.
Sylvia was reviewing a stack of delivery manifests. She looked up as Arthur closed the door behind him.
"Darius isn’t planning a physical raid," Arthur stated, getting straight to business. "He hired Varrik Slate."
Sylvia’s pen stopped dead on the parchment. Her gray eyes narrowed sharply. "The dock smuggler? Varrik deals in heavy contraband. Venom-laced weapons, unregistered artifacts..."
"And illegally corrupted monster cores," Arthur finished, pulling out the guest chair and sitting across from her.
He relayed exactly what Roxanne had told him. He detailed the unbranded crates, the forged City Inspector packing wax, and the impending anonymous tip meant to legally assassinate the guild using dark-arts contraband.
Sylvia’s expression darkened into absolute fury. Her hands curled into tight fists on the desk.
"That corporate bastard," Sylvia hissed. She immediately stood up, grabbing the hilt of the broadsword leaning against her desk. "Varrik drinks at the southern docks. I’ll take Garrick and Mira. We’ll intercept him before he even gets near our supply wagons and break both of his legs."
"Sit down, Sylvia," Arthur commanded, his voice cold and entirely devoid of anger.
Sylvia stopped, her hunter’s instinct warring with his absolute authority.
"Never interrupt your enemy when he’s carrying a loaded weapon," Arthur instructed, his dark eyes calculating. "If you beat Varrik in the streets, Darius just hires another smuggler next week. We don’t stop the delivery. We let the rat bring the poison straight into the trap."
Sylvia slowly sat back down, realizing he already had a counter-offensive planned. "If those cores make it inside this warehouse and the Inspectors find them, we lose everything."
"Only if we don’t find them first," Arthur said, turning in his chair to look out the glass window. He pointed down at the quiet, analytical young man organizing herbs at the appraisal table. "Bring Tolan up here."
Two minutes later, the guild’s alchemist stood nervously in the office. Tolan was brilliant with reagents, but he wasn’t a frontline fighter, and he found Arthur’s cold demeanor incredibly intimidating.
"Our regular supply delivery of smelting coal and crate lumber arrives tonight," Arthur explained to the alchemist. "One of those crates will be sealed with forged City Inspector wax, and it will contain highly illegal contraband."
Tolan blinked, adjusting his leather gloves. "You want me to find it without breaking the seals?"
"Exactly," Arthur said. "Can you trace the forgery?"
Tolan’s nervous demeanor vanished, instantly replaced by sheer academic confidence. He stepped up to the desk.
"Official Inspector wax is blended with a microscopic trace of crushed lumin-moth scales to prevent standard counterfeiting," Tolan explained, his mind racing. "Varrik Slate is good, but he’s a street smuggler. He’ll use standard red beeswax and dye it to match the color."
Tolan looked at Arthur, a sharp smile forming on his face. "I can mix a vapor-reagent. When exposed to the fumes, real Inspector wax stays red. Standard beeswax will instantly turn a sickly, bruised purple. We won’t even have to touch the crates to know which one is fake."
Arthur nodded, thoroughly satisfied. "Prepare the reagent. And keep quiet. We have a delivery to catch."
By nightfall, a thick, freezing fog had rolled in from the coast, blanketing the industrial sector in a heavy gray shroud.
The heavy iron doors of Warehouse 9 were wide open.
A standard, horse-drawn supply wagon pulled into the loading bay. Two men wearing the heavy, oilcloth coats of the merchant guild jumped down from the driver’s seat. They kept their heads lowered, avoiding eye contact as they began unloading heavy wooden crates of coal and lumber.
Arthur stood in the shadows near the cold forge, watching them. His high perception easily caught the nervous twitch in the couriers’ hands and the heavy daggers poorly concealed beneath their coats. Varrik’s men.
Up in the heavy wooden rafters of the warehouse, completely hidden in the darkness, Garrick and Mira watched like hawks. Garrick’s eyes tracked the exact placement of every single crate, logging their positions in his mind.
"Sign here," one of the fake couriers grunted, shoving a clipboard toward Sylvia.
Sylvia signed the manifest with practiced boredom.
The men didn’t linger. They practically threw the clipboard back, jumped onto the empty wagon, and spurred the horses back out into the freezing fog.
The moment the wagon disappeared into the gloom, Arthur stepped out of the shadows.
"Lock the doors," Arthur ordered.
Garrick dropped silently from the rafters, grabbing the heavy iron chains and dragging the massive warehouse doors shut. The heavy deadbolts slammed into place with a resounding echo.
"Third stack from the left. Bottom crate," Garrick reported immediately, pointing his dagger at the freshly delivered supplies. "They handled that one like it was made of glass."
Arthur walked over to the stack. Tolan hurried behind him, carrying a small glass vial filled with a bubbling, pale blue liquid, and a small metal incense burner.
"Do it," Arthur commanded.
Tolan knelt beside the suspected crate. It looked completely identical to the others, bearing the stamped, red wax seal of the city’s supply chain.
Tolan poured a few drops of the blue liquid into the metal burner. A thin, odorless wisp of pale vapor rose into the air. He carefully wafted the vapor directly over the red wax seal.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, right before their eyes, the vibrant red wax hissed. The color rapidly bled out of it, turning into a sickly, dark purple bruise.
"Forgery confirmed," Tolan said, stepping back.
Arthur drew a sleek, blackened hunting dagger from his belt. He didn’t bother preserving the fake seal. He drove the blade into the wooden seam and viciously pried the lid open.
Crack.
The lid came off. Inside, the crate was packed to the brim with standard, low-grade smelting coal.
Arthur reached in, digging his gauntleted hands through the heavy black rocks until his fingers scraped against a solid, flat piece of wood halfway down. A false bottom.
He jammed his dagger into the edge of the wood and pried it upward.
The false floor lifted, and a foul, sickly sweet stench instantly flooded the immediate area. It smelled like rotting meat and oxidized copper.
Resting in a bed of raw straw were twelve large monster cores.
They weren’t glowing with the pure, standard blue or green light of normal mana. They were stained with a faint, necrotic black residue. The dark energy visibly warped the air around them, pulsing with an unnatural, artificial sickness.
Sylvia covered her nose, her face paling as she looked at the highly illegal contraband. If the City Guards caught them with this, they wouldn’t even get a trial.
But Arthur just stared down into the crate.
The dark rot wasn’t as thick or overwhelming as the mutated Spider Matriarch he had killed deep in the Iron-Vein mines, but the underlying signature was identical. Someone wasn’t just hoarding these—they were manufacturing them.
Arthur’s eyes narrowed into cold, dangerous slits.
"Again," Arthur murmured.