Chapter 75: I don’t bluff
The Guild Association Headquarters was located in the center of Lornfell’s commercial district.
Arthur and Sylvia walked into Chamber Four and took their seats at the defendant’s table.
On the left side of the room sat Darius Holt. The Red Boar Vanguard Captain had a bruised jaw and scuffed armor—the clear results of his run-in with the City Guard yesterday morning. Sitting directly beside him was a thin, impeccably dressed man holding a ruby-topped cane.
"Baron Graves," Sylvia whispered, her gray eyes narrowing as she took her seat at the right-side table. "He’s the primary financier for the Red Boar guild. He owns half the merchant shipping lines in the southern docks."
Arthur took the seat next to her, casually resting his arms on the wooden table. He recognized the name immediately. In the game’s lore, Baron Graves was a mid-tier corrupt noble who eventually triggered a massive city-wide scandal for laundering dark-arts artifacts.
"The Formal Arbitration will commence," the Chief Arbiter announced, striking a small wooden gavel. "The plaintiff, Vanguard Captain Darius Holt of the Red Boar, against the defendant, Guild Master Sylvia of the Obsidian Hand. Captain Holt, state your grievance."
Darius stood up. Despite his bruised face, his posture was radiating pure, arrogant malice.
"Chief Arbiter," Darius began, his deep voice echoing in the chamber. "Two days ago, the Obsidian Hand orchestrated a malicious, highly coordinated corporate attack against my guild. They planted a crate of forged, highly illegal necrotic cores into their own supply line, then submitted an anonymous tip to the City Inspector’s office to frame us."
Darius pointed a thick, gauntleted finger directly at Sylvia.
"Because of their slander, the City Guard violently raided my primary warehouse," Darius growled. "They caused tens of thousands of credits in property damage, seized my legitimate stock, and completely halted my daily operations. This was a targeted assassination of my clean-market status."
The Arbiter frowned, looking down at his notes. "These are heavy accusations, Captain Holt. What restitution are you demanding?"
"I demand the immediate, total liquidation of the Obsidian Hand," Darius stated coldly. "I demand the deeds to their warehouse and the transfer of all their registered dungeon claims to the Red Boar guild as compensation for the damages and lost revenue."
Sylvia’s jaw tightened. They were trying to steal the crawler cavern legally.
Baron Graves leaned forward, steepling his fingers over his ruby-tipped cane.
"Chief Arbiter," Graves added, his voice slick with aristocratic authority. "The banking syndicates cannot tolerate rogue, fledgling guilds using the City Guard as a weapon to destabilize the local economy. The Obsidian Hand is a desperate, bankrupt faction. They resorted to extreme, illegal sabotage. An example must be made to maintain order in the industrial sector."
The Arbiter nodded slowly, clearly intimidated by the Baron’s wealth and political weight. He turned his gaze to the right side of the room.
"Guild Master Sylvia," the Arbiter addressed her. "The plaintiff claims you manufactured the contraband to trigger a false raid. How do you respond?"
Sylvia stood up, preparing to present the inspector clearance forms.
Arthur placed a hand on her arm. "Sit down, Sylvia," he murmured.
Sylvia blinked, looking at his calm, pitch-black eyes, and slowly lowered herself back into her chair.
Arthur stood up. He adjusted the cuffs of his academy uniform and looked directly at Baron Graves.
"We didn’t plant the cores," Arthur stated, his voice ringing clearly across the quiet chamber. "Because we don’t have the infrastructure or the funds to manufacture hundreds of necrotic weapons or artifacts."
Darius sneered. "Varrik Slate smuggled them in for you."
"Varrik Slate works the southern docks," Arthur countered smoothly. He didn’t look at Darius. He kept his eyes locked entirely on the nobleman. "And according to the city’s tax registries, Baron Graves’ shipping lines hold the absolute monopoly on southern imports. Specifically, the unrefined synthetic resin used to seal those corrupted cores."
Graves’s face lost all its color.
"You over-farmed the Red Boar’s public dungeons," Arthur continued, dissecting the operation out loud. "Your cores degraded. To keep up your market monopoly, you started injecting dead F-Rank husks with necrotic sludge, using the Red Boar to launder them into the city’s black market."
"Slander!" Graves shouted, standing up so fast his chair toppled backward. "Chief Arbiter, I demand this student be arrested for defamation! This is an outrage!"
"If it’s slander, then you won’t mind an audit," Arthur challenged, his eyes completely merciless.
Arthur took another step forward, lowering his voice into a deadly, surgical strike.
"If you continue to defend Darius Holt in this room, Baron," Arthur warned, "I will walk straight from this building to the Royal Inquisition. I will tell them to search the private, lead-lined wine cellars beneath your West End estate. Because we both know exactly how much necrotic sludge is currently sitting in those barrels."
Checkmate.
Baron Graves froze entirely. The air completely left his lungs. His hawkish eyes stared at the first-year student in absolute, unadulterated terror. The wine cellars. It was his most heavily guarded, highly classified secret, and this teenager had just casually dropped the exact location in a public arbitration room.
If the Inquisition searched his estate, he wouldn’t just lose his wealth. He would be executed for high treason.
Graves didn’t look at Darius. He didn’t look at the Arbiter.
He grabbed his ruby-topped cane and violently shoved himself away from the Red Boar table.
"My... my legal counsel advises me that the Red Boar’s current operational liabilities are entirely unmanageable," Graves stammered, his voice shaking as he backed toward the exit. "As of this moment, the Graves Syndicate officially revokes all financial backing, legal representation, and association with Darius Holt."
"Baron?!" Darius yelled, his eyes wide with betrayal and panic as his entire empire crumbled in front of him. "You can’t do this! We have a contract!"
"You are on your own, Holt," Graves hissed, practically sprinting out of the heavy brass doors of the chamber.
Darius Holt was left standing entirely alone.
Without his noble backer, and with the City Guard seizure manifest already on the Arbiter’s desk, he was nothing but a bankrupt criminal.
The Chief Arbiter cleared his throat, looking at Darius with disgust.
"Captain Holt," the Arbiter declared, striking his gavel. "This arbitration is dismissed. The Red Boar guild’s charter is suspended pending a full criminal investigation. Your assets are frozen."
Darius’s face twisted into a mask of pure, rabid desperation.
He locked his bloodshot eyes on Arthur. He didn’t care about the law anymore. He lunged across the arbitration chamber, drawing his massive steel broadsword to cleave Arthur in half.
"Guards!" the Arbiter shouted.
Arthur didn’t flinch. He didn’t even draw his daggers. He simply stood perfectly still, watching the Vanguard Captain charge him.
Before Darius could even close half the distance, Sylvia moved.
She vaulted over the defense table. Dropping her center of gravity, the Guild Master slipped perfectly beneath Darius’s wild swing and drove her armored elbow directly into his solar plexus.
The impact cracked his breastplate.
As Darius doubled over, gasping for air, Sylvia grabbed the back of his steel collar. She violently twisted her hips and slammed the massive man face-first into the solid marble floor.
Crack.
Darius went completely limp, knocked unconscious by the sheer efficiency of the takedown.
Four Association guards rushed into the room a second later, tackling the unconscious Vanguard Captain and binding his wrists with heavy irons.
Sylvia stood up, shaking out her arm. She looked down at the bleeding thug, and then turned her gray eyes toward Arthur.
"I told you," Sylvia said, a fierce smirk spreading across her face. "I run the floor operations."
Arthur gave a genuine, approving nod. "You handled that perfectly, Guild Master."
Ten minutes later, Arthur and Sylvia walked out of the Guild Association Headquarters and stepped into the bustling morning sunlight of the commercial district.
Sylvia let out a long, heavy exhale.
"Darius is going to rot in the city dungeons, and Baron Graves just cut his own supply lines to save his neck," Sylvia laughed, the adrenaline finally hitting her. "The Red Boar is completely dead."
"And their market share is completely open," Arthur noted smoothly.
Sylvia looked at him, shaking her head in disbelief. "How did you know about the Baron’s wine cellars, Arthur? If you had been bluffing, Graves would have had us executed."
"I don’t bluff," Arthur replied simply.
He stopped on the cobblestone street, turning to face his Guild Master.
"With Red Boar’s assets frozen, the city’s craftsmen are going to be desperate for raw materials," Arthur stated. "Expand the roster. Hire reliable hunters to increase our shift rotations at the crawler cavern, and start pulling heavily from the Mutated Flora Grotto. We need to grab as much of Red Boar’s lost market share as we can before the other guilds move in."
"I’ll have Tolan mass-producing basic stamina and healing drafts by Monday to undercut the potion market," Sylvia promised, her eyes burning with fierce determination. "What about you?"
Arthur looked toward the towering spires of Lornfell Academy in the distance. The bureaucratic war in the city was won, but the academic calendar was still ticking.
"My squad needs to start utilizing our new gear," Arthur said, his dark eyes gleaming. "The academy’s Mid-Term Dungeon Evaluation is approaching.