CHAPTER 102 New Hideout and Split of the Booty

The morning sun rose over the dense wall of the virgin forest, piercing through the tall, arched windows of the basalt manor. The entire kitchen smelled of freshly brewed herbal coffee and cinnamon pancakes that Mina was pouring onto the steel skillet at production speed.

I sat at the oak table, finishing my third mug of black brew. In front of me on the tabletop lay a small leather pouch with reinforced seams. I hadn't packed the entire treasury from the depths of the Forgotten Necropolis into it. Pragmatically speaking, dumping a hundred S-rank cores onto the Crossgard market in a single morning would cause wild panic, an inflation spike among guild merchants, and immediately draw the attention of Upper City spies to the manor. I only brought a selective, small batch of minor cores and magnetic obsidian.

Little Ria zipped past the table. She was levitating with her telekinesis again—this time a clean cloth and a wooden breadbox, ensuring that not a single crumb remained on my table.

"Boss, your coat is cleaned of frost from the 79th floor, leather straps for the pouches tightened to the third hole," she said with a small, spunky Aisha-style smirk, standing by my chair and handing me the oak-colored coat. "Shnee and Karys are already standing in the courtyard. Karys has been weighing her empty pouch in her hand for five minutes, complaining that if she doesn't get cash for new leather gloves today, she'll start charging the birds an entrance fee to the manor."

I ran my hand over the back of my neck, laughing softly.

"You're turning into a sharp little rascal, Ria," I smiled, stroking her black hair between her horns. "Keep an eye on Elena and Mina while we're gone."

"Elena is teaching me double-entry bookkeeping today," the little Tiefling replied proudly, straightening her back. "When you return, I'll count every coin faster than that old fence of yours."

I buckled my belt, slipped on my coat, and stepped out into the courtyard. Shnee, in her tailored, dignified attire, leaned against a basalt pillar, while Karys spun her empty pouch on her finger. Elena walked right behind me with a small, leather-bound treasurer's notebook.

Passing through the Lower City had a specific, raw atmosphere. The market streets thrummed with life—the smell of cheap beer, roasted smoked meats, and sour sweat mixed with the clamor of merchants. But there was something else hanging in the air: a dense murmur of rumors. Slipping between the stalls, we caught snippets of mercenary conversations.

"...I'm telling you, the board in the Guild of Pledges went crazy! The 42nd floor is unlocked!" "...The aura on the board is glowing gold... Someone cleared the acid labyrinths in a single night!" "...The Inquisition sent scouts to the Necropolis this morning, but the portal at the bottom is dead silent!"

Listening to this with casual arrogance, I passed through the marketplaces without revealing by a single movement of my head that we were the ones who had reset that dungeon down to the bare dirt.

Search "NovelPhoenix" plus the story's title to find the original; this copy was posted without permission.

Silas was no longer operating in his old, compromised quarters. He led us deep into the alleys beneath an old, abandoned tannery in the Lower City. The descent down damp stone steps led to an underground oak hideout stuffed with double deadbolts and simple silencing runes.

"Get inside, quickly," Silas whispered, sliding back heavy iron bars.

Inside, two of his most trusted appraisers were waiting. When I poured the contents of the leather pouch onto the oak tabletop—dark cores pulsing with magnetic radiance and black obsidian crystals—a dead silence fell over the cellar. Silas swallowed hard, and his appraisers nearly dropped their brass scales.

"Dave... you really weren't kidding," Silas rasped, taking one of the smaller S-rank cores in drfiting fingers. "These are pure, uncontaminated crystals from deep structures. If I dumped these all at once on the Upper City merchants, I'd cause a price war."

"That's why we do this pragmatically," I replied coldly, leaning against the edge of the table. "You pay us clean currency in gold, silver, and copper for the manor's reserve. As much as we need for current moves and materials. The rest you trickle through black-market channels."

The counting took a good hour. Silas, with the diligence of an old black-market fence, paid us a plump leather chest filled with clinking, pure talers and smaller pouches.

After returning to the manor, we sat down in the dining room. I had no intention of playing the greedy warlord. The division of wealth had to be clean, firm, and fair.

"Elena, this goes into the main reserve," I indicated the heavy oak chest with gold. "Keep the books on this. Supplies, manor expansion, fees, and rare raw materials for the forge."

"Understood, Dave. Everything will be recorded," Elena replied with surgical composure, writing the amount in her notebook.

Then I picked up the smaller, weighted pouches filled with silver and copper. I walked over to the girls.

"And this is for you guys. For your own expenses, clothes, women's knick-knacks in town, and whatever else you come up with," I said with a relaxed smile, handing the pouches one by one to Shnee, Karys, Elena, Luthia, Mina, little Ria, and Kaede.

Karys grabbed her pouch, shook it by her ear, hearing the loud, clinking crunch of silver, and grinned with a wild, predatory smile.

"Oho, now that's what I'm talking about!" laughed the wolf-girl, slapping the pouch against her thigh. "Dave, I'm telling you right now, half of this silver goes to fresh venison and custom gloves!"

Shnee accepted her pouch with dignified but visible satisfaction in her diamond eyes.

"Thank you, Dave," the elf said softly, sending me a soft, warm look. "Your pragmatism always carries class."

Ria held her pouch with reverent excitement, as if she had received the greatest treasure in the world.

As the girls inspected their loot, I turned to Silas, who was still standing by the door, turning a dead pipe in his fingers.

"Silas, one thing," I spoke coldly, walking up to him. "I need a blacksmith. But not some arrogant paralytic with an Upper City license who can only trim swords in gold for the aristocracy. I need someone with real craft instinct. A self-taught genius who isn't afraid of innovation and has the courage to undertake impossible smithing."

Silas pondered, stroking his gray beard.

"Hm... there is one guy like that," the fence rasped. "His name is Grim. He comes from an old, great blacksmithing lineage, but he roosts at the very bottom in the slums of the Lower City. The old man is a brilliant self-taught master, but the entire Craftsmen Guild considers him a madman and a heretic. He experiments with innovative steel density methods, destroying traditional furnaces because he's looking for a way to forge materials that no one in this city can even scratch."

I smiled predatorily. A sapphire spark flashed in my eyes.

"A brilliant self-taught master whom the stiff-necks consider a heretic?" I summarized with casual arrogance. "Silas, you just described my ideal collaborator. First thing tomorrow morning, we're paying him a visit."