Chapter 149 – The Loose Thread.

Diana pushed open the iron gate of the Lower Cauldrons Estate at nightfall.

She entered the living room, removed her leather coat dusted with rye flour on the sleeve, and tossed the pouch containing the five confiscated silver coins onto the coffee table.

The squad was gathered: Kael was finishing polishing his shield near the hearth, Mai was eating a crystal apple sitting on the floor propped against the armchair, and Aurelia-Elysia was sorting clean bandages alongside Seraphina. 

Rhea sat on the window bench. Upon spotting the white powder on Diana's clothing, the wolf girl stood up in a second, ears perking upright:

“What happened to your jacket, Diana?”

Diana sat down in the cedar armchair and summarized the event in three brief sentences: the attack in the warehouse alley, the shattered flour barrel, and Kip's confession regarding the thirty-silver bounty posted by the Quicksilver Guild.

Kael burst into a loud laugh, slapping his thigh: “The guy fell headfirst into a barrel of rye flour?! That's not an assassin, that's a circus clown!”

Mai laughed with her mouth full of apple, her striped tail swishing across the rug.

Diana waited for the laughter to die down. She rested her elbows on the wooden table, dark eyes with golden rings locked onto the center of the room:

“The kid was a Level 33 incompetent who didn't even know how to hold a knife. But the fact that someone from the Second Circle managed to slip down here and pay local middlemen to put a contract on my head is no joke.”

The Commander looked at Kael and Rhea with surgical seriousness:

“If a bankrupt Quicksilver clerk managed to cross the border and track down an underworld broker in this outpost, it means there is an active communication line leaking information between the Circles. Leaving that broker loose in the city gives room for other merchants to discover that the Arcane Greed Faction is operating without Beelzebub's authorization.”

Kael's laugh vanished on the spot. The vanguard straightened his posture, nodding his head.

Rhea took two steps forward, hands resting upon the hilts of her Dragon Daggers: “I'm going with you. Where is this broker?”

Zarek dropped from the stairwell with an easy hop, adjusting his lunar swords across his back: “I know the three blood brokers in this outpost. Let's pay a visit before dinner.”

***

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The Ironbone Den - Tannery District

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The local underworld contract broker operated out of the back room of an illicit gambling den nestled between the leather tanneries of the eastern sector.

The establishment reeked of cheap pipeweed, rancid grease, and gamblers' sweat. Stone tables accommodated Level 45 to 52 demons rolling bone dice and wagering bronze coins beneath smoking lanterns.

Diana stepped through the broad-planked door with her coat buttoned and the Crown of Sovereignty gleaming upon her brow. 

Rhea walked a pace behind her with the fluid speed of 124 Agility, and Zarek followed right after, all six arms displayed alongside the oppressive presence of Level 60.

Two Level 48 thugs armed with iron clubs stepped forward to block the rear hallway, but the second they saw Zarek's six eyes gleam crimson in the dim light, both men swallowed hard and pressed their backs flat against the wall, yielding the way without uttering a peep.

Diana kicked open the wooden door of the back office with the sole of her leather boot.

The brass latch gave way with a crisp crack.

Behind an ink-stained wooden desk scattered with loose coins sat the broker: Kozak, a four-eyed demon with scaly gray skin and a threadbare leather coat.

Kozak pulled a short knife from a drawer on reflex, but froze mid-draw.

Diana paced toward the desk with deliberate steps and slammed the two flour-dusted, rusted daggers taken from Kip right atop the man's stacks of paper.

The blades struck with a clean metallic clatter.

Diana planted both gloved hands tipped with obsidian claws on the edge of the desk, leaning forward:

“You sold a contract describing a Level twenty human to a boy who nearly drowned in a barrel of rye, Kozak.”

Diana's voice fell in a velvety, quiet tone, laden with the chilling frost of 237 Intelligence.

Kozak stared at the rusted daggers, then at Diana's obsidian horns and her vertical pupils encircled by golden rings. Then, his four eyes registered Zarek leaning on the doorframe with both moon blades drawn and Rhea standing in the shadows of the wall with daggers at the ready.

The broker dropped the knife onto the desk with shaking hands, cold sweat beading across the scales of his neck:

“C-Commander... I... I'm just the ledger broker! I didn't know who the real mark was!”

“I didn't ask about your ignorance, Kozak,” Diana said, her voice cutting through the room's air. “I want the name, the location, and the amount the client paid to post that order in your book.”

***

Kozak did not hesitate for half a second.

Faced with a Level 60 demon and an Archdemon radiating the presence of a Deadly Sin, the broker opened his iron strongbox drawer and set a ledger and a cloth bag on the desk:

“His name is Alber!” the man blurted quickly, stammering in terror. “He was one of the stewards for the Quicksilver Guild in the Second Circle! He fled the Citadel two weeks ago when the Silver Legion seized his warehouses. He slipped down here hidden in a hay wagon and came to me weeping with spite, paying thirty silvers to whoever killed the girl who wrecked his business in the south!”

Kozak pointed a shaking finger toward the rear window:

“He's holed up in an abandoned hide-drying shed near the mountain canal! He has no coin left, no escort, and he's waiting for word of the kill so he can flee into the Fourth Circle!”

Diana took the cloth bag off the desk: inside were fifteen pure silver coins, the remainder of the payment Alber had deposited as collateral with the broker upon completion.

Diana stowed the silver into her dimensional bag.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

[FULL FINANCIAL AUDIT]

- Previous Balance: 528 Silver Coins (52.3 Gold Coins).

- Confiscation of Illegal Bounty Deposit: +15 Silver Coins!

- NEW VAULT BALANCE: 543 SILVER COINS (54,300 Bronze / EXACTLY 54.3 PURE GOLD COINS!)

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Five hundred and forty-three silver coins secured in the faction vault. More than Fifty-Four pure Gold Coins.

Diana drew her hands back from the desk, fixing the broker with her black-gold gaze:

“The contract is void, Kozak. If you log another sheet bearing the name of Arcane Greed in this outpost... I will break all four of your hands and burn this shack down with you inside it.”

“Canceled! Torn up! Erased from the ledgers!” Kozak ripped the page from the register and swallowed it whole right before their eyes in sheer desperation.

***

Twenty minutes later, the squad reached the hide-drying shed on the canal's edge.

Alber was found in the back of the shed, tying up an old rucksack with his travel belongings. The man was a lesser demon with weak features at Level 30, lacking real combat weaponry.

When the shed door was kicked in and Alber saw Diana standing at the entrance beneath the copper moonlight, her black horns and amethyst circlet glowing, the man fell to his knees in the straw, dropping his rucksack with his hands over his head, shivering in unadulterated terror.

Diana didn't spend a single drop of mana on him.

She did not draw her dagger and cast no spells.

She simply took the forged merchant seal Alber carried in his pocket and snapped it in two with the force of her black claws, tossing the fragments onto the gravel.

“You lost everything in the Second Circle because you tried dirty monopolies against someone who could do the math better than you, Alber,” Diana said in a calm, icy tone. “And now you've lost the last thirty silver coins you had in your pocket.”

Diana turned her back toward the shed's exit:

“Boran has friends in the quarry guard in the north sector. Tomorrow morning you're being turned in as an undocumented vagrant to break stone in the sulfur rifts for the next five years. Be thankful you are still drawing breath.”

Alber slumped forward, forehead pressed into the packed dirt, weeping in total silence as Zarek bound the man's hands with a strip of rough cord.

***

Diana, Rhea, and Zarek walked back along the red-dirt lanes toward the Lower Cauldrons Estate.

The night was crisp. The runoff canal flowed quietly beside the granite path.

Rhea walked pressed against Diana's arm, silver ears upright, holding the Commander's hand with fingers interlaced.

The final loose thread of the Second Circle had been severed and buried in the mud.

There were no more underworld contracts, no more Quicksilver spies lurking on street corners, and the vault held over fifty-four pure gold coins.

Diana looked toward the valley horizon, where the chimneys of the Red Cauldron Arena threw reddish sparks against the dark sky.

The rearguard was secure.

And the next step toward Level 50 was ready to be taken.