Chapter 96 – The Coin and the Cauldron.

The outer gate of the Iron Cauldron Outpost stood wide open when Diana crossed the bridge of timber and chains spanning the moat of boiling water.

There was no toll for pedestrians arriving on foot along the mountain's lower paths. Guards clad in bone armor and thick hide merely monitored the stream of wagons laden with giant monster carcasses, checking whether the shipments of meat and barrels of lard bore the sanitation seal of the Circle of Gluttony.

Diana walked with the hood of her black leather coat pulled down to eye level, concealing her obsidian horns and the amethyst circlet.

The city was an immediate cultural shock compared to everything she had known thus far.

While the Ivory Citadel in the Second Circle prized white marble architecture, silk shops, and hanging gardens of medicinal flowers, the Iron Cauldron Outpost functioned like a colossal open-air slaughterhouse and culinary hub.

The packed red dirt streets were permeated with dried grease. On every corner, ten-meter-tall cast-iron cauldrons bubbled with thick marrow broths, and dark wooden stalls sold skewers of roast centipede legs grilled over embers, cheeses aged in ash brine, and rye loaves the size of wagon wheels.

The medium of exchange remained System silver and bronze, but nearly all valuations were calculated based on animal fat weight and the caloric density of goods.

Diana stopped before a rustic stone inn named The Smoking Boar Tavern.

She stepped into the spacious common room, which smelled of dark malt ale and smoked meat, and rented a private second-floor room for three nights, paying one silver coin and fifty bronze to the four-armed ogre innkeeper.

***

After stowing her travel pack in the room locked with an iron key, Diana headed back down to the outpost streets with one priority: communication.

She needed to find a way to send a direct magical message to the Bastion of Greed in the Second Circle, letting Rhea, Kael, Aurelia-Elysia, and Seraphina know she was alive and established in the Third Circle.

Diana walked to the city's administrative plaza and entered the Border Courier and Messenger Station.

The service counter was staffed by a red-skinned clerk stamping scrolls with hot wax.

“I want to send a long-distance runic message to the southern sector of the Ivory Citadel, in the Second Circle,” Diana stated, resting her gloved hands on the wooden counter.

The clerk halted his stamp in midair and snorted a raspy laugh through his nose, looking at Diana's hood.

“Message upstairs?” The man shook his head. “The vertical magical transmission line between the Third and Second Circles is controlled by Beelzebub's Inquisitors. Communication to higher Circles requires a Feudal Nobility seal or a smuggling fee of fifty silver coins per letter, with a ten-day delivery window and risk of customs interception.”

Diana frowned beneath her hood.

Fifty silver coins for a single letter without guaranteed delivery was blatant highway robbery. If she paid the illicit fee and the message was intercepted by border inquisitors, she would not only lose the money but also expose the Bastion's exact location to Third Circle authorities.

“Understood,” Diana said coldly, turning around and leaving the courier station.

The clandestine shortcut had worked for descending, but official communication was locked down.

The only way to guarantee contact would be to build her own trade influence in that Circle and establish a direct transport route once her power was consolidated.

***

Returning to the common room of The Smoking Boar Tavern, Diana sat at a corner table near the stone wall.

She ordered a bowl of hot meat broth with rye bread and a mug of purified mineral water, paying fifty bronze coins to the server, leaving six loose silver coins in her pocket and three hundred and sixty in the faction vault.

As she ate slowly, Diana kept her hearing attuned with her 70 Perception.

At the neighboring table, a group of four veteran caravan merchants traveling between Circle borders was drinking dark beer and discussing the Second Circle's supply market.

Diana tuned her ears.

“Things in the south of the Second Circle are shifting fast...” a curved-horn demon commented, thumping his mug on the table. “A new faction named Arcane Greed took over the glass supply and locked down an exclusive military contract with Lord Cassius's Silver Legion.”

“I heard about that,” another merchant agreed, slicing off a piece of roast meat. “The healing potions that guild brews are nearly ninety percent pure. Cassius's officers are using those elixirs to clear dungeons in record time. If anyone could smuggle a batch of those Greed potions down here to the Third Circle, they'd sell them for triple list price to Beelzebub's hunting guilds.”

Diana took a bite of rye bread, feeling a subtle, cold smile curve the corner of her lips beneath her hood.

Her trade brand in the Second Circle was performing flawlessly. The alliance with the Silver Legion was bearing fruit, and her workshop's reputation had reached even the caravans of the Third Circle.

The foundation she had left behind with Rhea, Kael, Aurelia, and Seraphina stood solid and unshakable.

***

After lunch, Diana walked to the grand Border Bounty and Hunting Board erected in the outpost's central plaza.

The Commander stopped before the solid timber board, reading through expedition posters to calculate the power scale of this new environment.

And that was when the reality of the Third Circle asserted itself with brutal clarity.

The simplest hunting posters for the city's outskirts listed levels that made Diana's eyes narrow with heightened focus:

- Iron-Tusk Hill Boar: Level 44.

- Gluttonous Manticore of the Sulfur Rifts: Level 48.

- Colossus of Tallow and Molten Stone: Level 52.

- Minimum Entry Requirement for Local Dungeon: Level 45.

The power scale in the Circle of Gluttony was relentless.

In the Second Circle, Level 35 to 40 monsters were Supreme Dungeon Bosses that demanded full military sieges from coordinated teams. Here in the Third Circle, Level 44 was ordinary wildlife grazing on slopes outside the city walls.

And Diana was there alone.

She was at Level 38. Without Kael's 930 HP Volcanic Shield to lock down the front line, without Aurelia-Elysia's instant heals from 870 MP, without Rhea's stealth strikes at 109 Agility, and without Seraphina's containment summons.

If she entered direct combat against a Level 48 beast in open terrain as though she had a full squad, the numerical and physical disadvantage would be fatal.

Diana touched the Crown of Arcane Sovereignty beneath her leather hood, feeling the steady thrum of her 183 Intelligence and her 1,160 mana points.

She felt no fear. She felt no hesitation.

Diana knew her individual strength as an Archdemon was equivalent to that of an elite Level 45 mage. But to survive and hunt alone in that Circle until reaching Level 50, she could not rely on clumsy brute force.

She would need to use advanced alchemy, chemical traps, calculated ambushes, and the absolute chill of her intellect to turn those Level 45 monsters into stepping stones for her own evolution.

Diana turned her back on the bounty board, walking with steady strides back toward the inn.

Planning for her first solo hunt in the Third Circle began that night.