DD 202 Ch 26 (Patreon)

Chapter 26

As if mentioning Ami’s name had summoned her, my butler arrived not long after. And soon after that, the ink was drying on a contract with Penny as I leaned back drinking tea.

“Thank you again.” Penny bowed low. “My father will be thrilled.”

“It’s just business. Upholding your end of the bargain will be enough.” I smiled and made sure it reached my eyes.

Silver Fangs had the resources, and this would be a decently solid investment. Better to put the money to use rather than hoard it.

Hopefully her father would run his new guild a little more cautiously. It wasn’t the only guild to collapse with the dismantling of Kaiming, but hopefully that was done.

“Still. Thank you.” Penny flashed a beaming smile.

“After you graduate, do you think you’ll move into their guild?” I asked, making conversation.

“What? No. Absolutely not.” She blushed and tapped her fingers together. “I don’t want to be my father’s subordinate. I’d never leave his shadow. Rather… rather I’d like to be a part of Silver Fangs, for the long term not just through the school years.”

“Oh.” I nodded, half expecting such an answer. “Then thank you. I know we are low level, but we’ll rise.”

She nodded emphatically, her blue-hair had grown out a little. When I first met her, it was short, cropped in line with her jaw. But now it dusted at her shoulders.

The new length made her look a little more womanly, and a little less of a knight. I liked the change.

She bit her lip and nodded, her eyes roving over me.

I wondered if I had stared too long. It would be cruel to encourage her too much.

“I’ll get going.” She bowed to me and Ami quickly and hurried out.

Ami glanced at me. “You know she’s head over heels for you.”

It wasn’t a question. “I know. What am I going to do about it? My party is full.”

Ami gave me a bland stare and then shuffled the papers before adding the stack to her CID and pulling the bag she’d brought down with her open.

Inside was a brick of a device that she set down on the table.

I had only seen the one that Grandpa hid under his bed next to his magazines before. That one was ancient, unlike the one in front of me. “Did Silverfangs buy this?”

“No.” Ami shook her head. “It’s from the safe zone. Hemi extracted it from the server intact. We’ll use it in the future.” Her hand brushed the surface and a display like the CIDs lit up.

The thing was a vault. Basically, it was an unconnected CID storage, with far more room than an individual CID.

Right now, it was full of items and I leaned over the screen and started tapping. “This is everything from the safe zone?”

“Indeed.” Ami nodded. “I’ve done a preliminary sorting of what I believe you’d want to keep versus sell.”

“Thank you.” I swiped through, seeing how she’d divided the inventory. “More important than the loot, what can you tell me about the information you collected? Actually, wait.” I paused and typed out a quick message to the rest of my party. “They’ll be here shortly.”

Ami used that time to lay out tea cups and brew tea.

Crimson came in first and took the tea graciously before sitting down and pairing it with potato chips. Sakura would shudder. “Ami’s here, so there’s an update on the SJS situation?” Crimson munched on a chip.

“There’s a situation?” Elysara stepped in with Des in tow. The two of them looked far less contentious at present than when we’d stepped through the portal.

“Wait for the others.” I said, seeing Fayeth coming through the open tent flap. She was with Felin and Charlotte.

Des plopped down next to me and Elysara took the other side.

I contained a sigh. They were still in a competition, it was just a little less obvious.

Charlotte came in with Felin and Fayeth. The Nekorian spotted that both spots next to me were taken and pouted. “We should have hurried.” She still eyed my lap and licked her lips.

“Don’t get between those two.” Fayeth warned. “Not until they work their kinks out.”

“Literally.” Crimson piped up from the side.

Charlotte ignored everything being said and sat down on the arm of the sofa, placing Bun-bun on the table. “Maybe we should get to the meeting? What was Penny doing here?”

“Getting a loan and some manpower from Silverfangs to restart her father’s guild. Apparently it was a casualty of Kaiming being scrubbed off the face of the earth and the financial markets.” I answered and glanced at Ami. “Alright, so let's get down to it. What information were my grandmother’s able to get?”

Ami set down the teapot and folded her hands in her lap. “SJS is involved in the camp.”

“We knew that.” Des interrupted. “Trish’s blatant admittance to Ken was obvious and Prince Albar trying to rush over confirmed it.”

“It’s always good to double check. I could poke holes in those two.” I put a hand on Des’ leg. “Go on Ami. I’m more interested in what deal was being negotiated as we raided them.”

“It would seem that Prince Albar bought a great sum of debt from high level adventurers in a bid to expand the operations.” Ami said.

“Do we know who?” Charlotte asked quickly. No doubt she wanted to try and save them from the same fate.

Ami shook her head. “The sales were private. We could get a look at it during the next quarterly statement, assuming it’s held by SJS and not privately by the prince. By then… it’ll probably be too late.”

Another thought was occurring to me as she spoke. “Penny’s father? The others in his guild?”

Ami nodded. “Perhaps.”

“We just made a decent investment. I don’t want him to disappear. If he’s restarting a guild, he’s going to open recruitment. I want one of ours in there to keep an eye on it.”

Even though she was wearing a mask, I could tell Ami was smiling. “Yes, sir. That seems prudent.”

“Look at you being the big bad boss.” Crimson grinned at me. “He should be paying down the debt, or at least keeping up with his payments if he’s restarting. From what Ami said previously, it was largely people delinquent on their payments.”

I let out a sigh. “Right. I’m just getting a little concerned about the investment all of a sudden. So, Prince Albar wanted to ramp up operations and we just squashed them. Penny’s father should make a rather organic discovery and the UG can swoop in…” I trailed off at the look that Ami was giving me.

“Your grandfather went to scout the place the day after… it’s gone. From the damage present, he estimated there was a large explosion. The castle was largely destroyed and is now the process of being absorbed by the dungeon. He described the destruction as having destroyed the whole safe zone.”

I swallowed. “They probably moved everyone?”

“Unknown. The timing makes it unlikely, but not impossible. We can’t be sure when they destroyed the safe zone, but we can be sure that if anyone was alive and in that space prior to the explosion, they are likely now dead.” Ami dipped her head in a moment for the dead.

Charlotte let out a hissing breath. “They… they just killed them all?”

“Likely.” Ami nodded. “Relocating all of them would be difficult and possibly attract too much attention. If Prince Albar had another set of people to collect, he may prefer to completely start over.”

I glanced at Crimson, wondering if he also just threw a tantrum because a certain someone made a fool of him. That seemed like the prince.

Then again, I couldn’t put it on Crimson. It wasn’t like it was remotely reasonable for him to kill them all.

“Fine.” I leaned back. “How many times a year do we get asked to assassinate the prince?”

Almost all of their brows shot up.

The only one who seemed unsurprised was Felin, but she likely was used to more savage methods when challenged.

Ami paused and frowned. “I’m unsure. However, I could see it happening. Your grandparents would likely screen such requests.”

“Why? They don’t get along with SJS.” I said.

“Because he’s likely not viewed as a real problem.” Ami shrugged. “He’s inconsequential to the grand scheme. A brat with too much money and not enough sense.”

Des hissed. “Ami, I had no idea you were so brutal.”

“This SJS is SJS Financial Group?” Elysara tapped at her CID. “We have several deals with them at present.”

“Really?” I asked, my interest piqued.

Elysara shrugged. “We need many things, Ken, and though you have some metal supply deals there’s a lot more flowing between our people. I’ll just have to squeeze them if they give me an excuse.” She smiled devilishly.

“Oh. I cannot wait for the prince to step in it.” Des rubbed her hands together and then pressed herself into my side. Her breasts swallowed up my shoulder.

“Alright, calm down everyone. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” I patted the air to refocus the meeting. “Ami, check with my grandparents if we’ve gotten any requests to remove the prince’s head. I think that would be interesting.”

Ami nodded. “As for what else we found. It doesn’t need to be said that what happened down there was cruel and abusive towards the prisoners. Yet, Sakura doesn’t believe there’s enough to do anything more. We have a bunch of messages of a place that no longer exists and of people who are dead.”

“It’s all completely suspect with no solid backing.” I thought about that. “At least we got the job done and quite a bit of wealth from it.”

“Money never hurts.” Elysara agreed. “You also removed a problem and stopped people from growing through their unscrupulous means. It’s a victory.” Ely tried to console me.

“Well, then. I think we should focus back on training.” The DPS competition was just around the corner. It would be another opportunity to meet the Prince and see if I couldn’t make him regret his life choices a little more.

***

Ken Nagato

Class: Emperor 

Secondary Class: Demon Lord 

Level: 30 

Experience: 91% 

Strength: 118

Agility: 235

Stamina: 181

Magic: 129

Mana: 134

Skills: Dark Strike, Earth Stomp, Charm, Metamorphosis, Sprint, Absorb, Discharge, Dark Blades, Shadow Arm, Camouflage, Shadow Ambush, Elemental Shield, Portal [Special] [Restricted], Mana Burn, Hydra [Elysara], Cleave [Fayeth], Spell Mirror, Dungeon’s Blessing, Blades of Shadow, Mana Implosion, Shadow Wave [Desmonda], Revive [Charlotte], Shadow Phase, Dodge, Liminal Speed, Eyes of Wisdom [Crimson], Delirious Pleasures, Triple Breach, Arcane Singularity

My stats had grown some with the training, but my leveling had slowed down drastically at level 30. Then again, we were above the level of the event. My stats might be slowing down simply because we were farming lower level monsters.

I stretched as we settled in at the 30th floor safe zone for a night of rest. We’d taken the afternoon off to make sure we were all at our prime for the competition the next day.

The inn was nice, with big suites for parties.

Des and Ely continued to be like paired magnets. Tension was building up between them anytime they were in a room together.

The current moment was no exception. They were playing chess, and I thought they were going to start breaking pieces with how hard they slammed them down.

“Going to do anything about that?” Charlotte asked, coming over to check on me. She put her hand on my back as I stretched and probed me with magic.

My body wasn’t really human anymore.

The dungeon and leveling had stuffed my body with so much magic that I was almost more magic than man at this point.

“Pretty sure there’s a silent battle for dominance. Des is loving it, despite the tension. She wants to play with a princess, but Elysara is an empress and she’s not going to give in easily. Best that I don’t spoil either of their fun.”

Charlotte frowned. “That’s fun?”

“To them.” I shrugged and glanced at the door. Fayeth and Felin had gone out for food and likely drinks. They weren’t back yet.

“They’ll be fine.” Charlotte touched me with glowing hands in a few spots. “You’re good. Nervous about the competition?”

“Me? Nervous? No. Not really about the competition. If anything, I’m just worried I won’t match up to Crimson’s expectations.” I sat down to work on my glutes.

Charlotte raised an eyebrow and waited for me to continue.

“She spends a lot of time training me. I can’t help but feel some pressure of responsibility.” It was only natural.

That, and there was my own relentless drive to push forward. It wasn’t easy being Crimson’s protege. I was a reflection on her in many ways.

Though, she’d certainly shrug off anybody’s opinion she didn’t like.

The door opened and Neldra let in Fayeth and Felin. Both of them were carrying takeout bags. Felin’s had several wine bottles while Fayeth held the food.

Neldra slipped in with them and took up a post in the corner that was anything but inconspicuous. She took guarding Ely very seriously.

“Oh. This looks good.” Des pulled the bag of wines from Felin and fished a bottle opener from her CID to remove the cork.

Fayeth laid out the food on the table. “Too bad they wouldn’t let me use the kitchen at the inn.”

“You don’t have to make dinner every night.” Ely laid a hand on her friend and fished out more of the containers to help her lay them out.

“So. How much has everyone put on Ken for the betting?” Des asked around.

“All I have.” Felin grinned.

“Plenty.” Ely smiled at me.

I felt the pressure increase on me again.

Everyone was putting their money on me, though the odds had evened out substantially from the early betting that we’d done.

“Don’t add pressure to him.” Charlotte admonished the rest of the group. “I’m more concerned how you’re going to keep up, Des.”

“Hey. Miss I-am-a-healer, damage dealing can be hard.” Des stuck her tongue out.

“I have my own part in the competition. They’ll make me heal for an extended period.” Charlotte puffed out her cheeks. 

“It’ll all be fine.” I added to the group, trying to settle them down. They seemed a bit more worked up than usual. “We’ll all do our best and then hit the raid for the first time after.”

I looked around at the lovely ladies of my party and smiled. “Tonight, we should celebrate.” I grabbed the wine bottle from Des and tipped it back, drinking straight from it.

“Yeah. Party tonight and fight tomorrow.” Des handed Ely a bottle. I had a feeling she was going to try to get her opponent drunk tonight.