Chapter 7 Chapter 7: Tracking the Tycoon's Daughter
Origin Camp #10086, Central District Ashcroft Vanguard Headquarters.
Vivian Ashcroft sat behind a long table cobbled together from raw logs, fingers tracing fast across the light screen hovering in front of her. A waterfall of blue data reflected in her sharp, cold eyes.
"Our base Life Point reserve is draining thirty percent faster than projected."
She pushed the screen aside.
Milo knelt in front of the table, face streaked with mud and sweat, not daring to lift his head.
"Chairwoman Ashcroft, it's not that I wasn't watching! That guy Julian Vance he's completely unreadable!"
"He pulled 20,000 units of low-grade bloodroot out of nowhere and sold it at two points a plant! Every crate our people stockpiled is dead weight now!"
Vivian tapped two fingers against the table.
"Twenty thousand plants."
She repeated the number slowly.
"Half a day after launch, even every guild in this camp working together couldn't have scraped up twenty thousand units of bloodroot. Either he's cracked some kind of supreme-tier talent, or he stumbled onto a genuine system exploit."
A man in gold-rimmed glasses leaned in and spoke low.
"Chairwoman, want me to take some men down to the black market and... handle him?"
He drew a thumb across his own throat.
"Idiot."
Vivian's gaze went flat and cold.
"Make a move inside the safe zone and the system penalty strips half your Life Points on the spot. Besides you really think a man who can conjure that much product out of thin air is some clueless mark?"
She stood and walked over to Milo.
"Was he alone?"
"No just him and one other guy. Big, dumb-looking, carrying a rebar rod. Dressed in rags. Looked like muscle for hire."
Vivian raised a hand and snapped her fingers.
Three men in matching light leather armor stepped out of the shadows. The one at the front Grady Voss, Level 3, an assassin.
"Grady. Take two men and put eyes on him."
Vivian turned and walked back behind the table.
"No moving in yet. Find out where his supply's coming from and what he's got up his sleeve. If he leaves camp to farm, find somewhere quiet and squeeze every last detail out of him his Life Points, his talents, all of it."
Back at the black market.
CRACK.
Duke smashed the empty wooden crate he'd been standing on into splinters with one swing of the rebar.
A few onlookers who'd drifted close flinched and scrambled back a solid five meters.
"Boss, all packed up!"
Duke slung the rebar over one shoulder, grinning so wide his eyes nearly vanished.
"We've got over 40,000 Life Points banked. Back home that's enough for a whole penthouse downtown!"
Julian rolled up the tarp and stuffed it into his inventory.
In the dark-gold grid at the corner of his vision, three red markers sat locked in a tight inverted triangle, thirty meters out. Grady and his crew hadn't shifted an inch.
Even the surveillance work these guild lackeys pulled had that same stiff, assembly-line training all over it.
"A penthouse, huh."
Julian brushed the dirt off his hands.
"In Godsfall, that kind of money wouldn't buy you a toilet. You think Vivian Ashcroft and her people are pushovers? We just torched their revenue stream. Right now they're probably in some back room figuring out how to take us apart and sell the pieces."
"So we just camp the safe zone! They wouldn't dare touch us with the system penalty hanging over their heads!" Duke thumped his own chest.
"And just wait to die slowly instead?"
Julian kicked a splinter of broken crate out of his path.
"Safe zone drains a fixed amount of Life Points every single day. Money only going out and never coming back in even a mountain of gold runs dry eventually. A landlord's first rule: money has to make more money, and territory has to expand. Let's go. Time to shop outside the walls."
He grabbed a hunk of roasted mutated wolf meat from a nearby vendor for ten Life Points and tossed it to Duke.
"Eat up. Gets rough out there."
The two of them stepped out through Camp #10086's blue energy dome, one after the other.
The air outside turned murky instantly, thick with the smell of wet earth and rot.
Julian ignored the flattened dirt trail the main crowd had worn down and cut sideways into the dark treeline west of camp instead.
Players had already started calling this stretch the Black Marsh. Rough terrain, poison gas pockets, natural traps everywhere, and monsters running Level 5 and up as a baseline. Nobody with sense went near it yet.
"Boss, ground's murder out here, mud's up past my ankles."
Duke slogged through, boots making a wet, sucking sound with every step.
"Rough ground means nobody's out here stealing our kills."
Julian, still in flip-flops, deliberately picked his way over soft dirt and tall weeds.
He walked at an easy pace, not bothering to clear the broken branches trailing behind him.
On his retina, the three red dots had already crossed into the treeline behind them.
Two hundred meters back, Grady triggered the assassin skill Fade, his outline blending halfway into the underbrush. He studied the uneven footprints in the mud and the torn strips of cloth caught on the thorns, and let out a cold laugh.
"Thought this guy was some kind of mastermind. Turns out he's just a rookie who knows a little business math."
The man beside him kept his voice low.
"Boss Voss, this guy's cutting straight through the worst terrain around. Could be a setup?"
"Don't be an idiot."
Grady spat on the ground.
"This is a man panicking, not planning. Guy's sitting on forty thousand points, scared stiff of getting robbed by every broke player in camp, so he bolts straight into the one place nobody follows. Doesn't have a clue how to survive out here, either. I could track this mess blindfolded."
He signaled forward.
"Move faster. Up ahead is Venomtoad territory. Once they're tangled up fighting monsters, we close in and take them clean."
Ahead of them, Julian kept walking, murmuring to himself.
"System. Pull terrain data, 500 meters out."
A waterfall of blue data swept across his vision.
[300m ahead: Level 6 Venomtoad colony.]
[200m left: Natural bog trap 5m deep, applies Slow.]
[150m right: Level 8 Rockback Bear den.]
Julian ran the numbers fast.
Killing these three assassins outright was an easy win, but it'd burn stamina and maybe force his hand on a trump card he didn't want to show yet. Worse the second they died, word would reach Vivian instantly, and she'd send someone stronger next time.
Better to send the tycoon's daughter a real gift. And get rid of these three flies for good in the process.
"Duke."
Julian stopped dead.
Duke braked hard, nearly slamming into Julian's back.
"What's up, Boss?"
"Take off your jacket."
"...Huh?"
Duke blinked, scratching the back of his head.
"It's kinda cold out, why am I stripping?"
"Less talking, more stripping."
Duke didn't argue, peeling off his blood-stained security jacket.
Julian took it, pulled an unsold low-grade bloodroot plant from his inventory, crushed it in his fist, and smeared the green juice across the fabric. Then he gave it a flick and hung it off the branch of a tall dead tree nearby.
A breeze rolled through, the jacket swaying gently, the herbal scent drifting off it from a distance, in the low light, it read exactly like a person crouched there.
"Boss, what are you doing?"
Julian didn't answer, just pointed at a slope on the right, thick with chest-high brush.
"Climb up. Lie flat, stay still. Not a sound unless I call for you."
Duke wasn't a subtle man, but he followed orders without question. He scrambled awkwardly up the slope on hands and feet and dropped flat behind the bushes.
Julian dropped back behind a boulder on the opposite side of the slope.
He drew the Ratfang dagger, weighed it once in his palm, then shut his mouth and slowed his breathing down to almost nothing.
Under two minutes later, three faint shapes crept in, following the trail of footprints.
Grady led from the front, a poisoned bronze dagger in hand, stepping so lightly he didn't crack a single fallen leaf.
His eyes locked onto the jacket hanging off the dead tree.
The light was thin, the brush gave good cover, and the way the fabric swayed in the wind read exactly like someone crouched low, back turned, gathering something off the ground.
"Found him."
Grady flashed a hand signal over the party channel.
The three assassins spread wide, closing into a loose circle, using tree trunks for cover as they crept toward the dead tree.
Ten meters.
Five.
Three.
Grady planted both feet and triggered Backstab, his whole body blurring forward, dagger driving straight into the jacket's back.
SHHK.
The bronze blade sliced clean through the fabric.
Something was wrong. No resistance, no give of flesh just cloth.
He ripped the jacket down and stared at what he was holding in the dim light.
"Damn it we got played!"
Grady cursed loud, cold sweat breaking out across his back.
"CONTACT!"
The other two snapped into a back-to-back stance, weapons up, scanning the treeline.
Behind the boulder, Julian watched the three of them scatter like spooked birds and smiled to himself.
Anyone who wants to come out ahead in this world had better be ready to eat some poison first.
He tapped two fingers in the air.
"System. Modify scent dispersion within a ten-meter radius ahead. Force the wind to reverse."
[Confirmed. 50 Life Points deducted. Rule modification applied.]
Julian pulled a fist-sized leather pouch from his inventory the venom gland he'd casually carved off the Scaled Rat King back in its den. Foul enough to gag a normal person, and a magnet for certain high-tier monsters.
He punctured the pouch with the dagger and hurled it downhill.
It landed square on the rock at Grady's feet.
SPLAT.
Black venom sprayed everywhere, and a rank, fishy stench detonated through the clearing.
Under the forced wind reversal, the smell didn't scatter in every direction it got funneled dead-straight toward the Rockback Bear den, a hundred and fifty meters out.
Grady clamped a hand over his nose, eye twitching hard.
"What the hell IS this?! Fall back! FALL BACK NOW, this kid set us up!"
He turned to run.
Too late.
"RAAAAWR!"
A deep, bone-rattling roar rolled out of the trees in the distance.
