Chapter 117: It is that serious
Cleo’s eyes widened slightly. "You think there’s something in that town worth scouting?"
"I don’t know," Draven admitted. "But a dungeon break happening in that exact location, followed immediately by an unregistered, exceptionally powerful player showing up to clear it personally, feels like too much of a coincidence to ignore outright."
Cleo sat back slightly, processing everything Draven had just laid out.
None of it painted an especially comforting picture. If a powerful, hidden guild really had sent someone that strong into the region for a reason neither of them could yet identify, it meant Bursting Jade was potentially walking into something far bigger than a simple dungeon break gone wrong.
"What do you want me to do?" Cleo asked.
Draven turned back from the window, his expression hardening into something more decisive.
"For now, nothing rash. I don’t want you engaging him again directly, not until we understand exactly what we’re dealing with. If he really is connected to a guild capable of concealing a player of that strength, provoking him further could bring consequences we’re not prepared to handle."
Cleo’s jaw tightened slightly at that, old pride still stinging from his earlier defeat. Still, he understood the logic behind the caution. Acting recklessly against an unknown threat of that magnitude wasn’t strength, it was carelessness.
"I want you to quietly gather information instead," Draven continued. "Find out if he’s still in Ratdale, or if he’s already moved on. If he has moved on, find out where. I want eyes on him, but no direct contact. Understood?"
Cleo nodded slowly. "Understood."
"Good," Draven said. "In the meantime, I’ll reach out to a few contacts of my own, see if anyone else across the continent has heard anything about a player matching his description. If a guild powerful enough to produce someone like him actually exists, someone, somewhere, has to know something about it."
Cleo rose to his feet, preparing to leave the office and get started on the task in front of him. Before he reached the door, though, Draven’s voice stopped him.
"One more thing," Draven said. "This information stays between us for now. I don’t want word of an unregistered, exceptionally powerful player spreading through the guild until we understand exactly what we’re dealing with. If word gets out prematurely, and it turns out he really is tied to something significant, we’ll only be inviting unnecessary attention onto ourselves."
Cleo gave a firm nod. "Understood. I’ll keep this quiet."
With that, he stepped out of the office, closing the door softly behind him.
Draven remained standing by the window for a long while after Cleo left, staring out over the wide, sprawling city stretching out beneath him.
Aldreth had always prided itself on order, on the careful, structured hierarchy that kept its guilds, its players, and its ranked citizens all functioning smoothly within their designated places.
The idea that someone capable of casually overturning that order, someone powerful enough to render an entire boss monster meaningless without effort, might already be moving somewhere within the region, hidden and unaccounted for, unsettled him more than he wanted to admit.
Whoever this mysterious player actually turned out to be, and whatever guild, if any, truly stood behind him, Draven intended to uncover the truth before it became a problem too large for Bursting Jade to handle quietly.
Draven remained by the window for a long moment after Cleo left, running through everything he’d just been told.
A player capable of dropping a boss monster without effort, unconcerned by guild rank, and completely unregistered anywhere in the system. It wasn’t the kind of thing he could simply set aside and forget about.
He walked back to his desk and pulled out a small, sleek communication device from the top drawer, one reserved specifically for contacts outside the guild’s normal chain of command. He powered it on and waited a few seconds before dialing a number he hadn’t used in months.
The line connected quickly, and a familiar voice answered on the other end. "Draven. It’s been a while."
"Renna," Draven said. "I need information."
There was a short pause, followed by a faint, amused chuckle. "You always need information. What is it this time?"
Renna worked as an independent broker, one of several scattered throughout the Western Continent who specialized in gathering and selling knowledge no official guild registry bothered to track.
She wasn’t affiliated with any particular guild herself, which made her useful precisely because she owed loyalty to no one but whoever paid her the most.
"A player," Draven said. "Unregistered. Extremely strong. He showed up in a town called Ratdale earlier today and cleared out a dungeon break single-handedly, boss monster included."
"Ratdale," Renna repeated, her tone shifting slightly, more focused now. "That’s a nothing town. Low class rating, barely worth mentioning on any map."
"I’m aware," Draven said. "That’s part of what makes this strange."
"Description?" Renna asked.
"Vague," Draven admitted. "My source said he was covered in filth when they saw him, sewage apparently. He couldn’t make out his face clearly, but he fought with his bare hands, no visible weapon."
"Bare hands..." Renna murmured. "That’s not nothing."
It was rare to see a player fight with their bare hands, since most usually used equipments.
Fighting with bare hands basically meant the player’s strength was high enough that they felt equipments were useless to them.
Unbeknownst to them, Leon indeed had an item, which were the legendary grade gloves of Heracles on his fists.
However, due to how ordinary they looked, it didn’t cross Cleo’s mind that they were actually items, instead of ordinary gloves.
"There’s more," Draven continued. "He showed no fear confronting a B-rank player backed by an A-rank guild. Refused to give his guild affiliation. Just told him to leave."
Renna went quiet for a few seconds on the other end. Draven could hear faint typing somewhere in the background, likely her already pulling up whatever records she had access to.
"I’m not seeing anything obvious," she said eventually. "No unregistered players logged as active in that region recently. No mercenary contracts filed. No bounty listings matching that description either."
"That’s what worries me," Draven said. "Someone with that kind of strength doesn’t just appear out of nowhere with no history attached to them. Someone must have trained him... equipped him. If he’s not registered anywhere, that means whoever’s backing him wants him kept completely off the books."
"You think it’s deliberate concealment," Renna said, not quite a question.
"I think it has to be," Draven said. "No guild raises a player to that level and just lets him wander around unaccounted for by accident."
Another pause stretched out on the line. When Renna spoke again, her voice had dropped slightly, more careful now.
"There’s been some noise lately, actually. Nothing confirmed, mostly rumors passed between smaller information circles. Something happened recently involving the Roaring Lions guild."
Draven’s brow lifted slightly. "The Roaring Lions? The S-rank guild?"
"That’s the one," Renna said. "From what little I’ve picked up, their guild headquarters suffered some kind of major incident."
"And I think... something happened to the guildmaster."
Draven straightened slightly at that. The Roaring Lions were no small guild, but a guild far bigger than his own since they were S-rank.
If something had indeed happened to them, he couldn’t help but wonder what it was, and what kind of shift it would cause for the world.
News about what happened to Roaring Lions was spreading fast, but information that the S-rank player Teon had died, killed by his own son hadn’t reached the western continent just yet.
If that information finally leaked out... then the whole world would tremble in fear at Leon’s name.
"Why haven’t I heard anything official about this?" Draven asked.
"Because whoever’s responsible for the information flow doesn’t want it spreading yet," Renna said.
"Which, considering how quickly bad news usually travels in this business, tells you something on its own."
Draven frowned deeply, turning the pieces over in his mind.
A powerful unregistered player suddenly appearing far from home, and an entire guild suffering a catastrophic, deliberately quiet collapse around the same general timeframe.
The connection wasn’t obvious, not concrete by any measure, but the timing bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
"Is there any indication the two events are related?" Draven asked.
"None that I’ve found," Renna said. "But I haven’t had much time to dig properly either. You caught me mid-investigation on something else entirely."
"I’ll pay for priority," Draven said without hesitation. "Whatever your current rate is, I’ll match it plus a premium if you can get me something concrete within the next few days."
"You really think this is that serious?" Renna asked, a note of genuine curiosity slipping into her tone now.
"I think a player capable of casually killing a boss monster with his bare hands, appearing out of nowhere with zero paper trail, is exactly the kind of thing that becomes serious very quickly if we don’t understand it before someone else does," Draven said.