Ch 212 – Guild Members
I couldn’t even detect that there was something off with that brick with Hightened Senses, Deacon mused to himself in surprise.
Pushing the ornate wooden box from where he had pressed it against his chest toward Deacon with both hands, Leon said, "Here, you should take this," having gotten over his initial bout of surprise at finding a loot box hidden inside the manor’s walls and somehow knowing that there was something off about the wall.
Taking his eyes off the loot box and upward to meet Leon's gaze, Deacon's expression immediately shifted to one of genuine confusion before they widened as he took a step backward and raised his free hand in a refusing gesture while shaking his head.
"No, no, no, that's not how we do things," Deacon said. "You found it without any of my help – it’s yours."
"There's no Team Leader Tax or Finder's Tax that gets applied to loot?" Valorie questioned with both surprise and confusion, asking both for herself and on behalf of her brother, who clearly shared the same confusion about how loot was supposed to be distributed.
"Absolutely not, we've never done anything like that and we never will," Bonehead answered immediately with a firm shake of his head.
"Our Party's motto when it comes to loot distribution is simple: if you find something or earn something through your own efforts, then it belongs to you completely and without question," Deacon continued on from Bonehead's explanation.
"But if it's something you don't personally want or can't use effectively, then you should check with everyone else in the party first to see if someone here would be willing to buy it off you or trade for it before you go and sell it on auction or online," Deacon added.
"We aren't some dumbfuck party that nickel-and-dimes our own members or creates resentment by forcing people to share shit they find," Bonehead explained bluntly.
"The Ravenlight Party, and eventually the Ravenlight Guild once we officially establish it, is a group of close friends who go on adventures together, take care of each other in and out of combat, and do cool shit with one another while building something meaningful," Deacon explained to the twins with complete sincerity, before his hand moved to softly pat the Soul Bottle hanging from his hip in an unconscious gesture. "And in the harshest of times when everything seems to be falling apart, we stand together no matter what."
“We don’t have a hierarchy in regards to a leader whom we all have to listen to and take orders from, like the other guilds – we decide shit by voting,” Bonehead added, further explaining how they functioned as a Party. “Stuff like leading us into areas or taking charge like Deacon is right now is because he’s the best amongst us at strategizing, and everyone else in our Party hated, or wasn’t as good as him at it.”
The twins turned their heads to glance at each other, and after several long moments of this wordless exchange, though Leon's expression looked noticeably less certain than Valorie's confident demeanor, they both turned their focus back to face Deacon and Bonehead.
"We'll join your Guild when you officially establish it," Valorie said with a firm nod, surprising both Deacon and Bonehead, who hadn't expected the twins to ask to join.
While Deacon had previously offered Valorie — and, by extension, her brother — a chance to join the Ravenlight Party back on Floor Three, her refusal at the time, as well as the wary and semi-hostile attitude Leon had shown toward them earlier on this Floor, made him fairly certain that the opportunity for them to join the Party, soon to be a guild, had long since sailed.
The two Ravenlight Party members glanced at each other in surprise before turning back to face Valorie and Leon with welcoming expressions.
"We'd welcome you both with open arms," Deacon said warmly. "We're in absolutely dire need of a Builder and an Archer."
"Oh right, I just remembered something important," Valorie said suddenly as a memory surfaced in her mind. "You guys won second place in the Group Tournament at the Academy, didn't you?"
The reminder caused Leon's eyes to light up ever so slightly as he recalled the rewards that the Ravenlight Party received for achieving second place in Iron Scales Guild’s Group Tournament, which included:
A Tier One Guild Waystone, a Tier Two upgrade token that could be applied to that Waystone, along with a substantial monetary stipend that was to be used for either purchasing materials for their Guild Base.
"Do you already have a specific location in mind for where you want to establish your Guild Base, or do you have schematics and plans already drawn up for what you want the base to look like?" Leon asked immediately after recalling that tournament reward information, sounding quite enthusiastic.
"If you officially join our party and eventually our Guild, you'll be placed in complete charge of both designing the Guild Base from scratch and overseeing all of its construction," Deacon said with a knowing smile, leveraging the knowledge he'd gained from Valorie about just how much of an obsessive building enthusiast Leon truly was.
"But whatever design you come up with absolutely has to include at least three separate greenhouses that are all directly connected via enclosed walkways to a central alchemy laboratory, and I get final approval on the lab's layout and equipment," Bonehead chimed in immediately after Deacon finished speaking, making his own requirements for the base design crystal clear.
"My personal interest in joining this guild has just risen immensely," Leon said with an enthusiastic nod before turning to look at his twin sister for confirmation.
"Once you officially establish and register the Guild with the Tower, send us both an invite, and we'll accept them immediately," Valorie confirmed.
"Done," Deacon said with a genuine smile spreading across his features. “I’ll be looking forward to working with you both long-term.”
“Same here,” Bonehead agreed.
"With all of that important business now settled and out of the way," Valorie said with a smirk as she turned back around to face the loot box still held in Leon's hands, reaching out to grab hold of the top edge of the lid, which caused both Deacon and Bonehead to immediately lean forward over her shoulders to get a better view of what treasures the box might contain.
With a soft metallic click that echoed softly in the abandoned hallway, the lid's latch mechanism disengaged, and Valorie lifted it open to reveal a delicate black lace choker resting atop a tightly coiled cushion of velvety purple foam.
Item Name:Wilted Lily
Type: Accessory – Necklace
Rarity: Rare
Description: A finely stitched lace choker, once owned by the late wife of a Manor Lord, as the lilies reminded him of her pure heart; it was purchased for her as a gift and cherished deeply until her untimely death from illness. The choker was intended to be buried along with her body as per her final wishes, however the night before her scheduled burial ceremony, the choker was stolen directly from her prepared corpse by a vexed and jealous concubine, and the accessory has never been worn or even touched since that theft.
Effect: +20 Intelligence & +15 Wisdom.
Requirements: Humanoid Race & Lv 25+.
"Yeah, absolutely fuck that," Valorie grimaced immediately after reading the item's description, her shoulders visibly dropping in disappointment as she finished Identifying the accessory. "I would rather be caught dead than willingly wear something as tacky as that."
"Even if I wanted to wear it for the stat bonuses, it looks like it wouldn't even be able to fit around my wrist properly, given how small it is," Leon muttered as he craned his head downward to stare at the lace choker with obvious disappointment about the item not being useful for his build.
Both twins turned their heads at the distinct sound of someone clearing their throat to get attention.
With Bonehead now sporting a choker wrapped around his neck where it rested just above his collarbone, and Leon now a pickaxe artifact richer, the foursome continued forward out of the hallway and through the slightly ajar door.
The group found themselves entering into a massive entrance hall that they'd accessed from a side corridor, and the expansive room opened up before them with vaulted ceilings that stretched at least three stories high and were decorated with faded murals depicting scenes of noble gatherings and hunts that had long since lost most of their original vibrant colors to time and neglect.
Positioned directly in the center of the marble-floored room were two elegant arced stairways constructed from what appeared to be polished dark wood with ornate metal railings, both curving upward in mirror-image sweeps that met at a second-floor landing decorated with more of that same tacky burgundy paint.
"Stop," Leon said suddenly, causing the other three members of the party to come to a full stop and putting them all on high alert.
Kneeling down onto one knee, Leon brought his face extremely close to a specific brick in the floor that was positioned exactly two bricks ahead of where he'd been about to place his next step.
Curious about what Leon had noticed, Deacon knelt down beside Leon and leaned in to examine the same brick, but found himself utterly and completely confused because he couldn't see anything whatsoever that distinguished this particular floor brick from any of the hundreds of other identical bricks surrounding it.
What the hell is he seeing that I'm completely missing? Deacon asked himself in growing confusion.
"Do you happen to have a thin needle or similar tool I could borrow?" Leon asked without turning his attention away from the brick he was scrutinizing so intensely.
"I do," Deacon confirmed, reaching into his Spatial Sling Bag and producing one of his lockpicks. He channeled a small amount of mana into the pick to revert its toothed edge to a completely smooth, plain needle before handing the tool over to Leon.
Rolling the lockpick carefully over his fingers as he gave it a quick examination to familiarize himself with it, Leon nodded to himself in satisfaction before extremely carefully pricking the bottom right corner of the brick he was positioned face-to-face with, applying pressure to it for exactly one second before withdrawing the needle.
At the exact same moment as Leon withdrew the needle, multiple sprinkler heads suddenly popped out from concealed hatches in the ceiling of the hall, approximately ten feet away from the group, and began spraying out a steady stream of clear liquid.
"We're good to proceed forward now," Leon announced calmly as he stood back up from his kneeling position along with Deacon and resumed walking forward, towards the sprinklers.
Confused about what exactly had just transpired and how Leon had known to do what he'd done, Deacon, Bonehead, and Valorie all followed after Leon with varying expressions of bewilderment.
It was only after all four members of the group had walked directly into the zone where the sprinklers were actively coating them with the clear liquid that arrows suddenly began being fired at them from all directions and angles throughout the hall, the projectiles launched from concealed mechanisms in the walls and built into the staircase itself.
Stumbling backward in alarm, their weapons half-drawn, they quickly realized that every arrow was being mysteriously deflected by the clear liquid spraying from the sprinklers, the projectiles veering off course and clattering harmlessly against the walls and floor around them.
Leon appeared only slightly taken aback by the trap activation since he'd known he'd successfully triggered the anti-trap mechanism when he'd pricked that specific brick, though he clearly hadn't been entirely certain what form the original trap would take or how the counter-measure would manifest itself.
"What the hell?" Deacon muttered to himself.
"I honestly don't know either," Valorie muttered under her breath as she drew out one of her arrows and nocked it to her bowstring, aiming at a location on the second floor where she could clearly see arrows being continuously fired from a concealed arrow slit in the wall.
Her arrow flew from her bow and passed through the falling liquid without any issues whatsoever, the projectile splitting one of the trap's arrows cleanly in two along its flight path before threading perfectly through the narrow arrow slit in the wall and completely destroying the mechanical arrow-shooting trap hidden within the wall.
Following Valorie’s lead, Deacon cast a brief glance at Bonehead out of the corner of his eye as he slung his quiver onto his back. He then shifted the Echoform Reliquary into its recurve bow form, nocked an arrow, and took aim at a point on the left staircase leading to the second floor, where he had spotted arrows being fired from another arrow trap embedded within one of the steps.
Bonehead, who was holding an empty glass beaker above his head to collect a sample of the strange liquid for later analysis, suddenly had his attention drawn to the east wall of the entrance hall.
Sections of the wall were rapidly shifting upward, revealing that they were actually vertical doors, and within the alcoves behind them stood mutant humanoids dressed in tattered butler and maid outfits. Their bodies were covered in grotesque boils and sprouted extra, malformed limbs, each gripping a weapon — crossbows, spears, and swords — while one even wielded a clothing iron.
[Bubonic Retainer Lv 26]
***
[Bubonic Retainer Lv 26]
Just as Bonehead opened his mouth to shout a warning and alert everyone to the newly appeared threats, a crossbow bolt fired by one of the Bubonic Retainers punched straight through the falling liquid without being deflected at all, and shattered the glass beaker he had been holding above his head.
"We've got company!" Bonehead shouted as he staggered backward, immediately reaching into one of the pouches on his back pocket and pulling out a spherical glass ball filled with noxious black liquid before hurling it at the Bubonic Retainer who had fired the crossbow bolt at him.
The moment the glass sphere struck the ground at the mutant maid's feet it detonated in a violent explosion of caustic black smoke and corrosive chemicals that engulfed her completely, the alchemical concoction melting through her flesh and dissolving her bones in seconds while simultaneously killing three other Bubonic Retainers who had been standing close enough to be caught in the rapidly expanding cloud of toxic fumes.