‘IJX45!HL223W.W’ Aaand… I’m in! Now, let’s see what this bad boy has for me.

Thankfully, the AA record room was almost completely digitized, or James would have had to spend the entire week sorting through reports before he got to anything concerning the Radiant Guild.

With the help of modern technology and a B-rank credential to open the way, he quickly managed to find the folders he had been seeking.

He had been tempted, for a moment, to look up his teacher’s file and what the AA had on all of Team 0’s members, but had quickly shaken the thought away. He had been trusted with a high rank clearance, and if he immediately misused it, he’d likely forever lose Miss Walker’s confidence.

That, and he simply didn’t want to snoop into his new friends’ private lives. If they had something they wanted him to know, they’d tell him, just like he had secrets of his own that he wasn’t ready to share just yet.

Since he had a much more pressing interest anyway, it didn’t bother him too much to leave that curiosity unaddressed.

Sorting through the Radiant related folders took a few more minutes until he found the reports related to their activities in Brooklyn and Coney Island. James set aside the reports concerning Brooklyn as a whole, which he’d return to if he didn’t uncover anything in the more area-specific ones he had found, and dived headfirst into the reading.

For being monster-hunting reports, this is surprisingly dry.

There was very little effort made into making the files enjoyable. Instead, they focused on conveying the most information in the shortest time possible. It was also evidently all done by the same person, as the style never changed.

They must have some poor mook they fobbed everything onto. I bet Wright doesn’t draft his own reports, the bastard.

Still, reading between the lines, a pattern became apparent. Four times in the last two years had a dungeon spawned in Coney Island, and Radiant had been given the lease over it every single time.

They did not immediately clear it, as should have been done, but instead used the dungeon’s presence as an excuse to conduct ‘patrols’. Little imagination on James' part was needed to realize that they were purposefully risking an increase in rank just to maintain control over the neighborhood.

Of course, they couldn’t have done it without someone on the inside willfully ignoring that their average clearing time was a month, which stretched well beyond what they should have been allowed to keep the lease for. But since no AA team had been available for dispatch on such low tier dungeons, the terms had been renewed without trouble after a week of laying fallow.

It also explained why Wright’s team had been so surprised to find them coming out of the dungeon, even though their lease had already expired.

They are used to doing whatever they want with impunity. And someone is allowing them to do so from the inside.

The name that came out repeatedly as the AA official monitoring the situation was one Julius Green. His signature was everywhere, from accepting the terms of the initial leases to the extensions, to even writing recommendations for the Radiant guild to be paid extra for their neighborhood watch work.

That alone would have been enough for James to write them all off as criminals, but something more beyond that was present in the files. There were at least a dozen cases of false alarms of a new dungeon being formed all over Brooklyn, which required dispatching a team the AA simply didn’t have the resources to send.

And who came in then, eager to fill the void left by the federal government? No points for guessing the Radiant Guild.

Report after report detailed their long ‘searches’, during which they had to send patrolling teams through the whole borough, and for which they received compensation from the AA.

It was enough to send a sane man to the madhouse. They were evidently manufacturing these alerts, especially because a quick little search in Queens showed that they had only 10% as many false alarms.

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If he could realize it, James seriously doubted the higher-ups didn’t know of it. Or at least, they had to suspect something when budget review time came.

Unless everyone involved with this who should raise the alarm is part of it or has been intimidated into silence. It wouldn’t surprise me if that band of thugs sent their ‘patrols’ to a particularly zealous bureaucrat’s house to ensure they understood how things should be handled.

James wasn’t especially surprised to have found evidence of wrongdoing. He had known for many years that Guilds didn’t always operate in the light and were, more often than not, a drain on society.

But the sheer brazenness with which the Radiant Guild operated a racketeering ring still stunned him. It was all here, out in the open, and no one did anything.

James made sure to send a copy of those incriminating files to a burner email he had set up specifically. Even if he couldn’t do anything immediately, he wanted to keep a record for when he became stronger.

If that’s how I need to operate, then that’s what I’ll do. Just wait, you bastards, I’ll show you what happens when you cross the wrong person. Justice will be served, sooner or later.

He had just finished sending the last folder, full of the ‘false alarm’ reports, when a hand suddenly gripped his shoulder, sending his heart into a frenzy.

James shot up from his seat, sweat forming on his brow as a dozen scenarios about being discovered by a Radiant’s accomplice played out in his mind, and what he could do to mislead them.

A great breath of relief escaped him when he saw who it was that had scared him so. In all her masked glory, Miss Walker looked at him in amusement, her red eyes crinkled. “I’m sorry James, was I too quiet? I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Sending her a weak glare only seemed to increase her mirth, so James decided that cleaning up his station and shutting down the computer were better ways to spend his time.

The masked woman waited in silence as he finished up, not asking questions even when he abused her credentials to clear the cache of his activities, so that it showed that the computer had only been used to check up on an old, non-threatening file he had picked at random.

Once he was done, he turned to face her, ready to answer the questions he was sure she might have had.

Surprisingly, the high ranker remained silent, looking at him as if waiting for something. Knowing the tactic for what it was, having experienced it a lot growing up with his grandparents, James sighed “Alright, I’ll tell you everything, but let’s move from here. I don’t want anyone to suspect anything.”

Again, the older woman acquiesced without complaint, following him until they were back in team 0’s room. There, they sat down at the parlor couches, one in front of the other.

James quickly explained what he had suspected and what he had found, growing more incensed as his retelling continued. By the end of it, his fists were clenched and his eyes hard as stone. “I can only conclude that a significant part of the AA bureaucracy is compromised by the guilds, if not all of it.” He finished, almost ready to spit fire.

Miss Walker was silent for a minute, staring off in the air. Finally, she returned to the present “You are not wrong. And your conclusion that this is an open secret is also correct. We all know that some guilds, though not all of them, abuse the system we have because the AA doesn’t have the resources to pursue them. And even more, they have corrupted the agency enough to pass it off as ordinary business.”

Something in the way she said it told James that this was an old wound for her. There was a bitter air around her, as if she was remembering a battle she had been forced away from.

“I’ll now give you the speech that my superior gave me at the time I found out about this system, five years ago.” She said, confirming James’ suspicion.

Seeing that he had no question, she continued “We are losing the battle against time. Dungeons, especially higher rank ones, are expected to keep growing in number as the years go by, and sometimes by the end of the century, we’ll reach saturation.”

James sat there, stunned. “Wha-what does that have to do with the guilds committing crimes?”

Miss Walker gave him a pitying look. “You already know the answer, James. This projection is based upon the guilds continuing to pull their weight. If we started to actively persecute every crime they commit, we’d simply not have enough forces to clear the dungeons that keep spawning.”

He gritted his teeth, angry at himself for being able to see sense in her words. “Which means we just have to accept them acting like organized crime syndicates, slowly eroding society away until we are nothing but a bunch of fiefs? Do we have no hope then?”

The woman’s eyes softened, and she patted his hand in a show of comfort. “That projection is only expected to come true if nothing changes. Now, the latest studies expect the mana levels around the planet to plateau around mid-century, which means we are not necessarily done for.”

That was a huge relief, but if it was true, that begged the question “But then why? Why not slowly deal with the most rotten guilds, leaving the righteous ones to help protect the Earth?”

“What makes you think that’s not exactly what’s going on?”

The question stunned James briefly, but he quickly reached the correct conclusion “So you are allowing them to basically tie their nooses with their own hands!”

“Exactly. It will take some time, and some crimes are less urgent than others. Guilds like the Radiant are not worth the effort cleaning them up would require.” She raised a hand, stopping the complaint forming on his lips “The presence of Esposito at your confrontation with their thugs should tell you how intertwined they are with the Golden Sun, and that is a heavy weight we simply cannot move against lightly.”

“So they can continue to siphon off resources from the AA, because they still take less than what would be required to eradicate them.” James concluded with a heavy heart.

“That is correct.” Then, upon seeing his glum expression, she added “Still, that doesn’t mean nothing can be done about them. If I or other high-rankers were to move against them, it would immediately call the Golden Sun’s attention upon us. However, if a newly arrived rookie were to somehow find enough evidence of their crimes and managed to subdue them, well, there is a reason why high rankers avoid getting in the business of those weaker than them.”

A smile slowly crept up, James quickly grasping where she was going. “Just as you can’t get involved because of the Golden Sun, they cannot be the first to come into low ranker business because of you.”

Miss Walker stood up, gracing with an eye-smile “I can see that you have gotten an idea. Now, as a responsible adult, I must warn you not to do anything that would pit you against someone much stronger than you.”

“Of course, Miss. I would never.” That just means I have to hurry and reach D-rank. Just you wait, Callum Wright. You and your little band of criminals better enjoy your freedom while you have it.