"Not a bad start," I said as I stood in front of Karak, and examined the moving cart he had arranged. "It looks workable enough to host a nice game or two," I said. "You're responsible to make sure no cheating happens," I said before I turned to the rest of the group. "Make sure you listen to Karak. He speaks for me," I warned the rest of the team.

"Yes, boss," they answered. A few of them — particularly the two that had been recently promoted — looked annoyed suddenly having an invalid over them, but my most recent achievement was enough to silence them.

A leader of an official guild, the Dawn Hammers.

"Good, make sure nothing goes wrong," I said, and walked away. Karak looked panicked at the sudden responsibility, but I acted like I didn't notice it. It was another test for him. If he couldn't handle just a game while I was at the camp, there was no way he could handle it when I left to handle the quartermaster duties of … our amazing guild, Dawn Hammers.

The name was tackier than I would have preferred, but I wasn't in a position to get everything to my taste. The important thing was to sudden influx of power I had received, and the opportunities that were buried in it.

Particularly, the trade.

Oh, the new world I had found myself in made their best to make trade as useless as possible. The lowest tier of material, the critter-level monsters, and the materials that could be worked with pure vitality were traded relatively easily with no license … but anything else, including the large monsters, was subject to restrictions.

And, those restrictions only got tighter and tighter as the material in question increased in quality. Being a part of a guild gave me some right to trade a portion of restricted items, but only to a certain quality and potency. Moreover, those could only be traded to people holding the appropriate licenses, and every trade needed to be recorded and reported to sponsoring noble house.

Mana stones were tightly regulated, but at least the guild had the right to use and sell them. We didn't even have the right to use stat and skill stones — with the exception of basic ones — and we had to bequeath them to a noble house, and only they could distribute them to people. Though, apparently, they just hoarded for their own households.

Apparently, they were too strategically important to be left to the hands of no one but the ruler classes.

Production was even worse, a myriad number of guilds, artisan houses, and alliances battling for production quotas and material rights… Not only the agreements were about who could produce what kind of weapon, armor, or equipment, but even who could wield what.

The dagger I had in my waist, for example. If it wasn't for my guild rank, I wouldn't have been allowed to wield it. And I still didn't know whether I was allowed to actually use my magical sword. It might be too potent for a mere ordinary guild quartermaster.

To summarize, I thought with a smirk. I was living in the dream of a smuggler.

All those tiers, regulations, and restrictions from different sources made my future job much easier. The restrictions meant overinflated prices, and more importantly, it meant a lot of people would be trying to steal, embezzle, grift, and raid the products of the dungeon.

Exactly what I needed to make some critical items fall from the back of a truck … or a cart, to be more appropriate to my new world.

Of course, to enjoy those great benefits, I needed to make sure our caravan arrived at our destination safely, and managed to defend the breach until the dungeon was operational.

I walked, leaving the slowly moving carts behind, and joined the front line. If the young noble wasn't here, I would have already expanded the full web of Charisma across the opening to gather experience, but with them here, I decided to wait until I arrived at the frontlines. The farther I was, the harder for them to notice — and easier to hide my responsibility.

Stolen story; please report.

Instead, I started examining the line. I could see Jertann right at the center, holding point several hundred feet further than the others, making sure he got the attention of most of the monsters.

And, considering he was doing his best to leave the last hits to his party members, he was doing it selflessly — not that those beasts had the same worth to him. He had mentioned that the experience granted by those giant beasts dropped significantly, counted in the mid-hundreds rather than high thousands.

Another drawback of the touch of the gods. I wondered if there was a reason for their intentional restriction… but I had too many things to deal with right now.

Instead, I continued examining the line. Near Jertann, there were two other groups, one led by Silas, and the other led by Terma. They weren't as efficient as Jertann, whose combat capability increased significantly after Zolast used that mysterious stone in his promotion, but still, they managed to keep their group safe.

It couldn't be said for all of them. The other groups were led by people who had been recently promoted as well, but their performance varied wildly. Some were flat-out incompetent, making mistakes that put them in danger and wasted their Health needlessly, the others were lazy and selfish, keeping back to force the weaker members of their group to hold the attention of the beasts while they delivered the killing blows exclusively.

I wonder if it was greed that made them act like this, trying to monopolize the experience to rise faster than the others, or pure laziness. Either way, I had to intervene.

"More work for me," I murmured. I wished Jertann was experienced enough to see what was going on, but he was too distracted by his own task to pay attention to wider happenings.

An expected oversight from a new leader.

I walked behind a large group toward the wings, led by a new promotion that was acting particularly egregious. I had already watched him allow only two of his members to deal with the last hits, and now, he was punishing one that he tried to prevent from taking the kill.

"I told you to be more careful!" he shouted as he kicked another man, ignoring the approach of a larger beast to a nearby team — which was already dealing with another, creating a dangerous risk. I cut the path of the beast before it could create a cascading failure, but I still watched them.

" I almost got hit because of you, you useless sack of meat. I'll make sure that no one else allows you in their teams, and you live picking up garbage —" he shouted, while the rest of the group watched, two of them smug, a few of them accepting, the rest in shock.

But regardless of their emotions, they did nothing, until their leader was interrupted … by the blunt side of my halberd.

"What is going on here," I said. I didn't speak particularly loudly. I didn't need to shout to show my anger.

"S-sir, we were just disciplining one of our members of our team," one answered, his challenging tone conflicting.

"Yes, I can see that. This is not your team anymore. You three are assigned to logistics until we arrive at the breach. When I arrive, I'll deal with your punishment."

The group froze. "You can't do that, I'm level thirty-one," growled the one I had slammed down earlier. "You need me. Your guild needs me."

"I don't need parasites," I warned him, loudly to make sure the other groups heard. They clearly lacked the foresight to understand that they needed our guild far more than we needed a bunch of farmers and other non-combat classes that just went through their second promotion. They were useful … just not enough that I would allow them to establish incompetently run cliques inside the guild before it even started operating.

"Oh, really," I said as I slammed the blunt side of my halberd to his knee, not enough to break, but enough to hurt very much.

He managed to stand up only half a minute later, and did so with a groan. He was forcing himself to stand up even as he began rubbing his knees. "You think you're strong, old man," he growled. Then, he murmured softly, soft enough that I shouldn't be hearing, as I doubted he knew the extent of my Perception. "You're lucky it's not the time to deal with you, yet, or I would have killed you," he whispered to himself.

His whisper was not surprising. He wasn't the first young man that tried to psyche himself after a beatdown. But his words about it not being time was more interesting. It suggested a plan.

I was tempted to interrogate him, but a public venue was not the place for it. People often got squeamish about … enhanced interrogation techniques. I could have let them go and follow them to a dark corner.

Instead, I decided to test them in a different way. I expanded a string of charisma, but instead of the usual web, it was just a string, connecting to the angry young man. Then, I followed the experimental part …

A flood of emotions.

I was trying to copy what I had seen the young noble had been doing. He was constantly radiating an aura of focus and confidence to make sure the caravan maintained their morale as they rushed forward during the night.

I went in a different direction. Anger, fury even. It was risky, but considering he had already admitted he was plotting against me, I saw no problem making him a lab rat.

It worked smoother than I expected, but then I had been experimenting with Charisma almost without stopping for the last few days.

"No," he growled with sudden anger, and looked at his two lackeys. "Let's show him why he made a mistake messing with us!"