Before me was a mountain of paperwork on my poor, struggling desk. I was halfway done, but what was still left seemed to ascend to the heavens. By Neuken, why must everyone write to me for approval over every single fucking thing. Sure, I am the guild master, but I do not need to know nor need to approve what you are going to serve in the cafeteria of your branch guild building in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. I moved away from the capital to Haven to get away from all the people pestering me for personal meetings and public events, but I am now pelted by letters and documents. I want a vacation! But I knew that no one would want to cover for my duties, not even my vice guild leader. Apparently, a whole day of drinking whatever piss drink that the bars in the slums have and wasting all their money at the brothels was a day of hard work for him. If they were not extremely strong and somehow well respected among the adventurers of the guild, I would have replaced them long ago. Unfortunately, I did not have the same kind of draw as them. From what I know, I am more feared than loved by my subordinates. I do not know exactly why though. I do not think I have been too harsh on them? Not my fault that most adventurers nowadays are dumbasses who did have the skill and/or constitution for military life in the royal army, the armies of the dukes, or a mercenary company and/or just have a few screws loose.

Looking at the ticking clock on my wall, I had been at it for about, er, twenty hours. I wanted to cry. I was officially the guild leader, but in fact, I was the guild’s number one slave to run to when they fuck up and need saving. Just recently, a newbie party under our guild’s employ killed another adventurer in a drunken argument. Issue was, that the dead fucker belonged to another guild. I wanted to leave the adventurers to suffer the consequences of their actions, but apparently they ran off to the vice guild leader first, and of course they gave the troublemakers a blank cheque and promised the full support of the guild. We had to pay a king’s ransom to keep it quiet and not sic royal authorities on us. Last time that happened, we had to suffer the clusterfuck known as the royal judicial system. I shall just say, I would never even wish my greatest enemy to go through that clusterfuck. It is painfully slow and extremely biased to the state in the cases. We had to pull on all my connections to get it dismissed. I still owe favors from that time despite that it was a decade ago.

I heard a knock at the door and I raised my voice to order them to make it quick. Unfortunately, it was my poor, fey secretary, the only person I truly respected for her hard-working, determined nature despite her inexperience. Issue was that she was absolutely terrified of me. Not only was I her boss, but I was a burly human man standing at 1.9 meters tall. I was in my sixties but I kept fit as a fiddle, not wanting to slack on my muscles. My ash-gray hair and beard,which contrasted against my tan skin, were similarly well cared for, my hair slicked back and my beard tied into knots. I usually did not wear the “normal” attire of a guild master, whatever that means. While a majority wore robes that had the colors of their guild, I wore full plate armour from my neck to my toes. We are guild masters! Not chicken-shit bureaucrats! Sadly, they do not seem to get it, only hurling insults like I am a barbarian or something. Do they not remember the times we were but lowly slime hunters making only a few stronts a day, barely enough to cover the cost of board in some shithole and eat the leftovers of the patrons? We cannot forget our roots! Yet now they believe themselves some kind of aristocracy, playing games to hoard wealth and power for themselves. Brats blinded by power they are.

“M-Mr. Dedushka, Mr. Z-Zmeya is h-here for you. Ss-says it is… important and calling on his… er… favor,” she managed to mumble loud enough for me to get the just before flying away like her life was in danger just by talking to me. Haaaaahhhhh, great, she ran again. She must be going back to hide in her nest in the tree outside. It was a bit of a weird request from her to live out there, but there was not any harm in it. I guess fey like to live in trees? I did not quite know since fey were rare here since only exiles left the Fey Forest that sat in the far north.

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Joshua Zmeya entered the room gracefully with his arms behind his back and a fake grin on his face. He was a pale human man with green eyes and black messy hair whose body was practically made of sticks but held a calculating, vindictive mind. I could tell it the smile was fake by his dead fish look in his eyes that never left him. He began his standard introduction every time we met, “Ahhh Lynne, it’s been sooo long since I last saw you, which was the… dragon subjugation right? Really do admire the courage and skill it took when felling that one dragon who wrecked the backlines. I–.” I cut him off by loudly clearing my throat. “I appreciate that you want to catch up but I am a bit tight on time you see,” I spoke and waved my hand to the paper tower next to me before continuing. “Get. To. The. Point.”

“So blunt, and you wonder why none of the guild masters side with you. Ugh.” I glared at him, warning him not to go any further. Not desiring to be made into a human pretzel, he switched to the main topic of the meeting. “You see… I need to cash in a favor. I need to borrow some money, there is going to be an auction for the new dungeon the Seer Association scryed in the Myage Mountains. We just got done with the guild office renovations and are a bit low of cash, but we really need it. We, the Dead Man’s Party Guild, do not have many dungeons ourselves unfortunately despite our size.” The latter sentence was said rather embarrassed, not wanting to admit the closely held secret that his guild lacked dungeons.

So it was about the infernal dungeon auctions. You see, by Macron Kingdom’s law, the first guild to step inside a dungeon owned it. Originally, the royalty owned all dungeons, but they found it too much trouble to manage and keep the dungeon monsters from running rampant outside. So, they gave up and made it a problem for adventuring guilds. Dungeons sort have become the personal fiefdoms of guilds, their word second only to the crown inside them. Like with how ownership of vast plots of land was used by nobles to brag, the number of dungeons a guild owned decides the social status of said guild. We had numerous dungeons of our own in fact, but we have been out-of-the-loop with the auctions for a while as a result of sabotage of other guilds. In this environment, the seers, who could detect dungeons with time focusing on finding dungeon energies, decided to form a group to collectively control information about new dungeons, but rather than go through the work of getting to dungeons, they just sold the location information in auctions to guilds that wanted them, effectively selling them ownership of it.

“The purse strings shall be opened. But the debt is repaid, yes?” I responded. A favor was a favor after all. Favors in our business were worth even more than gold. I could not say no, lest I be called an oath-breaker. “Perfect,” he spoke with a scheming smile and ugly cackle, “I am going to leave those Lone Prayer Guild bastards in the dust. Not going to buy another dungeon ever again!” Oh Neuken, so this was what it was about, their guild rivalry. I don't really want to get into their petty drama now. Might have a heart attack from the frustration if I detailed it.

He finally remembered where he was and quickly spoke, “Appreciate doing business with the Blue Sky Guild,” before promptly walking out to deny me the chance to change my mind. Sighing as he exited, I went back to braving the seas of paper. I want to sleep dammit!