The billionaire that owned sat in his office, sweating as he waited for the Scarlet Emporium’s representative to show up. His entire guild had found out about the Scarlet Emporium’s recruitment of the bothersome adventurers who cleared the hardest dungeon. The main demographic that supported him was people who saw the billionaire as a strongman, and him fumbling the situation so hard made them turn away from him.
A coup was already being planned, and the billionaire couldn’t do anything about it without major support. The king of the world couldn’t care less about who was in charge of a guild on an insignificant planet he owned. He had bigger fish to fry. This left the billionaire with one option. A bailout.
He needed funds to prop himself up with spokesmen and propaganda. He couldn’t use the golden guild’s funds as the guild itself would find out and ignore his messaging, so he had to ask for help from the other three guilds. The Scarlet Emporium was the richest one by far thanks to them actually owning businesses and only protecting the richest clients, so they were up first.
“Hello Tuskan. Why do I have the pleasure of meeting with you at this fine hour?” Said the herald of commerce as he just teleported in.
“O-Oh! I didn’t hear you come in. Please take a seat.” The herald opened another portal below himself and one above the chair and dropped in. “So, you recruited the adventurers my guild tried to, and tarnished my image, so I need funding that can prop me up and stop me from getting deposed.” The herald looked at the billionaire with a startled look. Nobody was this straight forward when negotiating.
“What would the emporium get out of this? Your loyalty? Don’t joke with me Tuskan. We know that your loyalty will always be with the king because you value your life and know you’re a bad liar. We’ll need something more… material. We noticed how your asian sub-branch has been a hassle for you, and we’d happily deal with it and with your image problem if you hand it over.” The billionaire gripped the table with one hand and whipped the sweat off his forehead.
“We can’t give up an entire region of the world! You can’t be serious. Maybe Europe would be more convenient?” Both of them knew Europe was a far less important region than Asia. The survival rate and existing adventuring population of Europe was far lower than Asia thanks to Japan, Korea and China having massive populations with even more massive communities who already had media about dungeons suddenly appearing drilled into their heads. Europe was the opposite of that. A low population and percentage of people who actually survived the dungeons left Europe as the factory of the world thanks to people there having no good adventuring business.
“Are you serious? You dictate terms when you’re one bad press statement from collapsing? What a joke. You either accept my offer, or get left out to rot. Your choice.” The herald teleported away, already knowing that the other two guilds would have already been asked to meet with the billionaire. The billionaire’s options were already looking grim. The other two guilds were a literal assassination corporation, and an half academy half adventurer’s guild. Both of them would probably just ask for bigger concessions. The billionaire cursed himself for even sending his knights to the cursed desert plane.
“Our first mission is in korea?” I asked, to which the herald nodded.
“Why of course! The golden guild operates there, but we’re afraid some of their reincarnators have gone rogue and they’ve asked us to help with that and their dungeon leaks. Does anybody in your party know how to teleport?” I was called up bright and early by myself when the herald decided it was time for my party to get a mission. I had spent three whole days keeping the peace in that tavern and basically providing therapy to the whole place while Christian drank himself to death in a vain attempt to compete with the demoness.
“Yes. What’s the target or area we need to clear?” The herald smirked, probably thanks to my wording. I noticed how he liked being called out or me skipping straight to the important part, so I did it in almost every questionnaire he gave me.
“Jae Il-Seong, or the top korean golden guild member. The whole area of south korea is having a lot of intentional dungeon leaks thanks to the adventurers there deeming the loss of land to be acceptable if it means faster monster spawns. You and your party will need to stop them before the monsters start building more demi-pillars or hives.” I nodded, and the herald took it as a sign that I understood the mission, and teleported away along with his expensive chair. I rose from my seat and was met by the demon princess as I exited the office.
“Robot! Here. I’ve bought you a gift.” She shoved a bottle of sunflower oil in my face. “I heard robots like oil.” Did she confuse natural oils with petrol? I chuckled as I made the nano-chatte absorb the entire bottle and convert it to energy.
“Thank you. Don’t ever buy it again though.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her how relatively useless the oil was to me thanks to the plentiful energy I got from the nano-chatte absorbing solid matter.
“Why?” I walked past her and she began following me as I descended the many steps of the guild headquarters.
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“I prefer something I can taste. Oil is bland.” She nodded and didn’t even have to pretend to understand what I said this time as ‘food is tasty’ is something she knew all too well.
“When are we getting a mission? I haven’t fought anything in too long. Why do you care so much about this city? Damaging it while fighting is fun.” She slouched in frustration as we walked through the mass of people blocking the street. Was something important happening?
“We’re actually going on a mission today. You go tell everyone else to get ready, I’ve gotta check something.” I melted into goo, slithering through the cracks of the brick patterned street until I made it to the centre of the crowd. I solidified immediately, startling someone; it just looked like I came out of the ground.
“This world has been cursed with god’s damnation! He never truly meant for humanity to be free. All these systems and curses were shackles he planned from the start. The only answer humanity has is in the alternatives to god. He may have named them demons, but those fallen angels were just the ones that chose their freedom above god’s rules.” Said a cultist like Sam, except instead of worshipping the Revifier, they twisted christian lore into a pitch to worship demons.
“Heretic! God hasn’t abandoned us. He has gifted us with such power so we can cleanse evil, not join it.” A golden knight came out of the crowd, clearly saying a premade speech. It was like those snake oil salesmen who had preplaced audience members who would be selected to be ‘cured’. The only difference between this and that is that the salesman is selling an idea, and the audience member will be convinced of the merit of their idea instead of being cured of an ailment.
“Then why has death spread without limit? Even the ones with immense faith were purged by God's uncaring summoning of the pillars and the monsters within. Demons and the power they offer us are the true security all of you have been searching for through prayer.” The cultist said to a small amount of cheering.
“The monsters within the dungeons are demons! You heretics simply refuse to–” A mass of people began dragging the knight away. “What are you simpletons doing?! Let me go!” He was dragged away by the crowd while the cultist looked around for someone to directly speak to.
“You! Knight. Why do you feel attached to such religious organisations if they do nothing but lead you astray with rules and regulations.” He pointed at me. I was internally damning the nano-chatte for making my armour look like paladin armour.
“I don’t. I just like wearing this armour.” The cultist paused, clearly not expecting me to say that.
“Ah. So even the holy knights don’t believe in the false god anymore. Do you hear that? Even the foolish knights can change. If even they can do it, so can you with our seventeen day possession guide.” I chuckled to myself. All this preaching was a sales pitch for a course? The internet’s impact was still felt through our scams apparently. Before I could leave, the crowd started clearing to make way for the demon princess.
“Robot! Where are you?” The demon princess was leading the party and suddenly saw me as the crowd cleared. She ran at me before the cultist got in her way.
“See! The great demons have rewarded us with the presence of a demon princess. Applaude!” The crowd started applauding and cheering while the demoness was trying to walk around the cultist.
“Get out of my–” The demon princess tried saying before being cut off.
“Great demon princess! Grace the crowd with–” The Demoness didn’t appreciate the cultist cutting her off and punched him through the crowd and cheerfully walked up to me.
“There you are. What was that guy talking about?” I quickly walked forward towards the group and saw Sam seething.
“Some freak was talking about demons to sell some course.” I said. Christian shook his head slowly as Anna began the teleportation.
“Where to?” Anna asked.
“Korea. Anywhere in Korea will do.” As soon as I blinked, we were on top of an abandoned skyscraper looking down on an infested city.
“What an embarrassment! A cultist that supports demons?! He’s probably only doing it for the money. All these materialistic people sicken me.” I let the nano-chatte send off a couple drones to be sent around to survey the city. I could already see a wall being built around the entire area to contain the monsters.
“Woah! What’re these?” The demon princess grabs one of the drones by jumping for it, and falls down to the ground after grabbing it.
“Are we jumping down or am I gonna have to teleport us down again.” Asked Anna.
“You’re teleporting us. Sam couldn’t survive that drop.” I said before an earthquake struck the city. No, that wasn’t right. I looked down to see the demon princess slaughtering the masses of orcs walking around. “On second thought, we’ll stay up here until my drones find the proto-piller.”