The heavy doors of the Adventurer’s Guild swung open as Noi’ri stepped inside. Sunlight sliced through the windows, glinting off the hall’s floorboards and bouncing across a dozen busy adventurers who were arguing over contracts, cobbling together parties, or bragging about kills that might or might not have happened.

  Once, the entire room would have frozen the moment he set foot inside. Heads would have snapped around, eyes wide with a mix of curiosity and fear, hands drifting instinctively toward weapons. “A gnoll,” they would have murmured. “A beast in the Guild.”

  But now, as Noi’ri walked across the hall, almost no one batted an eye. The few who did gave him a brief nod of recognition before going back to whatever conversation they were having.

  He passed the entrance to the mess hall, nostrils twitching at the scent of roast meat that drifted through the air. His tail flicked with an idle rhythm as he made his way to the reception desk. There, a familiar face looked up.

  “Oh, Noi’ri,” Rhea said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you here. Are you alone? Where are the others?”

  He suppressed a chuckle. Humans surely had a lot of questions. Too bad most of them couldn’t understand his replies anyway. Still, he had business here, and business required communication. That was why he had prepared beforehand. He pulled out his small notebook, flipped to a page already written “ISADORA,” and held it up for the girl to see.

  “The Guildmaster? You have an appointment with her?”

  He nodded.

  “I think she’s in her office. You can go straight in.”

  Noi’ri inclined his head, then moved toward the door at the back of the hall. Pushing it open, he found a corridor stretching out before him.

  He needed no signs or directions, as he had been here before, more times than he cared to count. He went upstairs, then walked to the door at the end of the hallway, where stood a guard holding a heavy glaive. Reddish fur, sleek and brushed. One of his kind.

  “Been a while, Noi’ri,” said the guard.

  He nodded. “Sirrha.”

  The female gnoll stood tall, though not as towering as the one he had met in the dungeon. After all, Sirrha was born here, in this world, and thus, not a pure-blood. Nevertheless, she was still bigger than most males, her height rivaling that of an average human even when she hunched, as gnolls tended to do.

  “I heard you were injured?”

  “Yes. But Lucian has fixed me up. I’m good as new now.”

  “Really? I expected something worse. I mean, your whole party has gone quiet. You’ve stopped coming back here for a while.”

  Noi’ri snorted. “We fought some gnolls in the dungeon.”

  “Oh,” Sirrha murmured, understanding settling in. “How’s the pups?”

  “They’re down, obviously. Lucian seems to have recovered a bit, but he won’t be adventuring again without the other two. So we need to wait for Cedric and Fiora to get back on their feet.”

  “Isadora will be thrilled if her son just quits,” Sirrha said, her voice tinged with amusement.

  “Of course she will,” Noi’ri said dryly. “She inside?”

  “Yes. Come in. She’s expecting you.”

  As Sirrha stepped aside, Noi’ri pushed the door open and entered the office beyond.

  The room was warm, almost stifling after the cool hallways. The faint scents of parchment, ink, and fine wood layered over the heat of the fire crackling in the hearth. Light spilled through the high, arched windows, catching on the curtain trim, the rows of neatly aligned books, and the brand-new rug with embroidery too fine for most adventurers’ boots. Everything here gleamed. Everything was in its proper place. The complete opposite of the noisy, half-chaotic guildhall outside.

  Yes, this was Isadora’s office, through and through. She had always been the kind of person who cared about the smallest details, making sure that everything looked good.

  Especially herself.

  Seated behind a sturdy oak desk, the Guildmaster of Daelin was dressed in a long, tailored gown that fit her form perfectly, her raven hair falling over her shoulders in glossy waves, catching the light like polished obsidian. Not a thread, nor a strand, out of place.

  Even though he had been living among humans for a very long time, Noi’ri still couldn’t quite wrap his head around their obsession with appearance. Not that gnolls didn’t have their own ways of showing off, of course, but they did that with scars, with steel, with trophies. Not with fabric and colors and hours spent in front of mirrors. On the other hand, humans judged, and were judged, by the cloth that wrapped around them. And then there was Isadora, who had taken that madness and refined it into an art form.

  “Noi’ri,” she said, lifting her gaze from the parchment before her, setting her quill aside.

  “Isadora,” he replied with his own tongue.

  That was how Berynians spoke to each other. Humans used human words, while gnolls used theirs. And they understood each other just fine. After all, no gnoll could twist their jaws enough to pronounce the syllables of human speech, and only a few humans, like Lucian, bothered to learn to speak the gnoll language with any real fluency.

  Funny enough, Isadora herself had been one such eccentric human once. Long ago, when she was much younger and wore far less powder on her face, she used to talk with him by cackling like a real gnoll. Then, one day, she stopped. Apparently, someone, probably several someones, had told her that she looked ridiculous doing so. He wondered if the same would happen again when Lucian got older.

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  “How are Cedric and the others?” Isadora asked, gesturing toward the chair before her desk.

  Noi’ri dropped into it and repeated the same answer he had told Sirrha outside.

  “I see,” she said, and for a moment, that was all.

  “Did you call me here just to ask me that?”

  “Of course not,” Isadora replied, leaning back slightly. “We’ve agreed to share information, haven’t we? Let each other know whenever something happens.”

  “So... you have new information, then? Have you found out who killed Guildmaster Gideon? Or who tried to stop you from becoming the new Guildmaster of Daelin?”

  “No, not yet.” She shook her head. “But there’s other news. Troublesome news. A storm is coming, Noi’ri.”

  “Storm? What kind of storm?”

  “Clovis has made his next move.”

  The Guildmaster of Iskora, huh? Rich, influential, powerful. He had tried to buy the dungeon for two million gold. Gideon had fiercely opposed the proposal, and Gideon was dead. So naturally, the man ranked quite high on the list of suspects for all the strange things that happened in Daelin so far.

  “What did he do?”

  “He’s... he’s planning to rebuild Voskryn.”

  Noi’ri’s ears twitched. “The city?”

  “Of course it’s the city. What else, Noi’ri? The river? How exactly do you rebuild a river? Not that it needs ‘rebuilding’ anyway. Last time I checked, the damn thing was still very much there.”

  “But... that’s the old imperial capital. It’s been completely destroyed, then swallowed by the forest. How the hell is he supposed to bring it back?”

  “He’s not going to restore the whole city, obviously. Only the part that matters to him.”

  Isadora reached under her desk, pulled open a drawer, and took out a map. The parchment was old, yellowed with age, and the ink had faded in places. Still, Noi’ri could make out the outlines: a vast grid of streets sprawled across the center, the massive wall enclosing the urban area, the river winding around it, and roads stretching outward connecting the city to the surrounding lands.

  “An old map of Voskryn?” Noi’ri asked.

  “Yes. Daelin should be around here,” she said, pointing to a crossroad. Then she traced a finger across the parchment. “And the dungeon should be around here. Now... what part do you think Clovis is going to rebuild?”

  Looking at this, everything suddenly became obvious. So he circled his claw around the southern section of the city.

  “This one.”

  “Exactly. All he has to do is build a bridge. Then, just like that, this ‘new settlement’ will be closer to the dungeon than Daelin itself.”

  Noi’ri frowned. “This is ridiculous. He can’t just build a city on someone else’s land like that.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Isadora said, a dry chuckle escaping her. “But the Central Plains belong to no one. None of the great kingdoms ever laid claim to it. It simply has no owner. So any settler with enough courage, and money, can come here and carve out a town for themselves. Which, as I recall, is exactly what the founders of Daelin have done.”

  “No one would care if Clovis built his town in any other patch of the woods,” Noi’ri said, tapping his claws against the edge of her desk. “But this... this is right next to Daelin. There’s no way the townspeople will accept that.”

  “Oh, they’ll accept it.” Isadora’s smile was faint and humorless. “There’s one little thing you’re forgetting. His town will be on the other side of the river. And you already know how much the locals dread that place. Haunted castle, old ruins, dark forest. Every child here grows up believing that crossing that river means never coming back. If you stopped someone in the street and asked them whether those cursed lands were part of Daelin, I guarantee they would laugh in your face. So they can hardly complain if someone else decides to live there, can they?”

  “Why... why does he go that far just for a dungeon? What could he possibly want from it?”

  “Well, that’s exactly what we’re trying to figure out, isn’t it?”

  “And how is he planning to do it, anyway? Build a whole new town on the ruins of the old imperial capital? Does he even have the money for that?”

  “My sources say he’s received a large sum from the Valiant Bank,” Isadora said with a shrug. “But it’s hard to determine their connection from just that. Is the Bank the true mastermind behind everything, using Clovis as their representative? Or is he simply a client, taking out a loan to fund his own ambitions?”

  Ah, the bank. Another fancy human invention that made absolutely no sense. To Noi’ri, money was simple: he got it by selling stuff, and he used it to buy other stuff. He could never comprehend the strange human practice of money changing hands endlessly, flowing through countless intermediaries, even when that exact same coin sat in a vault somewhere, untouched. How the hell it even worked, he had no idea, and didn’t particularly care to find out.

  “Fine, then. Let’s say Clovis has the means, and he’s going to build his shiny new town near the dungeon. Then what? Surely he can’t claim the dungeon as well, right?”

  “Of course not. The Guildmaster’s Conclave has already ruled that the dungeon falls under the jurisdiction of the Adventurer’s Guild of Daelin. Clovis conjuring a new town out of thin air is not going to change that.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  Isadora gave him a thin smile. “You think being in charge of a dungeon is some grand privilege, don’t you? No, it isn’t. It just means we have to do all the work to keep things running. And in return, we get what? Some registration fee, and a small cut of whatever the adventurers bring back. Peanuts, really.”

  She leaned back in her chair. “No, the real money comes from somewhere else. Selling services, running shops. The inns, the taverns, the brothels, the markets, the blacksmiths, the apothecaries. The gold found in the dungeon feeds the entire town.”

  “So if Clovis builds his town closer...”

  “Not only is it closer, but it will also have better infrastructure. Newer, cleaner. Better roads, better roofs, better alcohols, better whores. The adventurers, especially the more successful ones, will stay there. And they will spend their money there.”

  Noi’ri’s head ached. Things were getting more and more complicated. He would much rather have a real enemy in front of him to fight than sit here untangling all this human nonsense. How was he supposed to deal with any of it?

  As if reading his mind, Isadora said, “In short, we’re in for some fierce competition. And if we want even a sliver of a chance to fight back, I need more money.”

  “I hope you didn’t call me here to ask for a loan.”

  She chuckled. “Not unless you happen to be carrying a few million gold with you right now.”

  He dug around in his pouch, came up with a handful, and opened his palm.

  “Three silver.”

  They both laughed.

  When the laughter had died down, he looked at Isadora. “So... what’s the plan?”

  She let out a long exhale, then named a single word.

  “Rennald.”

  “The Overseer of the caravan station?”

  “Yes. The richest man in town. Sure, he doesn’t hold a candle to the Valiant Bank, but he’s all we’ve got. We need him to work with us.”

  “That’s not going to happen. Did you forget he’s the main suspect in Gideon’s death? At least half the Guild believes so. Good luck convincing them to work with him.”

  “I don’t need to convince anyone. Their opinion doesn’t matter,” Isadora said, waving a dismissive hand. “What matters is what Rennald himself thinks. Logically, he should side with us. Clovis’s new settlement will affect his trade routes, his profits. Unfortunately, he’s been rather elusive since Gideon’s death. It’s very difficult to reach him, let alone make a deal.”

  “What are you going to do, then?”

  “I’ve tried to invite him several times. However, his people at the caravan station kept saying the same thing: he doesn’t want to see anyone. I was running out of options, but...” Isadora paused. “I’ve just received a rather interesting piece of information. If it’s true, she might be able to get through to him.”

  “Who?”

  As if in response to his question, there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” said Isadora.

  The door opened, and a young woman stepped inside, someone Noi’ri knew all too well. After all, he and Lucian had shared more than a few lunches with her and her younger brother.

  “You called for me, Guildmaster?” she asked.

  “Yes, Claire. I have a job for you.”