Chapter 84: Ten Thousand Coins for the Missing
Chapter 84: Ten Thousand Coins for the Missing
Contract boards usually attracted people doing arithmetic.
The crowd outside Greyhaven’s mercenary hall was doing something closer to mourning.
Thirty people stood in a half-circle around a new posting. Conversations stayed low, and each version carried the same facts.
"Ten thousand," a man near the front said, as though repeating the number might make the risk smaller.
The woman beside him did not look away from the notice. "Five B-grades went in. What are you bringing that they didn’t?"
"Nothing. That’s why I’m still standing here."
Nobody laughed.
A five-person B-grade party had entered an instance and failed to return.
Not a newly assembled team. All five members were above Level 15. Two possessed rare or specialized B-grade classes; the remaining three formed a conventional frontline, ranged, and support core. They were balanced, experienced, and precisely the sort of party Greyhaven sent to investigate a problem before it became a disaster.
The posting described an underground mining instance eleven kilometres south-southeast of the city. Its expected range was Level 18 to 22. Former players had known it as a reliable source of ore, monster cores, and materials from a predictable insect boss. Post-Merge parties had cleared it often enough for companies to treat it as manageable.
Then its behavior stopped matching the records.
The missing team entered to investigate. Their final message mentioned changes in depth and layout but no threat capable of destroying five B-grades. Nothing had been received since.
The reward explained the crowd.
10,000 Eternal Coins.
Full access to Greyhaven’s Archive, including restricted holdings.
I read the objective three times.
Enter the affected area. Obtain reliable evidence of the party’s fate. Return and report.
Rescue was encouraged where possible. Combat with the unknown threat was neither required nor expected.
The distinction mattered.
So did the empty sign-up sheet.
Several people had asked for details. Nobody had accepted. A full B-grade team had disappeared, and ten thousand coins became less persuasive when the probable collection method involved following them.
One name had been written and crossed out after the applicant withdrew. The rest of the page was clean. Greyhaven had not found a hidden reserve of volunteers. It had found people willing to stare at the reward until self-preservation returned.
Anyone much weaker saw suicide. Anyone strong enough to enter confidently already had restricted information, better contracts, and opportunities that advanced their own power. Greyhaven’s A-grades and higher were defending critical regions, clearing time-limited Towers, containing Rifts, or pursuing rare resources. The city could request their help. It could not compel independent people strong enough to leave whenever they pleased.
I had never personally met one.
I stood before the posting and tried to think without lying to myself.
Whatever waited inside had defeated five people whose public grades exceeded mine. I could not fight it. I could not assume the old map remained accurate. I had spent an entire day learning exactly why that assumption killed people.
I wanted that reasoning kept honest. There was a particular kind of stupidity that put on a calm voice and called itself calculated risk. I had used it before. The mine did not become safer because I could list my advantages in complete sentences.
But the contract did not ask me to clear the instance.
It asked me to look.
Predator’s Veil suppressed my sound, scent, and detectable presence while I moved carefully. It was not invisibility. Running, attacking, or taking a hard impact would break it. Used properly, though, it made me unusually suited to reconnaissance.
Feline Senses could separate old blood from fresh, track sound through tunnels, and work with almost no light. Feline Grace helped on unstable ground. My spatial ring let me carry supplies without advertising them, and my C-grade Shadow Scout identity made the decision publicly believable.
The reward mattered too.
Ten thousand coins could secure the compound for months. Restricted Archive access could improve every decision after this one. Higher-level maps, class records, resource locations, and the continuation of files that currently ended at a locked staircase were worth more than equipment I might eventually lose.
Liora had warned me not to build my survival around ammunition. Rifles ran empty. Batteries died. Walls failed.
She had once taken the rifle from my hands during training and asked what I would be when the ammunition ran out. My answer had been clever enough that I remembered the expression she gave me and not clever enough to repeat. Then she had made me practice falling until the ground felt personally involved.
The unnamed cultivator had demonstrated the alternative by facing a Level 15 red-name while manifested below it and killing the creature with technique I could barely follow. She had brought no rifle, generator, or wall. She had brought what she was.
That was the law underneath the new world. Anyone who stopped progressing eventually became prey as the danger around them rose.
None of that made the contract safe.
"You just learned instances can stop obeying their rules," I murmured. "Your response is to enter the one currently proving the point."
Look. Learn. Leave.
It was not courage. It was a narrow job matched to the few advantages I had, with a reward large enough to justify the risk.
Reconnaissance had a clean edge in theory. Enter. Observe. Gather proof. Withdraw. The danger lay in believing the edge would remain clean after I crossed the threshold.
I signed.
The clerk read my confirmed badge and the clearance beside my name.
"Shadow Scout?"
"That’s what it says."
"Evidence and return. You are not contracted to rescue them or engage whatever is inside."
"Good. I wasn’t planning to become the sixth missing person."
He did not laugh. I respected that.
The last supply wagon carried me most of the way back to the compound. Blind Call remained ready and untouched.
Using it before I reached danger would waste the manifestation window on travel and explanation. A summon was not a companion I could keep beside me until convenient. She would arrive, the timer would begin, and at its end she would return to the exact instant she had left.
One charge. One emergency reserve.
I spent the evening preparing beneath the workshop lamp.
Laying everything out had been one of Liora’s habits. Equipment hidden in a bag could pretend to exist. Equipment spread across a floor had to answer for itself.
Rifle and available ammunition. Both knives. Food that could be eaten cold. Water and purification tablets. Medical supplies. Headlamp, hand torch, spare batteries, and a chemical light. Rope, cord, chalk, reflective strips for route markers, gloves, and protective clothing.
I laid everything out once, packed it into the spatial ring, then laid it out again to find what I had forgotten.
Nothing makes equipment more visible than believing you are finished.
The ring removed the burden from my back, not the need to plan. If I had to stop in a dark tunnel and search ten cubic metres of badly organized storage while something approached, the space itself would become another way to die. I grouped light, medicine, food, and route-marking supplies separately until I could reach each without thought.
Before sleeping, I walked the compound. Both gates were secured. The alarm wires hung clear of the wind. The generator was off, fuel marked, and water valves closed where they needed to be. Food and medical supplies sat above the floor in sealed containers.
Three days earlier, the place had been functional but bare. Now the office held a clean bed, the washroom had a shower, and the cooking corner contained a kettle that belonged to me by the ancient legal principle of having paid for it.
Somewhere to return to.
The thought felt less like comfort than leverage the world could use against me.
I slept badly and woke before dawn.
After eating, I unlocked the pedestrian gate, passed through, and secured it from outside. Grey light lay across the fence and water tanks. The compound waited behind me, quiet and intact.
Eleven kilometres south-southeast, five people better equipped for a fight had walked into a familiar mine and vanished when it became unfamiliar.
My job was to discover what happened and come back.
Look. Learn. Leave.
I turned south with the Blind Call held in reserve.
And if the job stops being simple, I thought, know where the exit is before it notices.