“The tower was in the wilderness,” Veyra continued. “It wasn’t marked as a safe zone. If we teleport there now, Syntrix is free to kill us.”

  “Did they also get the quest from Heywin?” I asked. “Was that shown on the forums?”

  “They did,” Veyra said. “And they have an egg. Heywin gave them the same deal as us. Eight frostfang feathers and four fire seeds, and Heywin gets to keep the pet.”

  I thought about our options. “We could try to sell the materials. Syntrix is rich enough that they might pay us a good sum to save a hassle.”

  Veyra’s lips formed a line at the thought of abandoning the quest, but she said, “Won’t hurt to see what they’re paying, at least.”

  “I can probably ask Sylriu right now. Their merchant. I worked with him last week.”

  I did exactly that and opened the system to write him a message.

  Assassin: “Hey, how much is Syntrix paying for frostfang feathers?”

  He took a minute, but the response eventually came.

  Sylriu: “Sixteen hundred for eight feathers. That makes two hundred per feather.”

  I showed it to Veyra. “Isn’t that really low?” I asked. “We’ll barely get a grand for all eight.”

  “Yeah, the minimum I’d even consider is a thousand per feather,” Veyra said.

  Assassin: “The drop rates are crazy low, and the dungeon where they drop is level 350. Two hundred gold is stupid. The lowest I’ll go is a thousand per feather.”

  The next response came almost immediately.

  Sylriu: “We’re not paying eight thousand gold for quest items. Syntrix isn’t so weak that we can’t hunt for them ourselves. Three hundred per feather is my final offer. Twenty-four hundred for all eight.”

  “Yeah, no,” Veyra said. “The quest pays ten thousand gold and an invitation ticket. Both parties know that. Whoever can complete it first gets the actual rewards.”

  “I agree,” I said. “That’s a crap deal. But the tower is probably too risky to enter right now, and we still need fire seeds.”

  Veyra leaned against the dungeon wall. “Honestly, The Wizard’s Tower is still safer than we think. It’s Heywin’s home. He’s a level 390 time mage. If a fight breaks out, he will defend his home. So even though it’s in the wilderness, we can use him to defend us.”

  “So we’re playing to complete the quest,” I said.

  “We’re not taking Sylriu’s deal, that’s for sure,” Veyra said. “And abandoning the quest just won’t feel right. Let’s grab the fire seeds.”

  I agreed.

  We’ll complete this quest, I thought, and when we’re both officially rich, I’ll ask her out.

  ***

  We began the search for fire seeds with the same method as with the frostfang feathers: I teleported us to the next high level dungeon I had found, and we made an educated guess at the entrance on whether the place would contain items called fire seeds.

  We checked two more poisonous swamp pits, a crystalline cave, a necromantic purple-colored ravine, a cursed treasury, and a dozen more dungeons, but none were particularly fire-themed.

  “Hopefully it’s not that rainbow-area to the north of the tower,” Veyra said. “Syntrix is probably looking to explore that.”

  “We might have to go there regardless,” I said.

  Before that, however, I decided to check the auction listings one more time.

  To my surprise, there they were. Exactly four Fire Seeds (Rare Crafting Material) on sale, sold by none other than [Nova Imperium] MartinWind.

  Martin seemingly had the right idea about the seeds, as he was selling them for a thousand gold each.

  Buying those would be stupid. Instead, we checked Oblivara’s livestream.

  Lo and behold, Nova Imperium was livestreaming a dungeon hunt inside a fiery dungeon called the Silent Flame. Their map and location was hidden on the livestream to avoid revealing the location of the fire seeds.

  So Veyra and I got to work observing Oblivara’s video footage. Wonderwind had so many dungeons, and the map was so ridiculously large, that stream-sniping someone just by seeing them inside a fiery dungeon was usually impossible. A dungeon like that could have been literally anywhere. Nova Imperium must have trusted that nobody could read the location of their raid from video footage. Livestreaming did pay them a lot, after all.

  After watching for a few minutes, however, I spotted something. “Hold on, isn’t that lava the same tint as what was inside the volcano labyrinth? It has the same magma pebbles inside.”

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  “Probably just reused assets,” Veyra said.

  “The walls also have a black shade, the same as with the volcano,” I added. “The rooms follow a similar layout. And look at those twig-like weeds growing from the walls. The volcano was infested with those, no?”

  Veyra squinted at the paused video, and she started to get curious.

  “I’m fairly sure they’re in a secret dungeon inside the volcano itself,” I said.

  From there, we started searching the volcano’s labyrinth-like interior. We used every method for searching for secret dungeons, hitting suspicious looking walls to hope an illusion broke, looking for patterns or secret levers or whatever, but we found nothing.

  In the end, two hours later, we found the place pretty much by random chance when we spotted two members of Nova Imperium suspiciously on standby, defending an entrance to a random tunnel.

  We knew we found their operation, and the infiltration to Nova Imperium’s secret dungeon began, starting with the death of the two watchmen at the entrance.

  Killing them was barely an inconvenience. Veyra and I had grown a lot more in the last two weeks than Nova Imperium had.

  I blasted the poor swordsman with [Curse Of Rathax]. The spray caught him by surprise, and I slit his throat from behind.

  [You slayed OutOfTuneTuna]

  He dropped Helmet Of Might (Rare Helmet), which was probably worth fifty gold. Meanwhile, Veyra killed his friend just as easily.

  “Aren’t we becoming top players at this pace?” I asked with a grin.

  “Maybe,” Veyra said. “Although, the top five hundred list is arbitrary anyway. It doesn’t take into account player skill. Nova Imperium is good at PvE, but actually fighting… not so much.“

  The first few levels of the dungeon were quiet and eerie. Monsters had already been cleared, and everything had been looted. Only when we reached the third level down, we could hear swords clashing and shouts ringing. Nova Imperium was fully engrossed in clearing the path down.

  I can’t believe we’re just walking into a dungeon raid for a guild wipe, I thought.

  Two weeks ago, before meeting Veyra, I would have been satisfied by merely killing the two guards at the entrance for a quick hundred dollars worth of items. Actually entering the dungeon to fight a full guild was too risky.

  With Veyra, we just walked straight in to see what was up. We didn’t even have the livestream open.

  A fight against a large monster was ongoing. The room was large with a ceiling at least twenty feet tall. We stood atop a small cliff, below which was a sea of lava, continuing into the distance.

  Eight members of Nova Imperium were present, including their top five hundred players, Oblivara, MartinWind, and Solace145. They faced the lava, where an Obsidian Magma Mound (Level 290) stood tall.

  The monster was pretty much what its name implied. A thick mound of obsidian in the lava, staring down with large gaping eyes. It spat lava and slammed its thick obsidian fist at Nova Imperium hard enough to make the cliff shake.

  Oblivara and MartinWind stood at the front as the main tanks, mages barraging it from behind. Nova Imperium fought the monster like regular guilds fought—they exchanged blows and powered through with numbers. It didn’t matter if Oblivara received a heavy blow. His armor was built to withstand that.

  They didn’t seem to be aware of our sneaky approach from behind. Veyra had a wry look on her face as she said, “Watch this. Shadow Dash through my Time Freeze if you need to. I’ll let you finish them off.”

  Them? I thought. Did she intend to kill them all? I hid behind a large rock, watching.

  [Chronorift] sprouted from her staff, straight through Nova Imperium’s backline, splitting the battlefield in a wide rift. The spikes hit Solace145 first, dealing 20% of her health bar. She shouted, “Behind!”

  In a panic, Nova Imperium’s attention split. Their front lines were forced to defend against the magma mound, while their backline scrambled together to figure out an answer to whatever had hit them.

  They tried to run from [Chronorift], at which point the floor had already turned to ice, making them slide.

  When they tried to see who was attacking them, Veyra was gone, seemingly nowhere. Nova Imperium turned to confusion, staring all around them, weapons ready, all the while the monster crushed Oblivara. Their healers were forced to pay attention to their tank. The whole back-line was in chaos.

  Oh my god, not again, I thought, already knowing what was happening. My eyes panned upward.

  Veyra’s glowing figure was falling from the ceiling, and as she was about to hit the ground, her nuke blew up.

  Slashes resounded as her evolved [Time Freeze] obliterated the backline. Everyone including Solace145 died right there and then. The attack hit Oblivara and MartinWind as well, knocking both of them forward, just as the magma mound was also preparing a punch.

  The punch landed perfectly on Oblivara’s face, and another slash followed as he, too, died.

  Only the magma mound and MartinWind remained. His health bar was at 56%, and he was frozen in shock, staring at the corpses of his fallen guild.

  “Oh, sorry,” Veyra said as she portaled next to me. “I stole all the kills.”

  My reaction was the same as MartinWind’s. Mouth wide open, unable to form coherent thoughts.

  “Holy shit,” I managed to say. “That… that was beautiful.”

  “You again!” MartinWind called, spotting me. He jumped to dodge a fist slam from the magma mound.

  “You two got grudges?” Veyra asked.

  “Nah,” I said. “Well, we might now, considering his guild is dead.”

  MartinWind ignored the monster entirely and charged at me. He performed a running [Swing], and his sword slammed down at me with tremendous force.

  But he was not a level 370 monster, and the [Swing] system was still predictable. I held The Immortal for an easy perfect block, which rebounded his sword, breaking his stance.

  With that, piercing a dagger through his forehead wasn’t much of an issue. The slash came, and MartinWind died.

  Lastly, I took the damage stored in Lichfang and jumped to the monster, which now had 21% health from fighting Nova Imperium. [Curse Of The Lich] blew up inside its eye.

  Slash.

  [You Slayed Obsidian Magma Mound]

  [Congratulations On Clearing The Silent Flame]

  [Items will be divided randomly to party members by contribution.]

  [You have received: Fire Seed x5 (Rare Crafting Material), Obsidian Deathplate (Epic Armor]

  “Oh,” I said. “That was the boss.”

  The dungeon fell silent, but for the bubbling lava in the lake. The boss’s remains fell in like a sinking ship. My experience bar went from 5% to 88%, but I didn’t quite level up now that I was a decent level already.

  Veyra burst laughing. “And there we go. Fire seeds obtained.”

  I grinned with her.

  Tell her how amazing that backline wipe was! And ask her out right now!

  “That’s crazy,” Veyra said. “We caught them totally off guard. I was right to follow you. Somehow, you always find the best places for loot.”

  “Of course,” I said with an awkward laugh. “Nice job. That was beautiful.”

  We grabbed their gear drops, worth around seven thousand gold total, and a new clip of Nova Imperium dying blew up on the forums.

  I was left mildly disappointed in myself for the unconfident compliment, but we readied ourselves to complete the quest in high hopes, and began figuring out how we’d teleport to the wizard’s tower without dying.

  20 chapters ahead on !