Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler-Chapter 64: [The Birth of a Cartel 2] House Seravin

House Seravin’s outer promenade felt like a forgotten stage set.

Gold-trim banners faded by moonlight.

Empty balconies with cracked lion motifs.

Noble prestige dressed in dust and echo.

But Raven didn’t come for the crowd.

He came for the blind spots.

He stopped in front of a small merchant stall tucked beneath a stone arch, its vendor NPC blinking slowly as if waking from a dream.

The stall was set into a weathered marble alcove, its stone counter layered with scuff marks and old blood sigils faded by time. A hollow glass lamp above flickered gently, casting dull golden light across the ledgers.

Behind the counter, the NPC cashier—a striking woman with silver hair braided over one shoulder—stood idle, her emerald eyes following nothing and everything all at once.

Her uniform, a soft blend of merchant greens and highborn velvet trim, stood out amidst the gloom. Players could approach her to browse listings or finalize trades through a polite, scripted interaction.

Raven gave the briefest of smiles as he noticed her. Of course. Good-looking staff, even if they were NPCs, still pulled in business. Players lingered longer when beauty met convenience. It was just smart design.

To the left of the stall, a bench warped by years of rain and disuse slouched under a cracked canopy. Once, it might have been a waiting spot for high-end customers.

Now, it was just part of the background—a forgotten corner of a forgotten city.

Frayed Ledger Guild — listed quietly above.

Inventory neat. Structured.

Tier-blue gear lined up beside stabilized potion bundles.

A handful of purple-tier mats sat near the bottom — nothing flashy, but priced with care: 20% above market. Exactly.

Clean. Consistent. Professional.

Then came the footsteps.

"Man, this herb satchel weighs like my kid after snack time," a voice muttered.

Raven turned.

A player rounded the corner, dragging a bundle of harvest bags.

Level 30 Paladin. No aura, no flare. No skin package.

Just a guy in worn armor and stained gloves who looked like he logged in during his kid’s nap break.

Theo.

He gave a tired chuckle as he set the satchel down. "Hey there. Don’t mind the mess — the stall’s cleaner than my desk at work, at least."

He crouched to open the merchant interface. "You looking to buy or just browsing?"

"Neither," Raven said. "I’m here to move product."

Theo paused. Blinked once. Then smiled — wide and disarming.

"Ohhh," he said, drawing it out. "So you’re one of those — what’s the term? Supply-rich, listing-poor?"

Raven shrugged faintly. "You could say that."

Theo turned back to the NPC terminal. "Lemme guess. Dungeon hoarder? Raiding with a sweaty crew full of numbered usernames?"

"Something like that," Raven said, eyes scanning the guild stall’s clean layout, reading prices without urgency. He sounded nonchalant, almost bored. "Weekend runs, mostly."

Theo chuckled again. "I once joined a PvP party by accident and missed a heal—got kicked on the spot. Apparently, being a dad doesn’t excuse missing a single button press. Got booted before I even found the healing hotkey. Never again."

He listed two herb stacks with fast, smooth inputs.

"I’m a market guy," he said casually. "Buy low, sell smart. Scrape margin between the sharks."

Raven said nothing, so Theo filled the silence.

"You know the big guilds pay real cash to get first listing windows, right? Hell, some streamers use delivery alts just to rotate product per hour. It’s like Bloomberg Terminal, but with poison powder and cloth boots."

He grinned, completely relaxed. "Me? I’m just the guy making nickels in the cracks."

Raven’s tone didn’t change. "What if I told you I had something better than nickels?"

Theo turned, cocking a brow.

"I’d say—cool. But I’m not running a laundromat."

"Nothing illegal," Raven said. "Just volume. Blue-tier minimum. Purple often. I’m active in raids—daily clears, rotating bosses. Materials pile up fast."

He glanced around the kiosk, voice low and even. "I don’t want a guild. I don’t like...socializing. I just want someone who knows how to slot listings without getting greedy."

Theo leaned back a little, studying him for a beat.

"You’re not the first player who’s tried to slide product through my guild trader," he said, casually but clearly. "Most of them talk big. Want front placement and fifty-fifty splits."

Raven waited.

There was a beat of stillness. Neither trusted easily. Not in this world.

But something in the rhythm of the conversation—the absence of bragging, the shared distaste for noise—began to smooth the edges.

Theo smiled again — a little smaller now. A little more focused.

"You? You’re different," he said. "Quiet. Not bragging or trying to smooth talk me. That’s good."

Then, a flicker behind his eyes — and just like that, the kind of man who dealt with six-figure spreadsheets and market fluctuations before breakfast was staring back.

"Volume per day?"

"Twenty to thirty listings. Raid surplus. Core mats. Some specialty gear. No junk."

Theo nodded. Already opening another window.

"You set your price range?"

"Cheapest I go is eighty silver. Most I list for is two gold. Depends on rarity and buyer demand."

He was already calculating. Hands moving fast. Listing rotation timings. Margin averages. Cross-stall bleed.

"If we do this, I list what I want, when I want," Theo said, tone now flat and professional. "I pad the rotation with lower-tier stock to hide spikes. You don’t ask for front placement. That just means you don’t request your items to be pinned at the top of the shop window—it keeps things subtle, like any regular trader slipping in his wares. No red flags. You get clean gold, minus fifteen percent."

"Fifteen?"

"Ten is what I give friends," Theo replied, with a dad-chuckle. "You’re not there yet, man."

Raven gave a small nod, his expression unreadable. "Fair for me."

A few minutes ago, he might’ve dismissed Theo as just another silver-chaser. But now? There was a method to him. Honesty layered under banter. Experience under casual weariness.

He appreciated that. No flattery. No sales pitch. Just clear terms and controlled margins. Exactly what he needed.

Most players, by now, would’ve overplayed their hand—begged for partnership, bragged about streaming clout, hinted at connections. Theo did none of that. He asked for nothing he hadn’t earned.

Raven respected that restraint. It reminded him of his own.

Then he opened his inventory.

He dropped three items into the shared trade box.

A crystallized mutagenic bloom from Vault of the Rootbound.

A scorched ember gland — a fire-resistant material harvested from the core chamber of Emberstone Forge.

A flawless ember-forged knife, leftover from the Emberstone massacre. ƒrēenovelkiss.com

Theo whistled low.

"Damn. You really are sitting on a gold vein."

He clicked through item data, double-checked tags, then leaned back again.

"I’ll list one today. Let it breathe. Once the market takes the bait, I drip the rest. Should look like a slow surge from a returning whale crafter."

He kept tapping as he spoke, muttering to himself.

"Pair the knife with a mid-tier acid flask... run it after server reset... low comp hours... yeah."

Raven watched in silence.

"We don’t go loud," Theo continued, tone smooth. "We anchor it with throwaway listings to bury it in the noise. A few real buyers pick it up, word spreads without setting off price pings. Quiet hype. The market does the rest."

"Good."

Theo tapped the side of his interface. "You want to set a comms link, or... how do you want to keep this rolling?"

Raven sent a blank direct message.

"Just reply to that whenever you need to talk," he said. "No friend request. Keeps things simple."

Theo raised a brow, then nodded once while chuckling,

"Wow, you really aren’t the social type. Well, works for me."

Theo turned toward him fully now, crossing his arms.

Theo didn’t fully trust him yet. No one with gear that clean, voice that flat, and bags that full was harmless. But something about Raven’s restraint—the absence of ego—made him lean forward instead of away.

"You got a name?"

"Raven."

He nodded. "Theo. You probably guessed I don’t do PvP or dungeon fan clubs."

"I guessed."

They weren’t friends. But they weren’t strangers now, either. Something clicked beneath the surface—an understanding neither needed to speak.

"But," Theo added, gesturing at the terminal with one hand, "I’ve been holding this stall against corporate-backed guild stall farms and streamer-run shops for two years."

Raven tilted his head. "Yeah, I’ve heard that. Got once trapped inside price play on the market of an item too"

"I’ve been making my pennies dodging capitalists," Theo said. "But you? You’re not a coin. You’re a cannon."

He grinned again, loose and casual once more.

"And I think it’s about time I added some gunpowder to my ledger."

They shook hands.

Neither of them said it, but both could feel the shift.

What began as a simple transaction had the bones of something else—something built to last.

Primordial Abyss wasn’t designed to be this way. The market was supposed to be simple—just a place to dump loot, flip swords, sell potions. But that was before the megaserver hit 300 million players.

Before real-world economists joined guilds. Before off-platform groups formed price-fixing rings. Before merchant guilds made backroom agreements and started controlling the value of healing elixirs like stock traders

It wasn’t a game economy anymore. It was a warzone in silver.

And Raven had just chosen his first partner—a quiet trader with steady hands and a ledger sharp enough to cut throats.

This wasn’t a deal. This was a fuse.

No banners. No contracts. Just two quiet players. And the start of something that would set the market on fire.

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