Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler-Chapter 82: [The Clean Coin Syndicate 5] Red Tier, Red Flag

Set beneath one of House Seravin’s old merchant corridors, the place had the feel of a forgotten storefront. The stall itself sat under a worn stone arch, its vendor NPC blinking slowly in robotic manner. Her silver braid hung over one shoulder, eyes glowing emerald and unfocused. The velvet-trimmed merchant uniform she wore gave her a noble look—clean, highborn, and oddly welcoming despite the dusty gloom.

Above the terminal, a glass lamp flickered in low intervals, casting dull gold light across faded blood sigils and ledger stamps burned into the counter. To the left, a warped bench sagged under a cracked canopy—once elegant, now just part of the background.

The Frayed Ledger nameplate hung above in faint, etched runes. Inventory listings were neat. Structured. Nothing flashy.

Catria stepped into the Frayed Ledger guild hall quietly, pausing to take it all in—the NPC stall under the stone arch, the faded sigils, the low flicker of the glass lamp overhead. She gave Theo a nod as he looked up from the merchant interface.

"Ready to start?" she asked.

Theo smiled faintly and tapped the guild permissions menu. One silent confirmation later, her access lit up.

"Forge Clearance unlocked," he said.

She moved to sit near the terminal, cross-legged, scanning the projected interface with quiet focus. She hadn’t touched anything yet. Just watching. Reading. Processing.

The screen was bare-bones—just tier tags, batch origins, and inventory sort filters.

The interface projected in front of her was bare-bones and functional. No neon, no cosmetics. Just tier tags, batch origins, and a dull grey-green filter that made everything look older than it was.

The door opened. Raven entered.

"Material inflow’s handled by Raven," Theo said without looking up. "I handle the selling. You don’t need to gather. Warehouse gets fresh stock every twelve hours. You see something interesting, take it. Mark it if you start crafting."

Catria blinked. "Raven handles the drops?"

"Through DarkMerchant, my alt" Raven answered with a nod. "All is drop in steady volume every twelve hours. Output’s stable."

She hesitated, then gave a slow nod and turned back to the screen.

Usually, they sold raw materials. But every so often, they took on a project.

"Today," Raven continued, pulling up a separate tab and dragging a window between them, "you’re starting with this."

A system chime rang.

Helix Scythe

Unique Weapon (Not Class-Bound)

+30 Agility

+20 Critical Chance

Passive: Spiral Echo — If user scores a critical hit, create an echo illusion for 3 seconds that mirrors basic attacks (50% damage).

Cosmetic Tag: Helix Media Partnership Item — Streamer Sponsored

Catria leaned forward and gasped. Her eyes widened. "This... This belonged to NekoNekoNyan. She’s huge. Top-tier PvP streamer."

She turned slowly. "Did you—?"

Raven shrugged casually. "She ambushed me during a raid. I beat her. This dropped."

Catria stared at the screen again. "We can’t sell this."

"Exactly. Too traceable. The tag alone would get us flagged. You’re going to break it down. Reforge it into two new items. High-level. At least orange. Different class types, different identities. We don’t want anyone recognizing its origin."

Catria leaned back, hands folding under her chin. "Two items minimum. Noted. I’ll need supporting materials."

Raven nodded once. "Theo sent a list from the warehouse. Use what you need."

Within minutes, she had the crafting suite open and was sorting materials:

Duskrunner Alloy

Bloomspore Husk

Embersteel Sinew

Spinal Bloom

Phantom Seer Cloak scrap

She ran multiple simulations on blueprints first. Color-coded charts, layering rune compatibility, stat affinity, passive interaction traces.

Then, finally, she spoke.

"I can do two red-level results. One ranged. One armor. Spiral Echo gets fractured across them, reinterpreted. Not a clone, not a copy. Just fragments that play differently."

Raven nodded, "The best priced items are comes from armor, weapon and utilities. I trust you will create the best result."

Catria stood up, nodding to both of them. "Sure! I’ll take it from here."

She headed through the side corridor toward the crafting wing of the guild hall. The Frayed Ledger didn’t have the largest workshop, but it was clean—a row of modular workbenches with embedded arcane stabilizers and segmented projection trays. A few unused alcoves still glowed faintly from past enchantments. Quiet. Functional.

She slid into one of the side stations and brought up her personal craft interface. The Helix Scythe blueprint hovered in front of her, spinning slowly with each finger swipe.

No crafting metadata. No origin concealment. Just raw data—and the unmistakable branded tag glowing like a red flag: [Helix Media Partnership Item].

Catria muttered, "You’re basically radioactive."

She activated the disassembly tool and started pulling the weapon apart into its component layers. As expected, most were fused through private enchant structures. But not all.

Recovered Core Material #1: Spiral Sigil Plate

Type: Illusion Enchant Anchor

Trace: Passive trigger — duplicate strike logic

Recovered Core Material #2: Compressed Alloy Frame

Type: Stat Anchor (Agility & Crit Scaling)

Trace: User-bound precision control channel

Two pieces. Two paths forward.

She exhaled slowly. "Okay. Repeater for the Sigil. Cloak for the Frame."

Then she dragged over the materials Theo had unlocked from the guild warehouse and started sketching combinations.

--

Reforged Item #1: Duskthorn RepeaterType: Red-Class Ranged Weapon (Repeater Bow)Stats: +22 Agility, +18 Crit, +6 MovementPassive: Fang Echo — On successful ranged critical, fire a shadow copy bolt (50% base damage) at a secondary random target within 10 meters, maximum 3 copy bolts.

--

Reforged Item #2: Whispercoil ShroudType: Red-Class Light Armor (Cloak)Stats: +20 Agility, +12% Stealth Duration, +15% Dodge TimingPassive: Ghostshell Haze — Delayed afterimage creates desync against lock-on and auto-aimLore Tag: "Spectral garment, alleged drop from Phantom Seer"

--

Catria wiped her brow. "It’s done. The stats are split. No visual continuity. The illusion passive was unbound and recoded in pieces."

Raven reviewed both profiles. Silent. Sharp-eyed.

Then he smiled, "You should consider my idea to be item game designer. All these are good but not overpowered. This could fetch us good prices and in turns, nice commission for you."

Catria nodded slowly. All these years, she’d had a thing for mix-and-match. First, it was clothes—three times she applied to fashion school, and three times she got rejected. It crushed something in her. She stopped showing anyone what she made. Stopped talking about it. Eventually, she found this game.

In here, she still mixed things. Patterns, effects, traits. Numbers that shouldn’t line up—but did, if you turned them just right. She didn’t call it crafting. Not really. It was more like solving a puzzle. A Rubik’s Cube. A weird alchemy game.

She never showed her creation. Never said a word in global chat. She didn’t want to get laughed at again.

But now? Now someone looked at the output and just said: "Good."

Her confidence started to creep back in—quietly, but real.

Now? Her confidence was creeping in.

"So what now?" she asked, still catching her breath.

Theo laughed lightly. "You can go around, play your own game and come back if you get ideas. We’ve got base materials stocked—weapon cores, armor fibers, potion reagents, poison catalysts—you name it. We usually sell them raw. But if something clicks, just use what you need."

He leaned back in his chair, tapping a timer on his screen. "Every 12 hours, fresh batch gets routed in. You can stay and craft more, go out and grind your own content, or just log in tomorrow and head straight to the crafter wing. It’s your rhythm." ƒrēenovelkiss.com

Catria stood, stretching her arms with a bright grin. "Alright! This sounds cool. I’ll play around a little and come back later if something hits."

She paused halfway to the exit, glancing over her shoulder. "And what do I do with the items I made?"

Theo leaned back. "The ones from the test trial yesterday? Already on display here in the guild. But these new creations—we’ll fence them through one of my alt accounts. I don’t want Frayed Ledger drawing heat."

Catria nodded slowly. "Ah, I see." She didn’t really get the full picture, but she understood enough to leave it alone for now. "Alright, i’ll be in the crafter room if you need me"

Theo watched her left to the crafter room. He let out a breath, then glanced at Raven.

"We’ll need another alt in a new guild soon," Theo said. "But don’t worry—I’ve got one lined up that can join a Cindraleth Union guild."

He tapped the guild overlay interface and began slotting names into his mental structure. "With that, the base web’s done: main guild here in Meridian Fold, first alt in Velkarin Axis, second in Cindraleth. We’ve got all three factions covered."

Raven folded his arms. "Should I expand the item list?"

Theo shook his head immediately. "Oh no. We need to breathe. Let the market adjust to our presence. You drop a new item today, another one tomorrow, and keep going like that? We’ll be in the spotlight."

Raven considered that. "Spotted any competitors yet?"

Theo smirked slightly. "Well, about that..."

Raven smiles and waiting for Theo’s next words, "Of course, this is not smooth sailing"

"There’s a sloppy competitor operating nearby. Not direct, but close enough to matter," Theo said, pulling up a display of trade data. "They’re pushing bulk red-tier gloves. Same item, minor variants, through multiple shell guilds."

Raven glanced at the data. "Same region?"

Theo nodded. "Stonebreath Gate. They’re clustering everything in Velkarin Axis, no attempt at regional split. It’s lazy. They’re either greedy or don’t know how to cover their tracks. Either way, they’ll get noticed. And that’s a problem for us."

Raven raised a brow. "Because your seller alt is based there."

"Exactly," Theo muttered. "If they draw attention—system flags, audit behavior, streamer watchdogs—we’re in the same blast radius. Our cover only works if we blend in. They’re turning Stonebreath into a hotspot."

Theo tapped again, expanding the item listings. "What caught my eye was volume. Six of the same glove in two days. Not duplicates—crafted variants. Same passive core, bleed damage and crit chaining."

Raven narrowed his eyes. "Detail me the pattern."

Theo scrolled through the listings, then expanded the display window for Raven to see.

"They’re flooding the market with Crimson Fang Gauntlets," Theo began, tapping through listing snapshots. "All red-tier, high-bleed passives, crit extension. No enchant lore, no drop tags—just raw forged pieces pushed through four shell guilds, all Velkarin-based."

Raven leaned in, scanning the interface. "They’re not even trying to mask origin."

Theo nodded. "Which is what makes it dangerous. They’re going to trip a wire."

Raven gave a short nod, then opened his DM panel.

[DM to Catria] — Check this. Crimson Fang Gauntlets. Can you analyze the passive and guess the materials used?

It only took a moment, Catria enter the guild hall from guild crafter room. Her screen open the link from Raven’s DM.

Crimson Fang GauntletsType: Red-Tier Gloves

Stats: +5 Crit, +Bleed Passive

Passive: Hemorrhage – Deals 2% HP bleed over 6s. Critical hits extend the duration.

Catria open the item specification from her own player DM screen, "Hemorrhage passive. 2% HP bleed over 6 seconds. Crit extends duration. That’s not plant or fire. You don’t get clean stacking effects from elemental gear. This feels like monster-core material—probably from fang, bone, or sinew. Something refined, not raw toxin. Probably built for speed and precision."

Raven flipped open his regional dungeon map, filtered for Velkarin Axis, and narrowed by monster-type anatomy drops.

"Too many," he muttered. "Half the dungeons here fit that profile. We’ll need more."

"I got it," Theo said, bringing up a filtered seller-volume scan. "Let’s look at glove sales. Red-tier. DOT passives. Last 72 hours."

Four dungeons appeared on the scan: ID 193, 198, 207, and 210.

Catria scrolled the list. "193 and 198 are off. Blooming Maw’s an acid plant boss, and Chimeblood’s an arcane caster. Both wrong type—and they’re in Meridian Fold, not Velkarin. Drop them."

"That leaves 207 and 210," Raven said.

"Thornspine Estate and Ashmarch Pit," Catria confirmed.

"Not Thornspine," Raven said flatly.

Theo looked at him. "You sure?"

"100%."

Catria scrolled to the final option. "Ashmarch Pit. Velkarin Axis dungeon.Tribunal Warcache, the drop from Ashmarch Pit, one of it contains some harpoon like things that can cause bleed with no elemental effect."

Theo gave a desperate look. "Then that’s it. Ashmarch Pit. But how can we do that? Should I reach out to the PvP guild and make a contract with them? That is risky, who can we trust to do that without being extorted later on? Those PvP guilds are like thugs most of the time."

Raven saw how Theo and Catria reached the same quiet conclusion—they couldn’t touch the source. Not directly.

He wanted to stay quiet, operate in the background. But he was in too deep now.

"Let me handle it," Raven said calmly.

Theo looked over. "You calling in your sweaty raid-number buddies?"

Raven chuckled. "More or less, yeah."

Theo’s curiosity only grew. How did Raven keep the material flowing every twelve hours? How could anyone maintain that kind of steady drop without burning out? And yet here he was, calm, detached, sitting in the guild like a man with nothing urgent to do. But Theo didn’t press. He respected the silence. Raven had his reasons.

Theo smiled faintly. "Alright, partner. First, we see if they’re really farming that dungeon on repeat. If they are? Disrupt the flow. If not, they’re probably flipping from someone else."

Raven noticed the way Theo looked at him—curious, but never pushing. He appreciated that. Maybe it came from being a finance guy, used to working client-side in real life. Maybe not. But this kind of partnership felt natural. Safe. It was always easier to work with a cartel when you didn’t have to explain everything.

"I’ll keep in touch," Raven said, and stepped out of the guild hall.

Catria, meanwhile, blinked at the empty door. "Uh... I don’t get it."

Theo chuckled. "You don’t have to. Just wait for news."

Catria’s mind turned the gears slowly, catching up in her own way.

Streamer gear disassembly.

Mid-tier material upgrades.

Hidden logistics.

Her eyes widened. "Wait—oh! Is this some kind of guild war?"

Theo smirked. "Oh, you’re just now catching on?"

Catria’s grin widened.

"OMG this is so EXCITING!"

This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢