Chapter 29: Lieutenant Doren

―

[You have killed player "Aidylan Hull"]

―

+0 Experience

+3,107,373 copper

―

Jaxir grabbed at his chest, heaving for breath that wouldn’t come in deep enough spurts.

―

[Health Warning. User’s body has fallen below the threshold of safely continuing. Emergency pause has been initiated.]

―

Jaxir chuckled a bitter laugh. But, even if he were to die here...

A smile spread across his face.

It had been so many years, but he had finally done something that he could be proud of.

His vision went black long before the game finished its emergency shut down procedures.

**

The location was dark and damp, cobblestone lining the ground, walls, and even the ceiling. However, it looked like a raging fire had been through here several times as the stone was soot-covered and blackened.

There was a group of five making their way through it, but the atmosphere felt tense.

Usually that would be because the dungeon itself was difficult, but this was far from the case for them.

This was already their fifth trial run of the easiest difficulty setting. They were waiting to ramp up to the next and they had already gotten to the point that it was all too predictable.

No... their tension was for an entirely different reason.

"What the hell is going on here?!"

The man’s voice practically sounded like a raging, barking dog. If not for the familiar inflections, one would have wondered if he was speaking their language at all.

But that was the only reaction he could have as one notification of a dead guild member after another flooded him.

He wore an armor that was an odd mixture of fur and leather. His pauldrons capped his shoulders with the taxidermied heads of a pair of bears, his chest plate formed of leather and etched with the chiseled physique of a man, while a fur-skin pelt formed a skirt for his lower half.

The man was, of course, not Aidylan. The only person who could receive such immediate notifications about the deaths of guild members were ranked officials.

But with a guild as large as the Golden Fleece Guild, there was no way that every official could pay attention to every death. As such, most had their notification settings set to only alert them for people under their charge.

That was to say...

This man was the lieutenant head in charge of overseeing five Tutorial Zones and the town that connected them all. Of which, Jaxir’s tutorial village just so happened to be one.

And even then, he only allowed himself to receive notifications about those Level 7 or higher. Those were those who had potential to be groomed to join higher branches.

For the last several hours, he had been getting notifications about them dying one after another, but he didn’t think much about it.

Rare events were often triggered depending on the region and timing. It was near time for the twinkle twinkle bears of the region to come out of hibernation, and sometimes that would trigger some quicktime events with high casualty rates.

In the rarest of instances, a field boss might even be produced.

But usually when something like that happened, Doren would receive a report about it even if there was a bit of a lag due to the chaos.

Not only did he not receive a report, the deaths just kept coming faster and faster, and in shorter bursts at that.

"What the fuck is Aidylan doing?!"

And just when he said that, he received a notification that froze him.

The other members of Doren’s party were quite silent right now. They seemed more afraid of him than the possibility that some rare instance would trigger in the dungeon.

Three of the party members looked toward a woman, pleading looks in their eyes.

The woman, the healer of the party, shook her head and sighed.

"What’s wrong, Doren?" she walked over, rubbing Doren’s shoulder in a vain attempt to calm him down.

"It’s the fucking Twinkle Village. Their entire player base has been wiped out, and the idiot Aidylan still hasn’t gotten a report to me."

"Did you check any reports from previous days?" she asked gently. It felt almost like she was coaxing a child.

Doren frowned. "No. We’ve been grinding the dungeon. We have to be the first to clear this expansion on Nightmare Difficulty. If another branch swoops in and takes it from me, I swear to god I’ll start a civil war in the guild."

The healer rubbed his back. "Yes, of course, Doren. But let’s check those reports to see if it might be something Aidylan might have thought was a smaller matter before."

Doren gritted his teeth, but still followed the healer’s words.

She exhaled a breath, feeling lucky that Doren listened to her this time.

Honestly, it was a crapshoot. Doren was one of the more talented lieutenants of their guild, but his temper, well... it was a problem.

It was more than just a small problem, his fuse was so short it might as well not be there in the first place. Rather than a fuse, he was constantly on the edge of exploding at any moment in time.

Mylene was about the only person he would somewhat listen to. One might think that that was because of her beauty or something adjacent, but that wasn’t the case at all.

As far as they could tell, Doren had never shown any interest in any women or men for that matter. The only reason he listened to Mylene sometimes was because they were childhood friends.

Doren remained silent for a long while as his eyes scanned through nonsense. He was about to go on another tirade when he stopped on something that furrowed his brows.

"What is it?" Mylene asked, curious herself.

"Aidylan reported here that three gold farmers died at the hands of a new arrival the village lord put a bounty on. Then he said he would handle the matter personally.

"But after that he sends a report here that says the person entered a dungeon and hadn’t come out for over a day, so the matter was delayed."

Mylene looked at the others. The light of confusion in their eyes was the same.

It wasn’t like being in a dungeon for days was unheard of, but starter dungeons like the ones in tutorial zones weren’t so difficult.

If someone was spending days in there, it was either they were stalling, or they were too weak. And if they were the latter, they should have already died, so what was the problem?

But more interestingly...

"The only reason a village head would put a bounty on a new arrival is if their Moral Alignment was Bad or worse..." Mylene said slowly.

And there was only one way a new arrival could have a poor Moral Alignment before they even had a chance to do anything.

"Do you think another God is encroaching on our territory? A unique class, maybe? The birth of a healer?" Ammad, their tank, couldn’t help but chime in.

Healers were incredibly valuable because they were the most sensitive to Divinity. There was a very good reason Jaxir hadn’t seen any of them during his battle.

Mylene frowned. "The only God near us with disciples that have Bad Moral Alignments would be the Minor God of Reaping. We do have some tension with them. Could it be that―?"

BOOM.

Flames erupted around Doren, his eyes blazing with rage.

"They want to take my dungeon? I’ll raze them all to the ground! Connect me with Ulandae. Tell her to take the elite team we’re cultivating in the Sparkle Village and bring them to the Twinkle Village. I don’t want this guy sniffing Level 10."

Mylene’s frown deepened. "That will put a healer at risk―."

"I don’t give a damn!"

Flames roared out from the corners of Doren’s lips and Mylene could only sigh.

Silently, she chose to make a report to the other lieutenants.