The Merchant Guild was in an uproar. Not so much because of the recent theft, but primarily due to the vile Psychic Curse the perpetrator had left behind. The thing was truly insidious and evil, able to propagate with ease and render all targets hapless until death.
It had no known cure, a simple and instant method of transfer as well as activation, and its killing rate was absolute. This was basically the worst kind of plague imaginable and it just had to occur in the Merchant Guild's headquarters of all places!
This was what was going through the leader of the Merchant Guild – Guildmaster Borgious' - mind as he sat in his room while drinking wine. He sighed with frustration as he unbuttoned his shirt and released his huge paunch to the world.
The sofa he sat in was manufactured to fit him perfectly and had many functions to accommodate his physique, weight, and mannerisms with ease. He tapped the side of it, which raised the leg rest up for him.
The issue had started with Mind Mage Dawson and since then 15 guards had been infected through various means, most of them experimentation, all of whom had withered away quickly.
Mind Mage Dawson himself was holding out due to his superior mental defense and the careful treatment of his elder sister, Grandmaster Olivia.
(Author's Note: This is not a Rank, but a title.)
A part of Borgious suspected the siblings. Mind Mage Dawson had access to the Treasury, but couldn't take anything out because he would instantly become the number 1 suspect for obvious reasons.
So, what better way to forge a robbery than to self-inflict a Psychic Curse on himself, making it seem like someone else had come to steal, while he and his sister used that time to fence the goods?
Once everything settled down, Olivia could magically come up with an antidote or countermeasure that would wake her brother up, and everything would be fine and dandy as long as he claimed to have been attacked by a foreign entity.
A perfect heist.
However, there were a few problems with this theory. First of all, Mind Mage Dawson and Grandmaster Olivia had been hired by the guild through a very special contract, one which did not allow them to harm the guild in any way.
Similarly, there were no known methods to cancel or avoid said contracts. In fact, Borgious skepticism had grown large enough to not only check through the wording himself, but he had also paid a lot of money to let others try to find a loophole which he might have overlooked.
Secondly, Mind Mage Dawson was in a state where he could perish at any time, and it had only been a week since the theft. If the two had planned for the matter to blow over before he woke up, well… Olivia would have to enjoy that money or resources on her own.
Thirdly, Olivia was a serious brocon. She would never allow any harm whatsoever to come to her darling brother just for some money or resources, both of which they could acquire with ease given the rarity of their classes and their power.
Even getting Mind Mage Dawson to take up that post had been a headache, and she had only relented because it should have been extremely difficult to harm Mind Mage Dawson given the location.
Fourthly, Borgious doubted this matter as a whole. Mind Mages like Olivia and Dawson could not manufacture such a potent Psychic Curse. They were Mind Mages! While it sounded similar to a psychic, there was a world of difference between both parties.
Assuming that these contradictions did not actually stop the event from happening. What would push the duo so far as to risk this? When Borgious thought up to here, his troubled expression froze.
Could it be?
Had the Mind Mage duo conspired not for the mere trash-level wealth in this millennium's treasury but the wealth of their secret treasury?
(Author's Note: There was the equivalent of 55 million platinum and enough resources to create 3 prosperous continents in the 'dummy' treasury.)
If that was the case, then yes, it would make sense. Even to Borgious, what was located in there was enough to tempt him into betraying the Merchant Guild and run. Alas, the vows he had been forced to take to become the Guildmaster had also made such a thing impossible.
Nevertheless, for Olivia and Dawson, staging this mere play where even Dawson's life was at risk would be the bare minimum. They could just use their newfound great wealth to hire an Archpriest from the Church of Light to resurrect him.
(Author's Note: I've forgotten if I explained this before, but resurrecting players is different from resurrecting NPCs due to the Immortal Spirit.)
Truly, an insidious plan if true.
In truth, Borgious also suspected Umbra. It was far too coincidental for them to appear on the same day that they got robbed. There was that fellow Draco, who could likely have sent his seductive woman here to distract them while someone else would rob them and incapacitate Mind Mage Dawson.
Thinking about Zaine again, Borgious felt his whole body flare-up. As one of the richest men in the world, there was no woman he couldn't taste. He even had enjoyed the best of succubi purchased from The Bazaar, but none could move him like a Royal Devil.
Zaine had 3 sisters and she was the only succubus among them. One was a well-known Broker who abused her beauty to trick fellows into terrible deals, and the other was a Trickster Devil that basically integrated herself into places and deceived people for her amus.e.m.e.nt.
Zaine was the least popular of Mephisto's kids because of her laziness that made her almost invisible to the main plane while all his other kids had left their mark here and there, the most recent being Ratchet who got vanquished before he could bring about an age of terror by the same man who Zaine swore herself to.
…the irony was not lost on Borgious and was one of the reasons he secretly resented Draco.
He heard that the fellow even had a harem of beauties that surpassed any Emperor, and such that even Gods would feel envy. Looking at Zaine alone, Borgious could not understand how such a fellow could even look at other women.
With just Zaine, he would never be tired! The Draco fellow was just a horny fool who could not control his urges and always wanted more!
But Borgious was ignorant of the fact that Draco had the Horned Demon Inheritance affecting him. Previously, Draco would have been content to play with Zaine once and stick to Eva.
And then he was r.a.p.ed by a gang of Wood Elves with fat butts, then gang banged by a bunch of Dryads. If anything, it was only with Roma that he fully gave his consent during the Unique Quest, and he made it clear to her that she would only be a Mystic Servant, though that sort of changed as he grew fonder of her.
Up until the bloodline activation where he brought his Horned Demon to 70%, Draco could be described as mild. The slaves that were bought to become living breeding pens were purchased by Eva, Draco never asked for them nor had he touched them.
As for opening a genealogy, that was only an idea he had in passing and he chose only a few willing maids who were 'perfected' by Richmond's spell. Even that was partly as a consequence of Zaine's scheme to worm her way from an uncertain toy he captured to a baby mama, till she eventually entered his heart properly.
Of course, Borgious had no idea of all this. If such a fellow had to bear the desires and commands of the Horned Demon Inheritance for even an hour, he would devolve into a beast that would be influenced by one of the seven sins at all times, with L.u.s.t being the most dominant one.
Right now, Borgious got up from his seat and dressed in a more comfortable attire for movement. He looked at himself in a mirror and scratched his face.
"This should be enough flab, right?" he asked himself uncertainly.
After pondering for a bit more, he shrugged and inhaled deeply. At the moment his lungs were filled with air, he flexed his body. The sound of an explosion reverberated in his room, as his body released a shockwave.
In the next second, the flabby fat man turned into a well-built middle-aged man who was slightly above average in terms of looks. After admiring himself for a bit longer, Borgious picked up the item that was created from the conversion of his built-up fat.
｢Aquarius – Bow
Rank: Legendary
Durability: 1,000,000/1,000,000
Effects:
Passive 1 – Homing: Every arrow shot from this bow will home in on its target and strike them regardless of distance.
Passive 2 – True Strike: All arrows possess the 'True Strike' attribute, allowing them to ignore skill and equipment modifiers for defense.
Active 1 – One Shot, One Kill: Fire a single arrow with enough power to kill anything in sight. Cooldown: 3 days.
Note: If the target is at or below the user's Rank, results in instant death.
Note: If the target is above the user's Rank, damage will be calculated accordingly.｣
Borgious snorted and tossed the bow into his Bag of Holding with an expression of dissatisfaction. "What a waste, I stocked up so much fat for just this? Damn, do I really have to become as fat as a mountain to create a Divine Item?!"
Grumbling about his special class ability, he moved out to head towards the vault. Interestingly, all the guards and aides who saw him didn't even question it, they all bowed with respect. It seemed that Borgious had done this enough times that people knew that he had two forms, slim and fat.
When he passed by the hallways where Mind Mage Dawson had been incapacitated, he saw Grandmaster Olivia there as usual. She was investigating the area for any clue that could lead to a cure for her brother, or at least, point her in the direction of the perpetrator.
Borgious snorted as he felt that she was putting on a show due to his suspicion, and Olivia ignored him because she felt he was an incompetent fool who had allowed her brother to be harmed.
This naturally made Borgious' suspicion deepen, but Olivia was unaware of this. When your family became the victim in a murder case and you were still grieving as well as trying to find out who killed your parent/sibling, who would ever think that the cops would dare to suspect them?
'Like, are you sick in the head? Why would I do that to my own goddamn family' was generally what Olivia assumed. She was even thinking about how to make Borgious take responsibility for this, much less imagine he'd have the balls to suspect her.
Borgious entered the Treasury and locked the door behind him. He quickly walked over to the statue of the God of Wealth, Plutus. There, he took out a strange scroll and chanted some words, which covered him in a golden light as he was sucked into a wormhole of seeming nothingness.
Once he appeared in the hidden world, he quickly took stock of things. Borgious eyes widened in surprise when he saw that none of the items or resources had been touched, but that only 5 billion platinum and some millions of Aether Crystals were taken.
This shocked him, for he had been prepared to come in and see the place swept clean. This was the equivalent of coming home to see your front door ajar and the window broken.
As you pushed the door open dreading the sight of all your appliances missing, you were stunned to find that the thief only took groceries and some curtains, leaving the TV and computers behind.
Borgious sighed with relief. "Whew. But why did they only take such a little amount? The platinum is forgettable, but the Aether Crystals are quite bothersome… at least they mostly took the lower grade ones."
He truly looked relieved. All the wealth in this mini small world was only 0.3% of the Merchant Guild's total hidden wealth stored over the millennia - with the rest stored in secure locations around the world – and this particular batch was compiled from the previous four of five millennia.
Still, losing it all would leave Borgious with a slight smear on his reputation.
With such a little amount taken, he could even write it off as his own consumption so his record would be kept clean.
He didn't feel the need to be bothered anymore. Searching for the perpetrator for this small amount would be too much of a headache. Right, he would just find a way to solve this Psychic Curse and extract more benefits from Olivia and co for this little theft of theirs.
As of now, Borgious firmly believed that it was Olivia and Dawson, because only they would be so considerate enough to take only a little bit without burning the bridge since they wanted to avoid suspicion and remain in the guild.
If it had been a party like Umbra, why leave anything behind? If they had found this realm, they should have robbed everything without a care. Since when did a thief have to be so careful when robbing?
If Borgious knew the main reason was because Eva couldn't carry it all away, how would he feel?