Chapter 384: The Guild Across Evergreen

Time continued moving after Pax left Greyvale, and Sage quickly discovered that preparing for the Royal Capital did not mean he could simply pack his belongings and follow him.

Pax had departed with a small number of trusted people to begin laying the intelligence network Sage wanted inside the Capital, while Sage remained behind with an entirely different problem waiting for him: Evergreen was growing faster than the Guild’s existing structure could comfortably handle.

Days became weeks, and during those weeks the Adventurer District became the command center of an expansion that stretched across the entire region. Reports arrived every morning from established branches, construction requests arrived by afternoon, recruitment lists piled across Lyana’s desk, and messengers seemed to enter and leave the Guild Hall at every hour.

Before the Vault expedition, Sage had always needed to think carefully about how much money could be committed to expansion without damaging normal Guild operations.

Now that restriction had almost disappeared. The treasure they had recovered from the Vault had given them an amount of wealth that would have been ridiculous to leave sitting uselessly in storage, and Sage had no intention of becoming some dragon sleeping happily on a mountain of gold while his organization desperately needed investment.

He spent aggressively, although never without knowing exactly where the money was going. Buildings were purchased in cities where constructing a Guild Hall from the ground up would take too long, while empty land was acquired in places where Sage wanted permanent facilities large enough to support future growth.

Old merchant houses became temporary Guild branches after renovation, abandoned warehouses were converted into storage facilities, and construction crews were hired for larger projects.

Wagons, horses, weapons, furniture, training equipment, office supplies and emergency reserves were purchased in quantities that would have made Sage nervous only a few months earlier.

Larger branches received smithies, stables, restaurants and inns wherever the expected adventurer traffic justified the expense, while smaller locations were kept practical rather than wasting money building enormous halls that would remain half empty.

Sage had learned enough from Greyvale to understand that looking impressive was useful, but making money disappear for no reason was not. Every gold coin he pulled from the Vault wealth needed to solve a problem, create income, improve Guild operations, or prepare the organization for future expansion.

Riverdale City already possessed an established branch, but it was no longer an exception. Stonebridge City received its own Guild Hall, followed shortly afterward by Silvercrest City, and once those locations stabilized, expansion accelerated into the remaining population centers throughout Evergreen.

Major towns received smaller branches with mission counters, equipment storage, training yards and enough staff to support the local adventurer population, while settlements too small to justify full branches received Guild offices instead.

Important trade routes gained mission stations where adventurers could report monster sightings, accept escort requests, deliver completed mission records or receive information about nearby dangers without traveling all the way to a city.

Within several weeks, the map inside Sage’s office changed so dramatically that even he sometimes found himself staring at it. Places that had once been nothing more than names written across parchment now had Guild markers beside them, each representing employees, adventurers, missions, income and another small piece of the organization spreading throughout Evergreen.

The twenty elite adventurers who had accompanied Sage into the Vault became especially valuable during this period.

Those who had accepted his earlier proposal to become Branch Guildmasters were sent throughout the region according to their experience and personalities, with the strongest candidates receiving important city branches while others took responsibility for growing towns or strategically useful locations.

Sage did not expect them to become administrators overnight simply because they were excellent adventurers, however, and the first few weeks proved why that distinction mattered.

A man capable of leading twenty warriors through a monster-infested forest could still become completely helpless when confronted with salary records, merchant contracts and three receptionists arguing about conflicting mission registrations.

Sage found that problem strangely amusing, but Lyana certainly did not. She became one of the busiest people in the entire Guild as the regional administration expanded, and before long she had organized a proper orientation program instead of allowing every new Branch Guildmaster to learn through mistakes.

The program quickly became mandatory because twenty people were nowhere near enough to manage the whole region. Sage opened recruitment for potential Branch Guildmasters and deliberately refused to restrict applicants to powerful warriors.

Experienced adventurers applied alongside retired mercenary officers, merchants, former caravan managers and administrators who had spent years working for trading companies or noble estates.

Strength mattered when running an organization filled with warriors, but Sage cared far more about whether someone could manage people, understand money, follow Guild law and make decisions without turning every disagreement into a duel.

Candidates who passed the initial screening entered Branch Management Training, where they studied mission registration, Guild laws, branch finances, adventurer discipline, monster and dungeon classifications, emergency procedures, conflict resolution, neutrality rules, relations with local authorities and the reporting requirements every branch owed the Evergreen Regional Headquarters.

Corruption received particular attention. Sage made the punishment clear enough that nobody could later claim ignorance.

Boren became heavily involved in the practical side of the training, especially anything concerning adventurer operations, and he discovered very quickly that teaching was considerably more exhausting than complaining.

One afternoon Sage found him leaving a training room with several documents tucked beneath one arm and the expression of a man who had personally survived another dungeon.

Boren looked at him and immediately complained, "Boss, I need you to understand that some people should never be allowed to manage anything larger than their own breakfast. I spent almost an hour explaining why a Branch Guildmaster cannot confiscate an adventurer’s equipment because he thinks the man is irritating, and somehow that became an argument about whether punching someone counts as an administrative punishment."

Sage nearly laughed as they continued down the corridor together. "And what did you tell them?"

"I told them that if they punch their employees every time they become irritating, they’ll eventually have no employees left. More importantly, I told them Lyana would probably travel across Evergreen personally just to murder them if they ruined her paperwork."

Boren glanced behind himself as though expecting the woman to appear. "That last explanation was surprisingly effective."

Expansion created more than leadership positions. Every new branch needed ordinary people to keep it functioning, and the Guild’s demand for workers spread almost as quickly as its demand for adventurers.

Receptionists were recruited and trained to handle missions without accidentally sending beginners into assignments that would kill them.

Accountants and clerks maintained branch records.

Cooks filled kitchens attached to the larger halls, stable workers cared for the constant traffic of horses, blacksmiths signed contracts to repair adventurer equipment, warehouse workers managed materials brought back from missions, and quest evaluators learned how to verify completion reports and determine whether unusual requests required investigation before being posted.

Healers and apothecaries began opening businesses close to Guild branches or entering formal partnerships with them, while merchants discovered that a street filled with adventurers created customers for almost everything from boots and travel rations to potions and replacement weapons.

What had happened to Greyvale’s Gryphon District was beginning, on a smaller scale, throughout Evergreen.

That development carried consequences Sage had not fully appreciated when he first created the Guild. The Adventurer Guild was no longer simply an organization that warriors joined to accept missions. Families now depended on salaries earned behind Guild counters.

Blacksmiths depended on adventurers bringing damaged weapons into their workshops. Innkeepers wanted branches nearby because adventurers needed beds, while merchants followed new Guild Halls because adventurers spent money freely whenever they returned alive from dangerous missions.

Even people who had never accepted a mission in their lives were beginning to benefit economically from the Guild’s existence. Any noble who wanted to remove the Adventurer Guild now faced a much larger problem than Sage Alistair and his warriors.

They would also be threatening merchants, craftsmen, workers and countless ordinary people whose livelihoods had become connected to it.

Of course, rapid expansion brought Sage another concern. Sitting inside his office one evening, he opened the Adventurer Guild Interface and began moving through the newly added branch section. Riverdale appeared first, followed by Stonebridge, Silvercrest and an increasingly long collection of smaller branches.

Each could be opened individually, revealing active membership, completed missions, income, operating expenses, employee numbers, assets, inventory changes and financial transfers.

Sage leaned back slowly as he realized just how ridiculous the oversight function was. A normal organization expanding this quickly would need auditors traveling constantly between cities and would still struggle to catch corruption.

Sage could sit in Greyvale and inspect a suspicious withdrawal made hundreds of miles away without leaving his chair.

By the end of the following week, Sage found himself standing before the enormous regional map that had followed the Guild’s expansion from the beginning.

Lyana had updated it again that morning, and this time there were so many Guild markers scattered across the parchment that Sage needed several moments to take everything in.

Riverdale, Stonebridge and Silvercrest were marked clearly, but they were surrounded by dozens of smaller points representing towns, Guild offices and mission stations. Major trade routes now connected Guild-controlled locations, and there were almost no significant population centers in Evergreen that remained outside practical reach of the organization.

Thousands of new adventurers continued registering, new employees were still being trained, and branches that had existed for only weeks were already sending regular reports back to Greyvale.

Sage folded his arms and stared at the map in silence. When he had first arrived in Greyvale, establishing a functioning Adventurer Guild had seemed enormous enough.

Somewhere along the way, the Guild had consumed an entire district, spread into other cities, created branches throughout the countryside and embedded itself into the economy of the Evergreen Region. It had stopped being an experiment a long time ago.

Now, for the first time, Evergreen looked almost complete.

The Adventurer Guild had not merely expanded into the region.

It had covered it.

And as Sage stared at the nearly filled map, one thought settled quietly into his mind.

His work in Evergreen was approaching its end.