Chapter 72: Clause

Chapter 72: Chapter 72: Clause

The morning news broadcast playing on the holographic screen in the TIG executive kitchen was completely hijacked.

Instead of the usual morning anchors, Julian Vane stood perfectly poised in his pristine white suit. Behind him, the massive, swirling purple vortex of the Abyssal Gate loomed, illuminating the gray Genesis City dawn. A perimeter of heavily armored Dragonheart guards kept the local press at a distance.

"By decree of the Capital," Vane’s aristocratic voice echoed smoothly over the broadcast. He held up a glowing gold scroll. "The Dragonheart Guild hereby invokes a Royal Charter over the Abyssal Gate. This dungeon is now sovereign Capital territory. All local mining, harvesting, and raiding operations are permanently suspended."

Donald took a sip of his coffee. He was leaning against the kitchen island, already dressed in his dark tactical gear. The winged black cat—which Evelyn had promptly named Nyx—was curled around his neck like a scarf, purring softly.

His burner phone vibrated on the marble counter. It was Aris Thorne.

Donald tapped the speaker icon. "Good morning, Aris. Did you see the broadcast?"

"I’m looking at it right now," Aris said, her voice tight with stress. "The Association is in a panic. The Mayor’s office is flooding my lines. Vane just officially choked the city’s economy to death. He has a twenty-man elite raid team walking into the portal right now. I don’t care how much money you have, Donald. You can’t outbid a Royal Charter."

"I don’t intend to," Donald said calmly. "I want you to drive down to the Association headquarters right now. File the paperwork to officially invoke the Vanguard Clause on behalf of the Investment Guild."

There was a long silence on the line.

"The Vanguard Clause?" Aris breathed. "Donald, if you invoke that, you have to beat a twenty-man team of Capital A-Ranks to the bottom floor. If you fail, or if you die, TIG assumes the legal penalties for challenging a Royal Decree. They will execute you."

"Then we better not lose," Donald smiled behind his gold mask. "File it, Aris. We’re leaving in ten minutes."

He hung up the phone and walked out of the kitchen, taking the elevator down to the second-floor armory.

The automated A-Rank Mana-Forge was venting a soft hiss of steam when Donald walked in. Garrick was sitting on a metal stool, wiping sweat from his forehead. The old Artificer looked completely exhausted, but his eyes were bright with a fierce, absolute pride.

Evelyn and Sylvia were already there, examining the new gear.

The contrast between the two women was striking, but the tension from last night was completely gone. Evelyn was a beacon of celestial heat, strapping a new set of sleek, silver-inlaid B-Rank bracers over her urban combat gear. Sylvia was a shadow, dressed in a brand-new, light-absorbing tactical suit woven from incredibly durable, mana-resistant spider-silk.

"It’s perfect," Sylvia said quietly, testing the flexibility of the suit. She picked up two new curved daggers from the workbench. Unlike her old Crimson Lotus blades, which dripped with unstable, corrosive magic, these blades were forged from pure, compressed tungsten, humming with a quiet, lethal edge.

"The forge did the heavy lifting," Garrick grunted, waving a hand. "I just adjusted the weight distribution. But you’re outfitted. B-Rank across the board."

Donald walked up to the workbench. Nyx hopped off his shoulder, landing silently on the metal table and sniffing at Sylvia’s new daggers.

"Are we ready?" Donald asked.

Sylvia pulled a small digital projector from her belt and set it on the table. A blue holographic map of the Abyssal Gate materialized. It was a sprawling, multi-layered labyrinth that descended deep into the earth.

"This is the route Dragonheart mapped out," Sylvia said, her violet eyes hardening with professional focus. "Julian Vane is leading the team personally. They are taking the Outer Spiral. It’s safe, heavily documented, and avoids the high-density monster nests. But it will take them at least eight hours to reach the bottom."

"If we follow them, we’re just fighting their rear guard the whole way down," Evelyn noted, crossing her arms. "And fighting twenty A-Ranks in a narrow tunnel takes time."

"We aren’t following them," Sylvia said. She tapped the hologram, highlighting a massive, straight vertical shaft in the dead center of the labyrinth. "This is the Hollow Drop. It goes straight from the first floor to the boss room."

"A straight drop?" Donald asked, analyzing the map. "Why isn’t Vane taking it?"

"Because it’s suicide," Sylvia said flatly. "There are no ledges. It’s a two-mile free-fall through pure darkness, and the walls of the shaft are lined with Gargoyle nests. Anyone who jumps down there gets swarmed and torn apart in mid-air."

Evelyn slowly turned her head, looking at Sylvia. A massive, thrilled smile broke across the Valkyrie’s face.

"I can fly," Evelyn pointed out.

"I know," Sylvia said, a faint smirk touching her lips beneath her black half-mask. "But we can’t."

Donald stepped up next to Sylvia, leaning over the holographic map. He was close enough that Sylvia could feel the quiet, steady warmth radiating from him. It wasn’t the suffocating, terrifying heat of Evelyn’s S-Rank aura. It was grounded. Safe.

"If Evie carries you," Donald said, tracing the vertical shaft on the hologram. "And I use [Shield of the Colossus] to create an aerodynamic wedge in front of us, we can essentially use gravity to turn ourselves into a bunker-buster. We bypass the labyrinth entirely and crash straight into the bottom floor."

Sylvia looked up at him. She was used to Guild Masters who viewed her as expendable meat. Malcor had literally left her to die in a room just like this. Julian Vane had put a collar on her throat.

But Donald was calculating the physics of their survival. He was using his own mana, his own defensive skills, to ensure she made it to the bottom alive.

"It’s a massive risk, Investor," Sylvia said softly, her violet eyes locking onto his. "If your shield breaks during the fall, we die on impact. You have thirty-eight million credits. You own this building. Why are you risking your own neck in a dungeon dive?"

"Ten million," Donald corrected smoothly. "I spent the rest fixing the plumbing."

He reached out, his gloved hand resting lightly on the metal table right next to hers.

"And I’m doing it because I made a deal with you, Sylvia," Donald said, his voice dropping into a quiet, absolute promise. "I don’t leave my investments in the dark. We take this dungeon, we break Vane’s political leverage, and then we go get your brother."

Sylvia’s breath hitched. A sudden, unfamiliar warmth bloomed in her chest. For a year, she had survived on pure, freezing hatred and paranoia. But looking at the Investor, she felt the terrifying, undeniable urge to simply trust him.

She quickly looked back down at the map to hide the blush creeping up her neck. "The Hollow Drop it is."

Thirty minutes later, an armored TIG transport vehicle skidded to a halt in the rain outside the Abyssal Gate.

The Dragonheart guards stationed at the perimeter instantly raised their weapons, but they froze when the doors opened.

Evelyn stepped out first. The Valkyrie didn’t say a word. She just let her S-Rank aura bleed into the freezing rain. The ambient temperature spiked, turning the downpour into thick, blinding steam. The Capital guards stumbled backward, their weapons shaking as the sheer pressure of her celestial mana crushed the air out of their lungs.

Donald walked past them, Sylvia flanking him seamlessly in the shadows, her dark suit blending perfectly into the steam. Nyx fluttered above them, the winged cat completely invisible in the heavy mist.

They walked directly up to the massive, swirling purple vortex of the Abyssal Gate.

Donald pulled up his internal interface one last time.

[Current Balance: 10,000,000 System Credits.]

[Party Assets: S-Rank Valkyrie, A-Rank Dark Mage.]

[Objective: Invalidate the Royal Charter.]

"Let’s crash the party," Donald said.

They stepped into the purple light.

The transition was instantaneous. The freezing rain of Genesis City was instantly replaced by the oppressive, suffocating heat of the dungeon’s first floor. The air smelled of sulfur, iron, and something old and rotting.

They stood on a massive stone platform overlooking the labyrinth. In the distance, they could hear the explosive sounds of A-Rank magic—Julian Vane’s team methodically clearing the Outer Spiral.

But as Donald looked down at the stone floor, his [Valuation Eye] flared violently. A wave of red warning text scrolled across his vision.

The bodies of the low-level monsters Vane’s team had killed were scattered across the stone. But they weren’t random, feral beasts.

They were Orcs. And they were wearing uniform, forged iron breastplates. They carried standardized steel pikes. The way their bodies had fallen indicated they hadn’t charged wildly; they had died holding a perfect, disciplined phalanx formation.

Evelyn knelt down, touching the iron breastplate of a dead Orc.

"Donald," Evelyn whispered, her brow furrowing in deep confusion. "Dungeon monsters don’t forge armor. They don’t use military tactics."

Sylvia materialized from the shadows beside them, her daggers drawn, her violet eyes wide with alarm. "This isn’t a feral monster nest. This looks like a garrison."

Donald looked out over the sprawling, cavernous depths of the Abyssal Gate. The golden text of his System interface pulsed with a rare, highly classified warning.

[WARNING: Dimensional Anomaly Detected.]

[Environmental Signature: Abyssal Realm Outpost.]