Chapter 109: The Rocky Basin, Rodeo on the Horns, and Guild Settlement

The midday sun slowly climbed over the jagged crest of the Black Ravine, casting sharp, stark shadows across the rocky gorges that bounded the northern trade route toward Halgard. The mountain air at this altitude was noticeably cooler, saturated with the scents of dry gravel, crushed moss, and that distinct, metallic tang of iron and sulfur that in the realm of Midgard invariably heralded the territory of a powerful predatory beast.

Dave walked ahead, his hands casually shoved into the pockets of his dark mercenary coat. Raiten rested diagonally across his back in a double leather harness-its black, basalt scabbard fitted with the polished, dark-sapphire Kaelar Core in the guard and the geometric Lynx pommel hugging his spine without shifting even a millimeter. Dave blinked, his retinal optical camouflage operating flawlessly, muting the sapphire brilliance of his irises into an unassuming, matte blue. To any bystander, he looked merely like a relaxed, slightly bored mercenary.

Behind him, treading with the silent grace of veteran hunters, walked Shnee and Karys. Both appeared entirely refreshed, as if the morning battle with the Leshy and being extracted from the flooded mill by Dave's liquid Sapphire Flame had been nothing more than an invigorating morning stroll.

"I have to admit, Dave, if not for that blue fire of yours, I’d be scraping river silt out of my ears until next week," Karys remarked, lazily running a thumb over the hilt of one of her dark daggers from the hundredth floor. "At least the smell of iron ahead is honest. Smells like a real predator, not rotten fish in vinegar."

"That's standard biology, Karys," Dave replied over his shoulder without slowing his pace. "Rotting pond scum is an ecological catastrophe. A horned beast on high rocks, on the other hand, is pure biomechanics. Let's see if this specimen lives up to the guild's sketches."

"The bounty noted the Fiend has completely cut off ore shipments from the old mines," Shnee chimed in, adjusting the hilt of her Celestial Silver rapier. Her cool, diamond gaze surveyed the jagged defiles ahead. "It rammed merchant palisades three times, smashed supply wagons, and shrugged off fire spells from local mages. Its armored hide possesses the density of graphite granite."

"Splendid," Dave smiled faintly. "Grim asked for hardened horn tissue and thick plate for the forge shielding. Two contracts are already bagged, and now it's time for today's third pacifist on the list. The Fiend will fill our material quota nicely."

They came to a halt at the edge of a narrow rocky ledge, gazing down into a sprawling, circular basin littered with shattered boulders and the splintered wreckage of wooden mining wagons.

Right in the center of the stone bowl lay the Fiend.

The beast was monumental-over four meters in length, its bulk covered in dense, dark-brown hide studded with outgrowths as hard as reinforced basalt. Four massive, stocky legs terminated in black claws the size of butcher hooks. Most impressive, however, was its head: a heavy skull scarred from past battles, crowned by a pair of colossal, curved horns forming an unbroken arched structure.

Dave stepped onto the brink of a boulder, tilted his head, and narrowed his eyes, assessing the curvature of the horns with brazen, engineering curiosity.

"Well now..." he muttered under his breath, scratching his chin.

"What did you come up with this time?" Karys asked, raising an eyebrow with clear amusement.

"Look at those horns, Karys. That elliptical curvature at an exact forty-five-degree angle... If I ran a high-frequency pulse along them, they'd act like a natural, directional Wi-Fi antenna booster. If we set up a router here, we'd have full-basin coverage without a single dropped packet."

Karys stared at him as if he had completely lost his mind, then broke into a low, predatory chuckle.

"Sometimes I wonder what goes on inside that head of yours, Dave. A Fiend is not an antenna."

"Not yet," he grinned insolently. "Alright, girls. Stick to the plan: create a small distraction on the flanks, and I'll see how this model handles the turns at full tonnage."

All three slipped soundlessly down the shale slope into the basin.

The Fiend registered the movement instantly. Its triple red eyes flared with a pulsing, blood-red luminescence, and a deep, sub-bass roar tore from its maw, rattling loose gravel across the cliffs. The beast unleashed a wave of hypnotic paralysis-a natural trait of demonic fiends designed to turn an intruder's nervous system into compliant mush.

For Dave, however, that wave was nothing more than ambient static. A single, shapeless pulse of Observation Yomi cancelled the psychic wave across a ten-meter radius before it could touch a hair on the girls' heads.

"Now!" Shnee commanded softly.

The elf darted along the left flank in a flawless assassin's glide. A clean thrust from her Celestial Silver rapier sent a cascade of crystalline frost directly into the beast's rear hocks. The ice encased the monster's tendons in a split second, stripping away its lateral mobility. Karys danced across the right-her wolf tail cut the air with the whistling crack of flexible steel, while her dark daggers severed the tendons in the front paw, collapsing the beast's attack angles.

The Fiend flew into a rage. It wrenched its heavy skull, splintering the ice beneath its hooves and roaring furiously.

In that exact split second, Dave accelerated.

Utilizing Lynx Footwork, he launched himself off the overturned wheel of a wagon, soared in an arc over the rocks, and landed with pinpoint precision... directly onto the startled monster's neck.

"Yee-haw!" Dave yelled at the top of his lungs, leaning forward and casually seizing the massive, curved horns with both hands.

The Fiend went berserk. The realization that someone had shamelessly mounted its neck and was gripping the sacred pride of its anatomy threw the creature into primal hysteria. Breaking the remaining ice from its limbs, the beast leaped two meters into the air, bucked violently, executed a mid-air spin, and stampeded across the rubble, desperately trying to throw off its uninvited rider.

Dave, however, dropped his center of gravity. Applying KAI physics, he anchored his mass via Gōtai, harmonizing with every micro-flex of the monster's spine. It looked like a shameless, wild-west rodeo: the four-ton monster thrashed across the basin, shattering boulders with the bumpers of its horns, while Dave sat atop its neck with a wide grin, steering the rack like motorcycle handlebars.

"It pulls a bit to the left!" Dave shouted toward the girls on the rocks. "Wheel alignment needs work, driver!"

Karys rested a hand on her hip, shaking her head in disbelief, though bright sparks of laughter danced in her emerald eyes.

"Tire him out faster, Dave! The passengers are waiting for the schedule!"

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Kaede, leaning out from Shnee's collar, twitched her legs in pure excitement and called out in their Polish code:

"Boss, give it some gas on the turn! Five stars for off-road suspension!"

The Fiend, realizing that bucking and leaping accomplished nothing, resorted to a desperate gamble. It bellowed hoarsely, dug its massive claws into the scree, gathered full speed, and attempted to throw its entire body backward-aiming to slam against the solid, vertical cliff face and crush Dave into paste.

The smile on Dave's face vanished in a fraction of a second.

"Oh no, buddy. We're not playing that game."

As the Fiend's front legs lifted into the air for the reverse slam, Dave tightened his grip on the horns with maximum Gōtai force and unleashed a full Raitai circuit-pure Gōtai supercharged with high-pressure sapphire plasma.

BZZZZZT-CRACK!

A blinding sapphire discharge erupted from his hands straight into the bone structure of the horns. The high-voltage current surged through the skeletal conduits directly into the brain and spinal column. Instant, tetanic paralysis locked down the entire nervous system-every muscle fiber in the Fiend's massive frame froze in a microsecond seizure. The beast went rigid mid-motion, its momentum completely dying.

When Dave released the horns and hopped lightly onto the gravel, the four-ton carcass collapsed onto the stones with a dull, heavy thud. Only a thin wisp of ozone-scented blue smoke curled from its nostrils.

"Safety belts worked after all," Dave remarked, dusting off his coat.

He stepped over to the fallen beast, drew a short hunting knife, and with engineering precision severed the pristine, undamaged horns and the thickest plates of armored hide from the neck. As a purely biological surface creature, the Fiend yielded no dungeon core-its true wealth resided entirely in its elite crafting materials.

Dave unhitched the spatial pouch at his belt.

Whoosh.

A dark spatial shimmer drew the trophies inside, where they joined the Leshy's skull and the Wodnik's scales.

"Three complete bounty sets on the ledger," Dave concluded, tapping the pouch. "Grim will have a fit of joy, and the merchants can finally breathe."

"Heading back to town?" Shnee asked, returning her rapier to its Celestial Silver sheath. "The sun is starting to dip toward the woods."

"Heading back," Dave replied, swinging his coat. "Time to collect our silver from the clerks and watch their rigid procedures shatter into dust."

Inside the hall of the Sworn Guild in Crossgard, the late afternoon buzzed like an overturned beehive. Daily patrol wages were being tallied, and at tavern tables, veterans in dented armor cursed the blocked trade arteries over mugs of sour ale.

"I tell you, the route to Halgard is completely sealed!" a bearded veteran in notched chainmail declared, banging his tankard onto the wood. "A Leshy in the ravine, a Wodnik drowning barge workers at the mill, and a Fiend wrecking convoys in the basin! No one in their right mind goes up there without an infantry company and alchemical artillery!"

At that exact moment, the heavy oak doors of the Guild swung wide open without a knock.

Dave walked in.

He strode down the center of the hall with his hands casually shoved into the pockets of his dark coat, Raiten on his back exuding calm, untouched lethal presence. Flanking him on either side were Shnee and Karys-poised, dignified, and entirely relaxed, as if returning from an afternoon garden tea.

Within twenty paces, all conversation died instantly. Veterans instinctively stepped aside, clearing a wide path for the trio who radiated an unsettling, quiet authority.

Dave walked straight up to the main counter, where the same young bespectacled clerk sat behind her ledger.

"Afternoon, boss," Dave greeted with an easy smile, resting his forearm on the oak counter. "We're here to sign off on the circuit."

The clerk blinked nervously, adjusting her wire-rimmed glasses.

"Mr... Mr. Dave?" she stammered, taking in his immaculate coat. "Did something go wrong? Do you require guild reinforcements on the trail?"

"Nah, not at all," Dave replied with casual nonchalance, reaching for the pouch at his belt.

THUD! CLATTER! CRACK!

Onto the polished oak counter dropped three pieces of indisputable proof:

1. The heavy, petrified skull of the Leshy with its tangled antler-crown from the Black Ravine.
2. A broad, shimmering sheet of greenish-black scales from the Old Mill's Wodnik.
3. The monumental, forty-five-degree curved horns of the Fiend from the rocky basin.

The silence that gripped the guild hall was thick enough to be severed with a rapier.

The clerk froze with her mouth agape, her quill suspended in mid-air. The bearded veteran at the adjacent table dropped his pewter mug, sending golden foam splashing across the floorboards, while several officers from elite mercenary companies stood up from their benches, staring at the Fiend's horns in absolute, paralyzed shock.

Three A-rank nightmares that had terrorized the province for two full weeks had been delivered to the counter in a single morning. Resolved by a young man in a well-tailored coat and two women.

"Are... are all three routes clear...?" the girl finally stammered, her fingers trembling noticeably.

"Clear as day. Send out the wagons," Dave grinned insolently. "Payout in hard coin, please."

The clerk nodded in feverish haste. She reached beneath the desk and produced a weighted leather pouch bearing the guild treasury's wax seal.

"According to standard rates... fifteen silver for the Leshy, twenty for the Wodnik, thirty for the Fiend... A total of sixty-five pure guild marks. Plus... an emergency bonus of ten gold sovereigns from the Merchant Council for the immediate restoration of transit!"

Dave scooped up the pouch, hefted it in his palm to gauge the weight, and winked at Shnee and Karys.

In that exact split second, stimulated by his passive Yomi Observation, Dave caught movement on the first-floor mezzanine. Behind a stone column stood an Inquisition agent in a slate-gray cloak bearing the Silver Eye crest. The man was frantically scribbling notes on a small parchment, glaring with cold hostility at Dave's silhouette and Raiten's hilt.

Dave didn't flinch. He pivoted on his heel and sent a single, icy glance toward the column-an active KAI impulse that caused the agent to stumble backward, retreat into the shadows, and slam his notebook shut.

"Let's move, girls," Dave smiled. "Mina definitely has dinner waiting."

Evening at the basalt manor by the forest carried the comforting scents of baked bread, marjoram, and oak smoke from the stone hearth.

Inside the spacious living room, an idyllic family peace reigned. Elena sat at the oak table with a thick ledger, methodically entering the silver marks and gold sovereigns into the estate's iron reserves. Beside her, little Ria proudly levitated small stacks of copper coins, sorting them into a wooden coffer.

"With this payout, our land taxes, winter grain supplies, and the rare alloy fund for Grim are fully secured," Elena summarized, closing the book with deep satisfaction. "At least our financial foundation is absolute iron."

"And the kitchen holds an absolute tonnage of calories!" Mina announced, carrying in a massive bowl of venison stew with roasted root vegetables and a basket of crusty rolls.

Dave sat on the edge of the wide sofa, stretching his legs comfortably. Raiten rested against the stone balustrade of the terrace. Shnee, dressed in a loose white linen shirt, settled right beside him, resting her head against his shoulder and closing her eyes. Karys lay stretched out on the soft rug before the fireplace, lazily flicking her wolf tail and nibbling on a roasted apple.

The peace was total. Warmth, safety, home.

And in that exact moment, the air inside the living room turned to stone.

It was no common draft, nor a sudden gust of autumn wind.

From deep within the earth and spacetime itself erupted a low-frequency, subsonic tremor. Glass goblets on the table chimed violently, the oak ceiling beams groaned, and the flames in the fireplace dimmed for a second as if all oxygen had been ripped from the room.

"What in the heavens is that...?!" Elena bolted upright, her hand instinctively snapping to her sword hilt.

Dave didn't answer with words. He sprang to his feet, his optical camouflage shattering in an instant-his irises blazing with the raw, predatory sapphire of KAI. His Yomi Tier II Sonar expanded across a dozen kilometers around Crossgard in a fraction of a millisecond.

"Terrace. Now," he ordered, grabbing Raiten in mid-stride.

They rushed onto the stone terrace of the first floor. From this elevation, the panoramic view of Crossgard and the rolling hills beyond stretched uninterrupted under the twilight sky.

The heavens above the northeastern horizon had literally split wide open.

Five kilometers from the manor, suspended fifteen paces above a forest clearing, hung a mammoth, black-and-blue elliptical Rift. It looked like a vertical, torn eye in the very fabric of reality. From its jagged edges seeped a heavy, tar-like dark mana that did not settle on the ground, but hovered in the air like dense, radioactive fallout.

"Holy mother of..." Silas gasped, running up the stairs and gripping the stone balustrade. "That's no ground fissure... That's a Rank-I Dimensional Gate! The Dark Gate!"

"A Gate of dark magic?" Shnee asked, narrowing her eyes as atmospheric pressure dropped sharply.

"Worse," Dave replied, a cold, predatory engineer's smirk slowly curling his lips. "It looks line-for-line like a classic Gate from Solo Leveling. The clock is ticking, mana is leaking, and inside nests an entire ecosystem of otherworldly garbage."

Dave slung Raiten's double harness across his chest and adjusted the cuffs of his coat.

"Girls, gear up," he called out with a dangerous spark in his eyes. "The infernal raw materials for my new toys aren't going to collect themselves. Time to see how this garbage works from the inside."