CHAPTER 94: CITY THEATER, A STROLL, AND FISH CLEANUP

The morning chill of the Upper City in Crossgard was thick with the crisp scent of settled dew, fresh oak, and the distant echoes of working forges. The sun slowly climbed above the stone spires of the metropolis, casting bright reflections across the ornate, brass-trimmed facades of the aristocracy's townhouses.

The team assembled in front of the manor porch. Dave adjusted the lapels of his three-piece black suit. The charcoal fabric, tailored precisely to accommodate his body's newly compressed Vessel density, fit him impeccably. Over his shoulders, he wore a black leather coat with a high collar, keeping his hands—as was his habit—deep inside his pockets.

Shnee stood beside him. Her transparent rapier forged from Celestial Silver hung at her hip, gleaming in the morning light with a cold, crystalline radiance. On his other side, Karys adjusted her fitted leather armor, complete with spine-reinforcing plates crafted by Berthold. From Dave's collar, Kaede's armored head peeked out. The little spider twitched her legs in excitement, her senses catching the vibrations of the awakening metropolis.

"Listen up," Dave said, turning on his heel to face the girls with a easygoing grin. "We're heading to the Guild of Pledges in Crossgard to finally settle our official paperwork and get registered in the city records. Remember the rules."

Shnee raised her left eyebrow slightly. "What rules, Dave?"

"Strategic camouflage," he explained with casual ease, tapping his fingers inside his pockets. "Out there, in front of the clerks and all those big shots from the city guilds, I'm playing the role of an unassuming, slightly goofy brute. Let them think I'm just your pretty mascot carrying the crates. Let them believe the weakest link is the guy in the black coat. Let them buy into it completely. Don't save me from any arguments; just play along with the game."

Kaede, perched on his shoulder, let out a squeaky cackle in their Polish code: "Dude, this is going to be absolute gold! Those guild guys are going to catch a massive lag when reality hits them!"

Shnee and Karys suppressed faint smiles, nodding in understanding. "Understood, Dave," Shnee muttered, adjusting her weapon.

They walked down the paved avenue toward central Crossgard. The aristocratic district smelled of expensive wax and lavender, but the streets were bustling with activity. Passing merchants, nobles, and city guards visibly slowed their pace upon seeing the group.

The sight was strange and provocative to the locals: two terrifyingly beautiful, dangerously armed female warriors—an ice elf with a transparent blade and a predatory wolf-girl with amethyst eyes—walking alongside a young man in a black suit with his hands in his pockets, strolling at a relaxed, carefree pace and smiling to himself.

"Look at that guy..." two traveling mercenaries standing by the fountain whispered to each other. "Just some plain, unimposing kid in a suit, leading two women like that. Probably a talentless freeloading pretty boy..." "Lucky bastard. But if they hit real trouble in the dungeon, those ladies are going to have to scoop him off the floor..."

Dave heard every word thanks to his Yomi perception. A amused, predatory glint sparked in his sapphire eye. The camouflage was operating at 100% efficiency.

The massive stone edifice of the Guild of Pledges in Crossgard exuded arrogance and stern architecture. Huge oak doors opened into a gigantic hall paved with polished granite. Inside, the atmosphere was thick with noise—dozens of adventurer teams, knights in gleaming armor, and clerks in leather coats crowded around the registration desks.

Dave and the girls approached a side counter dedicated to new guild registrations and quartering. Behind the counter sat a plump, balding clerk in a purple coat, scratching impatiently with a quill across yellowed ledgers.

When he looked up and saw Shnee and Karys, greed and merchant appraisal flickered in his eyes. But when his gaze landed on Dave, a condescending, contemptuous smirk spread across his fleshy face.

"New guild application and entry into the Crossgard city registry?" the clerk barked in an arrogant, bureaucratic tone, twirling the strap of his inkwell around his finger. "Two thousand coppers... or fifty silver coins. Processing fee, identity verification, and armor tax. Pay up, or move to the back of the line."

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Karys twitched violently, sensing a blatant scam in his voice, but Dave stopped her with a subtle shift of his shoulder.

Dave shifted his weight from foot to foot. He stared at the counter, scratching the back of his neck with a genuine, goofy grin, and spoke in his casual Earthling tone:

"Umm... excuse me, officer," he began, tracing his finger along the edge of the oak counter. "Because Luthia... our financial analyst back at the manor, wrote down right here on a slip of paper before we left that the official fee on the lobby chart is thirty silver coins, not fifty. I just feel like, on simple common sense, you're pinching us for twenty silver coins, hehe. Right?"

A sudden, strange silence fell over the guild hall around their counter.

The clerk froze. The quill stopped dead in his hand, and beads of sweaty panic broke out on his fat forehead. He looked at the slip of paper in Dave's hand, then at his cheerful, seemingly naive face. He didn't know how to handle it. An unassuming guy in a suit with a disarming smile, citing a note from his analyst, had just laid out his scam on the counter in front of ten other mercenaries.

"R-right... I mean... there was a miscalculation in the ledger column..." the sweating clerk stammered, his face flushing deep red with embarrassment. "Thirty silver coins. Pay up."

Dave pulled a leather pouch from his pocket, counted out thirty silver coins from Silas's capital, and set them on the oak table with a crisp, metallic clink.

With trembling hands, the clerk pulled out a heavy brass stamp. He slammed it onto the parchment, then handed Dave a set of gleaming steel plates and an official pass to the Deep Floors (80+) stamped with the city seal.

"Welcome to the Crossgard registry," he muttered, avoiding eye contact.

"Awesome, thanks boss! Have a great day!" Dave replied with a grin, grabbing the plates and winking at the girls.

Leaving the dark walls of the Guild, they stepped out onto the vibrant, bustling market of the Upper City. The air was filled with the scents of roasted meat, sweet vanilla, glazed fruits, and freshly baked bread.

"Before we get back to the daily grind," Dave said, looking around the stalls, "let's take a little stroll and get some real food. After that year of torture with Sensei, this market looks like paradise."

They bought delicious, piping-hot skewers off an oak grill at a busy stall, along with sweet, fluffy pastries filled with night-berries. Kaede poked her head out of his collar, eagerly nibbling a small piece of sweet pastry off Dave's claw with squeaky delight. Shnee sipped cold herbal tea from a clay mug, while Karys looked at the weapons and armor stalls featuring rare deep-biom materials with childlike fascination.

Dave felt a deep, perfect sense of peace. His black suit fit comfortably, silver clinked in his pockets, and he had a team by his side ready for anything.

Walking down the grand avenue past a marble fountain, they passed an ornate, gilded carriage escorted by six oversized, armored guards wearing the colors of a local noble house. On the driver's bench sat a young, arrogant noble in silks, ostentatiously sipping wine from a silver goblet.

As the carriage passed, the guards rudely cleared the way through the crowd, shoving onlookers with their halberds. One of them—a bulky brute with a coarse face—spotted Shnee and Karys. He narrowed his eyes, then deliberately veered his path straight toward Dave, who was walking in the middle, intending to shove him with his shoulder and knock him off the pavement into the muddy gutter.

"Out of the way, brute! Don't you see who's riding through?!" the guard barked, swinging his heavy iron pauldrons.

Dave didn't even take his hands out of his leather coat pockets.

His Yomi radar calculated the guard's movement trajectory and center of gravity in a fraction of a millisecond. Exactly as the guard's shoulder was about to strike his, Dave executed an extraordinarily subtle micro-shift of his hips, "accidentally" tripping over the uneven edge of a basalt curb.

It was a masterclass tripping maneuver.

Dave slipped aside by a centimeter, and the momentum-driven guard struck empty air. Losing his footing, the guard flew forward. He crashed headfirst into his master's gilded carriage, slammed his head into the noble's knees, and flipped the entire table. Hot soup and red wine spilled all over the noble's silk robes, while the guard himself skidded headfirst into an adjacent fish stall.

BANG! CLATTER!

The wooden crates shattered. Wood, ice, smelly herring, and fish-gutting water covered both men in front of the entire crowd. The noble shrieked in high-pitched fury, spitting herring, while the guard lay in the fish slime with two armored legs sticking up in the air.

The market crowd froze in a terrifying three-second shock. Across the onlookers' faces blossomed a silent, collective: "WHAT THE FUCK?!".

Dave, meanwhile, slowly straightened up, pulled a hand from his pocket, brushed off the hem of his leather coat, and looked at the fish disaster with the most genuine, goofy, and brazen grin he could muster.

"Oops..." he said in a friendly, charming tone, scratching the back of his neck. "So sorry, noble sir! I'm such a klutz on these uneven stones, hehe! Hope those herrings were fresh!"

Kaede was choking with laughter under his collar, Shnee turned her head with a proud, subtle smile, and Karys stared at Dave in pure, bewildered awe at how he had turned their harassers into fish mush without ever drawing a weapon.

"Let's go, girls," Dave said easily, slipping his hands back into his pockets. "Paperwork done, bellies full, and fish bought. Tomorrow at dawn, we head down into the Dark Dungeon to the 81st floor."