A loud horn blew outside the guild building. The sound was directly right through the walls of the cell room. Marcus let out a nasty laugh, pointing his dirty hand toward the ceiling.
"They’re here!" Marcus sneered, his eyes wide with panic and joy. "The Royal Audit Team is at the gates, Suzy! Your time is up!"
"Barry," Suzy’s voice snapped directly into my head through the mental link. She was standing totally still, but I could feel her pulse racing against my scales. "We have a major problem. The stolen potions you ate are still inside your system, but the remaining boxes from the warehouse are hidden in my office storage closet. If those royal auditors go upstairs, they will find everything."
[BARRY: Don’t panic, Director. Go upstairs and do what you do best. Act like a tough boss and stall them at the front desk. Use every piece of legal junk and guild rule you know to slow them down.]
"And what are you going to do?" she asked mentally, her fingers twitching near her dagger.
[BARRY: I’m going down to that ancient vault you mentioned. I’ll take the remaining potion boxes from your office, slide down the secret hatch, and hide the inventory where the royal guards can’t find it. Just give me the access key.]
Suzy didn’t hesitate. She turned her back to Marcus, reached into her leather vest, and slipped a small silver coin into her palm. She nudged her hand against her neck, and I quickly wrapped the tip of my tail around the coin, tucking it safely under my invisible matte-black scales.
"Enjoy the dungeon, Marcus," Suzy said her voice turning completely icy as she turned around and walked out of the cell room, leaving him yelling behind the bars.
The moment we come to main hallway, I dropped off her neck onto the floor. Since I was completely invisible, the guards running past us didn’t see a thing.
"The secret hatch is under the large rug in my private penthouse bedroom, Barry," Suzy whispered quickly as she hurried toward the front lobby. "The silver coin is the key. Be fast!"
I didn’t waste a single second. I zipped up the stairs like a silent black streak, using my high speed to reach her third-floor office in less than a minute. I slid under the office door, used my tail to pull open her private supply closet, and found the ten remaining wooden boxes of royal mana potions. I couldn’t carry ten boxes with my tiny snake body.
[System: Don’t look at the wood. Use your ’Void-Scale’ stomach! You don’t have to digest them right now—just hold the assets in your inventory temporary storage space!]
’Good idea,’ I thought.
I unhinged my jaw, opened my mouth, and swallowed the first box whole. Then the second. Then the third. Within thirty seconds, all ten boxes were sitting safely inside my pocket-dimension stomach. I looked like a long, lumpy black rope, but my camouflage still worked perfectly.
I scrambled up the secret stairs to her private penthouse, darted across the floor, and used my nose to shove the rug aside. Right there in the floorboards was a small, round silver slot.
I dropped the coin from my scales right into the hole.
With a soft click, a square section of the floor slid open, revealing a dark tunnel that went straight down into the deep earth. A cool air came out of the dark hole, smelling like ancient magic.
Down in the main lobby, I could hear the loud, arrogant voices of the Royal Audit Team.
"By order of Prince Raymond, this building is under official imperial inspection!" a man shouted from the front doors. "Director Suzy, step aside or be arrested for obstructing the crown!"
"This guild operates under an independent trade charter, Inspector!" Suzy’s voice boomed back, completely calm and firm. "You cannot search my executive offices without a signature from the High Chancellor himself. Let’s look at your paperwork line by line."
She was doing her job. Now it was time to do mine. i slid straight into the dark hole, the floor closing automatically behind my tail as I dropped down into the deep secrets of the guild founders, completely alone.
The slide down the stone tunnel was smooth. I dropped out of the dark chute and landed softly on a pile of old dust. I stood up on my tail—well, as much as a three-foot invisible snake could—and looked around the space.
It was a small, round room made of plain stone bricks. There were no lights, no fancy gold decorations, and no windows. In the middle of the room sat a square stone block, and floating right above it was a small, glowing white stone that looked like a smooth river pebble. The light it gave off was soft, but the magic energy coming from it was huge. It felt like standing next to a warm radiator on a winter day.
[System: Target Acquired: The Founder’s Soul Stone. This is it, Barry! The magic signature is a 99% match for your human soul. Drink this energy, and the system can finally build your human body!]
’Hold on,’ I thought, slithering closer. ’Suzy said the founders left traps. Let’s look at the layout first.’
I crept toward the stone block. The moment my invisible nose crossed a small groove in the stone floor, a sound clicked inside the walls.
Three small stone blocks slid out from the wall in front of me. Each block had a single word cut into the stone in plain, common language.
The first block said: [INVENTORY]
The second block said: [PROFIT]
The third block said: [TAXES]
Above the words, a line of blue magic text lit up on the wall:
"The true guild master knows what to keep, what to grow, and what to destroy. Press the correct choice to unlock the prize. Press the wrong choice, and the room fills with acid."
’Great,’ I hissed mentally. ’A corporate multiple-choice test from three hundred years ago. System, what’s the cheat code?’
[System: Don’t look at me, you useless snake. I code the screens, I don’t solve ancient history questions. Use your own brain. What does a real manager care about?]
I looked at the three blocks. A regular fantasy hero would probably pick [INVENTORY] because they love collecting legendary weapons and magic items. A regular greedy thief would pick ’PROFIT’ because they just want to count their coins.
But I was an assistant manager for five long years. I knew how the high-level bosses thought. You can have all the inventory in the world, and you can make a huge profit, but if you don’t handle the system costs, the whole business goes under. The true enemy of growth is the entity that takes your money without doing any work.
’Taxes,’ I thought, a smile forming inside my head. ’You always destroy the taxes.’
I didn’t use my fangs. I coiled my tail, lunged forward, and slammed the tip of my tail directly into the third stone block marked TAXES, pushing it deep into the wall.
For few second, the room still completely quiet. I braced my body, ready to use Quick Dodge if the acid started spraying from the ceiling.
The stone block stayed inside the wall. A sharp sound come as the glass shield around the white soul stone slid down into the floor, leaving the glowing relic completely open and unprotected. The blue magic warning text on the wall faded away, replaced by a simple message:
"Welcome, Director."
[System: Holy cow, Barry! You actually got it right! You just scammed an ancient puzzle using pure retail cynicism! Quick, grab the stone before the royal guards upstairs figure out how to open the floor hatch!]
I slithered right up onto the central block. The white stone was pulsing softly, its warm energy washing over my matte-black scales. It felt incredibly good, completely easing the tight, lumpy feeling in my stomach from the ten potion boxes I was still carrying.
I opened my jaws , unhinging my mouth until it was the size of a teacup. I leaned forward and clamped my teeth down on the glowing white rock, swallowing the ancient soul energy in one massive gulp.