Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler-Chapter 65: [The Birth of a Cartel 3] Dry Run

The stall shimmered faintly in the midmorning light, tucked beneath one of House Seravin’s ivy-covered archways like a relic refusing to be forgotten.

Theo sat hunched behind the vendor terminal, fingers tapping against his mug. He wasn’t even looking at the screen—just waiting.

Raven leaned beside a worn pillar across from the stall, arms folded, watching in silence. He hadn’t spoken since dropping the items three hours ago.

He didn’t like waiting. Not because he was impatient—he had endured week-long tracking ops during his peak—but because waiting meant trusting someone else to move the board. That part never came easy.

Theo was casual, even relaxed. Coffee in hand, tapping through menus like he was managing a fantasy football league, not a black-market operation.

But Raven wasn’t fooled.

The man’s touch on the merchant interface was surgical—clean, practiced, no wasted clicks. Someone with a real-world background in finance, maybe?

The kind who played the market not for loot, but for the rhythm of numbers and margin swings. Theo had that air—casual on the outside, corporate under the skin. Like he clocked in for fun.

Still, Raven couldn’t help running scenarios.

What if the listing didn’t move? What if the buyer flagged the stall for unusual pricing? What if Theo overstepped and started listing without care?

He wasn’t paranoid. He was trained. Paranoia was sloppy. Calculated caution? That kept you alive.

And yet... he was here. Not interfering. Not pacing. Just watching.

That meant something.

The Frayed Ledger stall was as quiet as ever—no flashy graphics, no limited-time event tags, no firework banners.

Just one distortion oil.

One fragment core.

One blue-tier throwing knife marked up by 22%.

Theo tapped the refresh key again, more from habit than impatience. The numbers hadn’t changed.

"I feel like I’m hosting a silent auction for ghosts," he muttered, mostly to himself.

Raven said nothing. Still watching. Still weighing.

Theo glanced over. "You ever just stare at a loading bar, hoping it’ll finish faster because you’re watching it?"

Raven blinked. "No."

Theo laughed under his breath. "Right. Forgot who I was talking to."

A minute passed. Then another.

Raven shifted slightly, his eyes flicking toward the merchant log. "This long normal?"

Theo shrugged. "First-time listing, middle-tier item. This market doesn’t exactly sprint unless you shout about it. But shouting? That’s how you get noticed."

A light breeze shifted through the archway, lifting dust and silence.

Then, with a soft chime, the interface flickered.

Theo leaned in. freewёbnoνel.com

Theo finally gave the terminal one last sip of his coffee and let out a soft, "Huh."

"Sold?"

"The oil, yeah. Not bad. Took two hours." He turned slightly, grinning. "Which, in this market, is practically a standing ovation."

Raven didn’t smile, but his eyes narrowed just enough to show approval.

Theo opened the merchant log. "No spikes. No reposting loop. Buyer ID’s clean. Cross-region registered." He scrolled down. "This one came from the Gilded Thorns zone. Probably a PvPer stacking stealth before a duel stream."

He leaned back, satisfied. "Smooth move, my guy. We’re not setting fires—we’re slipping through the smoke."

Raven tilted his head slightly. "So we’re good to scale?"

Theo didn’t answer at first.

Instead, he pulled up a new tab—guild permissions.

"You know," he said casually, "handshakes are cool and all. But we’re in business now. Handshakes fade. Partnerships need a little more spine."

Raven raised an eyebrow. "You think I’ll ghost you?"

"Nah," Theo replied, smirking. "If you ghost me, I still keep the stall. But I’m thinking bigger than trust."

He tapped the screen. "You don’t want to be seen. I get that. But if this gets messy—and it will, eventually—what’s your fallback? What’s your structure?"

Raven said nothing.

Theo leaned in slightly. "Look, man. I’m not trying to powerplay you. I’m doing this for your own good. IRL, if something goes wrong and your name’s nowhere in the dividend list? That’s a weak hand."

He paused, letting the silence hang.

"Think of it like... business protocol. You don’t just send crates of goods to a partner. You assign a rep. That’s what real-world companies do, right? You get a distribution partner, and they drop a guy in a blazer to sit at the regional desk, shake hands, and make it look official. Hell, even fast food chains send regional reps to franchises. Makes the relationship look professional, even if they’re just funneling frozen goods through a side door.

In our case? You’re the supplier. I’m the stall. And right now, I’m technically unlinked. That’s bad optics if things ever go south.

Put a rep in the guild. Someone clean. Silent. No guild chat, no flexing. Just a body in the chair, like a front office plant. Like a friend, or alt account.

Oh! Hey, you got an alt account?"

Raven’s lips curved slightly. He remembered something.

DarkMerchant.

An alt Raven had used only once—during the chaos of Emberlight Guild’s infamous meltdown.

It began with two wipes in the Hollowfang Den. Emberlight’s leader, Ronan, had rushed to the forums in panic, claiming AI abuse, mystery bosses, invisible attacks—anything to salvage their image. No one believed him.

Raven didn’t post as himself. That would’ve been stupid.

That was the only time DarkMerchant ever appeared in a public space.

After that, Raven only used the account for what it was built for—transactions. Quiet, clean drops. No emotes. No chat. Just a listing terminal and a clean exit.

He used the account sparingly, not to speak, not to play—just to sell. Emberstone massacre drops. Raw ore, alchemical runes, and high-grade dungeon salvage that couldn’t be dumped on the public stalls without risking exposure. Back then, it was efficient.

Until it wasn’t.

DarkMerchant had no warehouse. No listing extensions. Just one player account with fifty sale slots and a bag that filled faster than it emptied. Raven remembered standing in front of a default NPC merchant, manually dumping mid-tier gear—items that could’ve netted ten silver each on auction—for a default two silver for each.

He did the math. One hundred items. Eight silver loss per item. Eight hundred silver. Gone.

Not in battle. Not to bugs. But to bottlenecks.

That was the moment he realized he needed a stall—and not just any stall. A partner who could move product faster than it could pile up.

That was why he was here. That was why he was talking to Theo.

Raven never use DarkMechant for socializing.

Until now.

"Yes i have. I will put it here as guild member."

Theo raised both eyebrows. "Sounds good already."

A soft mechanical chime rang from the NPC vendor beside them, cut their conversation.

Raven turned his head slightly as the vendor—an elegantly dressed digital clerk with porcelain skin and gleaming eyes—activated with unsettling smoothness.

"Welcome, valued customer," the NPC said with a flawless smile. "How may I assist you in your transaction today?"

A random player stepped up to the stall—a mid-level rogue, judging by the gear—scanning through the listings. The moment he approached, Theo instinctively minimized the store management window.

The rogue poked at the listings, muttering to himself. "You got any blue-grade healing left?"

The NPC’s voice rang out, sugary-smooth and lifeless: "Of course. We currently have one hundred blue-grade healing potions in stock. Would you like to purchase in bulk or view individual options?"

Theo leaned toward Raven, whispering behind the back of his hand, "This is why I hate the deluxe NPC voice pack. Creepy as hell—but it sells. Nobody wants to walk into a store run by some fat old guy with a pipe. They want sleek, shiny, and polite. Even if it’s uncanny."

They waited in silence while the rogue clicked through menus, made his purchase, and wandered off without a word.

Theo reopened his interface, the dashboard blooming back into view.

"Now, where were we? Oh yeah, your alt account."

"Alt name’s DarkMerchant."

Theo blinked once—then barked out a laugh.

"You’re kidding."

Raven gave the faint shrugs of his shoulder, smile curled on his lips.

"Oh, that’s too good," Theo chuckled. "You’ve already got the cold nickname and everything."

He tapped the guild interface again.

"Well, let’s make it official. I’ll add him to Frayed Ledger as an officer—limited perms. He won’t talk, he won’t interact. Just sits in the chair like a company rep. Your ’company’ rep. Just send me the guild application."

Raven nodded. "You’ll use him to list?"

"No," Theo replied. "He won’t touch listings at all. But his presence justifies the partnership. If anyone starts looking, they see a supplier rep, not a ghost network. Plus, it’ll make it easier for you to dump the goods into guild storage, which I can pull from and sell gradually."

He grinned wider. "See? This is why I like you, bro. You’ve got the business sense—even if you pretend you don’t."

"I mean, don’t get me wrong," Theo muttered with a lazy smile, "I still log in with the same username my kid helped me pick. But this? This is the real game."

He tapped twice on the merchant interface, watching a slow trend graph settle into a gentle curve.

"You know what I do in real life? I manage portfolios for people who panic if their stock dips two percent. You try to run a stress test on an asset in that world, you get a compliance audit and a lecture on fiduciary risk."

He sipped his coffee again, still smiling. "But here?"

He motioned at the stall interface, where his blue-tier potions rotated in soft, invisible rhythm.

"Here, I can test volatility. Pump a market. Starve a supply chain. And no one calls the cops. No board meetings. No lawsuits. As long as you’re not using bots, hack or script, you’re just playing the economy. And the game lets you."

He turned the chair slightly, just enough to watch the vendor NPC resume idle posture.

"People fight dragons," he added, "I fight margin swings."

Raven was silent for a moment longer, then finally turned fully toward the street beyond.

"Understood," he said simply. "I’ll bring you something new."

Theo raised an eyebrow.

"Poison reagents. And healing potion materials. Maybe something rarer if the dungeon doesn’t eat me alive." Raven continued to the door with a faint smile to Theo.

Theo chuckled, leaning back again with a nod. "You bring the venom, I’ll clean the blood. With bling-bling."

Later that evening, the city square shimmered in gold-lit dusk, the vendor NPC cycling idle animations behind its polished counter. Theo logged back in, coffee in hand, the muted thrum of real life left behind for a different kind of boardroom.

All of Raven’s products had sold.

Several hours. That’s all it took.

He blinked once at the screen, and felt a flicker of something light in his chest. The kind of flicker you get when a long-dormant machine hums back to life. The stall was still called Frayed Ledger. The guild list was still mostly ghosts.

But it was moving again.

Theo chuckled quietly, leaning back as the logs confirmed every drop cleared.

He loved this part—the numbers falling into place. The proof that his model still worked. For once, he didn’t have to spend his limited play window gathering herbs or flipping one stack at a time just to enjoy a play style he dreamed of.

Now he had a supplier.

He clicked over to the guild tab. One pending application.

**DarkMerchant.**

Approved.

He grinned. The kind of grin that belonged to a dad in flip-flops at a Sunday barbecue, who just realized the steaks came out perfect.

"Now," he said to himself, stretching out his fingers, "we get to go nuts."

Speculation markets. Rare item rotation theory. Cross-region pricing experiments. All the things he’d only tested in spreadsheets, now powered by real flow.

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