Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler-Chapter 78: [The Clean Coin Syndicate 1] Needle in the Market

The market interface was basic—just a grid of listings, filters, and vendor tags—but Theo stared at it like it owed him money.

He sat in the Frayed Ledger merchant stall, one of a dozen tucked into the lower tier of House Seravin’s trade quarter. The air was quiet. No music, no chatter. Just the soft scroll of item feeds updating.

A full row of stamina cloaks caught his attention. All listed by different seller names. All with similar stats. All priced just under market average.

He opened his custom overlay—an auction tracker he built using feed exports.

+2 stamina boots: up 12% two days ago, wiped clean yesterday, now showing up again with a new price floor. Same story with mid-grade potions.

This wasn’t organic. Someone was controlling flow.

He filtered for stamina gear—boots, cloaks, and belts—and narrowed the window to the last 72 hours. Sorted by volatility.

+2 stamina boots.

Twenty listings. Different sellers. Different zones. All posted in waves—listed, pulled, relisted elsewhere. Each one had near-identical stat rolls. Prices moved in 3–5 silver jumps. Not much, but consistent. Coordinated.

He clicked a few seller names.

"BrintGear." Level 17. No combat log.

"StamFactory." Level 11. Logged in once every two days.

"DustShanks." Level 13. Always idle near vendor stalls. No guilds, no party records.

He checked their listing history. All of them routed through quiet merchant guilds. Five-member minimums barely met. Names like Westburn Traders, Ironhop Freight, Glintgather Exchange—nothing flashy. No banners. No forums. All silent.

He ran a cross-zone trace.

Boots listed in Emberwatch, Velkarin Axis...

Reposted in Totemrise, Cindraleth Union...

Then again from the Drowned Lattice in Meridian Fold.

Same item. Different seller. Bumped each time.

Theo’s eyes narrowed.

He opened the guild chat.

Theo: "We need to talk."

Raven arrived ten minutes later. Default summoner robe. Quiet as always.

"Look", Theo pointing at guild main trade overlay.

"Player’s not flipping gear," he said aloud.

Raven stood silently behind him, watching the numbers.

Theo kept going. "They’re moving the same item through fake sellers. Reposting through shell guilds to simulate demand. Make the market think it’s hot, then set a new floor."

He zoomed in on a timestamp cluster. Seven boots. Four names. Listed two hours apart across three zones.

"This is laundering," Theo said. "Pure and simple."

Raven glanced at the price logs. "Gold farming?"

Theo shook his head. "No. This is cleaner. This is how banks wash dirty capital. Same model."

He leaned back and rubbed his jaw. "In finance, we call this layering. You move the same asset through a network of fronts until no one can trace the origin. Shell companies. Dummy buyers. Stat padding. You hide the flow in the churn."

"To a player, it looks like the market’s shifting."

"To me?" He tapped the screen. "It’s a shell relay. Someone’s got a ring set up—maybe a team, maybe one guy with a rotation script. Either way, it’s working."

Raven studied the listings again. "How many guilds involved?"

Theo flicked a key—GHOST LEADS file opened.

"Too many to know for sure. But I’ve seen the pattern across eight minor guilds this week. All meet the five-member minimum. All quiet. All posting gear that follows the same naming logic, stat spread, and sale window."

Raven folded his arms. "Smart."

Theo smirked. "Yeah. Too smart to ignore."

He closed the overlay and leaned forward.

"Shell guilds," he said.

Shell guilds. Not a theory. They’re real

Raven’s eyes narrowed. "So what’s the plan?"

Theo smirked.

"If someone else built a laundering web... we’ll build one cleaner."

He minimized the graph and opened Frayed Ledger’s own trade log. The guild was hollow now—just him, Raven’s alt DarkMerchant, and three inactive ghosts to meet the five-member minimum. It used to be a chill group: hobby alchemists, weekend traders, a few old friends.

Not anymore. Ever since he and Raven turned the guild into a cartel front, Theo had kicked the dead member, who once when they online months ago show sign that they enjoy the game. Theo didn’t want questions. He only kept the dead account who only show 1 or 2 hours play history just to meet 5 member guild requirement. Those who show signs that they tried the game once and didn’t liked it. Safer that way.

Now it was just a quiet front. A clean name with a clean record.

The stall itself had decent foot traffic. Old spot, decent rent. Theo used it like a private lab. All analytics, no noise. The game’s default anonymity setting helped—it stripped creator tags unless toggled. Most players never turned them on.

Perfect cover.

He scrolled another page. Same pattern. Same gaps. Same return windows.

Whoever was doing this wasn’t just flipping gear. They were shaping prices—pushing the floor higher with every cycle, then letting the market settle before repeating the process.

He enlarged one of the item cards. Blue-tier stamina cloak. Generic name. Stat blend just interesting enough to look random. But the sale window was short. Too short. It went up just long enough to get noticed, then vanished. Two hours later, it was relisted under a different name in a different zone—same stats, slightly higher price.

Theo zoomed out, showing three more gear types: minor stamina rings, mid-tier recovery belts, and resistance potions. Same behavior. Post, pull, bump, repeat.

"They’re using decoy sellers," he said. "Push demand. Cut supply. Then use another stall to raise the price by a few silver. Repeat it enough times and the market accepts the new floor."

Raven nodded. "Create the illusion of rarity."

"Exactly," Theo said. "Buyers think they’re chasing something limited, so they rush to grab it before it disappears again. Even if it’s junk."

He tapped through a few more graphs. "It’s not random. They’re rotating listings across guilds to create false demand. Then they offload when the price spikes. Pull the gear. Take the money. Leave the bubble for someone else."

Raven squinted at the chart. "So... what is that? Controlled inflation?"

Theo shook his head. "Closer to price pumping. This is how crypto scams work. Inflate value. Get attention. Then disappear when the price peaks."

He pointed to the relist logs. "They’re not just flipping items. They’re staging the whole play. Fake sellers, fake scarcity, fake demand—just to unload when the hype maxes out."

Raven leaned closer. "This is just like crypto pumping."

Theo nodded. "Yeah. Digital rug pulls with stamina cloaks."

He flipped to a forum post.

Is it just me or are speed builds suddenly overpriced? WTF happened to stamina gear?

Theo grinned. "Players are already feeling it."

Raven crossed his arms. "What’s the move?"

"We don’t fight them. We use them." Theo cracked his knuckles. "We take a dead merchant guild, slip in an alt, start listing anonymously. Quiet listings, no patterns. While they draw the fire, we ride the smoke."

"Infiltration."

"Exactly."

Raven stepped away from the charts for a moment, folding his arms.

"Where?" he asked. "You said infiltration. So what’s our first move?"

Theo pulled up the Frayed Ledger guild info panel and tapped it. "We’re already sitting in Meridian Fold’s House Seravin, C-tier trading zone. That’s a good position. Far from Virenthyre, the faction trading capital, and not enough prestige to draw guild crawlers or trader fanboys."

He minimized it and brought up a second overlay. "But that’s only one leg. We need reach in Velkarin Axis and Cindraleth Union too. I’ll start scouting for C-tier merchant guilds in both factions. The kind nobody watches."

Raven nodded slowly. "Should I register DarkMerchant to a few? I can join up to five guilds with one character."

Theo shook his head. "No. We keep DarkMerchant tied to Frayed Ledger only. That way it’s flagged as the supplier. I can pull everything you dump into our warehouse and re-distribute it cleanly." freёweɓnovel_com

"So you’ll move the items out yourself," Raven said. "Alt account to other guilds. Manual handoff."

"Exactly." Theo tapped the edge of his mug against the desk. "Cleaner logistics. No crossover trails. My alts handle delivery. Yours just feed Frayed Ledger."

Raven gave a small nod. "Alright. Any idea where we go first?"

Theo reached across the interface and opened one of his older notes. He pointed.

"Bridge zone in Velkarin Axis. Stonebreath Gate. It’s not fancy, but it’s busy."

He opened his trader folder—GHOST LEADS. Dozens of forgotten guilds: red flags, unpaid rent, missing leaders. Some had too much traffic. Others, too little.

He stopped at one.

"Stonebreath Gate," he said. "Transit hub. Not a capital, but it’s busy. PvPers, crafters, supply runners. High movement. Nobody pays attention to listings here unless something explodes."

He highlighted it.

"Low prestige. High turnover. Good fog."

Raven nodded. "We don’t have much to sell."

"We seed first. Few crafted pieces. Weird names. No tags. If it sells, fine. If not, it still builds noise. We test the wire."

Several hours later, Theo logged in again using his alt character. New name, fresh face, basic armor set—no frills. Just enough to pass as a low-effort merchant type. He spawned directly into Stonebreath Gate.

The city was its usual mess of smoke and steel. Players barked prices in trade chat. NPC vendors looped their stall greetings. Nobody paid attention to one more trader stepping off the transport pad.

Theo made his way toward the shell stall he had flagged earlier. Time to move.

Theo entered the zone, sent a guild join request to Oldstone Market under his alt name: LedgerTrail. He half expected a rejection.

Instead, the interface pinged: Welcome to Oldstone Market.

He snorted. "Guild with a memory of a goldfish. Perfect."

Inside the chat, one guy was asking about a missing campfire recipe. Nobody responded.

Theo posted a red-tier ring with a vague stat block and no creator tag.

It sold in 47 minutes.

Still in his capsule, Theo leaned back and stared at the empty stall.

"Not bad for a soft launch."

He pulled up his spreadsheet and typed:

Clean Coin Test Run – Active.

Let the quiet war begin.

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