Chapter 212: Bad Decisions
Alpha had already sent five of the Phantosm towards the SMD branch here in Greenville. It was unlikely that the BloodRaven guild would sell their Artefacts to the government since they knew the government was taking a very high percentage from the sales, but it was still a possibility, so they had to investigate.
Alpha’s current destination was the largest Artefacts Dealership in Greenville called ’Royal Armory.’ It was a large corporation with branches all over the world, owned by an Arabian prince who had somehow managed to bring his business into the country. The Royal Armory wasn’t like other Artefact Dealerships that went out looking for customers to patronize them. Instead, the Royal Armory dealt exclusively with guilds! That meant that before you could do business with them, you had to sign a contract that every single Artefact your guild found in a Gate would be sold to them!
This not only allowed Royal Armory to have good customer retention, but it also prevented any competing Artefact Dealership from being able to take their customers away from them! Jason didn’t know if the Royal Armory was in contract with the BloodRaven guild, but if they were, then there was a very high likelihood that the Artefact would be in there!
Alpha reached the Royal Armory building and moved towards the alleyway beside the building along with the ten Phantoms that were still following her. She flowed out from the darkness and looked up at the building. There were more than thirty floors, and Alpha immediately decided they had to split up. The entire building belonged to Royal Armory, so they would need to search through every single floor!
"Each person takes three floors and sweeps through it. We cannot disappoint our king, so make sure you report anything you find. Go."
Alpha watched as all ten Phantosm fell into the shadow once more and began moving up the building. Alpha felt a great amount of anxiety in her heart as she hoped this building would have what they had been looking for! Alpha had sensed the turmoil in the King’s heart and felt sad that they weren’t able to make him feel better! She couldn’t disappoint the King anymore, so the Artefact had to be here! Alpha quickly melted into the shadow as well and headed inside the building to begin her search!
...
[Within the Orange Gate that appeared in New Jersey]
Things had gone very wrong very quickly for the superhumans who were hired by the New Jersey government to handle the Orange Gate. The Orange Gate was called the [Swamp Viper’s Pit], and just like the name suggests, the monsters inside the gate were giant, man-eating vipers that would put the fear of God into the body of even veteran A Ranks! Each viper was more than thirty feet long and their fangs were as thick as a man’s arm! They had midnight-black skin and their eyes were a deep red! They were the perfect killing machine and clearing the Gate would have been a difficult job for any Guild without any S Rank superhumans, but that wasn’t where the issues began!
The group sent into the Orange Gate was made up of two guilds: an A Rank and a B Rank guild. The A Rank guild was known as the Lightbringers, and they were led by an A Rank supporter-type superhuman who could boost the base attributes of the members of his guild by up to thirty percent! He was a proud, pompous man who believed everyone lower than him had to follow his every order or he would not support them during a fight. But there was no denying his ability and power, so everyone around him simply put up with his personality and did whatever he told them.
The second guild that went into the gate was the same guild that had been tasked with clearing out the Red Gate that Jason was dragged into before he gained his abilities. The Hornet Guild and their leader, Madam Rose, had been contacted by the government and told to join the Lightbringers guild. The first reason they were given this gate was because the government wanted to compensate them for the Red Gate that was cleared by Jason. The Hornet Guild had already been given that Red Gate to clear, but since Jason ended up clearing it, they did not make any profits from the Gate. But the second reason was that the Hornet Guilds needed to provide some much-needed physical support for the Lightbringer guild. The Lightbringers had three A Rank superhumans: one was an emitter, the second was a brawler, and the leader was a supporter. Meanwhile, the Hornet guild was made up of only Brawlers and Emitters, so the two guilds were well balanced.
The two guilds had met up outside the Gate and they discused plans and strategies on how to move towards the Gate Boss, but the moment the guilds moved through the Gate, all their plans flew out the window as immediately landed in a large swamp that almost swallowed them because of how fucking deep it was! They all struggled to make their way towards a large tree with floating roots that they could stand on, but as they moved, one of the superhumans from the Hornet’s guild ended up being captured by one of the large vipers in the swamp! The woman screamed in fear as she was almost dragged under, but a man from the Lightbringers guild immediately went to her aid! He tried to fight the viper but simply ended up being captured as well! Both of them would have died there, but the man decided to save the woman instead of himself and allowed her to swim to the surface while he ended up being dragged under the swamp by the large vipers.
The other superhumans had to fight off more of the vipers that were hiding inside the swamp, but they somehow managed to get to the floating root without losing any more members. The A Rank leader of the Lightbringers immediately went into a rant about how the Hornet guild was responsible for the death of his guild member. He claimed that they were supposed to be keeping an eye out for any monsters that snuck up on them and they weren’t doing their job properly! Obviously, Madam Rose didn’t take kindly to this, and she told the leader of the Lightbringers to shut the fuck up! They all fell into the swamp at the same time, so how was the Hornet guild supposed to know what would have happened!? It was just bad luck that made her guild member get captured!
This didn’t sit right with the leader of the Lightbringers who hated it when anyone weaker than him confronted him about his orders, so the leader immediately announced that he would not be providing any support for the Hornet guild and told his guild members to begin moving separately from the Hornet guild since they were no longer working together! This singular moment was what sentenced both of these guilds to the horrors they would face in the future.
The two guild leaders were headstrong and shortsighted, and so they both refused to be the bigger person and apologize. Madam Rose believed she was not at fault and the leader of the Lightbringers also believed he was not at fault, so why should either one of them have to apologize!? Together, the two guilds would have been able to put up a much better fight against the vipers. The vipers were strong, but that didn’t mean they were invincible. If the guilds had lured the vipers out of their swamp or if they had launched a joint attack, then they would have gotten through the viper horde with some effort since the Lightbringer’s leader could boost everyone’s stats significantly. But now that both guilds were alone, they stood no chance!