“Are you done?” Kane asked once Rui finished the final document at the bottom of the box.
“Yep,” Rui nodded. “Just finished memorizing all this data. Now time to destroy the box.”
“Are you going to hack it to bits?” Kane asked. “That feels a bit pointless.”
“It would be pointless,” Rui nodded. “But I intend to hack it and then burn it.”
He summoned his sword from the dimensional storage ring, swinging a hundred times in less than a second.
Instantly, the box and the documents were reduced to pieces. Immediately, he pulled out his hot air windpipe, before inhaling deeply and exhaling a huge amount of air that was cracklingly hot, immediately setting the box and the documents on fire and incinerating them to the ground.
“Can we take these annoying suits off now?” Kane asked impatiently.
“Sure, let’s put some good distance between us and it first though,” Rui replied. With a single step, the two of them were instantly hundreds of meters away from where they were before. They quickly removed the full-body suits before Rui put them into his dimensional storage.
Rui had taken all the precautions he could to ensure that there was essentially no direct contact between him and the box.
“We should very much be in the clear, let’s head back now,” Rui told Kane, as the two of the left the fourteenth floor, and eventually returned home. Rui spent the rest of the day fleshing out his plan as he revised all of the intelligence that he had stored in his Mind Palace.
Meanwhile, Guildmaster Bradt later that day was notified of the disappearance of the documents that Rui had purchased from him.
“Have you completely verified this result? Is there truly no trail of Cenexeun Sawdust?” Guildmaster Bradt asked sternly.
“Unfortunately not, sir,” The man replied. “Senior Vellean has reported that there is no overt trail of the potent Cenexeun Sawdust emerging anywhere from the Shionel Dungeon nor anywhere else from across the Adventurer Ring town.”𝑶𝑽𝐞𝗅xt.𝗇t
“Hmmm…” the man stroked his beard. (‘So he has either not yet left the dungeon, or has found a way to avoid my little trap.’)
Guildmaster Bradt found the first option to be very unlikely, it had been nearly half a day since the documents had been noticed to be extracted. Why would The Voider spend half a day in the dungeon if his main task had been completed?
(‘Alternatively, it is possible he realized he fell for my trap and refuses to leave the dungeon out of paranoia,’) Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes.
He did not discount this possibility, this was the worst possibility. Since the Voider would refuse to leave the dungeon, and thus the supplies for Esosale Suppliers would never reach him. Still, this was particularly unlikely.
However, it was the latter possibility that drew Guildmaster Bradt’s attention. If this was the case, then he would have to update his evaluation of the Voider’s competence, caution, and protective measures. This was a good thing in his opinion. If the Voider managed to foil this trap, then it would give Guildmaster Bradt an even greater degree of confidence in his mysterious working partner.
However, if the Voider failed to detect and evade the trap, then the potent Cenexeun Dust that could be tracked by special animals and some Martial Seniors would allow him to eventually discover the identity of the Voider, giving him a lot of control.
This was a trap that had positive outcomes regardless of whether it succeeded or failed. Guildmaster Bradt simply could not lose. Though he wasn’t sure which outcome had unfolded at the moment, he would definitely get confirmation over time.
More importantly, he was quite curious as to why Rui had requested the information that he had requested from Guildmaster Bradt. He wasn’t entirely sure what Rui was going for here.
However, there were several deductions and hypotheses he had in mind.
(‘There’s a direct clash of interests between the Voider and Deacon as they are the two most powerful forces in the supplier market and the two of them are going head-to-head,’) Guildmaster considered the information he had at hand. (‘Given that he wants information on Deacon’s exploratory information on the dungeons, it is almost guaranteed that the reason he wants it has to do with a clash of interests between him and Deacon related to the dungeon. Most likely, with the prospect of newer floors, and the fact that Chairman Deacon monopolizes new floors that his team comes across.’)
Guildmaster Bradt thought it was likely that Rui wanted to prevent Chairman Deacon from monopolizing floors that he came across in his exploration endeavors.
Unfortunately, he simply lacked the information to know how wrong that hypothesis was. In fact, it was the exact opposite of the reason why Rui wanted the information, but he couldn’t possibly come to that conclusion unless he learned about the problem of the fourteenth floor.
Regardless, Guildmaster Bradt predicted that all of this would lead to a series of events that would certainly cause Chairman Deacon a lot of pain in the coming future. He looked forward to kicking back and watching the Voider and Chairman Deacon going at it. He would simply do what he did best and exploit both of them to his benefit and come out on top as he had done his entire life.
In that regard, he was happy to see the Voider take a proactive interest in learning more about Chairman Deacon for no doubt reasons that Chairman Deacon would curse him for. He had to admit, he was quite curious to see what all of this would lead up to.
(‘Hohoho…’) He laughed inwardly. (‘What exciting times, indeed.’)
The chaos and uncertainty that had been plaguing the political landscape of the Shionel Confederation reminded him of his younger days when he fought tooth and nail to enter the Shionel Merchant Cabinet and eventually become the guildmaster.
A large number of plans were unfolding in the background, unbeknownst to almost everybody else.