There is no Epic Loot here, Only Puns.

Chapter 159: The Bureaucracy of Hypocrisy

“This is... an issue,” one of the people said, looking out across the round table at the others. The white tents adorned with two hands clasped over a Dungeon Core were warm and adorned with furniture in the same white vein.

The only real splash of color was the ink upon the maps strewn across the table top, corridors and rooms marked with comments and question marks.

“Issue? Geytan emerges looking haunted, Trysha is humming to herself that same horrid tune, and groups one to three are either resigning or requesting transfers,” came the cold tone of a much older woman in a white hood that hid her features.

“Director Ripdoy sent his boy here thinking it was a run-of-the-mill Dungeon scouting mission. He won’t like any report we send to him,” she continued with a sigh.

“How were we supposed to know this was ‘that’ village? The self-made prison of monsters? I presumed it was a joke we told to aging adventurers that their retirement plans involved moving here. It was to be that, a jest!” a smaller man announced with a huff. His more rotund figure made him look like a freshly peeled onion in his robe.

“We don’t have the total legal right of the Dungeon. The Dungeon itself is abnormal enough that I worry of corruption, and to top it off, the people here aren’t green. Some of these people have cleared more Dungeons in their prime than we have on file back at headquarters,” the first man said as he eyed the blank section of the first floor where Trysha went. She refused to explain anything about the hidden passage her men reported.

If she didn’t cooperate then they would simply have to ferret the secret out with more hired grunts.

“Enough panicking. It’s... unbecoming,” came a new voice. The three turned to the man walking in through the tent flap with a posture akin to a marble pillar, unbending and pristine.

“Ser Caline,” they all muttered in greeting as he moved towards the table. On his chest, a badge of four fingers grasped around an orb was displayed in the flickering candle light.

The two men only had two fingers on their badges while the woman's badge was adorned with three.

“We were not aware you were in this convoy,” the short man said quickly.

“I arrived a few moments ago,” he said simply and around his frame, the crackles of magic were visible from a long-range teleportation.

“The gate is being set up. There was no need to waste resources,” the woman said with a slight hint of disgust at the blatant use of company power.

“I find it prudent that we have time to talk amongst ourselves before the company comes en masse,” Caline said as he pushed his dark hair back. Long threads of his hair were deep white, but Caline was still a young man with striking features akin to a bird of prey.

The rotund man snapped his fingers and powerful silence wards sprung up around the tent along with a few more nasty surprises.

“Fellow workers of Fairplay, we gather ahead of the company for one reason alone,” Caline announced as he reached into a pocket and pulled out a tiny chest with a large golden lock on it.

Even from inside the container, the energy of the object within made the other three in the room shiver from the potent pressure it exuded.

“They’re... ready?” the first man asked, with aspects of excitement and horror lacing his words.

Caline opened the box with a key from his pocket, letting mana wash over the room.

“The Siblings have mercy on us,” the woman said, voice hoarse.

“There will be no mercy for us, sister. We will be the sinners of Fairplay and will unleash a divide in the company like never before... but we all agreed...” Caline said, the glow from the box casting shadows across his face as he looked down at it.

“Filanat Ripdoy must die.”

The other three nodded.

“And with his death, his child will inherit the company and if he proves to be as deluded as his father... then this cycle will continue,” Caline concluded as he put the box away.

“Step one... place the boy at the scene of the crime when we reach the Dungeon Core. We shall continue to throw grunts and hired hands at the Dungeon to keep up appearances. Once the Dungeon has either tipped its hand or lowered its guard, we shall activate the ‘Keys’,” Caline said simply, patting the box in his coat.

“And if Ripdoy catches wind of this little ‘drama’ we’ve enacted?” the woman asked coldly.

“We shall see his approach far before his arrival. Fairplay goes where he wills it... and if he wills it, all of Fairplay will come,” Caline responded, smiling at the thought.

All they had to do was keep a leash on Argus Gentle and reach the Core.

It sounded simple... but they eyed the maps with long looks.

---

“My dad?” Gentle mused at the weirdo skeleton as it helped goblins set up a weirder wagon of goods.

“Yes! I heard old Filly had really gotten things in order!” the skeleton said brightly. Gentle winced at the name, knowing how much his father disliked nicknames.

“Do you know my dad?” Gentle blinked at the odd statement.

“Would your father know a skeleton in the middle of nowhere?” the bone-man responded cheerfully.

“Well, no-” Gentle began and the skeleton patted him on the back.

“The name’s Ferry, Ferry Happy! Business consultant, musician, lover of milk, and by the by, I do stand up comedy if you need a party entertainer,” the skeleton said as he slipped Gentle a business card.

Gentle looked at the card then at the grinning skeleton... well, skeletons always grinned he supposed.

“I don’t need any of those, but thank you,” he said politely.

“What!?” Happy said in shock, his business tie flapping in his erratic motions.

“I work for Fairplay so I don’t need business help, I don’t know much music, I don’t mind milk, and parties make me nervous,” Gentle said slowly.

“Boy, you don’t work for Fairplay. You live Fairplay. It's a promotable lifestyle with high marketability and appeal to the younger demographic without a purpose!” Happy said and Gentle pulled back with a frown.

“Don’t say that! My Dad... he tries really hard to make Fairplay heroes for the people!” he protested.

“I have little doubt. Filly is an idealist, but heroism doesn’t pay for transport, food, rations, supplies, medical care, family insurance, equipment, and snazzy uniforms,” Happy said slyly, eyeing Gentle’s scouting uniform.

“What’s wrong with being heroic and supporting your people at the same time?” Gentle asked, hugging himself as one of the goblins tried to sell curious passersby glowing mushrooms and silk shirts.

“Ideally? Nothing at all, but while you can pay people in coin, you can’t pay them in heroism, like filling them up with fluff. When it becomes about lessening the damage you do instead of promoting the good... a company stops being heroic and evolves into a new beast. You have hungry men role-playing as knights... the cocky masquerading as the wise, and leaders pretending they wield a sword instead of a pen,” Happy commented and turned on his boney feet.

“You don’t… you don’t know anything about my dad or how he runs the company. You’re just like those in towns! All plans and comments but no action! Dad... he...” Gentle struggled with an old flash of memory...

Watching people sneer at his father when his back was turned, mocking his plans when their own were worse...

Gentle’s dad was brave... but human.

“...You are right in a way. I’m just a pile of old bones in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know anything about Fairplay as of now. Apologies my boy, my jaw rattles without care sometimes,” the skeleton said, sounding more somber now and a dark aura leaked off his bones for a moment before he contained it.

For that split second, Gentle tasted the mana... a deep, profound sadness in Ferry Happy.

“Mr Happy, I’m sorry-” he began but the man turned around with three more business cards.

“So, you’ll call me when you need a singer or comedian?” he asked, his empty skull sockets seeming to gleam with passion.

Gentle stared at him before his eye was caught by something. Happy looked over and hummed.

“‘Hob and Gob’s Epic Emporium’. A fresh investment of my time. You won’t find much loot there, but I do provide puns to all customers upon a sale,” Happy explained. Gentle wandered off, confused.

“I thought Dungeon stuff doesn’t last outside the Dungeon unless someone infuses their mana into it. Botanists and medical people do herbs and rare plants, miners do ores, adventurers with weapons and magical items, you know?” he asked Happy as he watched different items being moved between the goblins and a jolly woman who looked to have dried blood on her face.

“Good afternoon, Mrs.! You’re recovering nicely from your battle with that knight,” Happy called out and the woman turned. Gentle saw she looked a little... feral with a piece of her face partially wooden.

“Ah, Ferry! I was hoping to ask if you reconsidered donating a leg or two for my garden? Bone Meal as potent as yours would do wonders for my Fang Cabbages,” the woman asked without a hint of malicious intent.

“Such a transaction would cost me an arm and... a leg,” the skeleton guffawed.

“Oh maybe next time!” the woman hummed and walked off, winking at Gentle who felt like a slumbering titan of power had just pinched his cheek and walked away when it could have destroyed him.

“Small man!”, one of the goblins called and he was wearing a strange orange uniform with a triangle on the breast pocket. It was a strange modern shirt of sorts with buttons and a collar.

“Me?” Gentle asked, looking around for other people.

“Yes! You want special Cois-Sigil rock?” the lead one asked and Gentle tilted his head in confusion.

A what?

The second goblin picked up a carved rock with a weird symbol on it and tossed it into a blackened field next to the stall.

It landed with a clatter and Gentle was about to ask what it did when the field erupted into a fireball of force, sending soil flying.

“THAT’S A LOT OF DAMAGE!” the goblins screamed in primal delight.

“Should... should you be selling these to children?” Gentle asked as his ears had a ringing noise in them. Down the street, Deo chased a sour looking kid with an orange tongue, throwing smaller pebbles that exploded at the other boy’s heels.

The sour one turned and threw a whole rock at Deo who simply charged through the explosion with soot and a grin.

“We only carve the symbol sort of right! Much less boom!” the second Goblin with a nametag that read ‘Hob’ announced. The other goblin gestured to a locked chest which was barely holding closed a mountain of similar rocks.

“We messed up the messing up of those. They do too much boom and pop... and screams,” the goblin said calmly. Gentle was about to ask more when fellow Fairplay people swarmed the store.

“Potions? Any potions?” a woman asked rudely.

“I’ll take ten Cois-Bombs!”

“Screw him! I want two of the Bigga-Cois-Bombs!”

Gentle saw the Fairplay folk were not barting in coins but items. Daggers with gems, odd ropes, out-of-date Fairplay equipment and more.

Weird.

On the side, there were folded up dumpling-like things with a sign that read ‘A free Dungeon hint inside every Fortune Dump’. The price for those was stupidly high.

An enchanted weapon? A potion? The goblins were even asking for books, maps, and more.

Ferry Happy handed him one from his pocket and hummed as he walked off. Gentle looked inside the dumpling, the snack itself was quite delicious.

His hint was a single line.

‘Don’t aim for gold. Silver and lower is better for bodycount.’

---

Delta felt like she was trying to pass a kidney stone.

“Urgh, what is going on up there?” she asked, curled around her core with a groan. Alpha was quiet for a time before he shook his head.

“Fairplay. They were building a massive... gate outside of town. It was drawing mana before I came down here,” he explained softly, sounding helpless and Delta pushed her pain down and sat down, forcing a smile on her face.

There was no need for her to upset Alpha.

“I hate them,” Ruli said briskly, draining a flagon of sweet ale as she lounged on the beach of Delta’s fourth floor, looking every bit like a castaway who accepted her new life...

A life of free food, beer, and sunny skies.

“Any idea what this gate is?” Delta asked Ruli, so happy to be talking to people! Two people at the same time! Both who could see her!

It was like finally getting the attention of a classroom who had been bored of the lesson before.

“Gate Portal System, it’s a hole in space that connects two gates as long as both sides have enough Mana. They travel along the Mana veins of the land for near instant transportation,” Alpha said factually.

“Good thing I’ve been pumping mana into the land, or they’d be stuck,” Delta mused. She focused on the kidney-stone pain and found there was a slight feeling of... flowing. She followed it for a moment to find it vanished into a swirl of chaotic magic that made her normal mind hurt.

“Give me a sec,” she warned Alpha and Ruli before she exhaled and flipped on her ‘Dungeon’ mode.

The Dungeon, the people... the monsters... all of it dissolved into the ever expanding network of mana-motes. A network of connections that shifted like an ocean. From her domain, a constant drain of her energy was flowing to a growing tear in space.

Orange being converted to... a void.

No... not a void, a harshly scrubbed essence. It was like someone had run steel wool over a priceless piece of art. It was a loss. She tilted her head like an owl and the ocean of connections reformed like a giant orb of mana with Delta being the sun.

The space was a universe. Her bosses circled her, Fran the stalwart planet of sand and rising metal spires, roamed by a titanic boar.

Wyin was a verdant green planet that was overflowing with lush vines and the sweetest fruits on her surface, but the skys were blocked out by mile long thorns that leaked acidic fluids.

Jellagon was a tiny rock, barely more than a moon, but his gravitational pull was so absolute that the more ruin in this universe that occurred, the more rapid his moon would become a giant crowned storm planet.

All around her, lifeforms and forming fields of light represented all in her universe.

She looked around and saw Alpha, a massive galactic titan formed of stars around a central core, his form wreathed in a powerful robe, a sword in one hand and a staff in the other. He was outside her universe... yet inside it.

They should have clashed, but their efforts made them co-exist.

Between them, distant ripples in the dark could be felt... Delta saw something slashing at the dark with a keen edge, the hand holding it not visible... while in the other direction, a hydra with heads of a dragon, goat, dog, cat, fish, and more continued to roar, entwined in sickly roots which pointed the beast this way and that at the behest of some unseen puppetmaster.

Delta could only hold this state for so long so she focused on the white hole forming on the edge of her kingdom.

She reached forward.

---

The GPS hummed in its completed glory, a sleek silver oval formed by two metal fang-like pillars crossing over each other, the space in the middle peeling back like a curtain. Five crystals of purified Mana coated the pillars, the fifth at the very top.

No one saw... no one could see, the tinges of orange seeping into the pure whiteness.

The only thing that was noted was that the portal was extremely stable by Fairplay’s standards, a good sign they all told each other.

--

Delta inhaled and returned back to her normal senses. She couldn’t quite absorb the gate or do much since it was outside her Dungeon, but what she had done was quite simple.

Everyone who passed through the Gate would donate just a tiny portion of mana to the Dungeon.

This would begin their seed conversion process before they even stepped in the Dungeon. There was a slight hiccup in some of the ‘safety’ procedures, but Delta was confident that it was fine.

Absolutely positively, definitely sure...it was fine.

---

Caline watched the first of the proper teams of Fairplay arrive. Something was amiss, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was exactly.

“Did HQ update the uniform to have summer shorts?” one of his fellows asked and Caline blinked and looked down at the men and women walking forward, oblivious to the fact their uniform had shorter sleeves and trousers.

It wasn’t just that... more than a few complained about the sudden experience of tighter, smaller garments.

“Portal gave me a damn wedgie,” one announced.

Why were their clothes shrinking in the portal?

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