"The people you bailed out of that mechanical monstrosity were rather grateful for that, and the medical assistance we provided, so they decided to repay us via the stuff they took from the ruins."
"Safe to assume you're taking my portion as 'medical fees'?," Zhen Hai asked with a touch of sarcasm. There was a strange expression on his face that Zhen Liu swear had a deeper meaning, but he wasn't sure.
"Not exactly," Gianna answered with no hesitation, "but it is part of the reason why I'm not bothering you lot for the crystals you just retrieved."
"How generous."
"Well that's awfully nice of them," Zhen Yue noted, "They weren't going to submit them for judgement?"
"They couldn't," one of Gianna's subordinates piped up, "Due to their diggers being too injured to testify."
"No digger testimony, no entries," the other subordinate added.
"Wait, what?," the three Zhen heirs asked simultaneously. They didn't hear of this rule until right now and they were kinda shocked.
"You don't remember? The diggers were assigned to us to make sure we handover everything we found for examination."
"Wait, seriously? When did they add that rule?" Zhen Hai asked while recalling how he kinda abandoned his cousin and their digger to the mechanical centisnake earlier in the day. He made a silent prayer of thanks to whatever higher being helped save them both.
"About the same time they assigned diggers to all of us?," Gianna asked with a clear look of confusion. "Like I just said, every assigned digger is to report everything that their assigned team managed to retrieve to the judges. They added this rule because they knew the contestants would've attempted to pocket things a bit more valuable than high quality ores. The organizers wanted to make sure that every art, treasure and tool found in the ruins gets exposed so that none of the factions got uppity due to hiding away some powerful item from the rest of us. For the sake of fairness."
It was an unspoken tradition that competitors would "occasionally" pocket some of the things they found during the challenge in order to reap some small benefits in the event that they failed to win the big prizes. These pocketed items have since been referred to as "blind eye prizes". While they were technically frowned upon and any pocketing would end with disqualification, nobody said shit unless they got caught.
Zhen Liu mildly squinted at that statement about fairness, something about that line didn't sound right to him.
If there's one thing he knew about powerful factions when it came to rule establishment, they always included a loophole for themselves in order to benefit in some way.
Corruption was universal and a bitch.
"Then what happens if the digger did get injured or died?," Zhen Yue observed, "what's stopping competitors from causing 'accidents' to silence their diggers?' Apparently Zhen Liu wasn't the only who thought this was hinky, although he wasn't expecting Zhen Yue to sound so vicious.
'Gonna have to re-evaluate my opinion of her later...'
"Then the prizes that were retrieved by the team with injured or dead diggers are turned over to the Diggers Union as compensation."
There it was.
"Doesn't this ruling eliminate the possibility of 'blind eyes'?," Zhen Hai asked in a blunt manner. It was a good thing there were no other diggers or organizers near them, otherwise Zhen Hai would be in for a scolding.
"Well the diggers are willing to turn a blind eye over the blind eyes...," Gianna paused for dramatic effect, "for the right price."
With a surprise number two loophole, fun.
Zhen Liu looked mildly annoyed over the realization that out of all the absurd shit everyone has gone through, the biggest winners of this whole thing turned out to the Diggers Union despite having no team.
If they lost a digger, they could claim all the prizes that a team dug up, if they all made it to surface, than the digger could essentially blackmail for a portion of the prize to keep mum about it. Honestly, Zhen Liu couldn't help but admire the hustle.
"Regardless, I have used your portion of the prizes to pay off my team's digger so that they keep mum. Toodles." With their piece said, Gianna and her teammates proceeded to leave and presumably reunite with the rest of the Corrada family.
As Gianna and her team left, Zhen Liu couldn't help but notice that his cousin Zhen Hai was watching them leave in that forlorn way used by the guy character in romantic comedic animes and dramas. More specifically, he was staring at Gianna in that kind of way.
'Don't make comments, that triggers a flag. Don't make comments, that triggers a flag. Don't make comments, that triggers a flag,' Zhen Liu repeated to himself mentally like a mantra. He actually did want to trigger this flag just to see what would happen, but this was...technically his "real" life now, so he shouldn't tempt fate like that. Luckily for him, Zhen Yue interjected in time and snapped Zhen Hai back to the present.
"Alright, so we need to find Sullivan and bribe him ASAP..."
"Why? It's not like we have anything more valuable than these Ifrit Fire Heart Crystals."
"Uhhh, echoing?"
"...Oh shit, right...yeah we gotta find his ass. Zhen Liu," Zhen Hai began to say as he turned towards his aforementioned cousin, "Sullivan was with your puppet right? Where'd it go?"
"Oh! Right..."
Now that Zhen Liu thought about it, he had no idea.
After Frosttusk had yeeted him and his cousins to go deal with the Wolfe team, he kinda lost track of where he went. Frosttusk must've crossed the finish line at some point due to Gianna and her teammates having to submit their treasures early, but other than that he had no idea where he or the "sled" was.
[Frosttusk, where the heck are you?]
[With...long...arms...]
[Ah, so Sullivan is with you, cool. What are you guys doing?]
[He's...talking...to...judges...]
"Oh balls."