*Clink*
The man in the red suit of armor has spiky ginger hair and bright blue eyes.
"Brother, we're finally going to break into the big leagues after this one! I can't believe the entire stash of that old Sector 2 leader was left out to rot in the desert."
The man in the green armor sports a buzzcut, and his black eyes match the color of the short trim. His facial features make him look a bit older than his orange-haired brother.
"It only took us a few days to get this town under control, and the progress today will clear out most of the surface warehouses."
Their analysis enchantment is still active despite their armor helmets being off, but just by the sound of their voices and levels, it's clear that both the leader of the Crimson Dagger and the Green Mist sitting together at a table are celebrating their success.
This revelation was definitely in the realm of possibilities that I was thinking up, but the fact that they're brothers, and so blatantly manipulating their grunts to do their dirty work is surprising.
Both of them drink their entire glass of alcohol, and the man in the green armor pours them both another.
He speaks up as they clink glasses again.
"So, how should we go about moving forward from here? This distribution city is by far our most profitable plunder yet. I say we play it cool after this one, don't want anyone getting too hot on our tail."
The ginger man nods and replies after taking a drink.
"Agreed."
He thinks to himself for a moment, and I reach into my item storage to pull out a glossy blue gem as he does.
Still under the protection of my stealth skill, I channel MP into the recording crystal Lith gifted me before I left. The information that's about to be shared seems like details that these two don't ever want escaping this bunker, and I intend to use it to my advantage.
The crystal creates a recording array around the whole back of the room, encompassing all of the stacked riches, fancy bottles, and most importantly the two undisguised gang leaders openly conversing.
The man in the red suit of armor finally makes his point.
"We both picked up quite a few members over the last couple of months. I think it's about time for a thinning, what do you think?"
They both grin slyly to each other, and the older brother responds.
"I was thinking the same thing. A gang war to keep only the strongest handful of guards moving forward is a fine idea. It's not like we need those weaklings anyway. Any new city we go to will have more grunts for us to choose from."
He shrugs and lets out a chuckle.
"We might as well kill them all ourselves before we leave. Sharing the riches we've found in this town would be a waste."
They both laugh to themselves and pour out another drink.
Over the next half hour, they get more and more drunk, even to the point of opening another bottle. They recount the events of different towns they raided and other times they betrayed and manipulated their gangs to fight each other under different aliases.
My eyes widened at their words, and I get some interesting insight on how they run their scheme.
Ever since both of them Ranked Up, it seems their power gap among weak hunters in the Dark Continent has blown their ego far out of proportion. However, their crime tactics are pretty smart.
They scour the edges of the Abyss, and wait for towns and villagers in need that have been driven from their homes, giving them food, work, and most recently after they stumbled across a certain Elixir of Suggestion, the two of them have been making systematic teams of high-level grunts and low-level workers to raid and pillage small towns all over.
However, every one of their drunken tales ends with them killing a majority of the people that have helped them. Especially the mindless working slaves.
My anger builds as I remember the tear falling down that woman's face as she tried to disobey the grunts' command but failed due to the elixir. It makes me want to challenge and kill both of them on the spot. But as I look around the room even more, I come to an even better plan.
On the back wall, resting on top of one of the crates full of High-Grade items, I see a small silver tablet with three large buttons on the front side. The distance isn't far, and my advanced eyesight is more than good enough to see [Middle Door] [Middle Wall] [Exit Door] as the options.
I stop channeling mana into my recording crystal and stow it away in my item storage. In the same moment, I begin to leave the large open room and hide halfway behind the stairwell, looking up at the closeed door above.
With a light activation of telekinesis, I flip one of the small silver enchanted rings out from a pile of loot in the back room to fall directly on top of the button that says [Exit Door].
Immediately, both men's heads turn toward the fallen item and stand from their seats, activating their red and green mist abilities.
At the same time, a mechanical sound opens the door above to the outside world.
I activate [Extreme Speed] and zip out of the opening crack in the ceiling as both men yell out, "Who's there?" and "Show yourself!" facing the back wall of their bunker.
Once out into the street, I can already see the fountain closing shut again as one of them pressed the button to do so, but I can't help grinning to myself as a plan to bring this operation to the floor comes to mind.
I reach into my Storage and pull out the black mask I used at the arena in Valor City and put it on. After that, I use the concealment attribute of my cloak to turn my outfit into what looks like a black business suit, but add a unique touch to make it look like it is constantly flickering with black flames.
I allow the perception of flames to change colors beneath my mask, so it looks like golden-yellow light comes out from the eye holes of the mask.
On top of this display, I put up my Qi barrier to the max, so even though I look like a walking businessman on fire, my presence is completely concealed, so it feels as if I'm not even here.
Once this is done, my hunt for every single grunt in the city begins.
Whether they're from the Crimson Dagger or Green Mist, this is not my concern.
The first one I decide to go after is the familiar man that helped to get me into this whole mess. As I round the corner, the round face and tall stature of Raze comes into view. I allow just enough of my intimidation skill to pour out of my barrier to make it noticeable, but don't want the range to spread too far or knock out the grunt here.
The moment his eyes meet the flaming man walking toward him, his gaze turns to one of fright. Earlier when he faced me, he ran into battle without thinking twice, but just by looking at my new form, something deep within his intuitive battle instincts makes him turn to run without questioning me at all.
I calmly walk down the empty street and activate my new skill, [Confusion], to send out a weak wave through my Qi barrier. Just enough to stop him in his tracks and fall to his knees holding his head.
A few seconds pass as I walk to stand in front of him, then deactivate my [Confusion] skill to watch his mental torment immediately cease, but the second he looks up to meet my fiery gaze, his skin turns pale and his eyes glaze over.
I speak in a calm and professional tone.
"You may call me the Flame Emperor. I am not here to harm you, so don't try to kill yourself. I'll be taking over this town and giving you an opportunity. I have much to show you, so please follow me."
I get ready to use more of my intimidation aura, or even ramp up the flames a bit to stop him from using the poison capsule like Fin tried when I attacked him, but the man's eyes just open wider and wider, and sweat begins to pour down the sides of his face.
I turn around without saying a word and begin walking slowly toward the warehouse his team was working on organizing.
None of them react to my presence as they're under strong hypnosis magic, but they follow my orders to rest for the day, and to wait until my return to follow any other orders.
After this, I move toward the next closest Crimson Dagger grunt.
As we turn the corner and my fiery eyes lock with his, a very similar interaction plays out.
Seven more just the same all tremble before my aura and presence. However, a few start whispering to each other the longer I let them walk behind me unharmed. There were two that needed a little convincing, so I dropped them to their knees with my intimidation skill combined with confusion, one of them even tried to run away using a [Special Grade] Extreme Speed Skill.
However, just to make it clear that I'm not playing around, I point a finger at him from over 20 meters away and send a pea-sized advanced fireball wrapped in dense wind energy in his direction.
The instant it makes contact with his back, the man explodes into a ball of flames that tears down half of a small building in the aftermath.
After this display, no one says a word or steps out of line.
I make my way to the other side of town and the visual displeasure of the Crimson Dagger grunts grows. The first man of the Green Mist goes into full attack mode the moment he sees a group of Crimson Dagger's. However, I make it very clear I'm in charge and no extra fighting will be going on.
One by one, I collect every one of the Green Mist's lackeys and only have to burn one of them to a crisp that runs away to prove my point to the new guys.
They separate into two groups, but hold themselves back from fighting each other in fear of facing the same fate as the others that have disobeyed.
Once I finish my march around town collecting everyone, I bring them inside one of the large abandoned warehouses that has already been raided and take out my recording crystal to turn it on against a large blank wall. It begins to replay the conversation of their leaders.
"Watch this. Don't move a muscle or say a word until it has completely finished."
____________________________
Author's Note:
If you're enjoying Dungeon Diver and want to follow Jay on his journey 20+ chapters ahead of schedule, check out the Patreon link in my profile bio.
There's custom chapter art for every new daily upload too!
Thanks for reading:)
____________________________